594 
synonym of Echinostoma bursicola (Creplin, 1837) 
nec Looss, 1899. 
In order to straighten out the synonymy im- 
mediately, [here propose the name Hchinostoma 
africanum, nomen novum, as substitute for FE. 
bursicola Looss, 1899, nec (Creplin, 1837) Stiles, 
1901. 
CH. WARDELL STILES. 
BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 
AMATEURISM AND MENTAL INERTIA IN 
PUBLIC SERVICE. 
In a striking presentation of the results of 
‘Official Obstruction of Electric Progress’ in 
Great Britain, by Professor J. A. Fleming, in 
The Nineteenth Century for February, that distin- 
guished writer and scientific authority describes 
the outcome of the existing system of public 
service in Great Britain in the departments of 
telegraphy and telephony and the relative ret- 
rogression of that nation in all departments of 
electrical engineering. ‘‘In reviewing the 
nationality of those who have thus helped to 
make the electric current the humble servant 
of mankind, it is impossible not to be struck 
with the fact that British names do not pre- 
ponderate.”’ 
In pure scientific research, Great Britain has 
held her own; in detailed improvements and 
minor advances she has not been backward ; 
but has made no fundamental invention or dis- 
covery, except, perhaps, those ‘of Lord Kel- 
vin in submarine telegraphy, of Mr. Swan in 
electric lighting and of Professor Hughes in 
telephony’; practically all first-rate novelties 
have originated in other countries, for a gener- 
ation past. The reason is attributed largely to 
the fact that in 1870, just at the dawn of the 
period of electrical activity, the Government set 
itself up in business as an electrician and 
proceeded to create a gigantic Government 
monopoly in one large department of elec- 
trical invention which has exercised a most 
undoubted control over the supply and demand 
for invention in a wide area of electrical work. 
It invested £10,000,000 in telegraph purchases, 
made the business a monopoly, and thus smoth- 
ered invention through that monopoly and an 
always characteristic governmental inertia, an 
inertia, misnamed conservatism, always to be 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Vou. XIII. No. 328. 
observed where, as in such cases, the alertness 
in effecting improvement and in competition 
which characterizes private business for private 
profit is absent. This ‘conservatism’ is seen 
in all departments of the public service and is 
liable to produce serious retrogression in every 
national enterprise and inall countries. It was ~ 
also illustrated, according to Professor Fleming, 
in the case of the telephone. No sooner was 
this extraordinary invention made practicable 
than the British Government, even without 
explicit authority of law, compelled its pro- 
prietors and promoters in that country to pay 
tribute to the Postal Department, and to-day, 
while the postal service and the telephone are 
conducted at a loss, the telephone is made to 
contribute, without substantial return to its 
proprietors, the amount of £130,000 to the 
profit side of the postal service ledger; while 
the official service of the telegraph, too largely 
amateur, brings in a loss of over £220,000. 
The National Telephone Co. has paid into the 
treasury of the postal service over a million 
of pounds, since its capitulation to that service, 
as a ‘tax on a new industry barely twenty 
years old.’ The higher tribunals have never 
confirmed this act of piracy, as it is considered 
by the members of the company. 
As this writer states: ‘‘The whole behavior 
of the post-office towards private enterprise in 
telephony in the last twenty years has been 
marked by inconsistency, inaptitude and want 
of prevision.’’ The business which it itself con- 
ducts is a source of enormous loss ; that which 
it simply taxes and burdens pays a sufficient 
profit to bear this invidious taxation, to which 
other industries are not subjected. It is a fair 
presumption that, were the telephone managed 
directly by the Government, it would exhibit a 
lack of thrift and efficiency similar to that 
characterizing the postal and the telegraph 
business. Meanwhile, also, the postal service 
deliberately impedes the telephone manage- 
ment in its endeavors to secure rights of way, 
and compels it to charge the public a much 
higher tariff than would be fair and practicable 
were it not discriminated against in taxation, 
and thus its range is restricted as well as its 
value to those who are able to secure its service. 
In all ways the hope of reward which is the 
