November 16, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



739 



position of superintendent of the Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey or for the directorship of 

 the proposed bureau of standards. More- 

 over, it is believed that either of these so- 

 cieties would be willing to cite in the public 

 prints reasons for the fitness of such can- 

 didates based on lists of their published 

 works and on histories of their professional 

 careers. It is doubtful, of course, whether 

 an eminently fit person would, under exist- 

 ing circumstances, accept such a position ; 

 but the establishment of a high standard 

 of appointment would help more than any 

 thing else to make the position worthy of 

 an able man and to make his tenure of 

 office reasonably secure. 



Has not the time arrived when the scien- 

 tific societies of the country should unite in 

 an effort to raise the standard of qualifica- 

 tions for a directorship of government sci- 

 entific work? We believe the time has 

 come ; and we believe also that Congress 

 would welcome the advice of a representa- 

 tive committee of scientific men of the coun- 

 try on all questions relating to the work and 

 administration of our scientific bureaus. 



It may be said, however, that experience 

 has revealed well-nigh insuperable difficul- 

 ties in the way of the needed changes. One 

 must confess, in fact, that the reforms of 

 the democratic and republican administra- 

 tions of the Coast and Geodetic Survey dur- 

 ing the past twenty years have corrected 

 only minor evils ; and that the efforts of the 

 past thirty years to get the Naval Observa- 

 tory on an astronomical rather than on a 

 naval footing have proved almost fruitless. 

 But depressing as this experience is, it 

 ought not to suppress the optimism of pa- 



triotic men of science. It ought rather to 

 lead them to renewed studies of these per- 

 ennial questions, especially since the prose- 

 cution of scientific work is apparently com- 

 ing to be more and more a part of the 

 business of civilized nations the world over. 

 Possibly the reformers have failed hitherto 

 because, they have sought to accomplish too 

 much, or because they have sought to ac- 

 complish the wrong things. The problems 

 presented are evidently very complex, and 

 their solution may be unattainable except 

 by the method of successive approximation _ 

 Perhaps we should be content as a first 

 step to secure the necessary legislation for 

 the creation of a board of advisers with ref- 

 erence to appointments to prominent posi- 

 tions in the scientific bureaus. It is hardly 

 conceivable that such a board would, if 

 composed of well-known men, ever propose 

 anj' one conspicuously unfit for official posi- 

 tion. Once establish the custom of choos- 

 ing only men of good scientific repute to 

 direct scientific work, and there would be 

 little danger of relapse to the present hap- 

 hazard system. In short, the plane of ref- 

 erence for appointments to national posts of 

 honor and trust in science needs to be 

 raised at least to the level of that which is 

 applied in the case of appointments to jus- 

 ticeships in the Supreme Court. When the 

 office seeks the man, and when the office is 

 worthy of the untiring devotion essential to 

 eminence in science, our government will 

 secure officers of whom we need not feel 

 ashamed, and the petty annoyances of 

 which our correspondent complains, in a 

 measure justly, no doubt, will disappear 

 without special attention. 



