population occupying some of the older States, a considerable 

 amount of duplication is permissible. Yet our higher institu- 

 tions of learning, or rather the numberless sickly children 

 carefully nursed under the name of Universities in every State 

 of the Union, present a spectacle of scientific impracticability 

 and a waste of resources foreign to the hard-headed and thrifty 

 American methods in other directions. Germany, with its old 

 population, boasts but a fraction of the number of our universi- 

 ties, where collections and laboratories in every department of 

 science only lead a languishing existence, and from want either 

 of co-operation or of centralization do not produce results in 

 the least commensurate with the expenditures. The good ef- 

 fects of genuine competition are felt as keenly in scientific 

 matters as in business circles, but the mere parallelling, for the 

 sake of local prejudices, of an older institution, if I may be 

 allowed to borrow this expression from another field, is as dis- 

 astrous as it is wasteful. No institution can abandon a well 

 considered and original policy, because a neighbor chooses to do 

 the same thing somewhat later. Fortunately, it matters little 

 in scientific matters where the progress is made, as long as the 

 thing is accomplished. Methods and aims have of late years 

 changed so rapidly, that the managers of older establishments 

 may be pardoned at feeling somewhat discouraged if their plans 

 have become antiquated before they are fully carried out. 



A school of Natural History such as was contemplated by the 

 founder of this Museum not only needs collections, libraries, 

 an ample fund for its publications, a large staff of teachers, 

 and the necessary buildings for storage and for its laboratories ; 

 but it also needs in the field and on the sea facilities for ever 

 renewing its contact with nature itself, without which the work 

 of its teachers would soon pass into that of the closet naturalist, 

 and their instruction lose its stimulus. It is in this direction that 

 we may yet hope to unite as far as practicable the forces in the 

 field and on the sea-shore. In connection with the Laboratory 

 of the United States Fish Commission, the Universities of the 

 country might found a seaside laboratory which would render 

 unnecessary, except for special work, the various establishments 

 already under way along our coast. Those States which from 

 a geological or biological point of view present an interesting 

 field of study could be visited in succession, in accordance with 



