To give even the briefest account, within the limits of a single chapter, of the lives of noteworthy American scientists and educators is, of course, quite beyond the bounds of possibility. All that can be done, even at best, is to mention a few of the greatest names and to indicate in outline the particular achievements with which they are associated. That is all that has been attempted here. There are at least a hundred men, in addition to those mentioned in this chapter, whose work is of consequence in the development of American science and education. The record of their achievements is an inspiring one which, if properly told, would occupy many volumes.

In the annals of American science, two names stand out with peculiar lustre John James Audubon and Louis Agassiz. Neither was, strictly speaking, American, for Agassiz was born in Switzerland and did not come to this country until he was nearly forty years of age; while Audubon was born in French territory, the son of a French naval officer, and was educated in France. But the work of both men was distinctively American, for Audubon devoted his life to the study of American birds, and Agassiz the latter part of his to the study and classification of American fishes as well as to services of the most valuable kind in the field of geology and paleontology.

Audubon’s story is a curious and interesting one. His father, the son of a Vendean fisherman, after working his way up to the command of a French man-of-war, purchased a plantation in Louisiana, which at that time belonged to France. He married there, and there, in 1780, John James Audubon was born. He was a precocious child, and early developed a love for nature, which his parents encouraged in every way they could. He was especially fond of drawing birds and coloring his drawings. He acquired so much skill in doing this that his father sent him to Paris and placed him in the studio of the celebrated painter, David.

It is related of young Audubon that his drawings for many years fell so far short of his ideal, that on each of his birthdays he regularly made a bonfire of all he had produced during the previous year. He cared for nothing else, however, and after his return to America, his home became a museum of birds’ eggs and stuffed birds. He took long tramps through the wilderness, with no companions save dog and gun, all the time adding new drawings to his collection. Some birds he was obliged to shoot, afterwards supporting them in natural positions while he painted them; others which he could not approach, he drew with the aid of a telescope, representing them amid their natural surroundings, and all with painstaking care and exactitude.

This work, occupying years of time, and accompanied by every sort of suffering and exposure, by long trips through the wilderness of the west, in heat and cold, snow and rain, was carried forward from pure love of nature and enthusiasm for the work itself, without thought or hope of reward. Audubon’s friends began to consider him a kind of harmless madman, for what sane person would devote his life to a work so laborious and seemingly so useless? He made a little money occasionally by giving drawing lessons; but he was never content except when roaming the plains and forests, hunting for some new specimen. For his ambition was to study and draw every kind of bird which lived in America.

In 1824 he happened to be in Philadelphia, and met there a son of Lucien Bonaparte, to whom he showed his drawings. The Frenchman was at once deeply interested, for he saw their beauty and value, and he urged upon Audubon that some arrangement be made by which they could be published and given to the world. The obstacles in the way of such an enterprise were enormous, for the processes of color reproduction at that time were slow and expensive, and it was estimated that the cost of the entire work would exceed a hundred thousand dollars.

But Audubon had overcome obstacles before that, and three years later he issued the prospectus of his famous “Birds of America.” It was to consist of four folio volumes of plates, and the price of each copy was fixed at a thousand dollars. Three years more were spent in securing subscriptions, and then the work of publication began, though Audubon had barely enough money to pay for a single issue. Funds came in, however, after the appearance of the first number, and the work went steadily forward to completion in 1839. It was called by the great naturalist, Cuvier, “the most magnificent monument that art ever raised to ornithology.” It contained 448 beautifully colored plates, showing 1065 species of North American birds, each of them life size.

Before it was completed, Audubon had planned another work on similar lines, to be known as “The Quadrupeds of America,” and set to work at once to gather the necessary material, which meant the study from life of each of these animals. He even projected an extensive trip to the Rocky Mountains in search of material, but was pursuaded by his friends to give it up, as he was then nearly sixty years of age, and suffering from the effects of his long years of exposure. His sons assisted him in the preparation of the work, the first volume of which appeared in 1846, the last in 1854, three years after his death.

Audubon’s life illustrates strikingly the compelling power of devotion to an ideal. Few men have met such discouragements as he, and fewer still have overcome them. For many years, in all climates, in all weathers, pausing at no difficulty or peril, his life frequently endangered by wild beasts or still wilder savages, he trudged the pathless wilderness, quite alone, sleeping under a rude shelter of boughs or in a hollow tree, living on such game as he could shoot, seeking only one thing, new birds, and when he found them, observing their habits and setting them on paper with an infinite patience. On one occasion, rats got into the room where his drawings were stored, and destroyed almost all of them; but he set to work at once re-drawing them, where most men would have given up in despair. His work remains to this day the standard one on American birds a mighty monument to the ideals of its maker.

Jean Louis Rudolphe Agassiz was also a born naturalist, but no such obstacles confronted him as Audubon surmounted, nor did he strike out for himself a field so absolutely original. Born in Switzerland in 1807, the descendent of six generations of preachers, but destined for the profession of medicine, he refused to be anything but a naturalist. From his earliest years, he showed a passion for gathering specimens, and his first collection of fishes was made when he was ten years old. He received the very best training to be had in Switzerland, France and Germany, and early attracted attention for original work of the most important description. He came to be recognized as the greatest authority on fishes in Europe, and his work on fossil fishes, published in 1843, was a contribution to science of the first importance.

