578 



SCIENCE. 



[JS. S. Vol. XVII. No. 432. 



committed itself to what for want of a bet- 

 ter term I shall call the 'lunch-counter' 

 policy of perpetually offering new courses 

 and subjects — not so much, perhaps, for 

 the purpose of keeping pace with the mul- 

 tiplying and advancing sciences, as for the 

 purpose of keeping itself constantly before 

 the eyes of the public. One heavily en- 

 dowed institution is known to have utilized 

 its fellows as attendants in the depart- 

 mental libraries, because the expensive 

 ■* lunch-counter' policy would not enable 

 it to pay the salary of departmental li- 

 brarians. And it is not impossible that 

 somewhere between Maine and California 

 there may be universities so heavily en- 

 dowed that they can require their fellows 

 to perform regular janitorial services. 



With the insignificant remnant of his 

 fellowship and such scattered remains of 

 liis faculties as can be scraped together 

 from the more or less perfunctory study 

 •of one or two 'minor' subjects, and from 

 the neglect of his duties as a sort of poor 

 relation in the university household, the 

 fellow is supposed to be 'doing original 

 work,' 'making researches,' 'investigating.' 

 If he was a child with strong investigating 

 impulses, like all normal children, and has 

 retained a shred of these ancient and pithe- 

 coid, but nevertheless divine, impulses after 

 running the gauntlet of some of our sec- 

 ondary schools and colleges, he is expected, 

 under the limitations afore-mentioned, and 

 while eating any thing and living in any 

 way, to produce some epoch-making work 

 ad majorem universitatis gloriam. 



As a matter of fact, the poor fellow— 

 and he is, indeed, a poor fellow— is given 

 some problem which to the body of his 

 chosen science bears about the same pro- 

 portion as a single nucleus to the whole 

 human body. He proceeds to collate all 

 that Schultze, Mueller, Schmitt & Co. have 

 written on the subject, glues it together 

 with a little of the secretion from his own 



larval sericteries, and prepares his jaded 

 nerve-centers for the final examination 

 farce. His professors assemble, and, be- 

 reft of all sense of humor, instead of smil- 

 ing at one another like a troop of Roman 

 augurs, sit through the farce with faces 

 as long and as blank as the windows 

 of the favorite-imported-imitation-Gothic- 

 university-architecture — that gingerbread 

 relict of church-ridden medisevalism — till 

 the candidate wriggles through with a rite 

 or a cum laude, or perchance, if he has 

 been sufficiently intrepid to mount to 

 sources unknown to his professors, with a 

 summa cum laude. And the newly-fiedged 

 doctor goes forth into the country to start 

 a fresh center of mental infection of the 

 same old type. 



It would, indeed, be difficult to devise a 

 more effectual method of hampering re- 

 search than by the petty restrictions placed 

 on fellows in most of our universities. 

 Such, among others, are the pusillanimous 

 objections to permitting fellows to work 

 in absentia or where they can best obtain 

 their materials, consult the best libraries 

 and museums, work in the necessary marine 

 laboratories, botanical gardens, etc. The 

 results of these restrictions, so far as 

 American biology is concerned, are only too 

 apparent in the monotonous output, the 

 few lines of investigation that are being 

 intensively cultivated, and in the not infre- 

 quent cases of intellectual parasitism and 

 commensalism, not only on the part of the 

 students— that is to be expected — but be- 

 tween professors of different institutions. 

 In the meantime the whole of tropical 

 America, as well as the tropics of the Old 

 World, abounding in materials of the great- 

 est interest, not only to the botanist and the 

 zoologist, but to the paleontologist, geolo- 

 gist, mineralogist, archeologist, anthropolo- 

 gist and pathologist, are being rapidly 

 opened up to us. For any adequate util- 

 ization of such magnificent opportunities. 



