Part 1

YALE UNIVERSITY MRS. HEPSA ELY SILLIMAN MEMORIAL LECTURES

In the year 1883 a legacy of eighty thousand dollars was left to the President and Fellows of Yale College in the city of New Haven, to be held in trust, as a gift from her children, in memory of their beloved and honored mother, Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman.

On this foundation Yale College was requested and directed to establish an annual course of lectures designed to illustrate the presence and providence, the wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in the natural and moral world. These were to be designated as the Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures. It was the belief of the testator that any orderly presentation of the facts of nature or history contributed to the end of this foundation more effectively than any attempt to emphasize the elements of doctrine or of creed; and he therefore provided that lectures on dogmatic or polemical theology should be excluded from the scope of this foundation, and that the subjects should be selected rather from the domains of natural science and history, giving special prominence to astronomy, chemistry, geology, and anatomy.

It was further directed that each annual course should be made the basis of a volume to form part of a series constituting a memorial to Mrs. Silliman. The memorial fund came into the possession of the Corporation of Yale University in the year 1901; and the present volume constitutes the fourteenth of the series of memorial lectures.

SILLIMAN MEMORIAL LECTURES

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ELECTRICITY AND MATTER. _By_ JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON, D.S.C., L.L.D, PH.D., F.R.S., _Fellow of Trinity College and Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics, Cambridge University_.

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THE INTEGRATIVE ACTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. _By_ CHARLES S. SHERRINGTON, D.SC., M.D., HON. LL.D. TOR., F.R.S., _Holt Professor of Physiology, University of Liverpool_.

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RADIOACTIVE TRANSFORMATIONS. _By_ ERNEST RUTHERFORD, D.SC, LL.D., F.R.S., _Macdonald Professor of Physics, McGill University_.

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EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL APPLICATIONS OF THERMODYNAMICS TO CHEMISTRY. _By_ DR. WALTER NERNST, _Professor and Director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry in the University of Berlin_.

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PROBLEMS OF GENETICS. _By_ WILLIAM BATESON, M.A., F.R.S., _Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution, Merton Park, Surrey, England_.

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STELLAR MOTIONS. With Special Reference to Motions Determined by Means of the Spectrograph. _By_ WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL, SO.D, LL.D., _Director of the Lick Observatory, University of California_.

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THEORIES OF SOLUTIONS. _By_ SVANTE ARRHENIUS, PH.D., SC.D., M.D., _Director of the Physico-Chemical Department of the Nobel Institute, Stockholm, Sweden_.

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IRRITABILITY. A Physiological Analysis of the General Effect of Stimuli in Living Substances. _By_ MAX VERWORN, M.D., PH.D., _Professor at Bonn Physiological Institute_.

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PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN GEOLOGY. _By_ WILLIAM NORTH RICE, FRANK D. ADAMS, ARTHUR P. COLEMAN, CHARLES D. WALCOTT, WALDEMAR LINDGREN, FREDERICK LESLIE RANSOME, AND WILLIAM D. MATTHEW.

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THE PROBLEM OF VOLCANISM. _By_ JOSEPH PAXSON IDDINGS, PH.D., SC.D.

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ORGANISM AND ENVIRONMENT AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE PHYSIOLOGY OF BREATHING. _By_ JOHN SCOTT HALDANE, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., _Fellow of New College, Oxford University_.

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A CENTURY OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA

A CENTURY OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 1818–1918

BY

EDWARD SALISBURY DANA · CHARLES SCHUCHERT HERBERT E. GREGORY · JOSEPH BARRELL · GEORGE OTIS SMITH RICHARD SWANN LULL · LOUIS V. PIRSSON WILLIAM E. FORD · R. B. SOSMAN · HORACE L. WELLS HARRY W. FOOTE · LEIGH PAGE · WESLEY R. COE AND GEORGE L. GOODALE

NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON · HUMPHREY MILFORD · OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXVIII

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PREFATORY NOTE

The present book commemorates the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the American Journal of Science by Benjamin Silliman in July, 1818. The opening chapter gives a somewhat detailed account of the early days of the Journal, with a sketch of its subsequent history. The remaining chapters are devoted to the principal branches of science which have been prominent in the pages of the Journal. They have been written with a view to showing in each case the position of the science in 1818 and the general progress made during the century; special prominence is given to American science and particularly to the contributions to it to be found in the Journal’s pages. References to specific papers in the Journal are in most cases included in the text and give simply volume, page, and date, as (=24=, 105, 1833); when these and other references are in considerable number they have been brought together as a Bibliography at the end of the chapter.