In 1846, Agassiz came to the United States, partly to deliver a course of lectures at Boston and partly to make himself familiar with the geology and natural history of this country. His reception was so cordial and he found so much to interest him here, that he accepted the chair of zoology and geology in the Lawrence Scientific School at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and decided to make the United States his home. He soon made Cambridge a great scientific centre, and proved himself the most inspiring, magnetic and influential teacher of science this country has ever seen.

In succeeding years, he traversed practically the entire country, accumulating vast collections of specimens which formed the foundation of the great natural history museum at Cambridge. He was preparing himself for the publication of a comprehensive work to be called “Contributions to the Natural History of the United States,” the first volume of which appeared in 1857. Succeeding years were occupied with a journey to Brazil, another around Cape Horn, and the establishment of the Pekinese Island school of natural history, where he was able to carry out his long contemplated plan of teaching directly from nature. But his labors had impaired his health, and he died in Cambridge in 1873, after a short illness. His grave is marked by a boulder from the glacier of the Aar, and shaded by pine trees brought from his native Switzerland.

Agassiz was one of the most remarkable teachers of science that ever lived. Handsome, enthusiastic, overflowing with vitality, and with a learning broad and deep, his students found in him a real inspiration to intellectual endeavor. His lectures, however technical and abstruse their subjects, were of an incomparable clarity and simplicity. He was one of the first to advocate the teaching of science to women, not in its technical details, but in its broad outlines.

“What I wish for you,” he said, one day, addressing a class of girls, “is a culture that is alive and active. My instruction is only intended to show you the thoughts in nature which science reveals.

“A physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle,” he used to say. “Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance.”

Of the pupils of Agassiz, not the least famous was his son, Alexander, who, after graduating from Harvard, assisted his father in his work, collected many specimens for the museum at Cambridge, and was finally appointed assistant in zoology there. In the following years he put his scientific knowledge to a very practical use. In his geological surveys of the country, he had been impressed with the richness of the copper mines on Lake Superior. For five years, he acted as superintendent of the famous Calumet and Hecla mines, developing them into the most successful copper mines in the world, and himself gaining wealth from them which permitted his making gifts to Harvard aggregating half a million dollars. It was characteristic of him that, after his service with the Calumet and Hecla, he resumed his duties at the museum at Cambridge, and continued as curator until ill health compelled his resignation in 1885.

Among other pupils of Agassiz who won more than ordinary fame as naturalists may be mentioned Albert Smith Bickmore, Alonzo Howard Clark, Charles Frederick Hartt, Alpheus Hyatt, Theodore Lyman, Edward Sylvester Morse, Alpheus Spring Packard, Frederick Ward Putnam, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, William Stimpson, Sanborn Tenney, Addison Emory Merrill, Burt Green Wilder and Henry Augustus Ward as brilliant a galaxy of names as American science can boast, bearing remarkable testimony to the inspiring qualities of their great teacher.

What Agassiz did for geology and natural history, Asa Gray to some extent did for botany. Born at Paris, N. Y., in 1810, and at an early age abandoning the study of medicine for that of botany, he accepted, in 1842, a call to the Fisher professorship of natural history at Harvard, a post which he held for over thirty years. Gray’s work began at the time when the old artificial system of classification was giving way to the natural system, and he, perhaps more than any other one man, established this system firmly on the basis of affinity.

In 1864, he presented to Harvard his herbarium of more than two hundred thousand specimens, and his botanical library. He remained in charge of the herbarium until his death, adding to it constantly, until it became one of the most complete in the world. His publications upon the subject of botany were numerous and of the highest order of scholarship, and long before his death he was recognized as the foremost botanist of the country.

Scarcely inferior to him in reputation was John Torrey. It was to Torrey that Gray owed his first lessons in botany, and if the pupil afterwards surpassed the master, it was because he was able to build on the foundations which the master laid. John Torrey, born in New York City in 1796, was the son of a Revolutionary soldier, and in early life determined to become a machinist, but afterwards studied medicine and began to practice in New York, taking up the study of botany as an avocation. He found the profession of medicine uncongenial, and finally abandoned it altogether for science, serving for many years as professor of chemistry and botany at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. The succeeding years brought him many honors, and saw many works of importance issue from his hands.

The progress of the last century in the various branches of science is an interesting study, and America has made no inconsiderable contributions to every one of them. In astronomy, six names are worthy of mention here. The first of these, John William Draper, was noted for his devotion to many other lines of science, especially to photography, and was the first person in the world to take a photograph of a human being. His service to astronomy was in the application of photography to that science. In 1840, he took the first photograph ever made of the moon, and a few years later published his “Production of Light by Heat,” an early and exceedingly important contribution to the subject of spectrum analysis.

His work in astronomy and more especially in physics was carried on most worthily by his son, Henry Draper, who, at his home at Hastings-on-the-Hudson, built himself an observatory, mounting in it a reflecting telescope, which he also made. His description of the processes of grinding, polishing, silvering, testing and mounting it has remained the standard work on the subject. With this telescope he took a photograph of the moon which remains one of the best that has ever been made. Among his other noteworthy achievements were his spectrum photographs of 1872 and 1873, and in 1880 his photograph of the great nebula in Orion, the first photograph of a nebula ever secured. Perhaps the most brilliant discovery ever made in physical science by an American was that by Draper in 1877, when he demonstrated the presence of oxygen in the sun so conclusively that it could not be disputed. It was a sort of tour de force that took the scientific world by surprise and gained its author the widest recognition.

