publication of its transactions. A bill providing one thousand dollars a year is now pending before the legslature, this item having been included in the budget submitted to the legislature by the governor.

The following is the program of papers and addresses presented at the meeting

PAPERS OF GENERAL INTEREST

Dr. H. S. Pepoon, Lake View High School, Chi"A proposed state park. cago, Dr. Chas. F. Millspaugh, Field Museum, Chicago, "Botany in a public museum."

Dr. Frank C. Baker, University of Illinois, "The Museum of Natural History of the University of Illinois.''

J. L. Pricer, State Normal University, "Current tendencies in science education in the secondary schools."

William A. Dunkley, Geological Survey Division, "The use of central district coals in water-gas manufacture."

Gilbert H. Cady, Geological Survey Division, "The Illinois pyrite inventory."

Mr. F. E. Kempton, University of Illinois, "The Barberry Eradication Campaign."'

REPORTS ON THE FORESTRY SURVEY OF ILLINOIS

Professor S. A. Forbes, State Laboratory of Natural History, "General plans and purposes of the survey."

Professor W. S. Waterman, Northwestern University; Professor H. C. Cowles, University of Chicago; Miss Hazel Schmoll, University of Chicago, "The survey of Cook County."

Dr. H. S. Pepoon, Lake View High School, Chicago, "Jo Daviess County."

Dr. George D. Fuller, University of Chicago, "La Salle County."

Mr. O. D. Frank, Quincy High School, County."

"Adams

Dr. W. B. McDougal, University of Illinois, "Vermilion County."

Dr. Arthur G. Vestal, Eastern State Normal School, Charleston, "Cumberland County."

Symposium on Science and Reconstruction: The effects of the war on science and the opportunities and responsibilities of science under the new order of things.

Dr. Roger Adams, University of Illinois, "Chem

istry."

F. W. De Wolf, Chief of Division of Geological Survey, "Geology."

Professor John M. Coulter, University of Chicago, "Botany."

Professor Henry B. Ward, University of Illinois, "Zoology. ""

Dr. C. St. Clair Drake, Chief of Department of Public Health, "Medicine and public health.'' Dean Eugene Davenport, College of Agriculture, University of Illinois, "Agriculture and food production."

PAPERS ON BOTANY

Professor William Trelease, University of Illinois, "The scarlet oak of northern Illinois.''

Dr. Frank C. Baker, University of Illinois, "A mussel survey of the upper waters of the Vermilion River, with special reference to Salt Fork."

Professor T. L. Hankinson, Eastern State Normal School, Charleston, "Life history notes on Illinois fish."

Dr. H. J. Van Cleave, University of Illinois, "Preliminary survey of the Acanthocephala from fishes of the Illinois River."

Theodore H. Frison, University of Illinois, "Keys for the separation of the Bremidæ, or bumblebees of Illinois, and other notes."

Miss Marion J. Miller, Illinois College, "Ob servation of the Kentucky Cardinal."

Anne Wakely Jackson, Illinois College, "Bird songs.

A special illustrated address on Porto Rico was given by Dr. R. D. Salisbury, president of the academy, and one by Dr. Josephine Milligan, of Jacksonville, on the work of the Red Cross among the civilian population of France.

The officers elected for the ensuing year are the following: President-Dr. Henry B. Ward, of the University of Illinois; Vice-president-Dr. Geo. D. Fuller, of the University of Chicago; Secretary— J. L. Pricer, of the State Normal University, Normal; Treasurer-Dr. W. G. Waterman, of the Northwestern University.

FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1919

MENT AND LABORATORY ZOOL-
OGISTS IN THE SOLUTION OF
PROBLEMS OF GENERAL OR

NATIONAL IMPORTANCE1

LET us admit at once that government bureaus have great difficulty in getting men trained for their work. Let us go further, and admit that government bureaus have practically, except for certain fundamentals, to train their own men. Let us acknowledge also that the men in charge of the biological laboratories of the universities of the country are ready and anxious to train their men to be of the greatest possible service to the country, and that this readiness and this anxiety have been intensified by the great crisis through which we have been and are still passing.

How is this to be brought about? Plainly by a very perfect understanding and sympathy between the men in charge of the government bureaus and the men in charge of the university laboratories.

