stratum of the city. The Dutch are hard to be
moved, but when they do start their momentum is not as other men's in
proportion to the velocity, but as the square of the velocity. So when
the Dutchman goes three times as fast, he has nine times the force of
another man. The Dutchman has an immense potentia agency, but it wants a
small spark of Yankee enterprise to touch it off. In this strain the
Professor continued, making his audience very merry, and giving them a
fine chance to express themselves with repeated explosions of laughter.

PROFESSOR DAVIES ON THE PRACTICAL NATURE OF SCIENCE.

Prof. CHARLES DAVIES was introduced by EX-GOVERNOR SEYMOUR, and spoke
briefly, but humorously and very much to the point, in defense of the
practical character of scientific researches. He said that to one
accustomed to speak only on the abstract quantities of number and space,
this was an unusual occasion, and this an unusual audience; and inquired
how he could discuss the abstract forms of geometry, when he saw before
him, in such profusion, the most beautiful real forms that Providence
has vouchsafed to the life of man. He proposed to introduce and develop
but a single train of thought--the unchangeable connection between what
in common language is called the theoretical and practical, but in more
technical phraseology, the ideal and the actual. The actual, or true
practical, consists in the uses of the forces of nature, according to
the laws of nature; and here we must distinguish between it and the
empirical, which uses, or attempts to use, those forces, without a
knowledge of the laws. The true practical, therefore, is the result, or
actual, of an antecedent ideal. The ideal, full and complete, must exist
in the mind before the actual can be brought forth according to the laws
of science. Who, then, are the truly practical men of our age? Are they
not those who are engaged most laboriously and successfully in
investigating the great laws? Are they not those who are pressing out
the boundaries of knowledge, and conducting the mind into new and
unexplored regions, where there may yet be discovered a California of
undeveloped thought? Is not the gentleman from Massachusetts (Professor
Agassiz) the most practical man in our country in the department of
Natural History, not because he has collected the greatest number of
specimens, but because he has laid open to us all the laws of the animal
kingdom? Are the formulas wri