504 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 616. 



duties of supervising elementary students 

 carry with them a larger obligation to publish 

 as fully as possible the results of all discov- 

 eries; to organize departments intelligently; 

 to train up young men who can teach; and to 

 make liberal room for such men, instead of 

 trying to get in their way when their work 

 becomes popular. 



These last statements indicate the policy 

 which we should adopt in dealing with our 

 junior instructors and graduate students. We 

 should give them the maximum of freedom 

 consistent with their teaching duties. We 

 can not, under the existing circumstances, pay 

 them as large salaries as we should like to do, 

 or as the work of many of them deserves; but 

 we can at least give them a fuller chance to 

 show what they have in them. In the time 

 which is necessarily occupied by class-room 

 work we can allow them more independence 

 of method than has been habitual in the past. 

 If we have as heads of departments men who 

 are competent to look after results we can 

 leave their assistants the utmost freedom in 

 the choice of means. We can make a univer- 

 sity a good place for an instructor or student 

 of any grade who thinks that he has some- 

 thing to discover. If we keep places free at 

 the top we increase his opportunity for pro- 

 motion if his discoveries turn out as he ex- 

 pects ; and if promotion does not come here we 

 can always find chances for him elsewhere. 

 Of course there will be among the members of 

 the teaching force many a man who disap- 

 points us, and perhaps disappoints himself; 

 but if one of his superiors — ^president, dean or 

 head professor — gives him timely warning that 

 we shall not be able to promote him here, it is 

 easy to find such a man a teaching place else- 

 where without grave hardship to him and with 

 definite advantage to the university. 



The success of a system of this kind is to 

 some degree dependent upon the laboratories 

 and library facilities accessible to the differ- 

 ent instructors. But a laboratory or library 

 of moderate size, administered in the right 

 spirit, is far more efficient than a much larger 

 one which is monopolized by a few heads of 

 departments for their own special investiga- 



tions. It is astonishing what an amount can 

 be done with very moderate facilities by a 

 group of young men working together, ani- 

 mated by the spirit of independent investiga- 

 tion for the moment and by the prospect of 

 distinction for the future. In each new 

 laboratory that we establish, or in each new 

 appointment to the headship of an old labora- 

 tory, we set forth clearly the fact that it is to 

 be open to the use of junior instructors and 

 graduate students just as far as the circum- 

 stances allow, to work in the way that they 

 think promising rather than in the way that 

 the chief thinks promising. This will result 

 in a good many mistakes, and in some waste 

 which might have been avoided; but it will 

 result in vastly increased efficiency and in a 

 great many discoveries which would otherwise 

 have been prevented. 



Jifr. Schwab, in his position as head of the 

 library, is fully in sympathy with these ideas ; 

 and the addition to the library building, 

 erected from the bequest of William B. Ross, 

 as a memorial to Jared Linsly, is being ar- 

 ranged with that end in view. There is no 

 other institution connected with the university 

 whose administration affects the efficiency of 

 so many departments. Yale is to be con- 

 gratulated on what Mr. Schwab is accomplish- 

 ing and also upon the care and intelligence 

 shown by Mr. Haight, the architect of the new 

 building, in enabling us to achieve the most 

 with the means at our disposal. 



A committee of the university council is 

 arranging plans for increased opportunities 

 for publication of new discoveries in various 

 lines — a matter in which during recent years 

 our facilities have been inadequate. This is 

 a thing of great importance as a stimulus to 

 the older students and younger instructors. 

 The full professors have so much reputation 

 that they can publish their work anywhere, and 

 proper attention will be given to it; but for 

 the men who still have their reputation to 

 make, the opportunity for a convenient and 

 quick channel of publication is a great stim- 

 ulus to the work and a great help to the uni- 

 versity with which their published work is 

 identified. Nothing in times past did more 



