May 29, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



851 



than to productive scholarship,* and 

 this condition will hardly improve until 

 our universities can afford to appoint pro- 

 fessors who shall lecture exclusively to the 

 students of the graduate school. 



As a whole, our museums expend too 

 small a proportion of their resources upon 

 the development of their more serious 

 aims, such as the maintenance of learned 

 libraries, the publication of research and 

 encouragement of exploration. The great 

 majority of our museums contribute little 

 or nothing to the direct advancement of 

 knowledge, either in publication of original 

 work, or in the maintenance of lecture 

 courses given by acknowledged masters. 

 Moreover, the installation, arrangement 

 and labeling of their collections, and econ- 

 omy in expenditure leave much to be de- 

 sired. It is true that all of these deficien- 

 cies are in a measure traceable to the poor 

 support which our museums receive from 

 public funds, a fact which is apparent 

 when we consider that the British Museum 

 in 1897-98 received a public grant of about 

 $812,000 or more than the entire public 

 support given more recently to sixteen of 

 our best museums whose finances we have 

 been considering. 



In European countries the state of civil- 

 ization and development of culture of each 

 nation is certainly commensurable with the 

 development of its museums. Measured 

 by this standard, the United States com- 

 pares unfavorably with other civilized 

 countries. 



This investigation appears to show that 



the average well-managed museum in the 



United States devotes one half of its an- 



'nual income to salaries and wages, one 



* An excellent exposition of the inefficiency of 

 our universities as centers for the production of 

 research is given by Hugo Miinsterberg, ' Ameri- 

 can Traits from the Point of View of a German,' 

 Chapter III., ' Scholarship,' 1901, Houghton Mifflin 

 and Co. 



third to maintenance, installation and re- 

 pairs, and only about one sixth of its in- 

 come to expeditions, library, publications 

 of research and purchase of specimens. 

 Alfred Goldsboeough Mayer. 

 Museum of the Bbookltn 



Institute of Aets and Sciences. 



MONTANA AS A FIELD FOR AN ACADEMY 

 OF SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS.' 



It seems appropriate at this meeting, the 

 first in the history of the work of the Mon- 

 tana Academy of Sciences, Arts and Let- 

 ters, to discuss the opportunities for work 

 in the state, rather than to take the dis- 

 cussion of some problem or phase of work, 

 tempting as the latter may be. In this day 

 of many societies and organizations, when 

 each line of work has its own organization, 

 with a membership composed of those di- 

 rectly interested in the work fostered by 

 the organization, it would appear that new 

 organizations and societies should not be 

 brought into existence without good rea- 

 sons for so doing. Let us present some 

 of the reasons for the organization of this 

 academy. 



In organization lies strength. Accord- 

 ing to the laws of physics, if a thousand 

 separate forces act upon an object from 

 different directions the object will move 

 in the direction of the component of all 

 the forces and with the force exerted by it. 

 This component may be smaller than any 

 single force, when the forces act against 

 each other. Or it may be the sum of all 

 of them when they act together. Each 

 human being may be considered to repre- 

 sent a force. The sum total of progress 

 represents the combined action of all the 

 forces of the different units, human beings. 

 When the work is concerted and not an- 

 tagonistic, progress is rapid. "When every 



* Address delivered at the first meeting of the 

 Montana Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, 

 at Bozeman, Montana, December 29, 1902. 



