54 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



effective thau grants in direct aid of research, and there are liberal appropriations of 

 money as well. Our own academies of science are no less honorable and efficient, but 

 they receive neither money nor recognition from the Government, and though, as in 

 the case of the National Academy of Sciences, often responding to calls for gratuitous 

 advice, are never used by the nation as public agencies for the increase of knowledge. 



The real analogues under our Government of the European academies of sciences 

 are the scientific bureaus, whose officers are the salaried agents of the nation. 



A scientific investigator, working in his own laboratory, directs bis studies in the 

 channels most agreeable to himself. If not influenced by the need of money- getting, 

 he will, as a rule, pursue some branch of pure science, for the love of knowledge or 

 in the hope of fame. In the college and university laboratories the tendency is always 

 to seek for the discovery of principles rather than to make economic applications of 

 those already familiar — to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. 



Universities do not often encourage or even tolerate studies in applied science, for 

 the reason that these are not so well calculated to direct the minds of their students 

 to the highest intellectual ideals. It is well that this is so; for our universities by 

 their work in pure science have rendered possible almost all which has been done in 

 economic science, and have done far more for the material advancement of the world 

 than they could have done with more practical ends immediately in view. 



The attitude of a government when it subsidizes scientific workers is always 

 more or less sordid, and as unlike as possible to what we desire to believe to be the 

 spirit of science itself, as it is cultivated in the universities. We should be grateful, 

 nevertheless, for evidences of liberality wherever they are manifested, and supremely 

 thankful that our law-makers rarely object to allowing work of a scientific character 

 to be done when there is reason to hope that it may ultimately serve as a foundation 

 for economic applications. 



A very wholesome condition is manifest in the confidence which is shown in the 

 scientific bureaus, both by the heads of the Government and by the people. Questions 

 of politics have never been considered in the selection of the scientific officers of the 

 Government so far as the National Government is concerned, and the advice of the 

 universities and the scientific men has always been sought and regarded. I speak from 

 the observations of twenty years' residence in the National Capital. Once selected, 

 these officers are held responsible solely for the results of their work, and have only 

 been criticised in the rare instances where, after long waiting, adequate results have 

 seemed to be lacking. 



The confidence of the people is quite as remarkable, and to this may be ascribed 

 much of our national industrial welfare. When perplexities arise in any industrial 

 enterprise, through lack of knowledge or experience, it rarely happens that the aid of 

 science is not invoked, and in the case of the primary industries at least it is usually 

 a Federal or State scientific bureau which is the agency selected. 



I read not long ago an editorial in the London Athenaeum in which it was said 

 that there is not a department of the British Government to which a citizen had a 

 right to apply for information upon a scientific question. This seems hard to believe, 

 for I cannot think of any scientific subject regarding which a letter, if addressed to 

 the scientific bureaus in Washington, would not receive a full and practical reply. 

 It is estimated that not less than 30,000 such letters are received each year. The 

 Smithsonian Institution and National Museum alone receive about 10,000, and the 



