FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT 13 



necessities or present work of any other bureau, but is nevertheless necessary 

 to serve as a basis for work which later will be obviously directly applicable. 

 The details of any subject cannot be considered intelligently ^vithout first 

 knowing its general outlines. Thus, for example, before the Bureau of 

 Health can adequately study the transmission of diseases due to insects or 

 vermin, it is necessary that there be performed a large amount of work on 

 Philippine entomology in general. Similarly, before the Bureau of Agricul- 

 ture can adequately investigate such a disease as that of coffee blight, it is 

 necessary that a considerable amount of work on the fungi of the Philip- 

 pines shall have been carried on. In the same way, in order to enable 

 the Bureau of Forestry properly to identify the commercial timber trees 

 of the Philippines, a ground work in Philippine botany is needed. 



These considerations it seems to your Committee furnish the justification 

 for much of the work which has been carried on by the Bureau of Science 

 in past years and which has been characterized by the public in general 

 as "impi-acticable." In the opinion of your Committee it is not "im- 

 ptacticable" and should not be considered so merely because it does not 

 immediately and directly result in material value, but, on the other hand, 

 it furnishes the fundamental basis for more obviously practical studies. 



We believe that this rather long introduction is necessary for a full 

 understanding of the recommendation which we are about to make. 



1. We believe that the Bureau of Science should be intrusted with all 

 laboratory equipment needed by any branch of the Insular Government, 

 particularly by any branch located in Manila; and so far as possible, a 

 similar plan should apply to the provinces. This is the best, in fact the 

 only way, to avoid unnecessary and expensive duplication of equipment. 



2. We believe that all scientific collections which are liable to be used 

 by more than one bureau should be assigned to the Bureau of Science. 

 We have already spoken of the undesirability of having the entomological 

 collections of the Government housed at the College of Agriculture near Los 

 Banos, where they are inaccessible to other branches of the Government and 

 to the public in general and where, as has been shown, only a small propor- 

 tion of the collections are used by the students and where the collection, by 

 distracting the interest and attention of the students and professors, inter- 

 feres with their strictly agricultural studies. Your committee believes that 

 it should be returned and housed in its original location in the Bureau 

 of Science where it will be available for use by the Bureau of Agriculture, 

 the various branches of the University in Manila, the Bureau of Education, 

 the Bureau of Forestry, and other branches of the Government, as well 

 as by the public in general and by visiting scientists. 



Similar considerations hold in reference to the botanical collection known 

 as the Philippine herbarium, which for several years has been housed in 

 the Bureau of Science, where we believe it should remain. To transfer 

 this Government herbarium to any other institution outside of Manila 

 would inevitably reduce its value to a mere fraction of that which it now 

 possesses. The hex'barium was founded and now exists not for the use 

 of any one department of the Philippine Government nor even for the 

 Government alone. It has become one of the greatest herbaria of the 

 Orient. It contains tens of thousands of specimens which are of no special 

 interest or value to the instructors and students in the College of Agricul- 

 ture or to the members of any one bureau, but which are of constant and 

 very great value to other departments of the Government (Bureaus of 

 Education, Forestry, Internal Revenue, Customs, etc.), to the students in 



