New-York tribune., 1867-08-17
THE NATIONAL ACADEMY or SCIENCES.

THE NATIONAL ACADEMY or Sciences
This institution has just closed It's eighth
session at Hartford, Conn, and the record of
its daily proceedings as it has been published
in The TRIBUNEi will have enabled that por-
ton of the public, interested in science TO
Judge Of the importance of the subjects dis
cussed, and of the ability with which they
have been handled. Even the unscientfc
public must have been interested in Prof.
Agassizs remarks upon the confusion which
has resulted from the attempt OF the British
Academy OF Sciences to substitute modern
specific names for the generic terms
which were applied by LinnGus 10 the vari-
Gus species of animals and plants. Nor were
his subsequent remarks upon Van Beneden's
experiments, and his paper on the Order of
Selachians less interesting to the amateur than
they must, of course, have been to the seien-
tifc listener. Whatever Agassiz touches, he
adorns; not by allowing his imagination to
play with facts, and invest them with colors
that do not belong to them, but by setting
them in new lights and new relations, and
bringing out all the poetry that is in the
seemingly dullest of them. Professor Halls
statement of the geological relations of the
mastodOn and fossil elephant suggested by the
recent discovery Of q mastOdOn at Cohoes, n.
Y, were also of interest TO the educated pub
lie; but beyond these papers, we believe there
was nothirg read with which any but purely
scientific listeners had any concern. Nor have
we any right to find fault with this, for the Acade
my, by its very name, implies that its objects
are purely scientific, and it does not propose
to cater TO any but scientific tastes. III Agas-
siz will take skates and rays, and make
their history as delightful as a fary-tale, the
Academy cannot help it there is nothing in
the Constitution that obliges him to be dull
and, no doubt, the members were rs much
pleased with him as the rest of the audience;
but he would have been just as welcome to
the Professors if he had been as little lively
as Mr.. Pierce with his paper "on the limita-
tions and conditions of associated linear
"algebrao or Gen. Barnard, "on the process
sion of the equnoxes, and mutations"
The object scientific men have in view is,
to be scientific; it is not to be interesting, or
sympathetic, OF orthodox; and if, by chance,
they are any of these, we must be thankful
for what we get, and not be out of humOr that
VIC get no more. But there is vast range of
subjects that are as capable of scientific treat
ment as those which are usually taken up by
these learned bodies, as those which have been
treated by this very National Academy, for
example, and which are Of vital interest
and importance to the general public.
We would not ask the Academy to limit its
range, but we do ask it to widen that range,
to take in many subjects that now seem to be
excluded, but which there is no good reason,
that we know of, for excluding. IL is true
that the subjects we refer to are of mixed
character and have therefore been considered
as belonging to a new department Of inquiry
that of "SOciai Science" but, it seems to
us. that they are sufficiently capable Of