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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX, No. 1261 



ical knowledge. I should like to consider cer- 

 tain ideas with reference to each of these two 

 general aims. 



The Conservation of Knowledge Already 

 Attained. — My fii-st topic, on the conservation 

 and presentation of knowledge already at 

 hand, involves the teaching of students and 

 the publishing of resumes, year-books, abstract 

 journals, and the like. The teaching aspect I 

 shall not venture to take up here; the atmos- 

 phere is at present somewhat hazy with dis- 

 cussions on botanical, zoological and biological 

 teaching, questionnaires on these topics flit 

 frequently through the mails, and this whole 

 matter seems to be receiving considerable at- 

 tention at the hands of teaching botanists. 

 Also, it seems well for your vice-president to 

 take no sides on these questions at present, 

 especially as he does not count himself a 

 teacher (excepting for the purposes of army 

 draft questionnaires!) and has not taught 

 beginners for many years. 



On the other hand, I do wish to ask your 

 consideration of several ideas bearing on the 

 preservation of botanical knowledge and the 

 rendering of it available to those who wish to 

 use it in some way. Tou have all appreciated 

 the fact that the storing and handling of 

 scientific knowledge (as represented by the 

 literature, and to some extent by herbarium 

 and museum specimens) has recently become 

 of the utmost importance. Botanical science 

 is now so broad, and its wealth of knowledge 

 is so great, that no worker can hope to read 

 nearly all the papers appearing in his own field, 

 to say nothing of those in related fields. It 

 thus comes about that valuable bits of knowl- 

 edge get lost in the pile, as it were, and fail 

 to reach those persons who would be able to 

 use them. It is a favorite " indoor sport " 

 for scientists to find fault with their col- 

 leagues because the latter are not suitably 

 familiar with the literature, but the critic is 

 generally as lame as the poor cripple he de- 

 rides. As I have remarked elsewhere, " sci- 

 ence is in great danger of obliterating itself 

 Tinder its own productions, poisoning itself 

 with its own excretions, like yeast." It is a 

 very serious research to find out what is al- 



ready known about any given topic, and mat- 

 ters grow daily worse. 



Abstract journals can help greatly in tliis 

 difficulty, and we are trying to improve con- 

 ditions by starting Botanical Alstracts, an 

 enterprise that is a cooperation of a large 

 number of workers in botanical science " in 

 its broadest sense." Some botanical journals, 

 like the Revue generale de Botanique and the 

 Plant World, occasionally publish resumes of 

 the present status of knowledge regarding 

 some limited topic. These are of great value 

 if accompanied by accurate citations, and 

 their number should be increased. Sometimes 

 jom-nals publish monographs more complete 

 than resumes; for example, Jorgensen and 

 Stiles' monograph on " Carbon Assimilation," 

 which appeared in the New Phytologist. Such 

 contributions should be encouraged, especially 

 when they represent the cooperation of a ntim- 

 ber of workers and are accompanied by full 

 and accurate citations. But, from apparently 

 authoritative discussions of the status of a 

 scientific field, by a single author and without 

 citations of the literature, may whatever gods 

 there be left deliver us! 



But it needs to be emphasized that all these 

 things are but makeshifts. We need to step 

 forward boldly and state that our science, as 

 well as all the others, needs, and needs very 

 much, a national or international institute for 

 the furnishing of iihlio graphical information 

 on request. Such an institute would of course 

 be a great undertaking, even for a field as 

 narrow as botanical science, but it might well 

 be the most productive investment that sci- 

 ence (or humanity as a whole, even) could 

 now make. It has been suggested that the 

 establishment of such an institute for this 

 country might well be by the ISTational Re- 

 search Coimcil (which has been made per- 

 manent as you know), under the auspices of 

 the ISTational Academy of Sciences. And it 

 has also been suggested that this proposed in- 

 stitute become the avatar of all those vague 

 longings that fijid voice from time to time in 

 pleas for a national university of some sort. 

 Such an institute would have its permanent 

 staff of departmental heads and its corps of 



