that most great advances in applied science are made by rejecting
or disproving the results reached by one's predecessors. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. As Huxley has truly said, the
army of science has never retreated from a position once gained.
Men like Ohm and Maxwell have reduced electricity to a
mathematical science, and it is by accepting, mastering, and
applying the laws of electric currents which they discovered and
expounded that the electric light, electric railway, and all other
applications of electricity have been developed. It is by applying
and utilizing the laws of heat, force, and vapor laid down by such
men as Carnot and Regnault that we now cross the Atlantic in six
days. These same laws govern the condensation of vapor in the
atmosphere; and I say with confidence that if we ever do learn to
make it rain, it will be by accepting and applying them, and not
by ignoring or trying to repeal them.

How much the indisposition of our government to secure expert
scientific evidence may cost it is strikingly shown by a recent
example. It expended several million dollars on a tunnel and
water-works for the city of Washington, and then abandoned the
whole work. Had the project been submitted to a commission of
geologists, the fact that the rock-bed under the District of
Columbia would not stand the continued action of water would have
been immediately reported, and all the money expended would have
been saved. The fact is that there is very little to excite
popular interest in the advance of exact science. Investigators
are generally quiet, unimpressive men, rather diffident, and
wholly wanting in the art of interesting the public in their work.
It is safe to say that neither Lavoisier, Galvani, Ohm, Regnault,
nor Maxwell could have gotten the smallest appropriation through