The services of Lewis Morris Rutherford to astronomy resembled in many ways those of Draper. Starting in life as a lawyer, he abandoned that profession at the age of thirty-three to devote his whole time to science, principally to the perfection of astronomical photography and spectrum analysis. The service which photography has rendered to astronomy can scarcely be overestimated, and these pioneers in the art were laying the foundations for its recent wonderful developments. He was the first to attempt to classify the stars according to their spectra, and invented a number of instruments of the greatest service in star photography. All in all, it is doubtful if anyone added more to the development of this branch of the science than did he.

Very different from the services of these men were those rendered the science of astronomy by Charles Augustus Young. Called to the chair of astronomy at Princeton University in 1877, he held that important position for thirty years, his courses a source of inspiration to his students. He was a member of many important scientific expeditions, invented an automatic spectroscope which has never been displaced, measured the velocity of the sun’s rotation, and was a large contributor to public knowledge of the science.

Equally important have been the contributions made by Samuel Pierpont Langley, perhaps the greatest authority on the sun alive to-day. He showed a decided fondness for astronomy even as a boy, and at the age of thirty was assistant in the observatory at Harvard. Two years later, he was invited to fill the chair of astronomy in the Western University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh, and his work there began with the establishment of a complete time service, the first step toward the present daily time service conducted by the government. In 1870, he began the series of brilliant researches on the sun which have placed him at the head of authorities on that body. His scientific papers are very numerous and his series of magazine articles on “The New Astronomy” did much to acquaint the public with the rapid development of the science. In 1887, he was chosen to the important post of secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and his recent years have been spent in experimenting with aeronautics.

Simon Newcomb is another who rendered yeoman service to the science. Born in Nova Scotia, the son of the village schoolmaster, he lived to become one of the eight foreign associates of the Institute of France, the first native American since Franklin to be so honored; to win the Huygens medal, given once in twenty years to the astronomer who had done the greatest service to the science in that period, and to receive the highest degree from practically every American college.

In his autobiography he tells how, at the age of five, he began to study arithmetic, at twelve algebra, and at thirteen Euclid. At the age of eighteen, planning to make his way to the United States, he set out on foot, taught school for a year or so, and then attracted the attention of Prof. Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, by sending him a problem in algebra. The unusual aptitude for mathematics which the boy possessed so impressed Prof. Henry, that he set him to work as a computer on the Nautical Almanac; but he was soon attracted to “exact,” or mathematical astronomy, which became his life work. Some idea of its importance may be gained when it is stated that every astronomer in the world to-day uses his determinations of the movements of the planets and the moon; every skipper in the world guides his ship by tables which Newcomb devised; and every eclipse is computed according to his tables. He supervised the construction and mounting of the equatorial telescope in the naval observatory at Washington, the Lick telescope, and Russia applied to him, in 1873, for aid in placing her great telescope.

A man of humor, sympathy and anecdote, he found, in the fall of 1908, that he was suffering from cancer, and hastened the work on the moon, which was to be his masterpiece. Ten months later, he was told that his course was nearly run and his great work was still incomplete.

“Take me to Washington,” he said, “I must work while there is time.”

And there, lying in agony on his bed, for three weeks he dictated steadily to stenographers on a subject which required the utmost concentration. His indomitable will alone supported him, and a week after the last word had been written, came the end. Verily, there was a man!

The last of the great American astronomers whom we shall mention here is Edward Charles Pickering, whose name is so closely connected with the development of the great observatory at Harvard. Born at Boston, and educated at the Lawrence Scientific School, his first work was in the field of physics, but in 1876, he was appointed professor of astronomy and geodesy, and director of the Harvard observatory, which, under his management, has become of the first importance. His principal work has been the determination of the relative brightness of the stars, and many thousands have been charted. On the death of Henry Draper, the study of the spectra of the stars by means of photography was continued as a memorial to that great scientist, and the results obtained have been of the most important character, including a star map of the entire heavens. Other phases of the science of scarcely less importance have been carefully developed, and the work which has been done under Pickering’s direction, is second to none in the history of the science. Not satisfied with the Northern hemisphere, a branch has been established in Peru, in which the observatory’s methods of research have been extended to the south celestial pole. So for eighteen years and more, it has kept ceaseless watch of the heavens, with an accuracy of which the world has hardly a conception. For this great work the scientific world must pay tribute to the genius and perseverance of Edward Charles Pickering.

The second department of science claiming our attention is that of paleontology. Here one of the most eminent of American names is that of Othniel Charles Marsh. A graduate of Yale and firmly grounded in zoology and kindred sciences by a course of study at Heidelberg and Berlin, he returned to the United States in 1866 to accept the chair of paleontology which had been established for him at Yale. The remainder of his life was devoted to the original investigation of extinct vertebrates, especially in the Rocky Mountain regions. In these explorations, more than a thousand new species of extinct vertebrates were brought to light, many of which possess great scientific interest, representing new orders never before discovered in America. So important was this work that the national geological survey undertook the publication of his reports, which formed the most remarkable contributions to the subject ever written in this country, attracting the attention and admiration of the whole scientific world.

