A few months ago one of the curators of the Smithsonian Institution took occasion, in private conversation, to complain of the fact that our universities and colleges did not turn out men capable of taking hold of a collection of zoological specimens and working it up systematically. He said: We can find plenty of students from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, etc., who can do good work if they are put to investigating the embryology of a single species, or writing a thesis on the histology of certain organs. But we have great difficulty in finding men who are able to take hold of a collection brought in by some dredging expedition, for instance, and identifying and describing the specimens in a satisfactory manner
