FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT 125 



an institution as this. We are losing opportunities for certain 

 investigations in which the Aquarium should be the leader. 



With a sufficient staff it would be possible to make the pub- 

 lications of the Aquarium as important as those of the Museum 

 of Natural History or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 



The publications of the latter institution have recently been 

 referred to in the New York Sim in part as follows : 



"They [the former catalogues] probably were the best that 

 an overworked and undermanned staff could be expected to pro- 

 duce. The new catalogues are an unmistakable symptom of 

 better things. They mean that the staff of the Museum has been 

 put on a scientific basis — that its officers are no longer keepers 

 solely but curators in the best sense of the term. The work is 

 being well done and the Museum is taking its rightful place 

 among the museums of the world. The Museum now provides 

 its science from the resources of its own organization." 



A question often asked by prominent visitors from abroad 

 who have admired the collections of the Aquarium is : "What is 

 the Aquarium doing in the way of advancing knowledge — 

 what are you publishing?" Our meagerly equipped laboratory 

 is a laboratory in name only, having so far been used by less 

 than a dozen volunteer investigators. These men, usually fully 

 employed with their work of teaching in our universities, have 

 found little time for volunteer work in the Aquarium, although 

 they greatly appreciated the facilities afforded. The best way to 

 get things done is to pay some one to do them. 



With a properly equipped laboratory and a couple of trained 

 zoological assistants, investigations of value to science and of 

 interest to the public could be carried on. Their services as 

 students of marine zoology are demanded also in the Director's 

 office in the handling of correspondence and in the preparation 

 of material for the Bulletin of the Zoological Society. This 

 Bulletin should be made a monthly. The Aquarium numbers 

 have, so far, been devoted largely to new observations and are of 

 popular interest. More than 1000 copies a year of the Aquar- 

 ium numbers have been sold by the doorkeeper. They have 

 been a source of profit. 



The section of the Annual Report of the Zoological Society 

 devoted to investigation should contain much more in the way 

 of scientific papers than it does and this would naturally follow 

 the appointment of efficient assistant curators in the Aquarium. 



A work of great public interest and one of considerable im- 

 portance which has been carried on at the Aquarium for some 



