248 DAY: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH 
more appropriate to the magnitude of the task. We are familiar 
with industrial organization and the wonderful progress in the 
development of American industries which has everywhere fol- 
lowed it. We are also familiar with organiZed geological sur- 
veys and the success which has attended them in geological and 
topographical classification. But the idea of organizing research 
to meet a scientific situation of extraordinary scope and com- 
plexity is still comparatively new. The very words science 
and research are still regarded as referring to something out of 
the ordinary, something to be withheld from the common gaze, 
to be kept hidden in a special niche, behind a mysterious curtain 
and served by priests of peculiar temperament and unpractical 
ideals. This is both disparaging to our good sense and prejudi- 
cial to the progress of knowledge. Scientific research is not a 
luxury; it is a fundamental necessity. It is not a European fad, 
but is the very essence of the tremendous technologic and indus- 
trial success of the last twenty years, in which we have shared. 
Professor Nichols, of Cornell, as retiring president of the Amer- 
ican Association for the Advancement of Science, put the case in 
this way "The main product of science (research) ... is 
knowledge. Among its by-products are the technologic arts, 
including invention, engineering in all its branches, and modern 
industry." The idea of scientific research is therefore not less 
tangible than industrial development, or less practical; it is merely 
one step more fundamental; it is concerned with the discovery 
of principles and underlying relations rather than their applica- 
tion. This being true, research should profit as much, or even 
more, from efficient organization as industrial development has 
done. 
Altho this conclusion is making its way but slowly in Amer- 
ican science, in geological research, where material must be 
gathered from the utmost ends of the earth and even from within 
it, and where nearly every known branch of scientific activity 
finds some application, there is a peculiarly favorable opportunity 
for organized effort which is already coming to be recognized. 
"So long as geology remained a descriptive science," says Presi- 
dent Van Hise of Wisconsin, "it had little need of chemistry and 
