botanical course as a co-worker with the professor. It has often happened that enthusiastic persons have said to me, "How delightful it must be to have a class of students aiding you in your researches!" Alas! why could they not see that they were hindrances, not aids?
Furthermore, for some most unaccountable reason, the public have the impression that research pays for itself, and therefore does not require endowment. Probably a good many of my hearers have heard the remark, "I suppose you must make considerable out of your scientific papers." Unfortunately, with the exception of text-books of a lower grade, one is only too glad not to be money out of pocket. I fear that you can all bear witness that, with rare exceptions, your published papers have never paid for themselves. It is only after the results of research have reached a homœopathic dilution in some text-book or popular article that they begin to pay. Of such dilutions we already have an abundance, and the more important point is to get something new which will bear dilution. Unfortunately, the public do not clearly see the difference between the original work and the dilution. The former does not pay, and needs encouragement; the latter is a commercial article having a recognized money-value.
A part of the confusion with regard to the paying-value of research in natural history is probably due to the fact that the public see that certain discoveries in physics and chemistry are pecuniarily profitable. But in natural history there are no truths which can be patented. Biological discoveries become the property of the world if the discoverer is fortunate enough to have his work published.
A great gain will have been made if the public can be persuaded that professors in colleges ought to be allowed time for, and be expected to do, original work; and we should assure them that such work is of real value to the world. If the professors are to have time, it can only be by giving them a number of assistants who will relieve them of all the details of laboratory instruction, and possibly the elementary lectures. More advanced work could probably be secured by having one professor with a number of assistants than by two professors without any assistants, provided they both have to give laboratory instruction, as is probable. In a paper which I read to the society at its last meeting, I stated incidentally that one assistant was not enough for a class of thirty or forty men. I did not dwell on the subject at the time, as it was only indirectly related to the question then discussed; but since then a number of persons have expressed their regrets that I had not put the case more strongly, for they regarded an increase in the number of assistants as essential to good instruction and work. It is desirable that there should be an assistant for every twelve students in a laboratory, and it is necessary that there should be one for every twenty men if the work is to be well done. If there are forty students and one assistant, then the professor himself must act as an assistant to twenty of the men, and that means cutting
