
gF The American Naturalist. [ December 
enced by personal considerations, rather than by absolute merit. 
One criterion may, however, be safely trusted as a guide in this 
difficult question. Let appointees always be selected on account 
of work actually done. In this way, and in this way only, can 
the actual merits of a candidate be ascertained. Moreover, let 
this work have been extended over several years, and not be 
measured by a graduating thesis or an essay or two. It is never 
safe to appoint men on the strength of what they are going to do. 
When rewards are conferred before services are rendered, the 
services are sometimes never performed. Especially should 
trustees be careful to distinguish between original investigators 
and the various kinds of middle men that are so useful in other 
capacities. Such are teachers, popular lecturers, and compilers 
of general or popular books; very valuable persons, but not the 
proper recipients of any part of moneys left for the endowment of 
original research. 
From the same point of view the administration of the 
affairs of our academies of science, which are media of original 
research, becomes important. The custom, very general in this 
country, of electing to membership any person who is willing to 
pay the entrance fee, must necessarily have bad practical results, 
in the directions above referred to as incidental to a board of 
non-scientific trustees. Special scientific knowledge is required 
for the administration of museums, publications, etc., and these 
have too often fallen into the hands of totally incompetent 
persons. It is to be hoped that with the increase in the endow- 
ments of our academies of science the necessity of elect- 
ing members for financial reasons will disappear, and that the 
membership will eventually be more appropriate to the objects 
for which such institutions are created. 
—WE learn that the committee of entertainment of the Wash- 
ington meeting of the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science had a surplus over expenses of about one thousand 
‘dollars. We have already referred (NATURALIST, 1891, p. 939) 
to some economical features of the management by this com- 
mittee, and we are now presented with another illustration of 





