This constitutes, as I am informed, one of the largest transfers in the history of American libraries. It was made with a view solely to the increase of the working value of the library of the bureau, and that end has clearly been attained.

Museums.-The most important of these are the National Museum and National Gallery of Arts, under the control of the Smithsonian Institution. The sciences most fully illustrated in the National Museum are zoology, botany, and geology, including palæontology, and the ethnology and archæology of North America.

The technical subjects best represented are firearms, land and water transportation, methods of lighting, time-taking devices, measuring apparatus, electrical appliances, ceramics, and glass making and decoration. The collections are much used for serious study, and would be used still more if it were not for the limitations of space. Apart from the general enjoyment of the exhibits by the public, it seems probable that at least two hundred investigators have availed themselves of the special facilities for study during the fiscal year 1908. In the laboratories and working rooms of the museum, however, there is practically no opportunity for outside students, owing to the limitations of space.

Like the Congressional Library, the National Museum will sometimes send material away from Washington to be studied, in cases where it is impossible for the investigator to come to the museum. The regulations regarding investigators are as simple as possible. Little is required other than an assurance of good character and scientific ability. As a rule, a brief indorsement from a scientific man of reputation or from the head of an institution with which. the applicant is connected is all that is needed.

The Smithsonian Institution also has valuable material for the student in connection with its Bureau of Ethnology and its Zoological Park. The National Botanic Garden is independent of the Smithsonian Institution, but affords opportunities for study on closely allied lines.

Hardly second in importance and reputation to the collections of the Smithsonian Institution are those of the Army Medical Museum. Among the departmental collections special mention should also be made of the museum in the Agricultural Department, and of the models and drawings of the Patent Office.

ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE TRAINING OF CLASSES.

The most important training schools conducted by the Government at Washington are the medical schools of the United States Army and Navy. These are organizations for the benefit of graduates of medical schools who need preparation for the special problems

which will meet them in the service of the United States Government. The course is in every case a brief one; beyond the fact that it is well conducted, the detailed work requires little comment. Of a similar character, but perhaps even more distinctive, have been the classes organized by the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service for the students who desire to prepare themselves for the special problems confronting that branch of the Government.

The facilities of the Government Hospital for the Insane are well utilized in connection with the instruction of medical students in George Washington University, and an effort has been made to render the collections of the Botanic Garden similarly useful to classes of college students.

Perhaps the most interesting class instruction in connection with any of the departments at Washington is that furnished by the Bureau of Standards. The assistants in this bureau receive from their chiefs regular instruction in the theoretical problems of physics connected with their work. The reports regarding the results of such instruction are extremely favorable. These classes and conferences enable the force of the department to do better practical work than it could without such training. Their results not only enable the assistants to qualify themselves for promotion within the department faster than they could otherwise, but they increase the demand for their services outside of the department in the manufacturing and mechanical industries of the country when they have reached the limit of the possibilities of their promotion at Washington.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH.

The students who desire to avail themselves of these opportunities fall into two pretty distinct groups.

1. Investigators of mature age and independent resources, who have definite problems to solve for which the departments in Washington furnish more suitable or more accessible material than is to be found elsewhere.

2. Students not yet wholly established in their profession, who desire not only material for study, but also a certain amount of guidance and help from their superiors, and who wish to use their studies as a means of winning position for themselves as well as knowledge for the world.

As things stand at present the first of these classes can be well accommodated at Washington. The number of investigators who can take care of themselves and who have definite ends in view is small. It is such a pleasure to the head of a department to see a scientific man who can direct his own work and who has a definite end in view that he is always willing to make room for him in a laboratory, no matter how crowded it is.

With representatives of the second class the case is different. They can not as a rule take care of themselves. They want suggestions concerning the ends to be pursued, no less than concerning the means to be employed. They are men who need education instead of simply needing opportunity. It is this class which most people have in mind-a class of students who desire to obtain their technical and their advanced scientific training in immediate connection with some of the departments of government work. With regard to the development of these facilities it must be confessed that the results are disappointing.

