NOVKMBEB 15, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



669 



his opinion that the public should be rigidly 

 excluded from the study collections. These 

 should, if possible, be kept away from the 

 exhibition halls, but if this can not be done 

 they should at least be kept from the public 

 yiew. Drawers with glass tops, placed be- 

 neath the cases and accessible to the public 

 are an abomination to the curators and a 

 menace to the safety of the collections, besides 

 serving no good purpose to the public, which 

 is only bewildered by the multitude of simi- 

 lar forms. 



The paper by Dr. Boaz opens up some per- 

 plexing but also interesting questions of 

 museum administration and it would be of 

 value to hear from others who are working 

 along this line. Many of the problems 

 touched upon will probably be discussed by 

 the American Association of Museums at 

 some of its future meetings, and the writer 

 would suggest that the Chicago meeting in 

 1908 will be an opportune time to offer some 

 of these problems for debate. 



Frank C. Baker, 



Curator 



The Chicago Academy or Sciences 



THE PUBLICATION OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH 



Professor Webber in a recent issue of 

 Science' has crystallized a problem which has 

 been prominent in the minds of experiment- 

 station workers of the United States for the 

 last decade or more, and which has been par- 

 ticularly accentuated by the recent expansion 

 of technical work in the stations by virtue 

 of the Adams Act. 



Most active station workers feel the need 

 of additional and better facilities for publica- 

 tion. 



As Professor Webber indicates, the issuance 

 of special technical series of bulletins has been 

 a failure and has been almost entirely or 

 altogether abandoned. The publication of a 

 technical bulletin with another edition of the 

 same number in popular abstract, tends to 

 confusion. Some stations issue the more 

 technical, less practical, bulletins in small edi- 

 tions and withhold them from general distri- 



' Science, Vol. XXVI., p. 509. 



bution. This course is objectionable, since 

 the farmer feels slighted when he finds that 

 certain bulletins have not been sent to him. 

 To take the other horn of the dilemma and 

 send all of this technical matter to the farmer, 

 placing before him matter which will ulti- 

 mately and in the hands of the proper persons 

 be highly valuable, but which it is entirely 

 impossible for him to use or even to judge 

 properly, is certainly not a proper course. 



Nor do any of these methods of bulletin 

 publication of technical matter attain the de- 

 sired end, viz., to reach the largest number of 

 interested people and to place the matter in 

 permanent and easily accessible form. 



In general, the plan of Professor Webber 

 must meet approval in that it provides a cen- 

 tral unified publication center. Personally 

 I believe that there should be one publication 

 which might be known as the Journal of 

 American Agricultural Research, a title which 

 commends itself as being definitive and con- 

 cise, and which is easily abbreviated to J. A. 

 A. B. or Jour. Amer. Agric. Res., an abbre- 

 viation which is not preempted in the large list 

 used by the Experiment Station Record. 

 While primarily intended for publication of 

 the research of experiment-station workers, 

 who should have the first right to immediate 

 publication, the privileges might be extended 

 to all other research concerning American 

 agriculture. 



This journal should be issued in numbers 

 consecutively, as they come from the press 

 and be paged consecutively as high at least as 

 the ten-thousandth page. All citations by 

 page will then be exact. The numbers should 

 be of variable size to conform to the dimen- 

 sions of the single articles contained therein, 

 and such editorial staff and press facilities 

 should be at command as to insure practically 

 immediate publication of matter submitted to 

 the editorial board by various station directors. 



Frequent index numbers with extensive 

 cross reference should be issued in order to 

 keep the journal of ready reference utility. 

 Such a journal used in conjunction with the 

 Experiment Station Record, as at present con- 

 ducted, would render all American agricul- 

 tural research readily accessible. 



