ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 



PHILADELPHIA, PA., OCTOBER, 1914. 



Aids to Scientific Work. 



In our editorial in the NEWS for May last, we urged the 

 desirability, if not the necessity, of a world-wide bibliographi- 

 cal dictionary of entomologists. Those who appreciate the 

 importance of such material aids to investigation will find 

 much that is suggestive and helpful, in considering possible 

 advances in our science, in Professor Wilhelm Ostwald's 

 "Memorial on the Foundation of an International Chemical 

 Institute," translated into English and published in Science 

 for July 31, 1914. Many "possible and necessary undertak- 

 ings of general value" for which the International Chemical 

 Institute is projected are similar to the needs of entomology. 

 For some of them the International Entomological Congresses 

 are already striving to provide. The development of chemis- 

 try and of chemical literature has proceeded to a much greater 

 degree than in our own field, so that the quantitative prob- 

 lems are much heavier there than with us. The organization 

 and methods by which the chemists hope to digest and make 

 useful their vast mass of data, ought to aid us in devising 

 means to attain our ends. Prof. Ostwald has sketched out, 

 in much detail, plans not for the conquest of "the highest 

 spheres of creative scientific work," but for the accomplish- 

 ment of 



those tasks in the realm of chemical science which are ever recurring 

 in the same form [and which] are to be carried out there once for all 

 and placed at the service of every one ; especially the literary refer- 

 ence work and everything connected with it ; that is the most trivial 

 and routine labors which are necessary for the advancement of the 

 science. Consequently in the future it should be a fundamental prin- 

 ciple in our science that no task of this kind once carried out need 

 ever be repeated, for the finished work should be kept continually and 

 regularly at the disposal of those whom it concerns. 



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