tection can hardly be worth while. On the other hand, if it is true, as represented by every one who should know, that there has been a great diminution in number of birds, then

3. We may hope that the protection of the birds will result in a great increase in their numbers. Before the working for guano on a large scale began and before the nesting grounds began to be plundered for eggs and fowls, the birds must have existed in a condition of abundance dependent upon their food supply, their enemies and their natural prolificness. New factors have entered in recent years which have caused the birds to decrease materially below this normal condition of abundance. If these unfavorable factors are removed by well-considered and well-executed protective measures, why may we not see an increase in number toward the former normal abundance?

I think it conservative to say that the proper protection of the birds means the saving to Peru of hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of guano each year.

We... may well plan for protective measures that are intended to work progressively to the advantage of the industry for the next twenty years or more. We want to see many more birds in 1915 than are present in 1908, and more birds in 1920 than in 1915; and this will not be accomplished by routing the birds from their nesting grounds as soon as they are fairly established.

The general plan of protection comprised the following essential elements.

1. The admission of but a single concessionist to an island or a group of islands in order to eliminate the vigorous competition which was resulting in utter disregard of the needs of the birds, requiring also that the concessionist, through a resident representative on each island, should be held responsible for the fullest protection of the birds.

2. The closing of islands for periods of

years.

tion between the exporting corporation (to which a considerable portion of the guano was mortgaged) and the national company might be obviated.

The problem before the government, the national agriculture, and the exporting company, is this: How can the guano industry be saved to the future? Certainly no legitimate interest can be furthered by a continuance of the present unsatisfactory system, with its sacrifice of the birds.

I think the solution of the problem will be furthered if we put the question in this way: What system of regulation will result in the greatest annual deposit of guano twenty years hence?

It was a comparatively easy matter to offer recommendations, but an extremely difficult one to give them effect, because of complications arising from the heavily mortgaged condition of the guano deposits, the inadequacy of the current deposits for the use of national agriculture, and the restive internal conditions which culminated, shortly after the recommendations were presented, in the most serious revolutionary movements known in many years. The matter of the preservation of the guano industry was not, however, lost track of altogether, and it is understood that several of the measures proposed were given effect at an early date. A later government took up the matter again in a serious way and enlisted the services of Professor S. 0. Forbes of England who made a careful study of the conditions and submitted a comprehensive report to the Peruvian government. As this report has not been published it can not, unfortunately, be cited in this connection. It is evident that the protective measures now in effect are based upon the essential principles outlined above. The extraction of guano for national agriculture was placed in the hands of a single organization, the Com

closed season of months.

4. Placing the extraction of guano for national agriculture in the hands of a single company, which would thus "be induced to plan for the future."

5. Adjustment with the Peruvian Corporation, Limited, whereby detrimental competi

responsible to and regulated by the government. Suitable adjustments were made with the Peruvian Corporation Ltd. The closed season was continued, and the closing of islands for periods of years became an established part of the plan of regulation. Guardians were put upon the several islands.

As to the results, we have convincing testimony from Dr. Robert Cushman Murphy, of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, who has recently visited Peru and given especial attention to the birds of the guano islands. Some of his observations are comprised in a series of papers of fascinating interest entitled "The Sea Coast and Islands of Peru" appearing in current numbers of the Brooklyn Museum Quarterly. I quote from the last number (October, 1920, p. 250).

The first undertaking of the Compañia Administradora del Guano under the able directorship of Senor Francisco Ballen, was to make each of the numerous guano islands a bird sanctuary, closed at all seasons of the year to unauthorized visitors. Competent guardians with duties scarcely less exacting than those of lighthouse keepers, were posted as permanent residents upon every group. Clandestine guano extraction, the stealing of birds' eggs for food or for the use of the albumin in clearing wine, and other disturbances which had formerly caused havoc in the colonies, ceased at once. The old method of extracting guano without regard to the presence or physiological condition of the birds has, of course, been abolished, the islands, under the new rule, being worked according to a system of rotation which leaves ample and congenial breeding grounds always available. Courting or nesting birds are now carefully shielded from disturbance. Moreover, after removal of the guano, an island is promptly vacated and is thereafter given over to the complete possession of the birds for a period of approximately thirty months, at the expiration of which the date for a renewal of digging operations is determined only after careful reconnais

sance.

The régime of the Compañia Administradora del Guano, with its well-balanced regard for both business and conservation, has resulted in a nearly uniform increase in the annual increment of guano, as well as a promising outlook for a continually augmenting supply while the birds are repopulating the breeding grounds to the limits imposed by space and the nutritive resources of the littoral ocean. Since 1910, the administration has issued an annual "Memoria" containing statistical data, from which the following table of production has been taken:

The slight fluctuations in the column are doubtless due to the fact that no island is worked two years in succession, which results in a somewhat disproportionately large yield for the seasons in which the product of the most important islands is included. In a letter dated August 24, 1920, Senor Ballen writes that the guano output for the current year will exceed 82,000 tons, of which 70,000 tons will be required by native agriculturists and 12,000 tons will be at the disposal of the Peruvian Corporation for export. It should be understood that the tabulated figures refer to newly deposited guano, for the so-called "fossil'' beds have been long since exhausted except upon Lobos de Tierra and Lobos de Afuera.

