266 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
publications of the United States Geological Survey. In my opinion, 
such work as Dutton’s Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon, Gil- 
bert’s Lake Bonneville, and the investigations of Marsh, Cope, and 
their successors on the wonderful series of reptile, bird, and mammal 
remains found in the Cretaceous and Tertiary strata of the West are 
fully as adequate and appropriate a return for the expenditure of 
public funds as a report describing the occurrence of a coal bed and 
giving the quantity of coal available in a given field. Many years 
ago when the United States Geological Survey was under heavy fire 
in Congress one Member of that body in some unexplained way 
learned that Professor Marsh had discovered and had described in 
a Government publication a wonderful fossil bird with teeth—a great 
diver up to 6 feet in length. He held this up to ridicule as a glaring 
example of the waste of public funds in useless scientific work, quite 
unaware of the light that this and similar discoveries threw upon the 
interesting history of the development of birds from reptiles and 
upon evolution, or of the intellectual value of such a contribution to 
knowledge. The representative of a people educated in the value of 
geologic science would, by such an exhibition of ignorance, discredit 
himself in the eyes of his constituents. 
FUNCTIONS IN A DEMOCRACY. 
Our Government, however, is not an all-wise benevolent autocracy, 
but is democratic in plan and intent and suffers from certain well- 
known disadvantages from which no democracy has yet been free. 
The wishes of the politically active majority control, and these wishes 
may or may not coincide with those of the wisest and most en- 
lightened of the citizens. The funds for Government work in science 
must be granted by Congress, and the vote of each Congressman is 
determined by the real or supposed desires of his constituents. A 
national scientific bureau, if it is to survive, must have popular sup- 
port, and to obtain and hold such support it must do at least some 
work that the majority of the people can understand or can recognize 
as being worth the doing. Here evidently compromise with scientific 
ideals is necessary. Something must be sacrified in order that some- 
thing can be done.. Such concessions and compromises are inseparable 
from democratic government, and the scientific man of high ideals 
who is unable to recognize this fact will inevitably fail as a director 
of the scientific work of a government bureau. Such a man is likely 
to insist that no concessions are necessary and that the public will 
support science which is not interesting to it or from which it can 
see no immediately resulting material benefit. One very eminent 
geologist with whom I was once conversing held this view. He said 
that he had always found that he could go before a legislative body 
