July 4, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



of food articles no movement offers greater 

 hope than that which draws into the reahn of 

 human consumption new foods and thereby 

 lessens the demand on old supplies while at 

 the same time it offers for the dietary of man 

 a greater variety than was included before. 



This is precisely the work of the U. S. 

 Bureau of Fisheries. In various ways it con- 

 tributes to the i)erpetuation and increase of 

 the supply of well-known and long-utilized 

 varieties of food fishes while at the same time 

 it endeavors to find and utilize unknown or 

 undervalued aquatic products. It has met 

 with marked success in both lines of activity; 

 but to make further progress, especially in the 

 direction of discovering and utilizing new 

 kinds of fish, and perhaps also of other aquatic 

 organisms, research must come in to demon- 

 strate the what and how in the situation. 

 The xmiversities of this nation are already 

 many of them organized for research and 

 others have made partial progress in the 

 achievement of that organization so that they 

 are able to do the research that is needed with 

 less expenditure of money, time and energy 

 than any other agency, especially in compar- 

 ison with a new organization that must be 

 built from the groimd np. Furthermore, the 

 universities have a multitude of young work- 

 ers eager to find opportunities for a future 

 career, and hence likely to be attentive to the 

 appeals from this new field. To realize all 

 the possibilities of this movement, therefore, 

 there is need of more effective cooperation as 

 well as more extended and more active effort. 



There are two real educational problems, or 

 two real points of attack on the one great 

 problem, which are outlined in the presenta- 

 tion of Dr. Smith: (1) Technical training of 

 young men for this work. This involves the 

 introduction of courses of study which shall 

 fit them to carry on the work demanded by the 

 U. S. Bureau of Fisheries and by the corre- 

 sponding state organizations. (2) Organiza- 

 tion of science to permit the exchange of 

 knowledge and formulation of plans, as well 

 as to secure cooperation in solving the prob- 

 lems. 



In spite of what has been said by others to- 



day I feel sure that the future of research is 

 bound to be different from its work in the 

 past. In the past the dominant note in sci- 

 entific work has been a high degree of individ- 

 ualism; in the future I believe it will be a 

 pronounced tendency towards correlation in 

 the investigation of significant problems. 

 When the U. S. government brought together 

 chemists in Washington and set them to work 

 on poison gases in warfare, this action broke 

 down the ancient barrier supposed to exist 

 between any control over individual activity 

 and success in research. It assigned men a 

 prescribed problem — and you all know how 

 successfully this was met and solved. In- 

 dividual action which has been so general in 

 the past will, in my opinion, disappear grad- 

 ually until men in scientific circles are work- 

 ing not under restraint, but under some gen- 

 eral direction in a joint attack on these prob- 

 lems, the solution of which is of evident and 

 most immediate value for the human race. 



Training Younger Men for Expert Worh of 

 Bureaus. — To furnish scientific training for 

 attacking and solving the problems of exist- 

 ence is a characteristic function of our uni- 

 versities. These institutions have sought, in 

 recent years at least, to keep in touch with ap- 

 plied science, perhaps chiefly along individual 

 lines; but no one of our universities is with- 

 out some work in applied science, and the va- 

 rious schools of agriculture, engineering and 

 laboratory science have reached a development 

 truly characteristic of those institutions. It 

 is natural that a similar training should be 

 provided for aquiculture. To be sure, there 

 are certain limits to this as the demand in the 

 field is small as compared with that in agri- 

 culture and the number of men interested in 

 pursuing such work is limited. Furthermore, 

 the funds in the possession of institutions are 

 limited and it is impossible to enter on the 

 study of all problems. But even after all has 

 been said and done, one must recognize a real 

 demand upon the university to furnish help 

 in this evident and increasing need. 



Let me emphasize at this point the fact 

 that in the course of their growth universities 

 must come naturally to the same sort of spe- 