The entire cost of the present book is defrayed from the income of the Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Fund, established under the will of Augustus Ely Silliman, a nephew of Benjamin Silliman, who died in 1884. Certain of the chapters here printed have been made the basis of a series of seven Silliman Lectures in accordance with the terms of that gift. The selection of these lectures has been determined by the convenience of the gentlemen concerned and in part also by the nature of the subject.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Prefatory Note vii

I. The American Journal of Science from 1818 to 1918. Edward Salisbury Dana 13

II. A Century of Geology: The Progress of Historical Geology in North America. Charles Schuchert 60

III. A Century of Geology: Steps of Progress in the Interpretation of Land Forms. Herbert E. Gregory 122

IV. A Century of Geology (continued): The Growth of Knowledge of Earth Structure. Joseph Barrell 153

V. A Century of Government Geological Surveys. George Otis Smith 193

VI. On the Development of Vertebrate Paleontology. Richard Swann Lull 217

VII. The Rise of Petrology as a Science. Louis V. Pirsson 248

VIII. The Growth of Mineralogy from 1818 to 1918. William E. Ford 268

IX. The Work of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. R. B. Sosman 284

X. The Progress of Chemistry during the Past One Hundred Years. Horace L. Wells and Harry W. Foote 288

XI. A Century’s Progress in Physics. Leigh Page 335

XII. A Century of Zoology in America. Wesley R. Coe 391

XIII. The Development of Botany since 1818. George L. Goodale 439

PORTRAITS

Benjamin Silliman _Frontispiece_ From a painting by G. S. Hubbard, Esq., in possession of Miss Henrietta W. Hubbard Benjamin Silliman, Jr. opposite page 28 James D. Dana „ „ 36 Edward S. Dana „ „ 48 Wolcott Gibbs „ „ 52 James Hall „ „ 84 G. K. Gilbert „ „ 140 Edward Hitchcock „ „ 156 O. C. Marsh „ „ 232 F. V. Hayden „ „ 196 J. W. Powell „ „ 204 Clarence King „ „ 208 George J. Brush „ „ 276 J. Willard Gibbs „ „ 324 H. A. Newton „ „ 336 James Clerk Maxwell „ „ 348 Louis Agassiz „ „ 404 Thomas H. Huxley „ „ 410 A. E. Verrill „ „ 412 Asa Gray „ „ 444 Charles Darwin „ „ 452

A CENTURY OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA

I THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE FROM 1818 TO 1918

By EDWARD S. DANA

_Introduction._

In July, 1818, one hundred years ago, the first number of the American Journal of Science and Arts was given to the public. This is the only scientific periodical in this country to maintain an uninterrupted existence since that early date, and this honor is shared with hardly more than half a dozen other independent scientific periodicals in the world at large. Similar publications of learned societies for the same period are also very few in number.

It is interesting, on the occasion of this centenary, to glance back at the position of science and scientific literature in the world’s intellectual life in the early part of the nineteenth century, and to consider briefly the marvelous record of combined scientific and industrial progress of the hundred years following—subjects to be handled in detail in the succeeding chapters. It is fitting also that we should recall the man who founded the Journal, the conditions under which he worked, and the difficulties he encountered. Finally, we must review, but more briefly, the subsequent history of what has so often been called after its founder, “Silliman’s Journal.”

The nineteenth century, and particularly the hundred years in which we are now interested, must always stand out in the history of the world as the period which has combined the greatest development in all departments of science with the most extraordinary industrial progress. It was not until this century that scientific investigation used to their full extent the twin methods of observation and experiment. In cases too numerous to mention they have given us first, a tentative hypothesis; then, through the testing and correcting of the hypothesis by newly acquired data, an accepted theory has been arrived at; finally, by the same means carried further has been established one of nature’s laws.

_Early Science._—Looking far back into the past, it seems surprising that science should have had so late a growth, but the wonderful record of man’s genius in the monuments he erected and in architectural remains shows that the working of the human mind found expression first in art and further man also turned to literature. So far as man’s thought was constructive, the early results were systems of philosophy, and explanations of the order of things as seen from within, not as shown by nature herself. We date the real beginning of science with the Greeks, but it was the century that preceded Aristotle that saw the building of the Parthenon and the sculptures of Phidias. Even the great Aristotle himself (384–322 B. C.) though he is sometimes called the “founder of natural history,” was justly accused by Lord Bacon many centuries later of having formed his theories first and then to have forced the facts to agree with them.

