The mirror., 1922-12-28

We are so accustomed to all this that we
do not give it the weight it deserves. In
fact, the intelligent minds of Great Britain
and of continental Europe have always
noticed evidences of our rapid advance
which we overlook.
Many man who can find his way about
the streets of Washington has never read
the list of publications of the Smithsonian,
or ever looked over its reports. There will
he find illustrations of the scientific cam
paigns of his count-ymen. There will he
obtain direct and indirect information of
what is going on in the scientific bodies OF
the whole world, AID in those of our own
land in particular.
Nor do many give the attention that may
we'll be paid to the publications of the
Government Printing Office, or the Bureau
of Education, or of the Department of
Agriculture. Let any man have a spec
ialy, let him begil. to hunt for data on
tree culture, and destructive insects, on the
resources of Alaska on mineral wealth, on
soil chemistry, on irrigation, on the medici-
nal plants of the forest, on the Great Lake
region, and he will be surprised at the
steady garnering of years. The daily round
of government work calls for the help of
all the sciences. Probably there is not one
science that is not in some degree at work
in the courses of public schools, in the
columns of the press, in the lecture courses,
and in the educational picture shows. More
or less of this deveopment can be seen
abroad, but not to the same extent that we
behold it here. Our newspapers jest at
the silly talk often heard on the telephone,
but the rapid exchange of views on scienti-
fic matters is daily Fastening progress.
Yearly lists mention some of the large
gifts to colleges and universities. But for
every large gift there may be twenty small
ones. Alumni return to tell what they
have seen in their travels. The telescope,
the microscope, the camera and the spectre
scope do not 60 on strike. Exhibitions
in long line tell what has been wrought
and what is being projected is beyond the
counting. In land, large part of which
has scarcely emerged from the wilderness,
the donations to science in every form have
surprised the savans of England, the mas
ter workers of France, the herr professors
of Germany.
How little, comparatively speaking, we
hear of the Rhodes scholarship, although
Rhodes was man of great powers and
although Oxford has centuries of renown
Such gift, thirty years before would
have been talked of every day. But now
a young American feels that he can study
the classics as we'll in his own country as
in any other, and every year. Old World
students come to our shores to enter our
scientific institutions. The Rhodes legacy
showed princely spirit; it is, however,
less spoken of than it would have been be-
cause our point of view has altered. A
young American may have excellent reasons
for going abroad, and yet the desire to re-
ceive better instructions than he could obtain
at home may not be among them. While
there will always be some who are drawn
across the Atlantic by classical or artistic
magnets, the growth of our own institu-
tions in scientific merit is one of the facts
of which all nations are cognizant
An hour in the Patent Office, ramble
about navy yard, visit to a technical
school, glance at a few trade journals,
an inspection of an engineering plant
these suggest to one what is meant by the
American temples of science.