September 1, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



313 



Gray, Dana, Guyot, Peirce, Joseph Henry and 

 Hilgard ; and though it has numbered the best 

 American scientists since, it has made little 

 popular impression. Professor Conklin states 

 that Wilson was the first president to ask its 

 advice in appointing an expert — following its 

 recommendation in choosing the chief of the 

 Weather Bureau. Again, though the Amer- 

 ican Society of Naturalists and the American 

 Society of Zoologists had appealed in vain to 

 McKinley to appoint a trained man commis- 

 sioner of fisheries, Wilson not only promised 

 to do so, but named the man they recom- 

 mended. He has also followed expert advice in 

 choosing the chief chemist of the Agricultural 

 Department and the chief of the Bureau of 

 Mines; and has entrusted to the National 

 Academy the important work of establishing a 

 national research council. 



The fact that the National Academy of Sci- 

 ences has lagged behind the similar academies 

 of Europe is traceable to various causes. One 

 lies in the huge extent of our country, making 

 difficult the frequent assembling of scientists 

 at Washington, as they easily gather at Lon- 

 don, Paris and Berlin. Our scientists are 

 usually connected with universities scattered 

 over the whole land, while in Europe the most 

 important seats of learning are often situated 

 at the capitals. But a main cause is clearly 

 the lack of government support. The academy 

 has had to rely for its work on money given 

 by Bache, Agassiz, C. B. Comstock, Wolcott 

 Gibbs, Apthorp Gould, Sir John Murray, and 

 others, totalling only about $200,000 — part of 

 this to be devoted to prizes. It has had no 

 home, and its building fund would disgrace 

 any vigorous college fraternity. It has not 

 received the number of commissions for the 

 government — to be executed with government 

 funds — that it might very well have had; and 

 in some years has been almost inactive. It was 

 once given such tasks as to suggest a means 

 for restoring the Declaration of Independence, 

 to canvass the various materials for cent coins, 

 to show how to prevent counterfeiting, to offer 

 a tariff classification of wools, to study glucose 

 manufacture : tasks that would now be handed 

 over to the government's own scientific bu- 



reaus. Only recently has it seemed that it may 

 soon assume its proper place as a chief federal 

 agency in many lines of research. 



The Royal Society of Britain and the French 

 Academy of Sciences are great institutions 

 that this country can not at present equal. 

 Por two centuries they have been the centers 

 of progress in research. The first had its pe- 

 riod of weak governmental support, when it 

 was too poor to publish Newton's " Principia," 

 but it now has $20,000 a year and special 

 grants, its own quarters, and the building 

 formerly known as its workshop, now as the 

 Royal Institution. Here have worked Fara- 

 day, Davy, Young, Tyndall, Dewar, Sir Joseph 

 Thomson and others, many as brilliant in 

 the lecture room as in research. It has sup- 

 plied money and instruments to scientific ex- 

 peditions all over the world, has assisted the 

 self-governing dominions and India, and has 

 performed such special tasks as that allotted 

 the Sleeping Sickness Commission. The 

 French Institute, set firmly on its feet by Col- 

 bert and Napoleon — the latter was a member — 

 has had names as great, and at one period sur- 

 passed the best days of the Eoyal Society, 

 with Laplace, La Grange, Becquerel, Fourier, 

 Begnault, Gay-Lussac, Berthollet, Cuvier, 

 Lamarck and Saint-Hilaire on its rolls. Our 

 National Academy would do well if some day 

 it rivalled that of Berlin, with its large new 

 building, ample funds and tradition of con- 

 sistently maintained research into Greek and 

 Latin inscriptions, the Prussian law, and the 

 history of the fixed stars; or if it became as 

 important to America as the Stockholm Acad- 

 emy, which distributes the Nobel prizes, is to 

 Sweden, or that at Petrograd to Bussia. It 

 must be given more of such work as it has had 

 in reporting on a national board of health, on 

 a plan for treating the national forests, on the 

 survey of the territories, or on Philippine ex- 

 ploration. And it must somehow find funds to 

 enable it to carry on extended researches in 

 one field for years, and to undertake publish- 

 ing, as do the European bodies. 



If the National Academy were often con- 

 sulted by the president about scientific ap- 

 pointments, we should only be following a 