Associated with Marsh as paleontologist for the Geological Survey was Edward Drinker Cope, whose work was second only to the older man’s in importance. He also devoted much of his attention to the exploration of the Rocky Mountain region, and found that there, in the strata of the ancient lake beds, records of the age of mammals had been made and preserved with a fulness surpassing that of any other known region on earth. The profusion of vertebrate remains brought to light was almost unbelievable. Prof. Marsh, who was first in the field, found three hundred new tertiary species between 1870 and 1876, besides unearthing the remains of two hundred birds with teeth, six hundred flying dragons, and fifteen hundred sea serpents, some of them sixty feet in length. In a single bed of rock not larger than a good sized lecture room, he found the remains of no less than one hundred and sixty mammals.

It was this work which Prof. Cope took up and carried forward. Its importance may be appreciated when it is stated that among these remains are found examples of just such intermediate types of organisms as must have existed if the succession of life on the earth has been an unbroken lineal succession. Here are snakes with wings and legs, and birds with teeth and other snakelike characteristics, bridging the gap between modern birds and reptiles. The line of descent of the horse, the camel, the hippopotamus and other mammals has been traced to a single ancestor, the result being the proof of the theory of evolution.

The whole work of American paleontology has, of course, been along these lines. Agassiz himself was a living and vital force in it, as were such men as Joseph Leidy and H. F. Osborne.

It is a remarkable fact that one of the few truly original and novel ideas the past century can boast, and the one which has had the deepest influence on geology, had its origin in the brain of an illiterate Swiss chamois hunter named Perraudin. Throughout the Alps, on lofty crags, great bowlders were often found, which had no relation to the geology of the region and which were called erratics, because they had evidently come there from a distance. But how? Scientists explained it in many ways, but it remained for the mountaineer to suggest that the bowlders had been left in their present positions by glaciers. The scientific world laughed at the idea, but ten years later, it was brought to the attention of Louis Agassiz; he investigated it, became a convert, and saw that its implications extended far beyond the Alps, for these erratic bowlders were found on mountains and plains throughout the northern hemisphere. Agassiz found everywhere evidences of glacial action, and became convinced that at one time a great ice cap had covered the globe down to the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere. So came the conception of a universal Ice Age, now one of the accepted tenets of geology.

The dean of American geologists was Benjamin Silliman, who, at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, took up at Yale University the work which he was to carry on so successfully for more than fifty years. As an inspiring teacher he was scarcely less successful than Agassiz at a later day. His popular lectures began in 1808 and soon attracted to New Haven the brightest young men in the country. Among them was James Dwight Dana, who was to carry on most worthily the work which Prof. Silliman had begun.

James Dwight Dana was attracted to Yale by Prof. Silliman’s great reputation and received there the inspiration which started him upon a scientific career. Three years after his graduation, he was appointed assistant to his former instructor, and two years later sailed for the South Seas as mineralogist and geologist of the United States exploring expedition commanded by Charles Wilkes. He was absent for three years and spent thirteen more in studying and classifying the material he had collected. He then resumed his work at Yale, succeeding Prof. Silliman in the chair of geology and mineralogy. His work was recognized throughout the world as most important, and many honors were conferred upon him.

Another famous name in American geology is that of John Strong Newberry. His name is connected principally with the explorations of the Columbia and Colorado rivers. He was afterwards appointed professor of geology and paleontology at the Columbia College School of Mines, and took charge of that department in the autumn of 1866. During his connection with the institution, he created a museum of over one hundred thousand specimens, principally collected by himself, containing the best representation of the mineral resources of the United States to be found anywhere.

Among the pupils of Prof. Silliman who afterwards won a wide reputation was Josiah Dwight Whitney. Graduating from Yale in 1839, he spent five years studying in Europe, and then, returning to America, was connected with the survey of the Lake Superior region, of Iowa, of the upper Missouri, and of California, issuing a number of books giving the results of these investigations, and in 1865, being called to the chair of geology at Harvard.

Still another of Prof. Silliman’s pupils was Edward Hitchcock, whose life was an unusually interesting one. His parents were poor and he spent his boyhood working on a farm or as a carpenter, gaining such education as he could by studying at night. Deciding to enter the ministry, he managed to work his way through Yale theological seminary, graduating at the age of twenty-seven. It was here that he came under the influence of Prof. Silliman, and after a laboratory course and much field work, he was chosen professor of chemistry and natural history at Amherst College. He held this position for twenty years, and in 1845 was chosen president of the college, transforming it, before his retirement nine years later, from a poor and struggling institution into a well-endowed and firmly established one. He had meanwhile served as state geologist of Massachusetts, and completed the first survey of an entire state ever made by authority of a government.

The most important recent contribution to American geology has been the three volume work issued in 1904-5, under the joint editorship of Thomas C. Chamberlain and Rollin D. Salisbury. Both are geologists of wide experience, and their work presents the present status of the science interestingly and simply.

America has had her full share of daring and successful surgeons, and in the science of surgery stands to-day second to no nation on earth, but perhaps the most famous American surgeon who ever lived was Valentine Mott. Dr. Mott was descended from a long line of Quaker ancestors, and was born in 1785. His father was a physician, and Dr. Mott began his medical and surgical studies at the age of nineteen, first in New York City, and afterwards in the hospitals of London, where he made a specialty of the study of practical anatomy by the method of dissection. At that time there was in this country a deep-seated prejudice against the use of the human body for this purpose, and the experience which Dr. Mott secured in London, and which stood him in such good stead in after years, would have been impossible of attainment here. A year was also spent in Edinburgh, and finally, in 1809, Dr. Mott returned to America with an exceptional equipment.