The bringing together of facts through observation alone began, to be sure, very early, for it was the motion of the sun, moon, and stars and the relation of the earth to them that first excited interest, and, especially in the countries of the East, led to the accumulation of data as to the motion of the planets, of comets and the occurrence of eclipses. But there was no coördination of these facts and they were so involved in man’s superstition as to be of little value. In passing, however, it is worthy of mention that the Chinese astronomical data accumulated more than two thousand years before the Christian era have in trained hands yielded results of no small significance.

Doubtless were full knowledge available as to the science existing in the early civilizations, we should rate it higher than we can at present, but it would probably prove even then to have been developed from within, like the philosophies of the Greeks, and with but minor influence from nature herself. It is indeed remarkable that down to the time with which we are immediately concerned, it was the branches of mathematics, as arithmetic and geometry and later their applications, that were first and most fully developed: in other words those lines of science least closely connected with nature.

Of the importance to science of the Greek school at Alexandria in the second and third centuries B. C., there can be no question. The geometry of Euclid (about 300 B. C.) was marvelous in its completeness as in clearness of logical method. Hipparchus (about 160–125 B. C.) gave the world the elements of trigonometry and developed astronomy so that Ptolemy 260 years later was able to construct a system that was well developed, though in error in the fundamental idea as to the relative position of the earth. It is interesting to note that the Almagest of Ptolemy was thought worthy of republication by the Carnegie Institution only a year or two since. This great astronomical work, by the way, had no successor till that of the Arab Ulugh Bey in the fifteenth century, which within a few months has also been made available by the same Institution.

To the Alexandrian school also belongs Archimedes (287–212 B. C.), who, as every school boy knows, was the founder of mechanics and in fact almost a modern physical experimenter. He invented the water screw for raising water; he discovered the principle of the lever, which appealed so keenly to his imagination that he called for a ποῦ στῶ, or fulcrum, on which to place it so as to move the earth itself. He was still nearer to modern physics in his reputed plan of burning up a hostile fleet by converging the sun’s rays by a system of great mirrors.

To the Romans, science owes little beyond what is implied in their vast architectural monuments, buildings and aqueducts which were erected at home and in the countries of their conquests. The elder Pliny (23–79 A. D.) most nearly deserved to be called a man of science, but his work on natural history, comprised in thirty-seven volumes, is hardly more than a compilation of fable, fact, and fancy, and is sometimes termed a collection of anecdotes. He lost his life in the “grandest geological event of antiquity,” the eruption of Vesuvius, which is vividly described by his nephew, the younger Pliny, in “one of the most remarkable literary productions in the domain of geology” (Zittel).

With the fall of Rome and the decline of Roman civilization came a period of intellectual darkness, from which the world did not emerge until the revival of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Then the extension of geographical knowledge went hand in hand with the development of art, literature, and the birth of a new science. Copernicus (1473–1543) gave the world at last a sun-controlled solar system; Kepler (1571–1630) formulated the laws governing the motion of the planets; Galileo (1564–1642) with his telescope opened up new vistas of astronomical knowledge and laid the foundations of mechanics; while Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, musician and true scientist, studied the laws of falling bodies and solved the riddle of the fossils in the rocks. Still later Newton (1642–1727) established the law of gravitation, developed the calculus, put mechanics upon a solid basis and also worked out the properties of lenses and prisms so that his Optics (1704) will always have a prominent place in the history of science.

From the time of the Renaissance on science grew steadily, but it was not till the latter half of the eighteenth century that the foundations in most of the lines recognized to-day were fully laid. Much of what was accomplished then is, at least, outlined in the chapters following.