In the year 1901 an unofficial inquiry was instituted by Mr. Walcott, at that time Director of the Geological Survey, concerning the possible number of students on different subjects who could be accommodated in the various departments and bureaus at Washington. The results were as follows:

A similar inquiry to-day would scarcely meet so favorable a response. It is doubtful whether the different officials would be willing to accommodate more than one-third of the number contemplated as possible in 1901. Some of the offices which had hoped to accommodate students are prevented by lack of room. Others have already tried student assistance and found it unsatisfactory. Several of the offices which contributed the largest numbers to the above table now say explicitly that they have no accommodations. This is true of the Weather Bureau, of the Hydrographic Office, of the Geological Sur

vey, of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and of the Forest Service. The only offices which express any appreciable readiness to provide for student assistants are as follows:

These numbers are vague; but after making due allowance for all uncertainties, it would seem difficult to make them add up to 100. But whether we estimate the number of places now open to students a little higher or a little lower, it is perfectly clear that we have not moved in the direction of making Washington a place for student training and student research. A few years ago there were eight or ten bureaus which had a system of student assistance. Now there are but one or two. The educational work initiated a few years ago with so much hope for the future is on the whole tending to diminish. rather than to increase. Department officials who at the outset were sanguine concerning the possibilities in this direction to-day show themselves exceedingly skeptical.

OBSTACLES TO STUDENT RESEARCH.

What are the obstacles or difficulties which have prevented the development of so attractive a plan?

They may be grouped under three heads: The space difficulty, the administrative difficulty, and the educational difficulty.

1. The space difficulty. A great many of the departments are so crowded that they have no room for students. The presence of an untrained man would crowd the trained man out of the necessary desk room. This is notably true of the Geological Survey. In its field parties the United States Geological Survey has been an educa

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tional institution of vast importance. A large number of the younger geologists of the present day have derived their inspiration and their scientific development from this source. But what Van Hise could do in the field Walcott could not do at Washington, for the mere physical reason that there was no place to do it in. The offices of the bureau were and are still inadequate for the work expected of it. This difficulty is likely to continue. There is a tendency on the part of every large government undertaking to outgrow its quarters. Give it more room, and it will undertake more objects. This sort of vitality is the very best thing to have in a government bureau, but it makes it harder for the officials in charge to find room for students.

2. The administrative difficulty. Even in those bureaus whose work has not passed beyond the capacity of the rooms accorded to them, as is the case with many of the newer bureaus in the Department of Agriculture, there is another allied difficulty which meets us, lack of funds. The problem for every chief is to get his work done in the most efficient and economical manner. Even where Congress is liberal in its appropriations and for many of these bureaus the treatment has been as liberal as could be expected-the bureau chief has to study ways and means pretty carefully. He wants to do all the administrative work he can with the money placed at his disposal.

The presence of students interferes with the chance of obtaining this maximum of efficiency. The labor of student assistants is as a rule neither very efficient nor very easy to handle. An untrained man employed at $500 rarely does half as much work for his chief as the trained man at $1,000. The work of supervising two $500 men takes a great deal more of the time and strength of the higher officials than the work of supervising a single $1,000 man. Of course there may be indirect results which justify this expenditure of money and time. If a bureau finds that there are not enough men who are technically trained for the work which it has undertaken, it must train them itself. The expenditure of money and time involved in their training is a necessary means to an end. But where the educational object is an independent one-where it is not undertaken as a necessary preliminary to getting the work done, but as a means of outside public service in connection with the work that is already progressing-then it represents a costly diversion of time, strength, and money.

Of course there are exceptions to this general rule. The Bureau of Standards is a marked instance in point. The development of the researches in this bureau must necessarily go hand in hand with the development of the men who make the researches. Hence the educational side of this bureau is much more fully developed and