60 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1360 



zoogeography, entomology and genetics 

 were almost entirely in the hands of ama- 

 teurs. Mendel was an amateur and all the 

 wonderful varieties of our domestic animals 

 and plants were developed, one might al- 

 most say invented, by amateurs. The 

 change Which has come over the situation 

 is due to the great increase in our knowl- 

 edge in more recent times and the exuber- 

 ant growth of our universities, technical 

 schools, museums and research institutions. 

 These have made investigation more and 

 more difficult for the amateur, especially in 

 the inorganic scienoes and in physiology, 

 which now demand an exacting prepara- 

 tion and elaborate apparatus, although 

 •there are even at the present time a few 

 eminent amateur astronomers and geolo- 

 gists. Amateurs still abound, nevertheless, 

 in zoology and botany, in which it is still 

 possible to carry on much valuable re- 

 search with very simple equipment. There 

 must be thousands of them, and nothing is 

 more extraordinary than the ignorance of 

 their work on the part of many of our uni- 

 versity professionals. I could give a long 

 list of men in the most diverse profes- 

 sions, letterearriers, stage-coach drivers, 

 hosiers, portrait-painters, engravers, par- 

 sons, priests, stockyard superintendents, 

 engineers, bankers, country-grocers, coun- 

 try-doctors, army officers, mining prospect- 

 ors, school teachers and clerks, whose 

 researches have greatly enriched entomol- 

 ogy and other departments of zoology. In 

 such vast and complicated sciences as biol- 

 ogy and archeology the work of the ama- 

 teur is so much needed and so worthy of 

 encouragement that we may regard it as 

 one of the grea!test defects of our educa- 

 tional system that a youth is ever able to 

 leave the science courses of a high school 

 or college and itake up the humblest calling, 

 without a fixed determination to fill at least 



a portion of his leisure hours with the joys 

 of research. 



The disuse of the words professional and 

 amateur is also, no doubt, due to the fact 

 that the two kinds of investigators can no 

 longer be sharply distinguished. Not only 

 are the biologists in our universities and 

 museums frequently • recruited from the 

 ranks of the amateurs, but as investigators 

 in those institutions many of them remain 

 amateurs in spirit and merely exercise the 

 teaching and curatorial professions because 

 they can be more conveniently carried on 

 in conjunction with research than more 

 lucrative professions such as undertaking 

 and plumbing. There is no reason to sup- 

 pose that the number of amateur investi- 

 gators may not greatly increase under a 

 pnore favorable form of society. In the 

 ideal commonwealth of the future it may 

 pot be in the least surprising to find that 

 the communal furnace-man, after his four- 

 Jiour day, is conducting elaborate investi- 

 gations in paleobotany, and that the com- 

 piunal laundress is an acknowledged 

 authority on colloidal chemistry. 



Now if the preceding very hasty behav- 

 ioristie account is accurate we must admit 

 ,that it would be difficult to find a body of 

 jnen more unfavorable for purposes of or- 

 ganization, even by a committee of their 

 jown class, than the investigators. Many 

 [reasons might be given in support of this 

 statement, but I shall consider only the fol- 

 lowing four: 



, 1. The activities of the investigator de- 

 pend as we have seen, on an array of in- 

 stincts, emotions and interests, many of 

 Which are so positive that their organiza- 

 tion in the sense in which organizers are 

 using the term, is out of the question. It 

 is possible, of course, to overstimulate, re- 

 press, pervert and exploit instincts and 

 they are undoubtedly able to organize 



