120 
BAUER. 
The scientific worker generally does not possess the means 
to purchase or to construct the instruments he requires for 
the prosecution of his work,, and a book bearing in any way 
on the line of work to be pursued is as much to be con- 
sidered part of his equipment as the purely mechanical tools. 
Indeed, I was told by the late von Bezold that Wilhelm 
Weber set his laboratory students to work by telling them, 
“Here are the instruments, and there are the ‘Annalen der 
Physik’; now go to work.” The man of science usually 
wants his tools close by and within ready reach. He cannot 
afford to go to a distant library and then possibly find the 
book out. Private possession permits him, furthermore, to 
make marginal notes and references to enable him quickly 
to put his finger on the very thing needed. 
Owing to these well-recognized needs, there has grown up 
a courteous and friendly interchange of publications among 
coworkers and sympathizers in the same field that to my 
mind deserves the highest encouragement. The time has 
unfortunately gone when scientific investigators can write 
such delightful and voluminous letters as passed between 
the research workers of half a century and more ago. The 
present system of interchange of publications has necessarily 
taken the place, to a very large extent, of the early letter- 
writing. It is a system of gradual development along the 
lines of least resistance that it would be disadvantageous to 
contend against until some more effective means of inter- 
communication among scientific men has been devised. 
But such free interchange of research publications can only 
be conducted to a limited extent and can embrace only cer- 
tain kinds of publications, viz., generally reprints or those of 
which the original cost for publication has already been 
borne in some manner, be it by a journal or by some research 
foundation. Larger publications, however, because of their 
expensiveness, must generally be restricted, for one reason or 
another, in their general circulation, with the inevitable 
result that the persons directly reached may be entirely out 
of proportion to the importance of the work undertaken. 
Scientific men and scientific bodies could well afford to 
pause and consider the tremendous cost of publication and 
