88 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



departments of research. We have a few admirably organized 

 laboratories and observatories, a few good collections of scientific 

 books, six or eight museums worthy of the name, and a score or 

 moi-e of scientific and technological schools, well organized and 

 better provided with officers than with money. We have several 

 strong scientific societies, no one of which, however, publishes 

 transactions worthy of its own standing and the collective reputa- 

 tion of its members. In fact, the combined publishing funds of all 

 our societies would not pay for the annual issue of a volume of 

 memoirs, such as appears under the auspices of any one of a dozen 

 European societies which might be named. 



Our Government, by a liberal support of its scientific depart- 

 ments, has done much to atone for the really feeble manner in 

 which local institutions have been maintained. The Coast Sur- 

 vey, the Geological Surveys, the Department of Agriculture, the 

 Fish Commissions, the Army, with its Meteorological Bureau, its 

 Medical Museum and Library, and its explorations ; the Navy, 

 with its Observatory, its laboratories and its explorations ; and in 

 addition to these, the Smithsonian Institution, with its systematic 

 pi^omotion of all good works in science, have accomplished more 

 than is ordinarily placed to their credit. Many hundreds of vol- 

 umes of scientific memoirs have been issued from the Government 

 pi-inting office since 1S70, and these have been distributed in such 

 a generous and far-reaching way that they have not failed to reach 

 every town and village in the United States whei"e a roof has been 

 provided to protect them. 



It may be that some one will accuse the Government of having 

 usurped the work of the private publisher. Very little of value 

 in the way of scientific literature has been issued during the same 

 period by publishers, except in reprints or translations of works 

 of foreign investigators. It should be borne in mind, however, 

 that our Government has not only published the results of investi- 

 gations, but has supported the investigators and provided them 



