December 7, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



727 



country have received from the U. S. Geolog- 

 ical Survey small allotments of money that 

 enabled them to spend their holidays and odd 

 hours in doing geologic work in which they 

 were especially interested. This work has 

 yielded excellent and far-reaching results both 

 for the national survey and locally. It has 

 greatly encouraged the younger geologists, for 

 it has generally been regarded as a sort of offi- 

 cial recognition of their professional ability 

 and standing, it has enabled them to widen 

 their knowledge and experience, and not infre- 

 quently it has enabled the poorly-paid teachers 

 to keep their heads above water financially. 

 This policy has justly strengthened the survey 

 throughout the country. The survey seems to 

 feel, however, that it has now outgrown the 

 necessity of this kind of support, and the 

 time has come when these professors are to 

 be dropped as rapidly as it can be done with- 

 out precipitating matters. The director prob- 

 ably realizes at the same time that, as long as 

 the names of these professors are on the pay- 

 roll of the survey, they are not going to quar- 

 rel with their bread and butter. The pro- 

 fessors must face the situation whether they 

 wish to do so or not, for here is the policy set 

 down in black and white: 



Mr. Walcott says in his letter given above 

 that the professors " can not work as effi- 

 ciently for the national survey as can the 

 geologists constantly in its employ, and recog- 

 nition of this fact has led in recent years to 

 a reduction of the proportional amount of 

 work allotted to teachers of geology, who can 

 give but a share of their time to it." This 

 statement of the case is straightforward and 

 the question is well defined. Even if it were 

 not so clearly put, the course of the survey 

 during several years past made this plan ap- 

 parent. Mr. Walcott's policy has lately made 

 itself quite apparent also in the conduct of 

 the Carnegie Institution of which he was for 

 several years the secretary, and of whose ex- 

 ecutive committee he is still a member. 



This plan on the face of it seems reasonable. 

 It is to be noted that there is no complaint of 

 the grade or character of the work done by 

 the professors, it is simply that they can not 

 give their entire time to it, and that they are 



therefore and necessarily slow in handing in 

 results. 



The fourth proposition is that such a sys- 

 tem of discrimination by a national bureau 

 against the scientific work of university pro- 

 fessors discredits scientific instruction in the 

 universities, and must inevitably react against 

 the men who devote themselves to scientific 

 work and study, against the dignity and use- 

 fulness of the teacher's vocation, against the 

 high character and efficiency of scientific in- 

 struction in our institutions of learning, and 

 eventually against science itself. 



Science in this country has come chiefly 

 from the educational institutions. It is in 

 them that standards are set and maintained, 

 and it is from them that the most incisive 

 scientific thought has come. If the professors 

 have been slow, they have also been pains- 

 taking and trustworthy. They have worked 

 at science because they loved it, and their deep 

 interest in their work and their unselfish and 

 often fatal devotion to it has been a constant 

 inspiration to their students, and a source of 

 strength to the institutions with which they 

 have been connected. Unfortunately, these 

 professors have small salaries and they have 

 little or no money with which to carry on 

 their researches or original work, and even 

 the little they have often comes out of their 

 own slender private funds. There is another 

 reason for this slowness of the professor that 

 is not likely to appeal to the director of the 

 survey: I refer to the fact that the amount of 

 money allotted to the work to be done by a 

 professor in the survey's employ is sometimes 

 so small that he is unable to finish a given 

 piece of work within a specified time and to 

 do it as he thinks it should be done. In his 

 letter of November 9 my own case is cited in 

 evidence of the delay of the professors in 

 handing in their results. The allotments 

 made for the work mentioned (the Santa Cruz 

 quadrangle) were so small that in order to do 

 the work properly I was obliged to spend about 

 a thousand dollars of my own money. Dr. 

 Newsom, who joined me in this work, likewise 

 paid out about seven hundred dollars to help 

 put the work in better shape. Dr. Newsom's 

 bill was finally presented to the survey and 



