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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 407. 



year, and a third, and, finally, if it seem 

 profitable, even a lifetime. Second, the 

 Carnegie Institution should take up trained 

 and promising young investigators where 

 our universities leave them. The univer- 

 sity is the natural and efficient, though by 

 no means the exclusive, selection and train- 

 ing ground for investigators; it is in the 

 ability to permit these men to continue 

 their investigations that our American uni- 

 versities are weak, and need to be supple- 

 mented. A few of the best of these young 

 ;men, the ones most highly recommended by 

 the faculties of the leading universities, 

 should be offered stipends large enough to 

 permit them to live in comfort at any cen- 

 ter of research they may select, for a 

 year, or for two, or for three, or for a life- 

 time, according as their results show to 

 be profitable. From the many called to a 

 year or two of such honorable activity few 

 would be chosen for a lifetime, but those 

 few would form a priceless possession to 

 humanity. 



To provide a favorable environment for 

 minds adapted to research seems to me, 

 therefore, the best use for the greater part 

 of the Carnegie fund. But, second to this, 

 there are certain other profitable uses for 

 a part of it— the purchase or construction 

 of apparatus for use in promising investi- 

 gations by private investigators, grants to 

 scientific expeditions or in aid of bibliog- 

 raphies, subsidies to investigating labora- 

 tories and to scientific publications, and 

 many minor worthy objects of like sort. 



There are two uses to which I think none 

 of the funds of the Carnegie Institi^tion 

 should be put. First, they should not be 

 used to duplicate any existing institutions 

 for research, and especially not for the erec- 

 tion or purchase of laboratories of any kind 

 in Washington or elsewhere. In this coun- 

 try, it seems to me, our material facilities 

 for scientific research already far exceed 

 our capacity to utilize them profitably. In 



botany, for example, the development of 

 institutions is out of all proportion to the 

 importance of the results which are com- 

 ing from them. The Missouri (Shaw) 

 Botanical Garden, the New York Botanical 

 Garden, and in lesser degree several other 

 institutions, are offering freely to all in- 

 vestigators facilities for botanical investi- 

 gation which money can hardly improve 

 upon ; what is now wanted is not more such 

 institutions, but more men capable of mak- 

 ing proper use of them. I cite botany be- 

 cause I know it better than the other sci- 

 ences, but I presume the same is true in 

 this country of most, if not all, of the other 

 sciences. To duplicate facilities not already 

 fully utilized would be most wasteful. 

 There is, moreover, another reason why I 

 think the Carnegie Institution should not 

 own any laboratories of its own, including 

 such an one as that at Woods Hole, namely, 

 the temptation to aggrandize those particu- 

 lar laboratories would be so great, and the 

 capacity of any laboratory in the endlessly 

 expanding sciences to absorb money is so 

 nearly boundless, that all of the fund avail- 

 able for each particular science would in 

 time, if not soon, be ajDsorbed to that par- 

 ticular use, and other objects, however 

 worthy, would be no better off than at pres- 

 ent. Second, the funds should not be used 

 for any form of gratuities, rewards or 

 prizes, or to pay to investigators salaries or 

 stipends larger than needful for comfort- 

 able living and the successful prosecution 

 of their researches. Prizes have their uses 

 in the lower grades of intellectual activity, 

 but to suppose that pure scientific research 

 of the highest type is appreciably pro- 

 moted by them seems to me to involve an 

 erroneous idea of the mental attitude of 

 the investigator towards his results. At all 

 events the utility of such rewards is, on 

 the one hand, not demonstrated by the his- 

 tory of scientific progress, while, on the 

 other, the efficiency of prizes is being ex- 



