PROSPECTS OF SCIENCE ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1244, 2 October 1875, Page 3

PROSPECTS OF SCIENCE ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE.

The conditions for the advancement of Science beyond the Rocky Mountains are peculiarly favourable. The country itself presents an exhaustless field of research in every department of the phjsicaland vital history of the world. Its records of continental upheaval and subsidence, of ancient rivers and vanished seas, of vast volcanic outpourings and vaster scenes of erosion, are wonderfully full and legible. In the beds of its tertiary lakes are the remains of multitudes of the progenitors of recent forms of animal and vegetable life— inexhaustible mines of material for the solution of the great problems of evolution. On the shores of those lakes and rivers dwelt the most ancient races of men that geology has furnished glimpses of. Already abundant traces of them have been discovered in and beneath the later tertiary strata, and it is not unreasonable to hope that future observation may connect them with the post-glacial founders of the civilizations which grew up along the valley of the Colorado, before that strange river had sunk its channel a mile below the surface of the plain it once watered, probably before the Nile spread its first layer of fertile soil over the foundation sands of ancient Egypt. Chemical geology has already been immensely furthered by the knowledge gained through the mining operations of the interior, and the investiga-

turns they have inspired ; while the demonds for men of scientific training, incident to a country so largely given to mining, have secured to the Pacific Slope a proportion of scientific observers unequalled in any other country. In older communities, Science and Scientific thinking have to contend with the conservatism of custom and the traditions of scholastic culture ; in the Far West, where scientific training has been at a premium from the first, where public prosperity rests so largely on scientific operations, Science is likely to get more than its fair share of encouragement, rather than less.

In proof of this, it is necessary only to contrast the financial condition of the California Academy of Sciences with that of our eastern societies of like character. It is true that something more than money is needed for productive investigation : the natural and social conditions must be favourable, and there must be no lack of men of proper zeal and training to undertake the work. In this respect, as already noted, the Pacific Slope is aa greatly favoured as ia its abundance of wealth ; and only the grossest mismanagement of their means and opportunities can prevent the richest harvest of scientific achievement by the Pacißc scientists, whtf-ier independent or connected with the Ualilorma Academy.— Scientific American.