BIOLOGY IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 169 



stances, e. g., the botany at the University of Wyoming, these facilities 

 are extremely good. It will also be clear that there are several resident 

 naturalists within our area pushing forward the work to the best of 

 their ability. Thus the outlook is in many ways satisfactory, but there 

 are still great difficulties to be overcome. It is evident that the men 

 already in the field can not nearly cover it; instead of a dozen or so, 

 we need at least a hundred active workers, and a thousand would not 

 find their hands idle. This is Utopian talk, of course ; but I do think 

 that the first need is to increase the working force. Then again, those 

 who are at work, almost without exception, have to get their living in 

 other ways, and thus can give comparatively little time to research. 

 In the experiment stations, research is well provided for, but the pop- 

 ular clamor for e practical ' investigations and immediate results usually 

 prevents the undertaking of anything very broad or fundamental. 

 Furthermore, the experiment station officers mostly have to do a large 

 amount of teaching. In the colleges and universities, teaching is nat- 

 urally to the front, and in our mountain states this does not mean the 

 teaching of graduate students to more than a very limited extent. A 

 short time ago I appealed to the professor of chemistry in one of the 

 Colorado institutions to do a piece of work of scientific and economic 

 value. He immediately said that he longed to do it, ' but what can I 

 do ? I am giving seven courses ! ' This is a fairly typical case, and 

 although I know very well there are many who would not do anything 

 as investigators if they had the time, the fact remains that those who 

 would, and in fact do, are handicapped to an extent little appreciated 

 or understood. It is not that research is disliked; if anything is done 

 it usually meets with approval, but it is not understood that it is funda- 

 mentally necessary to progress, and that it requires time as well as 

 space to flourish in. Much of what has stood for culture in the west 

 has been little better than a sort of intellectual parasitism on the east 

 and Europe, and there is not yet an understanding or appreciation of 

 the efforts to form an endemic product. 



On the other hand, those who have accumulated wealth, or in some 

 manner have acquired the means of living at the expense of others, 

 will find in the mountain states ample opportunity. There are, of 

 course, many such people, but with very rare exceptions they do not 

 take to biological subjects. The well-to-do amateur is, for some reason, 

 extremely scarce among us, though in England, for instance, his kind 

 has done wonders. Thus there is plenty to praise and plenty to blame ; 

 but the only thing to do is to go ahead, and if the car of progress moves 

 slowly, at all events it perceptibly moves. 



