Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
I fully agree with him, but would make the National Museum the center
of activity, rather than the Smithsonian Institution. It would then be
under the control of the Board of Regents, through the secretary or
the assistant secretary, who could have direct charge. It seems to me
that the function of the Smithsonian Institution is to aid at the
beginning of such a movement, and then place the administration in
charge of one of its bureaus or transfer it to some other suitable
organization.
With the National Museum as a center or base, the student in
Washington may avail himself of the Library of Congress and of the
facilities offered for study and investigation by the various
scientific bureaus of the Government, such as the Fish Commission, the
Zoölogical Park, the Geological and Coast and Geodetic Surveys, the
Naval Observatory, and the Weather, Botanical, Biological, and
Entomological Bureaus of the Department of Agriculture, and systematic
courses of lectures will place before him the most advanced ideas and
conclusions of the largest body of scientific investigators in the
world.
A single well-trained man, with a few assistants, could render
invaluable aid to hundreds of post-graduate and special students,
whose only need is direction as to the best means of pursuing studies
and investigations. Such an organization could be located in the
administrative building that it has been proposed to erect as a
nucleus of the National University. From this beginning a national
university of the broadest type could be developed with as much
rapidity as the educational interests of the country might demand.
The National Museum can not at present give facilities to more than a
score of students, but with the erection of a modern museum building,
well equipped with laboratory space and a suitable staff to conduct
the necessary work of installation and investigation, the scientific
side of the National University would be established. It should be
remembered that many of the officers of the scientific bureaus of the
Government are directly connected with the museum staff as honorary
curators and custodians, and that a number of them have laboratories
within the museum building.
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