His skill won him a wide reputation and he was soon recognized as one of the first surgeons of the age. His boldness and originality were exceptional, and his success was no doubt due in some degree to his constant practice throughout his life of performing every novel and important operation upon a cadaver before operating upon the living subject. To describe in detail the operations which he originated would be too technical for such a book as this, but many of them were of the first importance. Sir Astley Cooper said of him: “Dr. Mott has performed more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did live.” He possessed all the qualifications of a great operator, extraordinary keenness of sight, steadiness of nerve, and physical vigor. He could use his left hand as skillfully as his right, and developed a dexterity which has never been surpassed.

It should be remembered that in those days the use of anaesthetics had not yet been discovered, and every operation had to be performed upon the conscious subject, as he lay strapped upon the table shrieking with agony. To perform an operation under such circumstances required an iron nerve. Dr. Mott was one of the first to recognize the value of anaesthetics, and his use of them, immediately following their discovery, greatly facilitated their rapid and general introduction.

It is one of the boasts of American medicine that the first man in the world to conceive the idea that the administration of a definite drug might render a surgical operation painless was an American Crawford W. Long. Dr. Long graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. When a student, he had once inhaled ether for its intoxicant effects, and while partially under the influence of the drug, had noticed that a chance blow to his shin produced no pain. This gave him the idea that ether might be used in surgical operations, and on March 30, 1842, at Jefferson, Georgia, he used it with entire success. He repeated the experiment several times, but he did not entirely trust the evidence of these experiments. So he delayed announcing the discovery until he had subjected it to further tests, and while these experiments were going on, another American, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, of Boston, also hit upon the great discovery and announced it to the world.

Dr. Morton was a dentist who, in 1841, introduced a new kind of solder by which false teeth could be fastened to gold plates. Then, in the endeavor to extract teeth without pain, he tried stimulants, opium and magnetism without success, and finally sulphuric ether. On September 30, 1846, he administered ether to a patient and removed a tooth without pain; the next day he repeated the experiment, and the next. Then, filled with the immense possibilities of his discovery, he went to Dr. J. C. Warren, one of the foremost surgeons of Boston, and asked permission to test it decisively on one of the patients at the Boston hospital during a severe operation. The request was granted, and on October 16, 1846, the test was made in the presence of a large body of surgeons and students. The patient slept quietly while the surgeon’s knife was plied, and awoke to an astonished comprehension that the dreadful ordeal was over. The impossible, the miraculous, had been accomplished; suffering mankind had received such a blessing as it had never received before, and American surgery had scored its greatest triumph. Swiftly as steam could carry it, the splendid news was heralded to all the world, and its truth was soon established by repeated experiments.

To tell of the work of the men who came after these pioneers in the field of surgery and medicine is a task quite beyond the compass of this little volume. There are at least a score whose achievements are of the first importance, and nowhere in the world has this great science, which has for its aim the alleviation of human suffering, reached a higher development.

Among the physicists of the country, Joseph Henry takes a high place. His boyhood and youth were passed in a struggle for existence. He was placed in a store at the age of ten, and remained there for five years. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a watchmaker, and had some thought of studying for the stage, but during a brief illness, he started to read Dr. Gregory’s “Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, Astronomy and Chemistry,” and forthwith decided to become a scientist. He began to study in the evenings, managed to take a course of instruction at the academy at Albany, New York, and finally, in 1826, was made professor of mathematics there.

Almost at once began a series of brilliant experiments in electricity which have linked his name with that of Benjamin Franklin as one of the two most original investigators in that branch of science which this country has ever produced. His first work was the improving of existing forms of apparatus, and his first important discovery was that of the electro-magnet. His development of the “intensity” magnet in 1830 made the electric telegraph a possibility. Two years later he was called to the chair of natural philosophy at Princeton University, where he continued his investigations, many of which have been of permanent value to science. In 1846, he was elected first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and removed to Washington, where the last forty years of his life were passed in the development of the great scientific establishment of which he was the head. He steadily refused the most flattering offers of other positions, among them the presidency of Princeton, and like Agassiz, he might have answered, when tempted by larger salaries, “I cannot afford to waste my time in making money.” To his efforts is largely due the establishment of the national lighthouse system, as well as that of the national weather bureau.

Besides his services to American science as instructor at Harvard College, Louis Agassiz rendered another when he persuaded Arnold Guyot, his colleague in the college at Neuchatel, to accompany him to this country. Guyot was at that time forty years old, and was already widely known as a geologist and naturalist, and the delivery of a series of lectures before the Lowell Institute, established his reputation in this country. He was soon invited to the chair of physical geography and geology at Princeton, which he held until his death. He founded the museum at Princeton, which has since become one of the best of its kind in the United States. Perhaps he is best known for the series of geographies he prepared, and which were at one time widely used in schools throughout the United States.

Perhaps no family has been more closely associated with American science than that of the Huguenot Le Conte, who settled at New Rochelle, New York, about the close of the seventeenth century, moving afterwards to New Jersey. There, in 1782, Lewis Le Conte was born. He was graduated at Columbia at the age of seventeen and started to study medicine, but was soon afterwards called to the management of the family estates of Woodsmanston, in Georgia. There he established a botanical garden and a laboratory in which he tested the discoveries of the chemists of the day. His death resulted from poison that was taken into his system while dressing a wound for a member of his family.

