68 proceedings: Washington academy of sciences 



KICK B. Power; Society of Engineers, Edwin F. Wendt; Electrical 

 Engineers, P. G. Agnew; Society of Foresters, Raphael Zon; Geological 

 Society, W. C. Mendenhall; Historical Society, Allen C. Clark; 

 Medical Society, Philip S. Roy; Philosophical Society, George K. 

 Burgess. 



The Entomological Society and the National Geographic Society had 

 nominated no Vice-Presidents. 



The following amendments to the By-Laws of the Academy, de- 

 signed to avoid the existing conflict of dates between the annual 

 meeting of the Academy and the regular meeting of the Chemical 

 Society, were then read and, in accordance with the By-Laws, referred 

 to the Board of Managers : 



(1) In Section 1, Article III, substitute "Tuesday" for "Thursday." 

 The section will then begin as follows: "The Annual Meeting shall be 

 held each year on the second Tuesday of January." 



(2) In Section 1 of Article V substitute "Tuesday" for "Thursday." 



The retiring President, Dr. Holmes, delivered an address entitled 

 Man's place in the Cosmos as shadoived forth by modern science, the newly 

 elected President, Dr. L. J. Briggs, presiding. 



"The address was designed to give a brief but comprehensive view 

 of the career of man not in the world simply, but to shadow forth 

 his place in the cosmos of which he was formerly thought to be the cen- 

 tral feature. The problems of the immediate past are in part readily 

 solved, while the remote past fades into the impenetrable shadows of the 

 infinite. The problems of the present appear large in the foreground, 

 so that he who runs may read; but the problems of the future find their 

 solutions shrouded in the mists of the unknown and the unknowable. 



"The story of the progress of research from the childish romancings of 

 the savage mind through quagmires of superstitious interpretations 

 to the astonishing revelations of modern science is a fascinating chapter 

 in human history.* The origin of the earth is found in the reassembling 

 and consolidation of ^e widely disseminated matter of a spiral nebula, 

 a process believed to be responsible for the evolution of the solar 

 system as a whole — the sun and its attendant bodies. These nebulae, 

 of which a thousand have been identified, are thought to be due to the 

 encounter of heaventy bodies with such force as to distribute their com- 

 ponent particles widely throughout space, the encounters being due to 

 the eccentricity of the orbits. 



"The earth thus gathered together by the forces of gravity from the 

 dust of ruined spheres became, after ages of ripening, the seat of life, — 

 an oasis in the vast desert of the cosmos. The story of the beginnings 

 and evolution of living things has been preserved in the fossil-bearing 

 strata of the earth's surface and its outlines are well made out. From 

 the earliest, exceedingly simple and minute forms -advance was made 

 throughout several stages of speciahzation to the culmination in man, 

 each stage requiring millions of years in its accomplislmient. But the 

 story is not ended. Mobility, uQceasing change is the rule of the uni- 

 verse. That which grows or develops reaches its meridian and passes 