Most instructive deductions may be made from the table of guano production just quoted. In the first place, it is evident that in the early years of the period covered the annual production of guano was approximately as estimated in 1908, i.e., from 20 to 25,000 tons per annum. In the second place, it appears that, beginning about 1913, the annual production of guano (proportioned in large measure to the abundance of producing birds) has risen to more than 80,000 tons at the present time. The production now is approximately three times as much as it was ten years ago. In 1908 the annual deposits were far below the estimated requirements of national agriculture, disregarding the export requirement. In 1920 the production substantially exceeds a greatly increased requirement for national agriculture so that a moderate export may be carried on even without sacrifice of internal requirements. The government derives revenue of more than a million dollars a year from the extraction of guano, a reasonable profit accures to the Compañia Administradora, and presumably to the export

corporation, while Peruvian planters obtain the most valuable fertilizer at a price which our American farmers would consider astonishingly low.

Now, in the words of Captain Cuttle, "The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it."

In the first place, one of the essential principles upon which this scheme of protection is founded is that of closure of breeding grounds in rotation for periods of years. This principle must be distinguished from the common measures of protection through closed seasons or the establishment of permanent sanctuaries. While the latter is in many cases an ideal method of protecting animals, it is of course impracticable of application in the case of guano birds and many objects of chase or fishery.

Closed seasons of a few months produce good results in many cases, but such a principle of protection has the defect (often unappreciated) of being based upon an assumption that nothing essential to reproduction takes place except when the reproductive activities are externally evident. It seems sometimes to be assumed that destruction or disturbance of an animal before it spawns makes no difference. The closed season of months has, to be sure, its proper place, and is often the only feasible measure.

The second application is that the plan of temporary sanctuaries, as applied to guanoproducing birds, has evidently worked and produced the desired results in high degree. The annual production has been trebled in ten years. Why then can not the plan be more generally applied in the case of natural objects requiring protection? It seems to be based upon a proper appreciation of physiological, "social" and ecological conditions as affecting successful reproduction. This is the principle, by the way, which for eight years has been advocated for the preservation of the fresh-water mussel resources of our interior streams, but which is as yet being given effect in a small way in only two states.

A final application to be made in this connection is not the least in importance. The

enforcement of any broad and effective plan of protection of guano birds was confronted ten or twelve years ago with obstacles which one might fairly have considered insurmountable: foreign obligations with their customary difficulties of adjustment; national agricultural demands so exceeding the yearly production as to make temporary curtailment most aggravating to Peruvian agriculturists; restive political conditions such as usually demand the service of the present rather than of the future. How do such difficulties compare with those which confront the protection of fresh-water mussels or the development of the oyster industry in the Chesapeake Bay, for example? example? Surely, as Dr. Murphy has appropriately suggested, credit is due primarily to the patriotic and far-sighted citizens of Peru who accepted the preliminary sacrifices and did what was evidently needed to be done.

When we consider that the conservation measures cited were so promptly and fruitfully executed in one of our sister republics south of the equator it ought to "give us pause" or else it should stimulate us to stop pausing and proceed to take like care of some of our own natural resources.

BUREAU OF FISHERIES

R. E. COKER

NATIONAL TEMPERAMENT IN SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS

WE have too long adjusted our scientific thought to the temperature of a European atmosphere. It should not be necessary to guard the voice of our scientists against the unnatural accent of the parrot. What was true of literature when Emerson read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge his celebrated oration on "The American Scholar" is now true of scientific investigation in the United States. "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe." We have too much taken our problems from European investigators and have too little allowed nature to ask her own questions of us. These problems we have treated too much in the spirit of European (and

especially of German) investigation. Too little have we allowed rein to our own individuality in the choice of subject and the development of method.

Let it be granted that the people of Europe have attacked the problems and developed the methods best suited to their needs and their temperament. This seems to be true. The several important groups, following their own. native inclinations, have marvelously succeeded in organizing nature in useful ways and have made conquests of the forces of the environment never approached by any other peoples. They have acted upon the realization that the best truth which any mind or any nation can create or discover is that which comes to it in the course of spontaneous activity. When we so proceed that our thinking is a natural expression of our native bent our discoveries will become typical of ourselves and we shall render into the whole worth of mankind a good which we can not attain by following the lead of another people. "He is great who is what he is from nature and who never reminds us of others."