His son, John Le Conte, after studying medicine and beginning the practice of his profession at Savannah, Georgia, was called to the chair of natural philosophy and chemistry at Franklin College, and after some years in educational work, was appointed professor of physics and industrial mechanics in the University of California, which position he held until his death, serving also for some years as president of the University. His scientific work extended over a period of more than half a century, being confined almost exclusively to physical science, in which he was one of the first authorities.

Another son of Lewis, Joseph Le Conte, like his brother, studied medicine and started to practice it; but in 1850, attracted by the great work being done by Louis Agassiz, he entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, devoting his attention especially to geology. After holding a number of minor positions, he became professor of geology and natural history in the University of California in 1869, and his most important work was done there in the shape of original investigations in geology, which placed him in the front rank of American geologists.

Lewis Le Conte had a brother, John Eathan Le Conte, who was also widely known as a naturalist of unusual attainments. He published many papers upon various branches of botany and zoology, and collected a vast amount of material for a natural history of American insects, only a part of which was published. His son, John Lawrence Le Conte, was a pupil of Agassiz, and conducted extensive explorations of the Lake Superior and upper Mississippi regions, and of the Colorado river. He afterwards made a number of expeditions to Honduras, Panama, Europe, Egypt and Algiers, collecting material for a work on the fauna of the world, which, however, was left uncompleted at his death.

American science recently suffered a heavy loss in the death of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, one of the most brilliant of the pupils of Agassiz, and from 1864 until the time of his death, connected with the geological department of Harvard University, rising to the full professorship in geology, which he held for over twenty years, and to the position of dean of the Lawrence Scientific School. He did much to increase public interest in and knowledge of the development of the science by frequent popular articles in the leading magazines, in addition to more technical books and memoirs intended especially for scientists.

Of living scientists, we can do no more than mention a few. Perhaps the most famous, and dearest to the popular heart is John Burroughs, a nature philosopher, if there ever was one, a keen observer of the life of field and forest, and the author of a long list of lovable books. One of the leaders in the “return to nature” movement which has reached such wide proportions of recent years, he has held his position as its prophet and interpreter against the assaults of younger, more energetic, but narrower men.

Prominent in the same field is Liberty Hyde Bailey, since 1903 director of the College of Agriculture at Cornell University. His early training took place under Asa Gray, and his attention has been devoted principally to botanical and horticultural subjects. He has written many books, his principal work being his Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, which has just been completed. Other recent important contributions to science have been made by Vernon L. Kellogg, whose work has dealt principally with American insects, and whose recent book on that subject has been recognized as a standard authority; by Charles Edward Bessey, professor of botany at the University of Nebraska since 1884, a pupil of Dr. Asa Gray and the author of a number of valued books upon the subject which has been his life work; by George Frederick Barker, now emeritus professor of physics in the University of Pennsylvania, and the recipient of high honors at home and abroad; and by many others whom it is not necessary to mention here.

It will be evident enough from the foregoing that American science can boast no men of commanding genius no men, that is, to rank with Darwin, or Huxley, or Lord Kelvin, or Sir Isaac Newton, to mention only Englishmen. Its record has been one of respectable achievement rather than of brilliant originality, but is yet one of which we have no reason to be ashamed.

Most of the men mentioned in this chapter have, in the widest sense been educators. Agassiz, Gray, Silliman, Guyot all were educators in the fullest and truest way. It remains for us to consider a few others who have labored in this country for the spread of knowledge. That the present educational system of the United States is not a spontaneous growth, but has been carefully fostered and directed, goes without saying. It is the result, first, of a wise interest and support on the part of the state, which early recognized the importance of educating its citizens, and, second, of the self-sacrificing efforts of a number of intelligent, earnest, and public-spirited men.

One of the first of these was Horace Mann, born in Massachusetts in 1796, the son of a poor farmer. His struggle to gain an education was a desperate one, and its story cannot but be inspiring. As a child he earned his school books by braiding straw, and his utmost endeavors, between the ages of ten and twenty, could secure him no more than six weeks’ schooling in any one year. Consequently he was twenty-three years of age when he graduated from Brown University, instead of seventeen or eighteen, as would have been the case had he had the usual opportunities. He went to work at once as a tutor in Latin and Greek, studied law, was admitted to the bar, elected to the state legislature and afterwards to the senate, and finally entered upon his real work as secretary to the Massachusetts board of education.

He introduced a thorough reform into the school system of the state, made a trip of inspection through European schools, and by his lectures and writings awakened an interest in the cause of education which had never before been felt. His reports were reprinted in other states, attaining the widest circulation. It is noteworthy that as early as 1847, he advocated the disuse of corporal punishment in school discipline. After a service of some years as member of Congress, during which he threw all his influence against slavery, he accepted the presidency of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he continued until his death. It was there that the experiment of co-education was tried, and found to work successfully, and the foundations laid for one of the most characteristic of recent great development of higher school education in America. Oberlin College, also in Ohio, had by a few years preceded Dr. Mann’s experiment, but the latter’s great reputation as an educator caused his ardent advocacy of co-education to carry great weight with the public. From this time on it became a custom, as state universities opened in the west, to admit women, and the custom gradually spread to the east and even to some of the larger colleges supported by private endowments.

