NOVEMBEE 2, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



555 



and diffusion of knowledge among men.' I 

 am not sure about that, but I have a convic- 

 tion that it ought not to be turned into a 

 superior club where scientific men may con- 

 gregate to imbibe the spirit of research, take 

 intellectual stimulants, eliminate their indi- 

 viduality and aberrant ideas and get into the 

 beaten path. 



For biology we have a splendid series of 

 laboratories at Woods Hole, Cold Spring Har- 

 bor, Dry Tortugas, Beaufort, all of them na- 

 tional in their scope. But the Woods Hole 

 laboratories do not receive the support from 

 investigators that their equipment warrants, 

 and the director of the Tortugas laboratory 

 has recently advocated the abolition of the 

 summer sessions of the universities that the 

 professors who now prefer to teach would, in 

 sheer desperation of ennui at nothing else to 

 do, be compelled to conduct research at the 

 splendidly equipped laboratories at the Tor- 

 tugas. 



It is my firm conviction that the middle- 

 aged and older men for whom the advocated 

 central, national, Washingtonian institution 

 would exist, who have not laid out their own 

 paths and are not diligently engaged in clear- 

 ing and traveling them; who must be sus- 

 tained by their environment and for whom, 

 therefore, an environment must be created, 

 are not worth any consideration whatsoever. 



Segregation has been the most potent factor 

 in organic evolution. Segregation has been 

 and is the most potent factor in developing 

 new ideas in biology. The mass has a regress- 

 ing, leveling or swamping effect on incipient 

 diverging ideas as well as on diverging vari- 

 ants. Self-sustaining ideas originate as rarely 

 in a crowd without elbow room as self-sustain- 

 ing mutations in small geographical areas. 



Unique faunas are found on isolated islands, 

 in caves or other segregated units of environ- 

 ment. The most pregnant ideas in biology 

 were conceived by Wallace alone in the Malay 

 Archipelago, by de Vries alone at Amsterdam, 

 by Wagner alone in the tropics of America, 

 by Gulich alone in the Sandwich Islands, by 

 Mendel alone in his monastic seclusion and 

 by Darwin flocking by himself at Down. 



The astronomers at Arequipa would prob- 

 ably have a more congenial time at Washing- 

 ton, but they would not photograph the south- 

 ern heavens. 



What we need most is not more opportuni- 

 ties for the herding of scientific men, but op- 

 portunities for them to work to the best ad- 

 vantage where they are or where their material 

 is to be found. If that happens to be in 

 Washington, by all means let provision be 

 made for them at Washington if it does not 

 already exist, but let us not repeat the mis- 

 take made years ago, when it became fashion- 

 able to think that all that was worth doing 

 must be done on and by the sea. I have, 

 among others, two good friends in Washing- 

 ton who have confided to me, the one that as 

 soon as the weather permits he leaves Wash- 

 ington, because he can do nothing in the swirl 

 that there exists, and the other that when 

 he has a big piece of work on hand he takes 

 his material to one of the universities, because 

 he can do much more there than at Wash- 

 ington. 



If the time has come for the Smithsonian 

 to adopt a different method for the ' increase 

 and diffusion of knowledge among men,' I 

 would urge, as I urged when the nascent 

 Carnegie Institution was under discussion, 

 what my own bitter experience leads me to 

 believe is the most urgent need of American 

 science. 



My experience no doubt is not at all unique. 

 I too have received liberally from the Smith- 

 sonian and its affiliated bureaus whatever pub- 

 lications were issued. This policy of the 

 Smithsonian for the ' diffusion of knowledge ' 

 followed by government bureaus has become 

 so liberal that we have protests and suggested 

 reforms of its extravagance. I have been 

 assisted by the loan of books, of valuable mu- 

 seum material and copies of inaccessible frag- 

 ments of literature. I have reciprocated by 

 sending specimens and preparing reports. I 

 could ask for nothing better along these lines. 



Several years ago I set myself to work on 

 the development of the remarkable viviparous 

 fishes of the Pacific coast. I gave all of my 

 time to the collection and working up of the 



