On supporting science journalism
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In the last number of the Scientific American we alluded to an excellent speech made by Sir Charles Lyell, at the dinner given by the Crystal Palace Association, to President Pierce, his Cabinet, and the foreign Commissioners. We had no room to publish his remarks then, and we consider them of too much importance to pass over with a mere notice. He said :— " Gentlemen, the President of the United States has spoken of me in such terms that I say most sincerely, with every disposition to believe him—for your first magistrate like our own, can do no wrong—that he has not measured carefully enough the terms of his eulogy. I receive gratefully the expressions, as intended at least to convey his kind feelings towards me for the little part which I have played whether in the sciences or in making your country better known, as I ;hink it deserves to be, to my own countrymen. (Applause.) Your President has also illuded to the observations of one of my col-eagues, Mr. Whitworth, which he made alter tiis return from a visit to the Lowell factories, and I may say that during their tour— and my colleagues have said the same thing ;0 me—they were struck with the wonderful labor-saving inventions in the machinery of this country, to which far more than its soil or any other cause, they asciibed the great wealth which has accumulated there, (Applause ) I trust this commission will be the means of making sooner known some of these inventions and machines which it is most desirable our countrymen should understand the benefits of. This is the fourth visit I have made to your country, and it is only by observing the wonderful progress which this people are making in knowledge, power, and general prosperity, that we can arrive at a true estimate of the greatness of the country. It is indeed a most cheering sight for any foreigner to witness. I say a foreigner, but whenever I have travelled in your country, whether pursuing science ox with others engaged in the same pursuit, or travelling as a stranger I have never been allowed to feel myself a toreigner; and yet, strange to say, this is the first time I have visited the United States without fi.nding the press, and sometimes Congress, engaged in the discussion ol questions that seemed to endanger the amicable relations between this courtry and my own. Sir Charles Lyell here alluded to the McLoud difficulty in 1841, and the Oregon question in 1845, when he said the walls of our city were placarded with' fifty-four forty or fight.' (Great laughter.) He then expressed the hope that nothing more serious should occur to disturb the present peaceful relations of the two countries. After alluding to the New York Crystal Palace in appropriate terms, he concluded as follows:—The Exhibition of England in 1851, created a unity of all the nations of the world, however different their tendencies and systems of government. Let us therefore hops that these other being BO much greater than all others, may be sustained, and these industrial exhibitions may be insured. And I believe that the tendency is to insure their perpetuity, provided they are so arranged as not to interfere with other great questions; and let us hope they may last, not only eleven centuries, but eleven times eleven centuries.”
