39 



Academy; and a standing committee was appointed, with the 

 Director of the Laboratory at its head, to organize and con- 

 duct this work. The principal, actual outcome of this experi- 

 ment — for an experiment, of course, it is — has thus far been a 

 review and endorsement, by this committee, of the State Lab- 

 oratory plans and operations, and a common understanding 

 among the active investigators in this field as to their respective 

 subjects, fields of operation, and interrelations, arrived at with 

 a view to the coordination of all parts of this work and a fairly 

 uniform and symmetrical final product. The publication of 

 several papers on the ecology of the state by members of the 

 committee has been provided for by the State Laboratory, and 

 these papers are appearing as articles in its Bulletin. Both 

 state and individual work have thus been stimulated and some- 

 what expanded, so far without increase of expense, and with 

 notable addition to the scientific and educational value of their 

 product. 



Possibly other plans of cooperative aid to other state agencies 

 might be profitably set on foot by committees of conference ap- 

 pointed for the purpose. Others of our members may be so 

 situated, so educated, so interested, and so experienced, that 

 by coming together and by allying themselves with the Water 

 Survey, the Geological Survey, the Soil Survey, or the State 

 Museum of Natural History, they could at once give greater 

 system, definiteness, and value to their own work, aid to each 

 other, and important assistance to these organizations, either 

 by the contribution of useful observations and material, by 

 supplementary studies made along allied lines, by intensive local 

 work and other continuation studies, beginning where the state 

 work leaves ofif, or by adapting the products of special work 

 to educational uses. 



In order to insure the success of such cooperative plans, it is, of 

 course, a prime necessity that thoroughly disinterested motives 

 should prevail, and that the advancement of science in the 

 interest of the state should be the touchstone by which all 

 plans and persons shall be judged. I fully believe that we can 

 trust each other confidently in these matters, and that the way 



