ApRIL 5, 1912] 
specimens, contains the types of such pio- 
neers as Nuttall, Pursh, Muhlenberg and 
de Schweinitz besides comprehensive col- 
lections from all parts of the globe. Among 
those whose researches have been carried 
on at the academy may be mentioned, in 
addition to the above, Durand, Charles EH. 
Smith, Meehan and Redfield. 
In anthropology the work of Morton 
and later of Harrison Allen is famous. 
The splendid collection of human crania 
brought together by the former is historic. 
Archeological and ethnological collections 
comprise the material gathered by 8S. S. 
Haldeman in North America and the land 
of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas. 
We have also the Wm. S. Vaux collection, 
rich in specimens of the neolithic age of 
Europe, the Robert H. Lamborn collection 
and the Clarence B. Moore collection. 
This latter represents the results of more 
than twenty years’ exploration in the 
southern United States and consists of 
thousands of specimens of the vanished 
art-industries of our southern aborigines 
now saved for all time in our museum and 
in- the fine series of reports published in 
our Journal. 
We have extensive mineral collections, 
foremost among which is the Wm. S. Vaux 
collection, famous for the beauty of its 
specimens and the completeness of the 
series. 
There are the famous Febiger collection 
of diatoms and others, which lack of time 
forces me to pass over. 
So, too, there are many former members 
of our academy who by their scientific 
attainments or their loyal and generous 
support have helped to build up the insti- 
tution, while among our living members 
are men who are, by their work and devo- 
tion, fully as deserving of notice as those 
who have gone before. 
Helmholtz, in 1862, said: 
SCIENCE 
523 
In fact men of science form, as it were, an 
organized army, laboring on behalf of the whole 
nation, and generally under its direction and at 
its expense, to augment the stock of such knowl- 
edge as may serve to promote industrial enterprise, 
to increase wealth, to adorn life, to improve polit- 
ical and social relations and to further the moral 
development of individual citizens. After the 
immediate practical results of their work we for- 
bear to inquire; that we leave to the uninstructed. 
We are convinced that whatever contributes to the 
knowledge of the forces of nature or the powers 
of the human mind is worth cherishing, and may, 
in its own due time, bear practical fruits, very 
often where we should least have expected it. 
It has been truly said that the distinctive 
feature of pure science is ‘‘that it is not 
remunerative; the practical rewards and 
returns are not the immediate ends in 
view.’’ The work of Tyndall and Pasteur, 
however, on fermentation, pursued in the 
beginning purely because of its abstract 
scientific interest, later came to have enor- 
mous economic importance and led to the 
scientific investigations that have within 
recent years become of incalculable value 
to mankind. 
The knowledge gathered by the abstract 
naturalist and the tabulation of scientific 
data concerning all forms of animal and 
vegetable life have a very close and direct 
relation to public health and preventive 
medicine. A long list of diseases might be 
compiled in which some of the insects are 
directly responsible for the transmission of 
the bacterium or parasite life causing dis- 
ease. It is now a matter of almost uni- 
versal knowledge that malarial fever is 
transmitted from man to man by means of 
the Anopheles mosquito, that the yellow 
fever virus can only be transmitted by the 
Stegomyia calopus, that the bubonic plague 
may be transmitted from man to man or 
from rat to man by means of the rat flea 
(Pulex cheopis), that the Trypanosoma 
gambiense of African sleeping sickness can 
be transmitted only by means of the tsetse- 
