INSTRUMENTS AND METHODS OF RESEARCH. 
121 
the rather frequent waste of money incurred. Why is it, for 
example, that when an explorer gives an account of his travels 
in an unexplored region for the commercial press he finds 
it possible to say what he wishes in an attractive and handy 
octavo form, but when he is working for an endowed insti- 
tution lie feels compelled to present his matter in an expen- 
sive, ponderous, quarto form, inconvenient to handle? 
It should be noted that it is as important to make research 
work known as to do it. To get our friends to read the 
contributions we may make to science requires nowadays no 
little skill and diplomacy and an attractiveness of literary 
style on the part of the author not so essential in the days 
of less frequent printed works. The original purposes of 
important and costly expeditions are sometimes well nigh 
defeated or superseded, because of the delay in publication, 
ensuing from the elaborateness of the plan adopted for the 
reduction of the field results and the form of publication 
decided upon. 
Reduction in the 'pretentiousness , size , and cost of scientific 
publications appears to me to be one of the greatest needs of 
research today. 
Methods of Research by Institutions. 
Some time could profitably be spent on a consideration of 
the general agencies engaged in furthering research work 
and the methods employed for doing so. Being, however, 
connected with a “research institution,” I should consider 
myself incompetent to enter upon a free and unbiased dis- 
cussion of the methods of such organizations for the further- 
ing of research work. My remarks will be chiefly confined 
to a brief discussion of the methods to be used in certain 
investigations of a world-wide character. Craving your in- 
dulgence once more, I shall take as an example the general 
magnetic survey of the earth as representative of the kind of 
world-embracing research enterprises I have in mind. 
Alexander von Humboldt, whose mental grasp was extra- 
ordinary in more than one science, set forth the following 