Our standpoint in the early years of the nineteenth century, just before the American Journal had its beginning, may be briefly summarized as follows: A desire for knowledge was almost universal and, therefore, also a general interest in the development of science. Mathematics was firmly established and the mathematical side of astronomy and natural philosophy—as physics was then called—was well developed. Many of the phenomena of heat and their applications, as in the steam engine of Watt, were known and even the true nature of heat had been almost established by our countryman, Count Rumford; but of electricity there were only a few sparks of knowledge. Chemistry had had its foundation firmly laid by Priestley, Lavoisier, and Dalton, while Berzelius was pushing rapidly forward. Geology had also its roots down, chiefly through the work of Hutton and William Smith, though the earth was as yet essentially an unexplored field. Systematic zoology and botany had been firmly grounded by Buffon, Lamarck and Cuvier, on the one hand, and Linnæus on the other; but of all that is embraced under the biology of the latter half of the nineteenth century the world knew nothing. The statements of Silliman in his Introductory Remarks in the first number, quoted in part on a following page, put the matter still more fully, but they are influenced by the enthusiasm of the time and he could have had little comprehension of what was to be the record of the next one hundred years.

Now, leaving this hasty and incomplete retrospect and coming down to 1918, we find the contrast between to-day and 1818 perhaps most strikingly brought out, on the material side, if we consider the ability of man, in the early part of the nineteenth century, to meet the demands upon him in the matter of transportation of himself and his property. In 1800, he had hardly advanced beyond his ancestor of the earliest civilization; on the contrary, he was still dependent for transportation on land upon the muscular efforts of himself and domesticated animals, while at sea he had only the use of sails in addition. The first application of the steam engine with commercial success was made by Fulton when, in 1807, the steamboat “Clermont” made its famous trip on the Hudson River. Since then, step by step, transportation has been made more and more rapid, economical and convenient, both on land and water. This has come first through the perfection of the steam engine; later through the agency of electricity, and still further and more universally by the use of gasolene motors. Finally, in these early years of the twentieth century, what seemed once a wild dream of the imagination has been realized, and man has gained the conquest of the air; while the perfection of the submarine is as wonderful as its work can be deadly.

Hardly less marvelous is the practical annihilation of space and time in the electric transmission of human thought and speech by wire and by ether waves. While, still further, the same electrical current now gives man his artificial illumination and serves him in a thousand ways besides.

But the limitations of space have also been conquered, during the same period, by the spectroscope which brings a knowledge of the material nature of the sun and the fixed stars and of their motion in the line of sight; while spectrum analysis has revealed the existence of many new elements and opened up vistas as to the nature of matter.

The chemist and the physicist, often working together in the investigation of the problems lying between their two departments, have accumulated a staggering array of new facts from which the principles of their sciences have been deduced. Many new elements have been discovered, in fact nearly all called for by the periodic law; the so-called fixed gases have been liquefied, and now air in liquid form is almost a plaything; the absolute zero has been nearly reached in the boiling point of helium; physical measurements in great precision have been carried out in both directions for temperatures far beyond any scale that was early conceived possible; the atom, once supposed to be indivisible, has been shown to be made up of the much smaller electrons, while its disintegration in radium and its derivatives has been traced out and with consequences only as yet partly understood but certainly having far-reaching consequences; at one point we seem to be brought near to the transmutation of the elements which was so long the dream of the alchemist. Still again photography has been discovered and perfected and with the use of X-rays it gives a picture of the structure of bodies totally opaque to the eye; the same X-rays seem likely to locate and determine the atoms in the crystal.

Here and at many other points we are reaching out to a knowledge of the ultimate nature of matter.

In geology, vast progress has been made in the knowledge of the earth, not only as to its features now exhibited at or near the surface, but also as to its history in past ages, of the development of its structure, the minute history of its life, the phenomena of its earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Geological surveys in all civilized countries have been carried to a high degree of perfection.

In biology, itself a word which though used by Lamarck did not come into use till taken up by Huxley, and then by Herbert Spencer in the middle of the century, the progress is no less remarkable as is well developed in a later chapter of this volume.

Although not falling within our sphere, it would be wrong, too, not to recognize also the growth of medicine, especially through the knowledge of bacteria and their functions, and of disease germs and the methods of combating them. The world can never forget the debt it owes to Pasteur and Lister and many later investigators in this field.

To follow out this subject further would be to encroach upon the field of the chapters following, but, more important and fundamental still than all the facts discovered and the phenomena investigated has been the establishment of certain broad scientific principles which have revolutionized modern thought and shown the relation between sciences seemingly independent. The law of conservation of energy in the physical world and the principle of material and organic evolution may well be said to be the greatest generalizations of the human mind. Although suggestions in regard to them, particularly the latter, are to be found in the writings of early authors, the establishment and general acceptance of these principles belong properly to the middle of the nineteenth century. They stand as the crowning achievement of the scientific thought of the period in which we are interested.