Although this suggestion has been made a number of times (I made it myself twenty years ago in an address before the American

1 A symposium before the American Society of Zoologists, held at Baltimore on December 26, 1918, Professor C. E. McClung presiding, included papers and discussions as follows: Representing the Bureau of Entomology, Dr. L. O. Howard. Discussion by J. G. Needham, representing the Bureau of Fisheries, Dr. Hugh M. Smith. Discussion of Dr. H. B. Ward. Representing the Bureau of Animal Industry, Dr. B. H. Ransom. Discussion by Dr. Herbert Osborn. Representing the Bureau of Biological Survey, Dr. E. W. Nelson. Discussion by Dr. R. K. Nabours. Relation of the Council of National Defense and the National Research Council to the Advancement of Research, Dr. John C. Merriam.

Society of Naturalists at Baltimore), this present discussion is, I hope, an emphatic and practical beginning of a definite movement which will bring results. It is primarily, perhaps, for the government men to point out the needs. They are now assured of the warm desire to cooperate on the part of the university men, and it is only by the closest cooperation that the best results can be secured. This involves more than mere suggestions from the government to the universities. It should mean a thorough knowledge on the part of the heads of the university laboratories of the intimate nature of the problems being studied and of the methods which are being adopted to solve these problems. Such a knowledge as this can best be gained by personal contact with the workers, and such contact should be of such a nature as to bring about not only suggestions to the teachers as to the best methods of training their men for future government work but also suggestions from the trained minds of the teachers as to other directions or means of attacking the problems which the government is trying to solve.

It would be an ideal arrangement if every highly trained laboratory man in the principal universities could be made a collaborator of some government scientific bureau and could be permitted and encouraged at government expense to visit for a longer or shorter time the different field laboratories of the government working in lines in which he himself is working, and thus bring about the personal knowledge and personal contact necessary for both lines of suggestion. Such an arrangement in a large way is probably impractical at present, but it might be started in a small way and in individual cases and will probably become eventually a fixed and valuable policy.

And now as to teaching and the training of workers, I don't know whether as a rule teachers have kept positive and relative values clearly in their own minds and in the minds of their students. Do they point out plainly the practical utilizations of zoology? Do they show their students the whole of the field

that is open to the trained investigator, and do they make their teaching as broadly attractive as possible? Have they made enough use of the great out-of-doors? Are they utilizing to the full the educational help of the motion picture?

In general, a man coming from a university to that branch of the government service with which I am connected should be fundamentally sound in botany, chemistry and physiology, and he should have an acquaintance with the principal foreign languages in which the results of important work are published.

There is need, as my colleagues who are to speak for other government bureaus will readily admit, for several different types of men in the service-men who have been trained for different kinds of work-and this should be borne in mind in considering the following suggestions.

We need more training in taxonomy, that basic branch of zoology upon which all other work rests.

We need an infinite amount of investigation in the different tropisms, in behavior, in all ecological lines, and, considering relative values, forms should be chosen for such studies from among those species which have an important economic rank or from among very closely related forms. In many cases enormous time has been comparatively wasted from the want of recognition of the importance of this point.

There should be careful training in the planning of experiments, in the interpretation of results, in the collation of suggestive results, and in the preparation of reports. The average man coming from a university is wofully lacking in the latter training, and gains it with slow progress after entering the government service.

As to cooperative work between the uni. versities and the government laboratories, in addition to the training of men by the former for service in the latter, there is much that can be done aside from this training and the possible official collaboration of certain teachers with traveling privileges hinted at in a former paragraph.

Constant suggestions might be made from the government laboratories to teachers concerning the lines of work that might be taken up by advanced students in preparation for theses which would fit in with general investigations being carried on by the government. It is extraordinary that such suggestions have not been asked for by teachers, or that they have not been made in considerable number by government men engaged in zoological work. I am informed by Dr. Alsberg that such a policy exists in regard to chemical problems and that the Bureau of Chemistry often assigns practical research problems to university men who have the laboratory facilities and the time to devote to research.

This naturally suggests the research fellowships which are beginning to be founded in certain universities by certain industrial organizations, and with this in mind the thought arises: Might not the government itself found fellowships at universities for the investigation of certain problems in applied science?

The laboratories of the larger universities are fitted out with costly and extensive apparatus which while existing doubtless in some of the government laboratories, are not duplicated in any number in field laboratories. Such apparatus as hydrographic machines, respirometers, calorimeters and others belonging to the university should, by collaboration, be used in practical government investigations. An admirable example of this kind of cooperation is the elaborate work on the wintering of bees which was done a few years ago at the University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with the Bureau of Entomology.

