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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



be increased best in two ways; by per- 

 mitting a larger number of young men 

 to carry on work long enough to be 

 eligible for national selection, and by 

 offering certain prizes for those who 

 reach the highest efficiency. Our uni- 

 versities now provide a considerable 

 number of scholarships and fellowships; 

 they should be increased, but even more 

 than these we need offices, such as the 

 secretaryship of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, that will attract young men 

 to science as a profession and provide 

 adequate rewards and the best oppor- 

 tunities for those whose work is most 

 fruitful. It has already been pointed 

 out in these columns that while a 

 lawyer may become a judge, a clergy- 

 man a bishop, a business man a mil- 

 lionaire and the like, there are no simi- 

 lar rewards for a scientific man or a 

 university professor. At a compara- 

 tively early age he receives the maxi- 

 mum salary of from three to five thou- 

 sand dollars, and no further advance- 

 ment is possible — unless he leaves scien- 

 tific work to become an inventor or a 

 college president. 



The directorship of the Carnegie In- 

 stitution will be one prize, but its 

 duties will be largely administrative. 

 The trustees of the institution selected 

 by Mr. Carnegie are men of tried ad- 

 ministrative ability; but they are too 

 busy and too widely scattered over the 

 country to attend to the details of the 

 scientific work of the institution. We 

 should view with much satisfaction the 

 establishment of a board of scientific 

 directors who should at the same time 

 be research professors, spending part 

 of the year at Washington and part at 

 their present universities or institu- 

 tions, receiving ample salaries and hav- 

 ing the best facilities for work. The 

 honor of selection for this position and 

 a salary comparable to that which may 

 be earned in other professions would 

 add great attractiveness to science as a 

 profession and serve as a continual 

 stimulus to scientific research. 



There are, however, many ways by 



which the great resources of the Car- 

 negie Institution can be utilized for the 

 benefit of science, and the trustees are 

 certainly competent to select the best 

 methods. There is no doubt but that 

 the institution will greatly aid in giv- 

 ing the United States a leading place 

 among the nations that are contribu- 

 ting to the advancement of science, and 

 will tend to make Washington one of 

 the three or four chief scientific cen- 

 ters of the world. 



MEETINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SO- 

 CIETIES. 



The meeting in Chicago at the be- 

 ginning of the year of the American So- 

 ciety of Naturalists and of the national 

 societies devoted to the biological sci- 

 ences was of more than usual interest. 

 It marked the establishment of con- 

 vocation week. At the instance of the 

 American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science our leading universi- 

 ties have set aside for the meetings of 

 scientific and learned societies the week 

 on which the first day of January falls, 

 greatly facilitating those meetings of 

 scientific men, which are among the 

 most potent factors in the advancement 

 of science. The meeting at Chicago was 

 also noteworthy because it was the first 

 to be held west of the Atlantic sea- 

 board. It will be remembered that the 

 American Association met this year for 

 the first time west of the Mississippi, 

 and our two great scientific societies 

 and centers of affiliation have thus in 

 the same year become truly national in 

 character. The remarkable development 

 of science in the central states within 

 recent years is witnessed by the fact 

 that the meeting at Chicago was the 

 largest and probably the most impor- 

 tant ever held by the affiliated societies. 

 There were over 300 scientific men in 

 attendance, and over 250 scientific 

 papers were presented. It is of course 

 impossible to give here any adequate 

 account of this great mass of scientific 

 work. The annual discussion, in which 

 Professors Minot, Davenport, McGee, 