Turning to the three great universities, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, which have done so much for the intellectual welfare of the country, we find a galaxy of brilliant names. On the list of Harvard presidents, three stand out pre-eminent Josiah Quincy, Edward Everett, and Charles William Eliot. Josiah Quincy, third of the name of the great Massachusetts Quincys, graduated at Harvard in 1790 at the head of his class, studied law, drifted inevitably into politics, held a number of offices, which do not concern us here, and finally, after a remarkable term as mayor of Boston, was, in 1829, chosen president of Harvard. The work that he did there was important in the extreme. He introduced the system of marking which continued in use for over forty years; instituted the elective system, which permitted the student to shape his course of study to suit the career which he had chosen; secured large endowments, and, when he retired from the presidency in 1845, left the college in the foremost position among American institutions of learning. Edward Everett, who was president of the college from 1846-49, was more prominent as a statesman than as an educator, and an outline of his career will be found in “Men of Action.” The third of the trio, Charles William Eliot, whose term as president of the college covered a period of forty years, is rightly regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest educator this country has produced.

Graduating from Harvard in 1853, at the age of nineteen, he devoted his attention principally to chemistry, and, after some years of teaching, and of study in Europe, was, in 1865, appointed professor of chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The same year, a revolution occurred in the government of Harvard, which was transferred from the state legislature to the graduates of the college. The effect of the change was greatly to strengthen the interest of the alumni in the management of the university, and to prepare the way for extensive and thorough reforms. Considerable time was spent in searching for the right man for president and finally, in 1869, Prof. Eliot was chosen.

That the right man had been found was evident from the first. “King Log has made room for King Stork,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, then professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, to John Motley. “Mr. Eliot makes the corporation meet twice a month instead of once. He comes to the meeting of every faculty, ours among the rest, and keeps us up to eleven and twelve o’clock at night discussing new arrangements. I cannot help being amused at some of the scenes we have in our medical faculty this cool, grave young man proposing in the calmest way to turn everything topsy turvy, taking the reins into his hands and driving as if he were the first man that ever sat on the box.

“‘How is it, I should like to ask,’ said one of our members, the other day, ’that this faculty has gone on for eighty years managing its own affairs and doing it well, and now within three or four months it is proposed to change all our modes of carrying on the school? It seems very extraordinary, and I should like to know how it happens.’

“‘I can answer Dr. ’s question very easily,’ said the bland, grave young man. ‘There is a new president.’

“The tranquil assurance of this answer had an effect such as I hardly ever knew produced by the most eloquent sentences I ever heard uttered.”

The bland young man’s innovations did not seem to do much harm to Harvard, for under his administration, her financial resources have been multiplied by ten, as has the number of her teachers, while the number of her students has been multiplied by five. Dr. Eliot has grown into the real head of the educational system of this country; his influence has wrought vast changes in every department of teaching, from the kindergarten to the university. It was his idea that common school education and college education ought to be flexible, ought to be made to fit the needs of the pupil. The result has been the broad development of the elective system broader than Josiah Quincy ever dreamed of. The same system has changed the whole aspect of the teaching profession, resulting in the demand for a competent training in some specialty for every teacher.

Dr. Eliot, who is in a sense the first living citizen of America, has not attained that position merely by success in his profession. He has devoted time and thought to the great problems of our government, and has taken an active part in many public movements the race question, the relations of capital and labor, the movement for universal arbitration. He has been honored by France, by Italy, and by Japan, and resigned from his great office, in 1909, at the age of seventy-five, with mental and physical powers in splendid condition, not to retire from active life, but to devote himself even more wholly to the service of his countrymen. In this age of commercial domination, a career such as Dr. Eliot’s is more than usually inspiring.

In the history of the administration of Yale university, the most striking personalities are the two Timothy Dwights and Noah Porter. The first Timothy Dwight, born in 1752, and graduating from Yale at the age of seventeen, began to teach, and at the outbreak of the Revolution, enlisted as Chaplain in Parson’s brigade of the Connecticut line. It was at this time he wrote a number of stirring patriotic songs, one of which, “Columbia,” still lives. At the close of the war, he continued preaching and also opened an academy, at which women were admitted to the same courses with men, and which soon acquired considerable reputation. In 1795, he was called to the presidency of Yale, a position which he held until his death. His administration marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the college. At his accession, the college had about one hundred students, and the instructors consisted of the president, one professor and three tutors. He established permanent professorships and chose such men to fill them as Jeremiah Day, Benjamin Silliman, and James Kingsley. The result of this policy was a steady growth in the number of students, until, at his death, they had increased to over three hundred.

Noah Porter, who came to the presidency in 1871, had been graduated from the college forty years before, during which time he had studied theology, held a number of important charges, was called to the chair of moral philosophy at Yale, and finally elevated to the presidency. His work was most important, one feature of it being the introduction of elective studies, though he insisted also upon a required course, as opposed to the Harvard system. Some of the University’s finest buildings were erected during his administration, and at its close the student body numbered nearly eleven hundred.

He was succeeded in 1886 by Timothy Dwight, grandson of the elder president Dwight, who, for many years has been closely associated with the University, its financial growth being largely due to his efforts. Under his management the growth of the institution was unprecedented, the number of students increasing nearly fifty per cent within five years. He was also prominently identified with the general educational movement throughout the country, and his “True Ideal of an American University,” published in 1872, attracted much attention.