Let us not run after the ways of another people. Let us also not run from the ways of another people. Let us follow our own ideals; let us develop our own spirit in the search for truth; let us be just to our own temperament. Our civilization is based on our European origin. We can not escape that fact. There is no need to try to run away from the nature which we have inherited. But there is a fundamental necessity that our thought shall not try to follow in the way pointed out by European thinkers of to-day; just as it is important that Europe shall continue to think in her own way and not seek to be guided by us.

We are a combination of social units which have not existed together before and are not now to be found together elsewhere. In some measure and in some phases we have developed our own national intellectual spirit; the present progress in American poetry, for instance, is not inspired by European models but is a native product arising from the basic foundation inherited from our European an

cestry. But in scientific matters we still have a great tendency to attack problems set by European investigation rather than to follow our own more spontaneous activity and so find that truth which our temperament makes it possible for us to discover more easily than any other people.

Our attitude in this respect is strongly contrasted with that of the great nations of Europe. They have proceeded in ways of their own. Though science is cosmopolitan the scientific work of the greater groups in Europe is national in spirit. Notwithstanding the close interactions of the modern world and the systematic exchange of scientific knowledge, national traits find spontaneous expression in the researches of different countries.

British science is characterized by the spontaneity and individuality of the workers, with consequent large power in fundamental conceptions, so that a greater measure of dominant ideas in the science of to-day goes back to them perhaps than to those of any other people. They do not congregate in distinct schools and institutions. They are not localized in definite centers. No army of well-trained intellectual workers exists among them. No compact body of pupils there develops the work and ideas of any master. The self-reliant strength of natural genius dominates the scientific spirit. The British have produced a disproportionate number of new ideas and great departures. They have no university eager to nurse and develop new talent, so that the new thinker becomes devoted to nature. He lives close to the heart of things and nature rewards his independence of other thinkers.

German science is remarkable for the organization of the investigators and the resulting wealth of detail in developing the consequences of fundamental ideas once introduced and in preparing indexes and summaries of the current literature of discovery. The universities of Germany form the most characteristic institution of the German mind and afford the most perfect expression of its essential character, especially as regards sci

entific work. These universities form one of the greatest intellectual agencies of the modern world. Among them arose the now universal habit of looking upon private study and research as a necessary qualification of the teacher. They teach not only knowledge but also research. To them largely is due the fact that German investigators stand under the generalship of a few great leading minds. They, more than any other single force, should be credited with the fact that so many persons in Germany are devoted to the pure ideal of knowledge for its own sake.

It is true that this ideal had been somewhat dimmed, even before the Great War, by the incessant demands of utilitarian motives; but it is to be hoped that it will again come into the ascendency and once more renew faith in the importance of the more ideal values.

There is danger that the ideal of knowledge for its own sake may dull the sense of values and lead one to a practise of treating trivial things with the same care as the matters of great moment. Indeed it seems that the Germany of the past has suffered in this respect.

In no country has so much time and power been frittered away in following phantoms, and in systematizing empty notions, as in the Land of the Idea.

Emerson somewhere employs a beautiful fable of antiquity, pregnant with rich truth, that "the Gods in the beginning divided Man into men that he might be more helpful to himself, just as the hand was divided into fingers the better to answer its end." In our day Man has been broken into smaller pieces than ever before to make the men of the generation, a process which has been carried further in Germany perhaps than anywhere else. We have specialists instead of Man specializing. We have scientists instead of Man investigating nature. We go much further than that; we have the geologist, the biologist, the entomologist instead of Man intensely studying earth formations, living things, insects. Instead of having the mere specialist of a particular sort we should have Man investigating

nature, having special tools to be sure and confining attention to a particular range of subject matter not too vast for him, but preeminently Man. The individual, in order to possess himself and to orient his work in the general activity of mankind, "must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all other laborers." Man should not be so minutely divided and peddled out as to be spilled into drops that can not be gathered up again.

The more universal is the character of the national temperament the more difficult it is to single out its peculiar traits. Striking characteristics are more readily recognized than highly developed features of central importance. Whether from this fact or from some other it is not so easy to determine the characteristics of French thought as of British or German, when one confines his attention to the present generation of thinkers. But if one looks into the history of the past century he will have no occasion of doubt as to the way in which the scientific spirit has manifested itself in France. Its flower can be easily recognized to-day in the elegance and finish, sense of proportion and importance, careful emphasis of the greater matters, which are characteristic of the work of the French. Intimately connected with this and interacting with it to the advantage of both is the fact that France has done more than other countries to popularize science-a thing which must be recognized as affording a very valuable and powerful stimulus to the growth of the scientific spirit.

In the first decades of the last century the home of the scientific spirit was in France. Paris was the capital of the republic of exact truth. Interest in scientific discovery and creation was widespread among her people. The spirit of literature flourished alongside the spirit of exact researches and both found place in the same creative intellect. Out of this union of elements, too much separated in other countries, there grew up a tradition of literary excellence in scientific exposition which abides to the present and contributes in no small way to the comfort and delight which