September 18, 1896,] 



SCIENCE. 



375 



serious use is limited to a very restricted 

 class. How to increase this use to the 

 maximum may well demand our best 

 thought, 



N"o doubt, just as many colleges now 

 offer scholarships, making their advantages 

 available to men who otherwise could not 

 enjoy them, and some of our universities 

 offer fellowships, opening their own post- 

 graduate courses or those of foreign univer- 

 sities to deserving students, the evolution 

 of research institutions will witness some 

 such provision for enabling students who 

 have partially completed pieces of research 

 work to visit and utilize these centers with- 

 out encroaching too far on the limited sav- 

 ings from the small salaries which, as a 

 rule, are drawn by the botanists of the 

 country. After all, however, the great op- 

 portunity of attainment, for such institu- 

 tions, whether or not connected with col- 

 leges or universities, lies in the performance 

 of research work by their own employees; 

 and while, except in the few instances al- 

 ready referred to, and notably in the Na- 

 tional Department of Agriculture, to-day 

 there is some hesitancy in recognizing the 

 employment of a staff of investigators as a 

 legitimate part of the maintenance expense 

 of an establishment which does not use a 

 large part of their time in instruction or 

 necessary curator's routine, it is quite cer- 

 tain that within a very few years opinion 

 will have so changed that a considerable 

 number of salaried positions for research 

 work in pure or applied botany will exist; 

 and as these positions will compete with 

 the professorships in the best universities, 

 it seems probable that the salaries pertain- 

 ing to them will be approximately those 

 paid by the larger colleges. 



In addition to bringing together facilities 

 for research and rendering them easily ac- 

 cessible to competent investigators, and 

 maintaining their own corps of workers, 

 engaged in such study, institutions of re- 



search have no small field of usefulness 

 opened up as publishers of the results of 

 the work they have promoted. I shall 

 have occasion later to speak of the means 

 of publication from the standpoint of the 

 student who is seeking to bring out his 

 work in the best form ; but it also 

 demands consideration from the point 

 of view of the institution. Much dif- 

 ficulty is experienced in looking up the 

 literature of a subject because of the large 

 number of journals, etc., in which refer- 

 ences must be sought, and it is probable 

 that at some time or other most workers 

 have impatiently wished that publication 

 could be confined to one or a few channels. 

 Simple as this would render the bibli- 

 ography of botany, it is obviously impos- 

 sible ; and the amount of work deserving or 

 demanding publication is so great and so 

 rapidly increasing as to leave no doubt that 

 means of effecting the latter must be con- 

 siderably augmented. To publish the re- 

 sults of good work well is no less commend- 

 able or helpful than to facilitate or perform 

 such work. ISTor is it less appropriate to 

 an institution such as I have in mind. The 

 object of publication being the adequate 

 preservation and diffusion of a record of the 

 results of research, however, it is easily 

 seen that harm may be done by injudicious 

 or ill-considered publication. While a 

 volume of homogeneous contents may be 

 so published almost anywhere as to accom- 

 plish its purpose, a serial publication ought 

 to be started only when there is reasonable 

 probability that it will persist for a consid- 

 erable length of time. Granting this prob- 

 ability, a research institution with adequate 

 funds forms one of the most satisfactory 

 and effective agencies of publication, since 

 it can place its proceedings or reports in all 

 of the principal libraries of the world, a 

 thing which the journals do not always ac- 

 complish ; and not only can it thus amplify 

 its field legitimately, but almost of neces- 