Princeton has also had its share of eminent men, among them Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, and James McCosh. Jonathan Edwards was one of the most remarkable characters in American history. Born in 1703, he was the fifth of eleven children and the only son. As a mere child, he developed uncommon qualities, entered Yale College at the age of twelve and graduated at the age of seventeen. His father was a clergyman, and the boy had been brought up in a household and community intensely religious, so that he very early began to have “a variety of concerns and exercises about his soul.” It was inevitable, of course, that he should become a minister, and, at the age of nineteen, was ordained and began to preach at a small church in New York City. Edwards seems to have been afflicted from the first with what is in these days irreverently called an in-growing conscience, and early formulated for himself a set of seventy resolutions of the most exalted nature, which, however praiseworthy in themselves, were too high and good for human nature’s daily food, and must have made him a most uncomfortable person to live with. He developed, however, into a powerful preacher, and his services were much sought, especially at revivals. One of his sermons, called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is said to have created a profound impression wherever delivered.

A difference with his congregation at Northampton caused him to resign his pastorate there, and, declining a number of calls to established parishes, he went as a missionary to the Housatonick Indians, at so small an income that his wife and daughters were forced to labor with the needle to support the family. It was while engaged in this work, that an unexpected call came to him to take the presidency of Princeton. He accepted and was installed as president early in 1758. At once he began a series of reforms in the college administration, but an epidemic of small-pox broke out in the neighborhood, and Edwards, exposing himself to it fearlessly, contracted the disease and died thirty-four days after his installation.

Jonathan Edwards probably came as near to the old idea of a saint as America ever produced. Self-denying, stern, of an exalted piety, and intensely religious, he lived in a world of his own, and was regarded with no little awe and trembling. That he was a power for good cannot be doubted, and his sermons are still read, where those of his contemporaries have long since been forgotten.

Much more important to Princeton, was John Witherspoon, who came to the presidency in 1768, after a distinguished career in Scotland, one of the incidents of which was being taken a prisoner while incautiously watching the battle of Falkirk. He never wholly recovered from the effects of the imprisonment which followed. He brought with him from Scotland a valuable library which he gave to the college, and, finding the college treasury empty, he undertook a vigorous campaign to replenish it, making a tour of New England, and even extending his quest as far as Jamaica and the West Indies. Through his administrative ability and the changes and additions which he made in the course of study, the college received a great impetus.

The service to his adopted country by which Witherspoon will be longest remembered, was the course he followed at the beginning of the Revolution. From the first, he took the side of the colonies, and by precept and example, held not only the great body of Presbyterians true to that cause, but also the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who were naturally Tories by sympathy. He was a member of the Continental Congress, urged ceaselessly the passage of the Declaration of Independence, was one of its signers, and as a member of succeeding Congresses, distinguished himself by his services. After the close of the war, he returned to Princeton and devoted the remainder of his life to its administration.

Greatest of the three as an educator was James McCosh. A Scotchman, like Witherspoon, a student of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, a pupil of Thomas Chalmers, he was ordained to the ministry in 1835, and was a leading spirit in the movement which culminated in the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland. His publications on philosophical subjects brought him the appointment as professor of logic and metaphysics in Queen’s College, Belfast, where he remained for sixteen years, drawing to the college a large body of students, and publishing other philosophical works of the first importance. In 1868, he was chosen president of Princeton, and his administration, lasting for nearly a quarter of a century, was remarkably successful. Under him, the student attendance nearly doubled, the teaching staff was more than doubled, and the resources of the college enormously increased. During these years, too, he continued his philosophical work, publishing a series of volumes which are the most noteworthy of their kind ever produced in America.

The temptation is great to dwell upon other educators connected with the great universities: Ira Remsen, and his contributions to chemistry; David Starr Jordan, and his great work on American fishes; Woodrow Wilson, and his contributions to the study of American history; Jacob Gould Schurman, and his work in the field of ethics; to mention only a few of them but there is not space to do so here. However, this chapter cannot be closed without some reference to the career of a remarkable woman, an educator in the truest sense, whose influence for good can hardly be estimated Jane Addams.

John Burns, the English cabinet minister and labor leader, has called her “the only saint America has produced.” Her sainthood is of the modern kind, which devotes itself by practical work to the alleviation of suffering and the uplifting of humanity, as opposed to the old fashioned kind of which we were speaking a moment ago in connection with Jonathan Edwards.

Graduating at Rockford College, in 1881, Miss Addams, then a delicate girl, spent two years in Europe. The sight which impressed her most, and which, to a large extent, determined her future career, was that of Mile End Road, the most crowded and squalid district of London, where she beheld a dirty and destitute mob quarreling over food unfit to eat. This vision of squalor and sin never left her, and the result was the establishment, in 1889, of the Social Settlement of Hull House, in the slums of Chicago. For Miss Addams had come to the conclusion that the only way to reach the destitute and despairing was to dwell among them.

How right she was has been abundantly proved by the splendid work Hull House has done. Its object, as stated in its charter, is “to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago.” All that it has done, and much more; for it has been a beacon light of progress, pointing the way for like undertakings elsewhere. But most valuable of all has been Miss Addams’s personal influence, the inspiration which her life has been to workers everywhere for social betterment, and the message which, by tongue and pen, she has given to the world. As an example of a useful, devoted and well-rounded life, hers stands unique in America to-day.