NEW YORK.-CONTINUED.

OHIO.

Helen C. Alton, 857 Doane Street, East | Jane O. DeForrest, Norwalk.

Elizabeth G. Bridge, Antioch College, Margaret V. Longley, Editor, Cincinnati.

H. M. Tracy Cutler, M. D., Cobden, Mrs. T. T. Seelye, 91 Sawtelle Street, Union Co.

PENNSYLVANIA.

Elmira M. Borhek, 1010 Clinton Street,
Philadelphia.

Mrs. J. G. Borhek, 628 Chestnut Street,
Philadelphia.

Rev. Ada C. Bowles, 1543 N. 43d Street,
Philadelphia.

Mary L. Bonney, 1615 Chestnut Street,
Philadelphia.

PENNSYLVANIA.-CONTINUED.

Anna E. Broomall, M. D., Woman's Mrs. W. C. Kemble, 1320 Arch St., Phila

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PENNSYLVANIA.-CONTINUED.

Emily P. Shoemaker, 611 Vine St., Phila- | M. Louise Thomas, Tacony.

delphia.

Mrs. Geo. A. Smith, 20 Tioga St., Philadelphia.

Sophia M. Springer, Chester.

Eliza Sproat Turner, Chadd's Ford, Del.
County.

Susan D. Wharton, 2107 Delancey Place,
Philadelphia.

Emily S. Stackhouse, 700 Arch Street, Mrs. M. R. Williamson, 720 Buttonwood

Philadelphia.

St., Philadelphia.

Louisa Stockton, 1905 Broad St., Phila- Mrs. M. L. Wise, 122 Friedlander Street, delphia.

Philadelphia.

RHODE ISLAND.

Mrs. E. W. Aldrich, Providence.
Ruth Burleigh, Little Compton.
Elizabeth B. Chase, Valley Falls.
Elizabeth K. Churchill, 23 Jones Street,
Providence.

Sara E. Doyle, Providence.

Anna C. Garlin, 426 Friendship Street,
Providence.

Susan B. P. Martin, 500 Hight Street,
Providence.

SOUTH CAROLINA.

Alice J. Chamberlain, Columbia.

ENGLAND.

Mrs. John Fredwile, (Address, 917 Spruce Street, Philadelphia,) London.

THE NEED OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE.

BY MARIA MITCHELL.

WHEN we inquire in regard to the opportunities afforded to women for the study of science, we are not surprised to find them meagre and unsatisfactory. Nor, with a few exceptions, are we surprised at the localities in which the little culture of science is found; they have the range of latitude and longitude which we expected. The light shading on the map of the world which in the old school books used to divide the enlightened from the barbarous countries, might be used to-day to designate the scientific and the unscientific.

Taking our whole country into consideration, there is very little attention paid to science. The same influences which deter men in scientific research operate only more forcibly upon women,—the want of leisure, and the unremunerative character of intellectual pursuits. And yet the fact that a few women give themselves so determinedly to scientific studies, and that so many make a beginning, would seem to show that they have a decided fitness for their requirements. Young girls almost all study the natural sciences in schools, and quite a moiety of them take up the abstract sciences. I do not believe it is because the science of the ordinary schools requires little brain work, although that is true, but because it is the work to which they instinctively incline. I should like to urge upon young women a course of solid scientific study in some one direction for two reasons,-first, the needs of science; second, their own needs.

1. Women are needed in scientific work for the very reason that a woman's method is different from that of a man. All her nice perceptions of minute details, all her delicate observation of color, of form, of shape, of change, and her capability of patient routine, would be of immense value in the collection of scientific facts.

When I see a woman put an exquisitely fine needle at exactly the same distance from the last stitch at which that last stitch was from its predecessor, I think what a capacity she has for astronomical observations. Unknowingly, she is using a micrometer; unconsciously, she is graduating circles. And the eye which has been trained in the matching of worsteds is specially fitted for the use of prism and spectroscope. Persons who are in charge of the scientific departments of colleges are always mourning over the scarcity of trained assistants. The directors of observatories and museums not infrequently do an immense amount of routine work which they would gladly relinquish. Their time and strength are wasted on labor which students could do equally well, if students could be found who would be ready to make science a life work.

Women are needed too, as lecturers in schools; it needs only the supply, and the demand will come. Persons who are known to be in a line of scientific work are continually besieged with applications to give lectures, to write short articles for periodicals, to translate foreign works. Such lectures and such articles would do little directly for the advancement of science, but much indirectly in forming taste and arousing interest.

I am far from the intention of encouraging young women to scientific study on account of its outward utility. At best, its wages to-day are little above those of manual labor, and were they the incomes of royal revenues, I should still raise the objection that it is an ignoble following of nature which looks for gain. Better dig in the earth for gold, than study its rocks for pay.

2. But, for themselves,--for young women who have a love of nature and a longing to study her laws,—how shall the taste be developed? and how shall they he encouraged? We must have a different kind of teaching. It must not be text-book teaching. I doubt if science can be taught in school-rooms at all. Certainly it cannot be taught by hearing recitations. There is a touch of the absurd in a teacher's asking any but a very young person a question, the answer to which he already knows. In the old-fashioned books the dialogue method is better used; the pupil asks and the teacher answers. Eudora asks how far the earth is from the sun, and Tutor answers. Eudora then asks how this was found out, and Tutor explains.

The method of teaching science by lectures is questionable; it is liable to the objection that the lecturer impresses himself and his views upon the listener, rather than nature and her ways. It is a feeble kind of science which can be put upon a black-board, placed in array upon a table, or arranged upon shelves. The facts of science may be taught by such means; the spirit of science, which is the love of investigation, they cannot arouse. If science can be developed at all in school-rooms, it must be by debate; free thought and free inquiry are the very first steps in the path of science. Only the "hard pan" of scientific truths should be accepted, and scarcely that. I should have more hope of a girl who questioned if three angles of a triangle equalled two right angles, than of one who learned the demonstration and accepted it in a few minutes.

It will be easier to reform the in-school work than to take young women over the next years, when they leave the class rooms and college, but it will be less difficult if in the class room they have learned to think for themselves and to plan their own lives. What lies before the true lover of nature, if she be a woman, when she leaves college? Almost always entire renunciation of her own wishes. An account which comes to me from one of the large cities of New York must be too strongly expressed, and yet it is somewhat true of any town. The writer says:

"If an unfortunate female should happen to possess a lurking fondness for any special scientific or literary pursuit, she is careful (if of any social position) to hide it as she would some deformity."

The young woman who leaves college belongs to one of two classes. She must either enter at once upon some business which shall enable her to be self-supporting, or she must accept parental support.

If there is any class of women for whom I have a deep compassion, it is the unmarried and unoccupied daughters of rich men; all the more do I pity them if, as often happens, they are born with a good deal of brain power. I shudder as I recall the speech of the editor of a widely read newspaper: "The first duty of a woman is to be ornamental in the parlor." That is, she is to be the marble Clytie or Psyche that stands on the bracket!

For such young women there is only the slow change of the ages; the conversion of public sentiment, or a struggle to which hardly any one is equal. In most cases, she

"Suffers, recoils; then, thirsty and despairing

Of what she would, descends and sips the nearest draught."

There is more hope for the poor young woman. For her, there is work. But in her poverty there are the elements of destruction. She is, perhaps, a lover of nature, and dreams of a life devoted to study; she is a born investigator and knows that she has special power as well as peculiar tastes; she stifles her longings and enters upon work-distasteful work-work which is fettering-because the home needs her and there are younger ones to be aided. I question if a young woman who knows she