Famous Men of ScienceT. Y. Crowell & Company, 1926 - 333 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Agassiz Alexander von Humboldt America animals Asa Gray astronomer Audubon beautiful became began birds botany brother Caroline chemistry Copernicus course Cuvier Darwin Davy delight devoted died discovery dollars earth England Fabre famous Faraday father feel five fossil Fossil Fishes France Galileo gave geology give happy heart Herschel honor Humboldt Humphry hundred Huxley insects interested JEAN HENRI FABRE John Herschel knew labor Lake Neuchâtel later learned lectures letters Linnæus lived London Lord Kelvin Louis Louis Agassiz Louis Pasteur Lowell Institute Lyell mathematics Michael Faraday mind months mother museum natural history naturalist Neuchâtel never Newton night once Pasteur philosophy plants Professor published received Royal Society says scientific sent soon species student telescope things THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY Thomson thousand tion took University volumes wife William writes wrote young
Popular passages
Page 46 - I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Page 260 - We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
Page 250 - I happened to read for amusement ' Malthus on Population,' and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.
Page 250 - I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale...
Page 171 - I weigh my words when I say that if the nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt-cheap at the money. It is a mere commonplace and everyday piece of knowledge, that what these three men did has produced untold millions of wealth, in the narrowest economical sense of the word.
Page 144 - On my return from the upper Mississippi, I found myself obliged to cross one of the wide prairies, which, in that portion of the United States, vary the appearance of the country. The weather was fine, all around me was as fresh and blooming as if it had just issued from the bosom of nature. My knapsack, my gun, and my dog, were all I had for baggage and company.
Page 262 - The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be ploughed, by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.
Page 254 - The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase : it will be...
Page 268 - From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed, — that is, to group all facts under some general laws.
Page 27 - The proposition that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture.