Record. Ixiii 



REPORTS OF OFFICERS. 



President's Address. 

 Fellow Members: 



The close of a year, in scientific as in business affairs, offers a 

 convenient opportunity for retrospection and presents an obligation 

 to look and plan forward. 



In the year just closed the Academy has been true to the broad 

 purposes for which it came into being, and your officers have done 

 what lay in their power to ease its passage consistently along these 

 lines. 



The sixteen meetings provided for by the By-Laws and the long- 

 standing practice of the Council have been held. At them have been 

 discussed topics of general as well as technical interest in selected 

 fields of scientific activity, presented in a manner at once attractive, 

 instructive and stimulating. Though a regrettably small fraction of 

 the total membership of the Academy is ever represented at any 

 one meeting, the attendance (averaging 53) has compared favorably 

 with that of preceding years and has shown a gratifying interest in 

 the program offered. 



The Curators have devoted much time and pains to the little 

 museum collection, in an effort to render it both interesting and educa- 

 tional, and after several of the meetings the audience has adjourned 

 in a body to the museum. 



The Librarian reports the customary increase in the library, 

 chiefly through the Academy's extensive exchange relations with the 

 learned bodies of the world. Early in the year, as the result of 

 consideration by the Council, a committee was appointed to consider 

 ways and means by which the library may be made more useful to 

 our members and to the community as a whole, and the suggestions 

 of this committee have been made the basis of administration. As in 

 the preceding year the Academy has co-operated with other organiza- 

 tions toward the preparation and issuance of a placing catalogue for 

 the scientific publications that are represented in the libraries of 

 Saint Louis, which it is hoped may be printed and thus made avail- 

 able in the near future. No single step seems so likely to promote 

 the ready use of scattered literature and incidentally to cause increased 

 reference to the Academy's library as this; and the policy of adminis- 

 tration adopted by the special library committee of last year, and 

 likely to be followed by the Council, is such as to give every possible 

 facility for such reference. 



In the year just closed, four scientific papers have been published 

 as numbers of the Academy's Transactions; and with a concluding 

 brochure, largely devoted to a record of proceedings for the years 

 1908 and 1909, now in preparation by the Secretary, the eighteentb 

 volume of Transactions will be completed. 



The material interests of the Academy have been exceptionally 

 promoted through the activity of its members in the past year. 



The active membership, which stands for and furnishes means 

 for carrying out the purposes for which the Academy exists, has 

 experienced a net increase of 109 (or 40 per cent), placing it today 



