PACIFIC EXPLORATION: W, M. DAVIS 
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will hardly do more than open up the more complicated subjects for 
investigation; for Pacific exploration should not only be continuous in 
the areal sense, and continued in the time sense, but comprehensive in 
every sense. It should reach from the depths of the sea to the heights 
of the air; from the cold waters of the North, narrowly limited in their 
connection with the Arctic ocean, across the torrid zone, to the cold 
waters of the South, broadly continuous with the Antarctic; from the 
little broken shores of continental America to the repeatedly interrupted 
shores of half-drowned Australasia ; it should include all the islands of the 
open ocean, and all forms of life from bacteria to man. 
The exploration of the Pacific is not a new theme. The voyages of 
Magellan, Cook, and others gave it early fame. The United States 
Exploring Expedition under Captain, later Commodore, Wilkes made a 
great advance 80 years ago. Forty years afterwards, the 'Challenger' 
did forty-years better; and yet we now learn from the refined studies 
of Norwegian hydrographers that the errors of certain instruments in 
the 'Challenger' outfit were greater than the variations of fact which 
those instruments were intended to measure. An interesting but 
sporadic and not long-lasting effort at Pacific exploration was made 
some 40 years ago by the Museum Godeffroy, founded at Hamburg by 
a firm of merchants: the Dutch Government has carried on scientific 
investigations of many kinds in its East Indian possessions, bordering 
the Pacific; much excellent work is now in process at the Bishop Museum, 
centrally located at Honolulu, where the great galleries of collections 
open to the public are backed by a large building devoted to research 
laboratories. The Hawaiian Islands seem, indeed, to be a center of 
inspiration on our subject, for a resident there, Prof. W. A. Bryan, 
elaborated a general scheme of Pacific exploration several years ago, 
and a recent visitor, Prof. R. A. Daly, has lately discussed the same 
problem; and in Hawaii as well as in the Philippines our governmental 
bureaus are prosecuting cartographic and other surveys. Specialists 
cross the Pacific from time to time on particular quests; the following 
papers will tell something of such work by Messrs. Briggs, Iddings,Pilsbry 
and Campbell. But the Pacific is vast. Discontinuous, local or linear, in- 
vidual work, economically conducted, cannot, however excellent, compass 
the immense extent and the infinite variety of that great water hemisphere. 
Thorough-going Pacific exploration will demand most munificent support. 
It has been urged by some of those with whom I have talked on 
the financial side of the scheme that the present troublous times are 
not propitious for its launching. True; and we are not launching it now; 
we are only laying its keel. But these troublous times cannot last in- 
