Vol. 32, pp. 271-280 December 31, 1919 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EARLY DAYS OF THE 

 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY.^ 



BY L. O. HOWARD. 



In 1880 the workers of forty years before seemed to us almost 

 prehistoric. I wonder if the workers of 1880 seem equally al- 

 most prehistoric to the young men of to-day. If reverence for 

 elders has not entirely gone from the modern world (I know it 

 has very largely) I can imagine that you look upon the founders 

 of the Biological Society of Washington with at least a touch of 

 that mental attribute which we used to call reverence or think of 

 them perhaps as rather interesting old fossils. But as I look 

 back the men who founded this society were very much like the 

 men who compose it to-day. Even the first president, Dr. Theo- 

 dore Gill, who was looked upon then as a man of extremely ma- 

 ture years, and who possessed a knowledge that only comes with 

 long years, was in reality only 42 years old; and most of the 

 others were in their twenties and thirties. 



In 1880 the great concentration of scientific men in Wash- 

 ington was just beginning, and the great specialization was 

 already making its appearance. Boston was still the scientific 

 center of the United States, and I believe that not even the far- 

 sighted Baird could have foreseen what we have all seen of the 

 development of science under the governmental institutions in 

 this city. The Philosophical Society had reached its destined 

 repletion and was beginning to crack. The Biological Society 

 was one of the very first of its children to leave the parental nest. 



Already the young men who founded the new society have 

 grown old and died, and I believe there are only two of them who 

 are still active members of the Society in Washington — E. A. 

 Schwarz and myself — curiously enough, both entomologists. 



l Published by authority of the council, under a special fund. 



56— Pkoc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 32, 1919. (271) 



