52 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sometimes that she is thus favored because she is more beautiful, more 

 winsome, than her sisters. Well, possibly this is true ; it may be or it may 

 not be. We need not stop to discuss relative merits in this particular, 

 since it is quite aside from the question. If other sciences must do what 

 astronomy is doing in order to get on, and if money in more abundance 

 is essential for this, then more money must be secured by those needing 

 it. If astronomy, by reason of greater winsomeness, is able to get it 

 more easily, that is her good fortune. So far as the essential matter 

 is concerned, it can be only a question of overcoming greater difficulties 

 by greater effort. But the real things are merit and need. When these 

 both are, first, strongly felt, and, second, strongly presented, they are 

 pretty sure to have a relaxing effect upon purse strings somewhere 

 sooner or later, particularly in our country where wealth is so abundant 

 and the general spirit of giving for the promotion of learning so much 

 abroad. 



Some of the practical bearings that a wider application of the 

 principle of organization in research would have may now be briefly 

 noticed. 



In the first place, as touching the status of research in the univer- 

 sities, there can be no doubt that were research a primary rather than 

 an incidental matter with the scientific departments of the universities, 

 the principle could be applied, without specially greater expenditure of 

 money, to an extent quite impossible under the present order. Sup- 

 posing, for example, the department of botany of University X were to 

 be organized and equipped primarily with reference to a comprehen- 

 sive botanical survey of the particularly interesting botanical region 

 in which it may happen to be located ; how vastly greater would be its 

 efficiency in forwarding botanical science than if its composition were 

 determined by some other consideration, say the needs of instruction, 

 and the botanical survey were to take its chance. Or again, suppose 

 the department of geology of University Y, situated in a region 

 especially favorable for investigations in dynamic geology, were to be 

 organized primarily with reference to such investigation. A depart- 

 ment thus constituted would promote this aspect of geology with a 

 degree of certainty and efficiency quite out of question under prevailing 

 conditions. A point of importance should here be noted relative to 

 what the organizing of a university department on such lines as indi- 

 cated could mean. Such a department of geology, for example, need 

 not consist merely of the geologists that would constitute the ordinary 

 teaching department of geology, but it would contain for the special 

 needs of the investigations, and hence selected and compensated with 

 reference to this end, persons belonging primarily to other fields of 

 science, and hence presumably to other university departments; and 

 there would be no reason why these should not be members of other 



