M 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 418. 



institutions as the National Museum. Uni- 

 versities are growing richer, for which we are 

 thankful, and more numerous, an evil neces- 

 sary perhaps to the geographical extent of 

 the country. There are great reference mu- 

 seums in Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, 

 New York, Chicago, and others with a good 

 promise that have been more recently started. 

 These are surely signs of a vigorous activity 

 in research, and we all must rejoice in them. 



It is not buildings, nor endowment funds, 

 nor libraries nor collections that make labora- 

 tories or universities or museums, but it is 

 the men who do constructive work in them, 

 those who discover and classify the facts. 

 There have been examples of institutions that 

 might have been splendid, but which have 

 proved to be only ornate, and because capable 

 men have not been placed in untrameled 

 guidance of them they have proved to be 

 melancholy mausoleums, examples of a donor's 

 folly. They have had their use in the gen- 

 eral economy of things, however, for they 

 have taught the American public that men, 

 and not buildings, mean greatness — the men 

 who do the work for the love of it and with- 

 out thought of personal advancement. 



But the work that is being accomplished, 

 the zoological investigations and reflections, 

 what is being done to give it publicity? By- 

 no means all that should be done. The ave- 

 nues of publication are incommensurate with 

 the amount of the investigations. For we see 

 nearly annually papers by Americans pub- 

 lished in the English Quarterly Journal of 

 Microscopical Science, in Spengel's Zoo- 

 logische Jalirhildier, in the Archiv fur Ent- 

 wichlungsmechanih, and in the two Anzeigers. 

 America builds and maintains laboratories 

 in sufficiency, but does not afford to publish 

 all the work done in them. One hesitates 

 to undertake an elaborate contribution, par- 

 ticularly one with expensive illustrations, for 

 when an American journal has at last been 

 persuaded to accept it, great delay is experi- 

 enced before its final appearance, and by the 

 time the proofs are received they seem like 

 an old and stale story. So we are obliged to 

 advise our students to condense their doctor's 



theses, to omit colored drawings, even to use 

 the pen in place of the pencil, in order to 

 avoid the expense of lithography. Now any 

 one at all conversant with the nature of zoo- 

 logical investigation understands how impor- 

 tant for the representation of the facts are 

 good and numerous figures; so important, 

 that the zoologist is involuntarily inclined to 

 estimate the truth of the facts contained in 

 a paper by the character of the drawings, 

 these being the concise evidence of what the 

 describer has seen, or of what he thinks he 

 has seen. The number of illustrations should 

 in no case be reduced; in most cases they 

 should be considerably increased, and as far 

 as the mere statement of facts is concerned 

 the illustrations should preponderate over the 

 text. More thought goes into the making of 

 a drawing than into the writing of a purely 

 descriptive text, and much more technique. 

 There would be much less confusion in de- 

 scriptions, consequently much less also in con- 

 clusions, if writers had not been obliged to 

 be sparing with their drawings, but every 

 American editor shrinks before an offering 

 of drawings. A certain German cytologist, 

 as it will be recalled, sent out with each 

 author's reprint of a paper upon cellular 

 ' Elementarorganismen ' a small ribbon of 

 paraffine sections of the objects that he de- 

 scribed, with the request that each recipient 

 mount these sections, study them, and so be 

 convinced of the writer's truth. That is a 

 method of argument, however, that is gener- 

 ally not feasible; duplicate material cannot 

 be furnished to all who are interested in a 

 subject, but good drawings and plenty of 

 them should be furnished, regardless of the 

 expense of reproduction. 



Plainly, what we need, and it is now the 

 first need of zoological research, are ample 

 means for publishing large monographs ac- 

 companied by numerous detailed plates, and 

 for publication of them as rapidly as the 

 plates can be reproduced. Our present jour- 

 nals are mainly the proceedings, transaction* 

 and memoirs of societies and universities, arid 

 the government publications; there are a con- 

 siderable number of these, and some of them 

 offer excellent facilities. Then there are • 