There is much that might be considered in this general way, and there are many specific things that occur to me, but which it will be undesirable to take the time to advance at present. Expecting that the approximate soundness of what has been said will be admitted, it seems to me that a practical step towards putting the whole matter on a cooperative basis will be to organize a permanent committee of government men in Washington, to whom definite suggestions can be sent by university and government workers and who

can discuss these suggestions, arrange them in practical form, and distribute them where they can do the most good. Such a committee would therefore be a clearing house for ideas, and its opinion as to the value of the ideas and the best and most practical way of carrying them out would carry weight. Perhaps there should be associated with this committee and as members of it certain strong men from nearby university zoological laboratories.

I welcome most heartily the movement which has brought about this symposium and which bids fair to have results of much importance.

L. O. HOWARD

THE problems of national importance with which we are called upon to deal are doubtless those having to do with the biological needs of our species. These fall into three principal categories: Needs of food, needs of shelter, needs of defense.

These are the primary needs of all animals. Given proper physical conditions-suitable air, moisture, temperature, pressure, etc.-these are the matters in respect to which every species must make its own provision. Of these, food is the most insistent and everrecurrent need. Shelter is for our species a little different from that of other species, since it means for us clothing and housing of a very artificial sort. Defense also has grown different, though the categories of our natural enemies are the same. They are: (1) Enemies to be escaped, because of their superior powers; (2) enemies to be fought, there being a fighting chance to overcome them; (3) enemies to be dispersed, because individually insignificant; (4) enemies to be endured (at least until we have means for their control) because they are so small.

Invention has enabled us to cope with all our enemies save a few of the smallest of them. We have improved our fighting weapons until all the great beasts have been put

completely within our power, and our worst remaining enemies are those of our OWIL species. The only needs of defense that Mother Nature imposed upon our species were needs of power to combat enemies of other species and to meet the rigors of our environment; all else is but a self-imposed burden.

I judge by the topics of this conference that it is the need of food that we are mainly called upon to consider. The conservation of food, through the control of insect destroyers of it, is a prime duty of Dr. Howard's bureau and of several others. So of food I shall speak. Years ago when writing a text-book of general biology, desiring to have said something when I got to the end of the first sentence, I wrote: "The primary demand of individual livelihood is for food;" and after a dozen or more years of subsequent reflection upon the subject, I think that that is about the most important biological statement I ever made.

Our species began by eating what Mother Nature provides ready made, as the animals. eat. Such plant products as fruits, nuts, roots; such animal products as eggs and oysters, were at once available for consumption. But unlike the other species, we have vastly increased the range of our diet, first by the use of fire in cooking, and then by the care and cultivation of the more valuable food-producing species in agriculture. Thus the entire range of the world's organic food stuffs is becoming available for the use of our species, in a small part unmodified as in the beginning, in a larger part after milling and culinary treatment, and in by far the largest part, after several turnovers by biological agents. In this last direction we have made only a beginning. I regard it as the field most promising in results for future research.

Our food is fundamentally the same as that of animals, and many animals are competitors with us for the same supplies. Some of these animals, like rats and mice and cockroaches, having dietaries like our own and appreciating our shelter as well as our food stores, have gone all over the world with us and have become our permanent associates. Many others

have settled in our fields where, by raising their food plants in mostly pure cultures, we have greatly improved the means of sustenance for them.

The pioneer when his fields became infested with pests could escape their competition for a time by opening new fields in another locality; but that was when land was plenty and men were few. Now, the land is filled. The people are here and must be fed. This is going to require that all the fields yield their full measure of increase every year, and that all that is raised be saved for human use. This then is one great national problem; to raise more food and to save what we raise from the ravage of competing species.

In the task of finding out the best means of accomplishing these needs, government and university biologists are colaborers. Their highest function, that of research, they have in common. They have, also, functions apart, that of the university being to train men for this work, and that of the government bureaus, to administer the work throughout the land. We are met here to consider the problem together, and to ask whether there are ways of making better progress through cooperation and mutual aid.

Dr. Howard's suggestions appear to be along two lines: Better training of men for the work; better facilities for exchange of experiences.

If the first seems to reflect on the training done in the universities, nevertheless it is a good suggestion and one that is always in order, and when it comes from so good a friend and so competent a critic of our work, accompanied by specific suggestions for improvement, it is more than welcome and we shall try to meet it. When he suggests in substance that we put the most important thing foremost, I am not sure that we will be able to agree with him or even with one another as to what is most important. It is important to give the student a good foundation in the fundamental sciences, for only on this may a superstructure of technical knowledge safely be reared. It is also necessary in this day of specialization to give as much