Greatest Of Modern Achievements

Different minds place different estimates on the intellectual accompli8hments of the past half century. In ordinary conversation the men of the mart will point to an Eíffel tower, a suspension bridge, a continental express train, a man-of-war, or an Atlantic cable. But in a discourse recently delivered in commemoration of the jubilee of the Sheffleld Scientific school of Yale university, President Gilman remarked that perhaps the greatest triumphs of the intellect during the last half century are these five contrfbutlons to human knowledge: The establishment of the principies of evolution; the establishment of the principie of the conservation of energy; the devel■opment of mathematical scienee and its application to physics, mechanics, electricity, and astronomy; the development of spectrum analysis and the consequent discoveries respecting light and electricity; and the discovery of the nature and functions of bacteria, and of their influences, for weal or woe, upon living organisms.