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
Congress to help make discoveries which are now the pride of our
century. They all dealt in facts and conclusions quite devoid of
that grandeur which renders so captivating the project of
attacking the rains in their aerial stronghold with dynamite
bombs.
XIII
THE ASTRONOMICAL EPHEMERIS AND THE NAUTICAL ALMANAC
[Footnote: Read before the U S Naval Institute, January 10, 1879.
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