The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-01

He spends his summers among the higher peaks of the Canadian Rockies, searching for the fossils which have en- abled him to set the time when lifaa first appeared on this globe farther back than his predecessors in science had thought possible. Not to fix the time when life appeared. Merely to lift one corner of the curtain of the ages a little higher, Member of and honored by the major societies devoted to pure science. When the Wollaston medal was forwarded to him by the British Geological Society the president of that organization said:
 Tribute From The British
 "His personal researches have ex- cited interest and admiration wherever geology is cultivated"
 Suppose we begin with the Smith sonian institution, itself starved and poverty-stricken by comparison with the newer institutions of research and yet superbly rich. One James Smith son, the illegitimate son of noble Eng lish family, left a fund to the United States government for the foundation of an institution flor the increase and diffusion of knowledge" His resent ment of the bar sinister was bitter. Ira dition tells that he assigned as . req son for this act his desire to make--
 The name of Smithson remembered when that of my fathers family shall have long been forgotten"
 Others have added to the original endowment fund from time to time. Yet today that fund amounts to only little more than a million dollars. Its total is not as much as the annual in- >N sa sxnzk ktsAn rsN "a @k ington. Its income is but $63, 900 a year, a sum pitifully inadequate to carry on the work of research and ex- pioration in which the scientific or- ganization owned by the nation should be foremost. Its income, according to an authorized statement:
 How Institution Is Hampered
 "Is no longer sufficient to take up big projects, attract young investiga. tors of promise, pay living compensa. tiAns, or publish valuable manuscripts offered. The extensive collections and laboratories under it's control cannot be fully utilized"
 Here seems to be a discrepancy. Under the Smithsonian institution in Washington is a group of magnificent buildings. The Smithsonian directs the National MuseGn., the National Art Gallery, the Freer Collection, a score, perhaps, of immensely important lab oratories and collections in which are assembled the foundation stones ot mod ern science. Most of the scientific ac- tiyities of the government today have been thrown off by the Smithsonian, as sparks from a whirling grtndstone. The airplane overhead owes It's ex- istence to Dr. Langley, head of the institution. Here was developed the forerunner of all oscillating electric mo tors, Here Nicholson developed the standard meter in wave lengths and Morley found the atomic weights or oxygen and hydrogen. A page might he filled with titles of Smithsonian re- searches, Yet the institution itself Is poyerty-stricken as a Blue Ridge noun taineer.
 Went To Carnegie For Aid
 The exclamation is that congress sup norts by appropFia tions the various ac- tiyities which have been grouped around the Smithsonian, but the parent of them all. the governing agency, the heart of the family, is permitted to de- pend on gifts made by private donors. 1t was when Dr. Walcott found him self confronted by heart-breaking need for funds to carry on the most in tensely important researches that he applied years ago to Andrew Carnegie for aid. Trained in the severe school of the Smithsonian, he did not ask for much.
 "Ten thousand dollars a year," he said, would enable us to make a be- ginning.
 Carnegie listened and was convinced. He gave not the ten thousand dollars a year asked. but ten million dollars as an endowment for a Carnegie institute, Later gifts increased this to twenty three million dollars from which the income its secretary, a position he later resigned in order to devote more time to his first love, the Smithsonian. But the researches of the need of which he had been so convinced had been, in- itiated. Science was being served. Only the Smithsonian remained poverty stricken. Handcuffed.
 Attracted Attention at 23
 Fifty years ago-in 1S73-CharleE Doolittle Walcott first attracted the attention of the scientific world, He was only twenty-three years old, and vet the leading scientific magazine of that day published an article about the young man and his geologic dis coveries. One might say he had al- ways been a geologist. As a boy he spent his summers on a farm near his birthplace at Utica, New York. and like othre small bows he trotted at the heels of a larger one, The cid CT boy had discovered a lime-carry ing spring, which "petrified" the for est leaves which fell into it. They gathered the leaves, boy-like, for sou venirs. One day the boy Walcett was lying the shade of tree by the roadside when an old man approached. He carried market basket, from which what seemed sticks protruded.
 "Why don't you come with me and hunt for fossilsf" asked the old man. The seeming sticks were the handles of geologists' hammers.
 Had Been Prolific Writer One might weave pretty fancy about that chance meetnig. One might say that chance meeting de- termined the course of the boys life. Rut it would net be true. The op- portunity came a little earlier than might have been hoped for, but al- ready the studious boy had learned little of the countryside fossils. Enough to have determined to know more. There was a brief and ad- yantaReous diversion into business, but geology was his life work, He was only seventeen when his knowl- edge was so far advanced that he. had determined to specialize on the Cam brian rocks. He had been at it ever since. The books he has written fill a shelf.
 Another man might find his activi- ties thwarted by the calls upon his l L;u.aA da hv tha administratiYa needs