October 27, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



515 



of President Wilson, that a university is a 

 place where many are trained to the love of 

 science and letters and a few to their suc- 

 cessful pursuit, may, I think, be given a 

 broader application than its author had in 

 mind. A university should be a place 

 which promotes the love of science and 

 letters and the understanding of the liberal 

 arts not only among the few thousands who 

 may happen to be its pupils, but among the 

 many thousands with whom it comes less 

 closely in contact. The work of a univer- 

 sity is to maintain standards. It can hardly 

 succeed in that work if it confines its in- 

 spiration to the relatively small number 

 who have had the good fortune to live 

 within its walls. It must appeal at once 

 to its smaller constituency, within its walls 

 and to its much larger possible constituency 

 without them. 



Yale men have always recognized this 

 responsibility and have done a great deal 

 of work for the community. But Yale has 

 taken less credit and less advantage from 

 this than it might wisely have done. The 

 relations of this public work to the univer- 

 sity have been unnoticed. Its status here 

 was so far undefined that it has been taken 

 out of our hands the moment it has achieved 

 public recognition. I suppose that Yale 

 University may fairly claim to be a start- 

 ing point of modern scientific agriculture. 

 Certainly the development of agricultural 

 experiment stations, which have proved so 

 important in revolutionizing the practise 

 of our farmers, and have done so much 

 to increase the productivity of our soil, 

 started from Sheffield Scientific School. 

 This movement has extended all over the 

 world. Its cardinal importance in theory 

 and in practise is everywhere recognized. 

 But nobody gives the credit to Yale. We 

 hear of what Wisconsin does for agricul- 

 ture; we hear of what half a dozen other 

 universities do. Of Yale, we hear chiefly 

 of what she has failed to do. Why? 



Simply because this whole important move- 

 ment was in its initial stages carried on so 

 quietly that its importance never properly 

 impressed itself upon our graduates or 

 upon the public; and those universities 

 reaped the benefit which, seeing the real 

 importance of the work Yale was doing, 

 gave it the recognition which we had with- 

 held. 



We are in danger of repeating the same 

 kind of error to-day. We are in danger 

 of ignoring the existence and usefulness of 

 some of the things among us which are 

 most important for our public influence. 

 Whenever a reception is held in the gal- 

 leries of the Yale Art School many men 

 speak with wonder of the fact that they 

 have neglected for years a means of en- 

 joyment and culture which stood ready to 

 their hand. Scarcely one in ten among 

 the Yale students or graduates knows the 

 extraordinary value and interest of our art 

 collections. If our own students do not 

 realize seriously what we have in the way 

 of art treasures and what we might do 

 with them for our own culture,^ we can 

 hardly expect the outside public to realize 

 it more fully. Our various scientific col- 

 lections are somewhat better known than 

 our art collections, both to the students and 

 to the public ; but even these fall far short 

 of having the usefulness which they might 

 well attain in stimulating scientific interest 

 among the students and throughout the 

 city. 



The means which we can use to bring our 

 work more fully into contact with the pub- 

 lic may be grouped under five heads : 



1. The natural history collections in the 

 Peabody Museum. Of these the most 

 widely known are the fossil vertebrates 

 originally collected by Professor Marsh. 

 Going out as he did at the time when the 

 fossil beds of the Eocky Mountain region 

 were first opened, Professor Marsh had 

 exceptional opportunities for obtaining 



