40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the United States reserving 150,000,000 acres of national lands for the 

 promotion of scientific education. In some respects this young coun- 

 try is in advance of all European nations in joining science to its ad- 

 ministrative offices. Its scientific publications, like the great paleon- 

 tological work embodying the researches of Professor Marsh and his 

 associates in the Geological Survey, are an example to other Govern- 

 ments. The Minister of Agriculture is surrounded with a staff of 

 botanists and chemists. The Home Secretary is aided by a special 

 Scientific Commission to investigate the habits, migrations, and food 

 of fishes, and the latter has at its disposal two specially constructed 

 steamers of large tonnage. The United States and Great Britain pro- 

 mote fisheries on distinct systems. In this country we are perpetually 

 issuing expensive commissions to visit the coasts, in order to ascertain 

 the experiences of fishermen. I have acted as chairman of one of 

 these Royal Commissions, and found that the fishermen, having only 

 a knowledge of a small area, gave the most contradictory and unsat- 

 isfactory evidence. In America the questions are put to Nature, and 

 not to fishermen. Exact and searching investigations are made into 

 the life-history of the fishes, into the temperature of the sea in which 

 they live and spawn, into the nature of their food, and into the habits 

 of their natural enemies. For this purpose the Government gave the 

 co-operation of the navy, and provided the Commission with a special 

 corps of skilled naturalists, some of whom go out with the steamships, 

 and others work in the biological laboratories at Wood's IIoll, Massa- 

 chusetts, or at Washington. The different universities send their best 

 naturalists to aid in these investigations, which are under the direction 

 of Mr. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution. The annual cost of the 

 Federal Commission is about forty thousand pounds, while the sepa- 

 rate States spend about twenty thousand pounds in local efforts. The 

 practical results flowing from these scientific investigations have been 

 important. The inland waters and rivers have been stocked with fish 

 of the best and most suitable kinds. Even the great ocean which 

 washes the coasts of the United States is beginning to be affected by 

 the knowledge thus acquired, and a sensible result is already produced 

 upon the most important of its fisheries. The United Kingdom largely 

 depends upon its fisheries, but as yet our Government have scarcely 

 realized the value of such scientific investigations as those pursued 

 with success by the United States. Less systematically, but with 

 great benefit to science, our own Government has used the surveying 

 expeditions, and sometimes has equipped special expeditions to pro- 

 mote natural history and solar physics. Some of the latter, like the 

 voyage of the Challenger, have added largely to the store of knowl- 

 edge ; wliile the former, though not primarily intended for scientific 

 research, have had an indirect result of infinite value by becoming 

 training-schools for such investigators as Edward Forbes, Darwin, 

 Hooker, Huxley, Wyville Thomson, and others. 



