Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/293

Rh  4. Give no fellowships, but, on the contrary, charge high tuition. 5 Live small sums to many individuals. 6. Money distributed in small amounts is wasted. Give at least $100.000 at a time. 7. Assist unknown and struggling men in small colleges. 8. Make no grants except to tried and proved investigators. 9. Grant only for specific purposes and on definite lines of work. 10. Give the investigator perfect freedom because he can not tell what he is going to dis. cover beforehand, and would not be willing to publish his intentions. 11. Pay salaries of $10,000 a year to the leaders of each science. 12. Expend no money on salaries, but supply only apparatus and books. 13. Publish a handsome series of quarto and folio memoirs. 14. Waste no money on big books and wide margins. 15. Grant degrees and award prizes. 16. Grant no degrees and offer no prizes.

This represents in somewhat exaggerated form the diversity in the views of scientific men; and when there are such differences of opinion, it is wise to move slowly in adopting an irreversible policy. There are possibilities that appeal to the imagination in an institution that can play the part of a special providence throughout the country, scattering money just where it will bring forth fruit a hundredfold and discovering the struggling genius to give him the work he is best fitted to do. But there are difficulties and even dangers in such an undertaking. Under its new president the Carnegie Institution will be in a far better position than hitherto to carry out a policy of this kind. But it is probable that the institution will ultimately become one of the constituents of a great national university.

American Association for the Advancement of Science held its first meeting in Philadelphia in 1848. After an interval of thirty-six years it met for the second time in Philadelphia in 1884, when the attendance was 1,261. This was the largest meeting in the history of the association, but the numbers were increased by 303 members of the British Association, which met that year in Canada. At the Boston meeting of 1880 there were 997 and at the Montreal meeting of 1882 there were 937 members in attendance