in addition to that undertaken on the Tortugas. The Department of Experimental Evolution has, among other work, collaborated with the Eugenics Record Office in the study of human heredity, constructed a vivarium for cave life and used Goose Island to study the changes a domesticated species undergoes in becoming feral.
Endowed institutions for research are of vast importance for the progress of science. Under existing social conditions investigation can not be undertaken as an independent profession. The sales of the publications of the Carnegie Institution are less than one per cent, of the cost of the work which they represent. It is necessary that society should in some way pay for the research work which is of benefit to society as a whole, but can not be sold to an individual. In Germany investigation has in the main been carried forward in connection with university chairs, and during the nineteenth century remarkable results were obtained with a small expenditure. In England much of the most important scientific work has been produced by men having inherited wealth. In this country our universities have not yet equalled those of Germany in their productiveness, and we have but few amateurs.
The United States has, however, taken the lead in the amount of scientific work done under the government, and the two foundations for research endowed by Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller have larger resources than those of any other nation. After the efflorescence of the medieval universities there was a period in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries during which the academies of sciences and the newly-established observatories, museums and botanical gardens became the most important centers of research. Perhaps the institutions endowed for research will in the twentieth century be the chief centers of scientific investigation. We may, however, hope that the universities, the research institutions, the national, state and municipal governments and industrial enterprises will unite to advance science and its applications. The United States has the largest natural resources of any nation, and in so far as these are used, the proceeds should in large measure be expended on scientific work, which will provide an economic equivalent for the fertility of the soil, the forests, the mining products and other natural resources which we are consuming.
LORD LISTER
In recording the death of Francis Galton somewhat less than a year ago, it was noted here that of the great men of science who gave distinction to the Victorian era only three remained—Hooker, Wallace and Lister. Hooker has since died at the age of ninety-four years and on February the eleventh Lister died at the age of eighty-four years. An English journal recently compiled a list of the ten greatest men of the world, and Lister would perhaps have been the name on which there would have been the most general agreement. Like Galton and Hooker, Lister had distinguished scientific ancestry, his father having been a fellow of the Royal Society, who, among many other services, gave us the existing compound microscope.
Joseph Lister was born at Upton in Essex on April 5, 1827. He received the degree of bachelor of medicine in 1847 and that of doctor of medicine in 1852 from the University of London. While house surgeon at University ColHospital he made researches on gangrene and pyemia. In 1856 he became assistant surgeon in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, in 1860 professor of surgery at Glasgow University, in 1869 professor at Edinburgh University and in 1877 at King's College, London. He was created a baronet in 1883 and was raised to the peerage in 1893, with the title of Baron Lister of Lyme Regis. In Edinburgh he married the daughter of Professor Syme, the eminent
