Mabch 4, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



331 



investigation he also needs, of course, and 

 that he now gets with ample efficiency. We 

 need a standardization of preparation for 

 college and high-school teaching of the sci- 

 ences, with appropriate titles or degrees. 

 "We are as yet far enough from such a con- 

 dition, but not wholly without some prog- 

 ress to record. For one university, Chi- 

 cago, in its school of education, has a de- 

 partment of botany and natural history, 

 administered, by the way, by one of our 

 members and colleagues whose accomplish- 

 ments in the past give promise of great 

 service to come. 



But now once more I wish to qualify a 

 little. While I believe that a training in 

 common knowledge of plants, in the history 

 of our science, in laboratory administra- 

 tion, in the psychology of youth, in the 

 collation and exposition of knowledge, as 

 well as in investigation, is indispensable 

 to the best botanical teaching, and should 

 be included eompulsorily in the training 

 of botanical teachers, I do not blame the 

 universities for not providing such instruc- 

 tion, nor am I sure that it is a correct or 

 economical university function. But there 

 is one thing of which I am sure, and it is 

 this, that there is a place in which such 

 training is practicable and wholly appro- 

 priate and that place is the graduate de- 

 partment of the college. 



Just here I wish to turn aside for a 

 moment to consider a bit more this matter 

 of training in the collation and exposition 

 of knowledge. The expansion of science in 

 our day has been so vast, the literature has 

 become so voluminous, the specialization of 

 method and thought are so extreme, that it 

 is becoming a serious question how the re- 

 sults of new research, when not of a sensa- 

 tional nature, can be quickly, accurately and 

 adequately incorporated into the general 

 mass of our knowledge and made available 

 to the intellectual or economic uses of our 



race. Every scientific man has witnessed the 

 ignoring of new truth long after its an- 

 nouncement, and the repetition of old error 

 long after its disproval, not alone in pop- 

 ular information and literature, but even 

 in the best scientific text-books; and this 

 mal-adjustment between scientific research 

 and general knowledge waxes constantly 

 greater. The trouble is plain ; we have no 

 recognized collators of knowledge, scholars 

 whose business it is to stand between the 

 investigator and the general user of knowl- 

 edge and to interpret correctly the results 

 of the one to the other. The need for such 

 service was pointed out long ago by Francis 

 Bacon. In his prophecy of the future de- 

 velopment of scientific knowledge, veiled 

 under his story of "The New Atlantis," he 

 describes the division of duty among the 

 scholars of Salomon's House. He says: 



Then after divers meetings and consults of our 

 whole number, to consider of the former labours 

 and collections [an obvious prophesy of our scien- 

 tific meetings], we have three that take care, out 

 of them, to direct new experiments, of a higher 

 light, more penetrating into nature than the 

 former. These we call Lamps. . . . Lastly, we 

 have three that raise the former discoveries by 

 experiments into greater observations, axioms, and 

 aphorisms. These we call Interpreters of Nature. 



To-day we have our lamps, and their 

 light shines steadily and benignantly forth. 

 We call them universities. But where are 

 our interpreters of nature? Though we 

 need them, we have them not. They should 

 be our colleges. In all of the great body 

 of intellectual endeavor there is no greater 

 weakness and no greater opportunity for 

 service, than in the interpretation to all 

 men of the results secured by research, not 

 in science alone, but in other departments 

 of knowledge as well. It is the absence of 

 such interpreters which leaves room for the 

 charlatans of Iniowledge, the mendacious 

 reporter who uses his bit of college infor- 

 mation to give a specious semblance of 



