26. THE NATURAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES IN ITALY. Old and young at the same time, Italy combines with the tradi tions of a glorious past in the field of science and the arts, the untrammelled energy of an overflowing vitality in modern times. She boasts among her sons the genial Leonardo da Vinci (q.v.), eminent as an artist and philos• pher, an engineer and a naturalist; and the im mortal Galileo (q.v.), an apostle of truth and human progress. And if the former, prophetic and solitary on his intellectual heights, did not exercise a great influence on the development of science, it was the latter, on the other hand, from whom were derived those sciences which on account of their methods are called exact sciences, and who had followers at once in the Academy of Cimento which took as its motto the celebrated e Riprovando? A member of this academy was Borelli, who ap plied the laws of mechanics to the motions of animals; and Torricelli, a pupil of Galileo, who invented the barometer and demonstrated the impossibility of perpetual motion.
At the close of the 18th century and at the dawn of the 19th century in Italy we see Gal vani, who in 1791 published his celebrated work (De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari' ; and Volta, who interpreted the experiments of Galvani with a greater intelligence and gave rise to a new branch of physics, the applica tion of which has contributed very largely, next to the application of steam, to the transforma tion of our civilization.
Contemporary with the two above mentioned was who disclosed the secret of fecundation.
The works of the poet and naturalist, G. B. Brocchi, on the other hand, belong entirely to the 19th century. He shows us the geologi cal structure of the Apennines, and in his works on paleontology unfolds ideas which to a certain extent anticipate the theories of Dar win. To the same period belong the researches of Count Amedeo Avogadro, who was the first to insist on the distinction between atoms and molecules, and who discovered the law that bears his name; also the ingenious experiments of Melloni, who, through the discovery that heat rays had the essential characteristics of light rays, made an important contribution to the theory of the unity of Physical forces, which had also a valiant defender in Father Secchi. We must also mention Dal Negro, who in 1830 built the first electric motor. Toward the mid dle of the century, Corti published his 'Re cherches sur l'organe d'ouie des mammifires,' in which he reveals the mechanism of the audi tory organs, discovering the one that bears his name; Fusinieri, a thinker who has not been ap preciated at his full value, put forth ideas that were strangely similar to the most modern theories on the constitution of matter; and Ascanio Sobrero, in 1847, made a preparation of nitro-glycerine, which only 15 years later was made an industrial manufacture by Alfred Nobel.
At the present day the scientific institutes and laboratories of the great universities, and even of not a few of the middle-class and smaller colleges, constitute so many centres of research, which, aside from their value to the professors of the special branches of science, furnish their assistants and collaborators and others (out side students), also the younger graduates of the universities, with their first equipment in the field of scientific research. The government observatory of the Collegio Romano (the old Jesuit college) at Rome; the observatory of the College of the Vatican; those of the Col legio di Brera at Milan, of Arcetri near Flor ence, of Genoa, Turin, Padua, Naples, Palermo and Catania, all of which, however, are not equipped with modern instruments, and others of minor importance, are zealously and earn estly devoted to the study of astronomy and celestial phenomena, as well as to meteorology and physical geography. In connection with these last two studies there are numerous allied institutes of which we will first mention the Central Bureau of Meteorology and Geo-dy namics, which was established by Pietro Tay chini and was under his direction for many years, and is now under the direction of L. Palazzo. This bureau, besides making daily weather forecasts by aid of the regular ob servations of a vast chain of meteorological stations, gives incentive and impetus to allied scientific research. There are, besides the ob servatory of the Collegio Romano, which is connected with the above-mentioned Bureau of Meteorology, the observatories of Rocca di Papa and of Vesuvius, established specially for the study of seismic and volcanic phe nomena, the observatories of Mount Cimone (7,020 feet above sea-level), of Mount Etna (9,587 feet) and of Mount Rosa (14,820 feet). By means of its meteorological bureau Italy has been able to join the international organiza tion for the concerted universal study of seismic convulsions, and on the other hand the organi zation participates with the Italian Aeronautic Society and the military Aeronautic corps in international aeronautic ascensions, from which meteorology derives the greatest benefit. There are similar institutes for botanical instruction and study, the first of which was founded in Italy in 1545.