650 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 591. 



tional Review, 1901, follows up the subject 

 conservatively : 



Questions of erecting the Bureau of Education 

 into an executive department, with a seat in the 

 Cabinet, as was proposed by Senator Hansbrough's 

 bill, introduced into the Fifty-sixth Congress, or 

 of organizing it on the same plane as the De- 

 partment of Labor, are not necessarily involved, 

 and may wisely be postponed until public opin- 

 ion on the subject is better informed and more 

 clearly formulated. All immediate necessities 

 could be met by an amendment of existing law 

 that should provide for a bureau of education 

 with two divisions: a division of statistics and 

 reports, to do the work now done by the bureau; 

 and a division of supervision and administration, 

 to take up the oversight of the school systems of 

 Alaska, of the white residents in Indian Terri- 

 tory, of Porto Rico and of the Philippine Is- 

 lands." 



"With our eyes opened by foreign needs 

 in this era of a new nationalism, would it 

 not be well to turn them upon our greater 

 domestic educational needs and the needs 

 of our own white children for developing 

 the bureau as shown by the subject we have 

 in hand. Some sense of such needs stirred 

 this association a year ago to appoint a 

 committee consisting of Presidents Van 

 Hise and Jesse to draft a memorial to 

 enlarge the function of the Bureau of Edu- 

 cation.^'' Without an amendment to the 

 act establishing the Bureau of Education, 

 might it not find authority with compara- 

 tively small addition to its expenditures, to 

 act in place of, or in conjunction with, the 

 delegacy above proposed 1 The law says it 

 shall 'aid the people of the United States 

 in the establishment and maintenance of 

 efficient school systems and otherwise pro- 

 mote the cause of education throughout the 

 country.' Let it federate and coordinate 

 our present school systems. Let it endorse 

 and promulgate national standards. Local 

 systems and institutions would be free to 



"Educational Review, Vol. 21, 1901, p. 528. 



^ Transactions and Proceedings, National Asso- 

 ciation of State Universities of America, 1904, p. 

 23. 



accept them or not; indeed, national in- 

 spectors might complement state and insti- 

 tutional inspectors; the national inspectors 

 visiting upon invitation and without au- 

 thority, as indeed is the case with the ma- 

 jority of state inspectors. The national 

 inspectors could validate the work of local 

 inspectors for remote parts of the country. 

 The individual colleges would upon occa- 

 sion, now in this, now in that subject, be 

 at liberty, as they now are even in the most 

 highly developed accrediting systems, to 

 give examinations to an entering student. 



In fine, the proposals of this paper apply 

 the doctrine of evolution. We grow from 

 the systems we now have. We crfrrelate 

 them. We leave liberty to each institution 

 and group of institutions to favor the sys- 

 tem or lack of system it may have. All 

 that is asked is an open-door policy instead 

 of an exclusive one. Ultimately the best 

 system or combination of systems will sur- 

 vive. In the meantime, there will be a 

 germinal genuine American system looking 

 toward a national one in harmony with our 

 new nationalism. 



George B. MacLean. 



The State UNn'EESiTY of Iowa. 



EFFECTIVE PROTECTION FOR TBE LOBSTER 

 FISHERY. 



The main biological facts concerning the 

 lobster are now well in hand, and form a 

 logical basis for the protection of the fish- 

 eries of this animal. 



In restricting the size of marketable lob- 

 sters the following methods are entitled to 

 consideration by the legislator who regards 

 the question upon its scientific merits alone : 

 (1) partial protection of young and adult, 

 with emphasis upon the young; (2) partial 

 protection of adult and young, with em- 

 phasis upon the adult. Such regulations 

 may be supplemented by various other pro- 

 hibitions, relating to close seasons, the de- 

 struction of 'berried' females and the sale 



