OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT

The near coincidence of this anniversary meeting of the Academy with the end of the nineteenth and with the beginning of the twentieth century imposes peculiar and quite unexpected .restrictions in the way of freedom of choice of a fitting subject fur an address. Naturally one would like to p a s in review some. of the brilliant achievements of science in the p t century, and perhaps forecast the still more brilliant advances that may be expected: to mature in the present century. Especially one might feel tempted to present a semi-popular inventory of the more striking or recondite scientific events with which he is pa$cularly familiar. But all this and more, strange as it may seem, has been done, or is being done, by the public press. Specialists in almost every branch of science have been employed to expound and to summarize the discoveries, the theories, and the useful applications which have rendered science, by common consent, the most important factor in the civilization of the nineteenth century. Statesmen, philosophers and divines are likewise sounding the praises of science and the scientific method with a warmth of recognition and with a stamp of approval which tend to make one who is old enough to have lived in the pre-scientific, as well as in the present epoch, feel as if a millennium were close at hand. Indeed, such a wealth of good scientific literature is just now thrust before us and such a wealth of , praise is just now bestowed on scientific achievement that the modest man of science must hesitate before adding a word to that literature or a qualification to that praise.