methods that shall he adopted. Help should have come from men of authority, and an expression of the American Association would have had great weight and a salutary influence with the people. Yet a committee was appointed at its Portland meeting to report upon the subject of better methods of general scientific instruction, and at the recent Hartford meeting it was discharged without having done any thing, the chairman stating that he had never even heard of his appointment! This indifference, we think, is very much to be regretted.
Prof. New comb says that The Popular Science Monthly has never attempted to supply the great want of making known the progress of science in this country, and is even behind the English periodical Nature in this respect. It certainly was not the chief object of the establishment of this magazine to report the doings of American investigators, and this for several reasons. In the first place, the field was already occupied by a journal of high character, which, with the proceedings of scientific societies, gave this information to the class most wanting it—the students of science. Moreover, the public press has latterly entered upon the work, and is constantly seeking for scientific novelties, as matters of ordinary news. Besides, as Prof. Newcomb shows, American contributions to the progress of science are but an insignificant portion of the total work that is doing in the scientific world, of which no single periodical could give even a synopsis. Nor is it to be forgotten that an immense amount of that which is currently published as "new results" has but a momentary importance! But a small portion of such work stands the test of time. Of the score or two of original contributions to mathematics, published in the transactions of our learned societies since the Declaration of Independence, Prof. Newcomb assures us that "it is not likely that more than one or two of them contain any thing worthy of quotation or remark." With this enormous shrinkage of scientific values, we think it is quite as well that the new results should be tested, discussed, and the chaff blown away by scientific criticism, before the final product is pressed upon the general public.
But the strongest reason why the Monthly has not assumed the duty of reporting American scientific work is, that is was started for distinctly another object—namely, to interest the non-scientific public, and to create a taste for scientific literature, and an appreciation of scientific knowledge in the reading community. The general ignorance of science is simply deplorable! The literary culture to which general education is committed does not lead to science, but, by its exclusive claims and overshadowing influence, hinders and prevents its study, so that, among so-called intelligent people, the ignorance of scientific subjects is so gross as to give much excuse to scientific men for their contempt of the hopeless work of its popularization. Between the state of mind of learned scientific explorers and that of the mass of magazine-readers throughout the country the gulf is already wider than the Pacific Ocean, and is constantly widening. As regards science, there is very little that is common between them. But a journal which aims to influence a non-scientific public must be somewhat suited to its state of mind, or it will not be read. Were we to fill the Monthly with the results of laboratory processes and observatory work, or with that which most concerns investigators, it might rise in appreciation with them, but it would not be wanted by the people, as all experience with such publications has shown. The public needs rudimentary explanations much more than the "last results" of science. The theory of this periodical is, that those who write for
