In a discussion of the question "How Education fails," Dr. J. T. Searcy, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, speaks of the tendency of too much education as being to make the pupil too machine-cut. "The successful, the progressive, the aggressive men, families, and races are not the manufactured ones, but the self-made ones." In the conditions and complexities of human society, the accumulating data of knowledge change so rapidly that educators can not anticipate the future in the elements and curricula of prescribed education. The advancing man, who is able to keep up in his day and generation, shows his excellence in his ability to readjust to his changing environment. The schools can not give this faculty, but rather have a tendency to weaken it; yet on it, more than anything else, rests the success of the man and the race. "Too much ought not to be demanded of the schools, nor ought they to assume too much to themselves." THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. BY HON. CHARLES D. WALCOTT, DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. A national museum should be the center of scientific activity in the country in which it is located. In England the British Museum is the Mecca of scientific men. In Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna, Berlin, and other capitals of Europe the national museum stands in similar relations to the scientific work of its own country. Such a relation our National Museum should hold to scientific men and affairs in America. It should receive and take care of all material that has been or may be valuable for investigation or for the illustration of the ethnology, natural history, geology, products, and resources of our own country, or for comparison with the material of other countries. It should furnish material for all kinds of scientific investigations which deal with specimens or types, and give aid to such researches and publish their results. It should present by illustration such of the results of the scientific investigations of its corps of officers as are susceptible of such representation. It should co-operate with all the higher educational institutions of learning in the country, and assist in the promotion and diffusion of knowledge in all lines of investigation carried on by it. It should provide library facilities, and aid all post-graduate students who may wish to take advantage of the provisions made by the Government for scientific research.