22 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



of form for statistical tables and some means of referring to the 

 contents. This question is discussed in Chapter III with reference 

 to the publication of geological surveys, which are by no means 

 more complicated than those of other departments. 



Another serious source of waste in scientific work comes from the 

 fact that a great deal of data which is not published, and indeed in 

 its raw form is quite unsuitable for publication, becomes lost. In 

 the course of ordinary duties officers of medical, agricultural, 

 administrative, and other departments, record a mass of detail 

 about the country and its inhabitants. Some officers have collected 

 notes of great scientific value about the people, their customs, food, 

 diseases, etc. The bulk of these notes are kept in the files of district 

 offices, where they are not easily unearthed and may never be 

 remembered when at a later date some investigator wishes to 

 make enquiries on similar lines. In these days, when research on 

 African problems is coming to depend more and more on organized 

 co-operation, all such data are of value and could be saved for 

 posterity, without any large organization or heavy expense, if in 

 each territory there were a clearing-house to which all such in- 

 formation were sent and classified, probably on the basis of the 

 administrative district from which it came. From time to time the 

 material collected would be worked through and sifted, and per- 

 haps written up into suitable publications. 



A further source of waste relates to the exchange of information 

 and bears upon interterritorial co-operation. It so often happens 

 that work is duplicated in different parts of Africa, or that sets of 

 data are obtained which might be of the utmost comparative 

 value, only each piece of work is done in ignorance of the other 

 and by slightly different methods, so that comparison is difficult. 

 Furthermore there are many papers published which are of impor- 

 tance to African workers, but are never heard of except by casual 

 reference in some book or article published long afterwards. The 

 admirable services of the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux and of the 

 Bureau of Tropical Diseases have gone far to override these diffi- 

 culties by publishing abstracts and bibliographies and enabling 

 workers in Africa to obtain copies of articles of interest; but these 

 bureaux deal only with their own special subjects, and there still 

 seems room for some organization interested in African develop- 



