360 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



to be kept hidden in a special niche behind a mysterious curtain and 

 served by priests of peculiar temperament and unpractical ideals. 

 This is both disparaging to our good sense and prejudicial to the 

 progress of laiowledge. Scientific research is not a luxury; it is a 

 fundamental necessity. It is not a European fad, but is the very 

 essence of the tremendous technologic and industrial success of the 

 last 20 years, in which we have shared. 



Prof. E. L. Nichols, of Cornell, as retiring president of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, put the case in this 

 way: "The main product of science (research) * * * jg knowl- 

 edge. Among its by-products are the technologic arts, including 

 invention, engineering in all its branches, and modern industry." 

 The idea of scientific research is therefore not less tangible than 

 industrial development, or less practical; it is merely one step more 

 fundamental; it is concerned with the discovery of principles and 

 underlying relations rather than their application. This being true, 

 research should profit as much, or even more, from efficient organi- 

 zation as industrial development has done. 



Although this conclusion is making its way but slowly in American 

 science, in geological research, where material must be gathered 

 from the utmost ends of the earth and even from within it, and 

 where nearly every known branch of scientific activity finds some 

 application, there is a peculiarly favorable opportunity for organized 

 effort which is already coming to be recognized. ''So long as geology 

 remained a descriptive science," says President Van Hise, of Wis- 

 consin, "it had little need of chemistiy and physics; but the time 

 has now come when geologists are not satisfied with mere descrip- 

 tion. They desire to interpret the phenomena they see in refer- 

 ence to their causes — in other words, under the principles of physics 

 and chemistry. * * * This involves cooperation between phys- 

 icists, chemists, and geologists." 



In a general way, physics, chemistry, and biolog}^ have already 

 supplied worldng h}'potheses wliich have been used by students of 

 geology to help in the examination, classification, and mapping of 

 the most conspicuous features of the exposed portion of the earth. 

 The geologist has gone abroad and has studied the distribution of 

 land and water, the mountain ranges, the erosive action of ice and 

 of surface water and the resulting sedimentary deposits, the distri- 

 bution of volcanic activity and of its products the igneous rocks; 

 or, more in detail, he has studied the appearance of fossils in certain 

 strata, and has inferred the sequence of geologic time. The distri- 

 bution of particular minerals and of ore deposits has been carefully 

 mapped. Regions which offer evidence of extraordinary upheaval 

 through the exercise of physical forces have been painstakingly 

 examined, and so on through the great range of geologic activity. 



