510 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. ( 



Animal Pathology, ^ 



Entomological Investigation, 



Etc. 



As a method of handling such publications 

 an editing committee of three station workers 

 could be appointed by the association for each 

 subject, who would examine, edit and pass on 

 the suitability of papers submitted for pub- 

 lication in the scientific journals. Papers for 

 publication could be forwarded direct to the 

 chairman of the proper committee by the 

 directors of the various stations and in case 

 the committee considered them unsatisfactory 

 for publication in the journal, they could be 

 returned to the director of the station with 

 the recommendation that they be published 

 in his regular series of station bulletins or 

 remodeled to fit them for publication in the 

 journal. 



Such journals, if established, the writer be- 

 lieves, should not be distributed free of cost 

 except possibly a single set to the library of 

 each station, and to the Department of Agri- 

 culture and the Congressional Library. Aside 

 from these a regular price per volume should 

 be charged for subscription as is done for 

 standard periodicals. 



The funds from subscriptions would in con- 

 siderable measure pay for the expense of 

 publication. Each station should probably 

 pay a certain limited annual stipend for regu- 

 lar maintenance and privilege of participa- 

 tion in the enterprise, and after the above 

 funds are exhausted, any deficit at the end of 

 the year could be assessed against the stations 

 publishing articles during the year, in pro- 

 portion to the pagation published. In this 

 way the publication could be easily financed 

 and probably at less expense than any station 

 could now publish and distribute similar 

 articles which are sent gratis. 



This scheme of publication if put into 

 operation would necessitate the employment 

 of a business manager and assistants and the 

 establishment of a headquarters from which 

 all arrangements for publication and distri- 

 bution could be made. This office, however, 

 should exercise no function except as related 

 to the business of publication. 



Many important reasons can be assigned 

 why some such scheme of publication as the 

 above should be put into operation. The 

 writer assumes that it must be clear to every 

 one that some different source of publication 

 from those now existing in the stations must 

 be provided. 



Purely technical papers on the cytology of 

 heredity or on soil bacteriology, for instance, 

 while of the utmost fundamental value might, 

 if published in the regiilar series of station 

 bulletins, be actually ridiculed and bring a 

 station into disrepute with certain classes of 

 their constituents. In any case such tech- 

 nical papers intended for specialists have no 

 place in our present series of bulletins, which 

 are intended for general distribution, and 

 would be largely lost to the people for whom 

 they are intended, when published in such 

 a place. 



It may be argued that the time has now 

 come when each station should publish a 

 separate scientific or technical series of bul- 

 letins. I would answer that the scientific 

 publications of any one station will not be 

 sufficient in number to attract special notice 

 and justify the publication of a special series, 

 and even if this were the ease it would be a 

 poor place to publish such matter, where all 

 subjects are run together in one series, and 

 considering the number of stations publish- 

 ing. What all writers and stations desire 

 is to place their good matter where it wiU 

 receive the most attention and be most easily 

 preserved and found. Every one knows from 

 experience, that the literature which is always 

 preserved and most easily accessible is that 

 found in standard periodicals which are 

 issued in volumes and indexed. If special 

 journals were established for the different im- 

 portant subjects, investigators would know im- 

 mediately where to look for articles on any 

 particular subject. They could subscribe for 

 and receive regularly the journals represent- 

 ing the subjects in which they are especially 

 interested and would know when they had 

 looked over all of the available experiment- 

 station literature on a given subject. I am 

 something of a plant-breeder, yet I do not 



