SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1149 



sent to the people as a whole in vivid and 

 yet truthful form, knowledge of the nat- 

 ural objects of our countryside — that is, 

 knowledge of nature — in such a fashion as 

 to be readily understood. 



Moreover, it must aid in the study of na- 

 ture — that is in the study of soils, insects, 

 plants, birds and mammals — from the utili- 

 tarian standpoint. 



Again, it must aid the growing army of 

 nature students, the men and women who 

 love nature, or love science, for the sake of 

 nature or science, without any set and im- 

 mediate utilitarian purpose. This museum 

 should keep aloft the standard of those who 

 delight in all knowledge and all wisdom 

 that can not be reduced to, or measured by, 

 any money scale. 



Finally, this museum should perform the 

 even more difficult task of giving research 

 facilities to the extraordinary and excep- 

 tional student, the man who has in him a 

 touch of the purple ; the man who can sup- 

 ply that leadership without which it is so 

 rare for even the laborious and well-di- 

 rected work of multitudes of ordinary men 

 to realize the ideal of large productive 

 achievement. 



Little can be done save by cooperation 

 and coordination. We are fortunate in this 

 state to have at the head of our educational 

 system, in President Finley, a man whose 

 ability to work by himself goes hand in 

 hand with ability to work with others, and 

 with ability to train up others to work 

 under him; and who does all this in such 

 fashion as to produce the maximum of 

 benefit to the people as a whole. No man 

 has done more than he has done to secure 

 for New York City a broadening of the 

 standard of cultivation, so as immensely to 

 increase the number of persons who can 

 profit thereby, and at the same time to 

 provide for the needs of those exceptional 

 men and women who, if given the chance. 



will do work of such exceptional character 

 that, to the permanent impoverishment of 

 mankind, it will remain undone unless these 

 exceptional persons are permitted to do it. 

 It is essential that this museum should 

 command the services of many different men 

 for work in many different fields, and that 

 its work should be so closely related to 

 work of the same kind elsewhere that it 

 shall all represent a coordinated whole. 

 This is true of all departments of its work, 

 but especially so of those departments 

 which have a direct utilitarian bearing. It 

 is the farmer who benefits most from the 

 utilitarian type of zoological work. The 

 rising generation will see a great change in 

 the position of the farmer in oiir social 

 economy; our governmental activities are 

 already in process of being turned to this 

 end. Most of the initial difficulties of con- 

 necting the farmer in fruitful fashion with 

 the government have been at least partially 

 overcome. The book man and the closet 

 man now understand that their science is 

 worthless unless subjected to the test of 

 actual conditions of life and labor. And 

 on the other hand the farmer has begun 

 to understand that the most practical rule- 

 of-thumb man can profit by a wise use of 

 the learning of the soil expert, the plant 

 expert or the expert in the knowledge of 

 fungi and insects. It is essential that the 

 work of this sort in each state should be 

 hitched on to the work in other states, and 

 in the federal capital, if the best result is to 

 be obtained. 



In addition to this science which is of 

 direct utilitarian bearing, to this knowl- 

 edge of nature which can be scientifically 

 applied to economic and agricultural bet- 

 terment, there is science pursued for its 

 own sake. There is a twofold warrant for 

 the encotiragement of the study of pure 

 science by the state. 



In the first place, the knowledge justifies 

 itself. The scientific student is justified 



