RECORDS OF MEETINGS. 381 



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vote of the Academy at large, has maintained quite as much interest in 

 the elections as the older method. We believe that with the respon- 

 sibility definitely upon the Council the different nominees are discussed 

 more freely and frankly than would be possible with the election by 

 the Academy. We believe that the method of electing by the Council 

 should be continued for a few years longer, at any rate, so that it may 

 have ample trial before the Academy takes up the question of any 

 change in the plan. 



The weakness in respect to the elections, whether on the old method 

 or the new, has been lack of interest by the Academy. This lack of 

 interest is sometimes so great that only a small and perhaps indifferent 

 list of nominees is presented to the Council from which the election 

 may be held. The prime requisite at present is to insure a reasonably 

 large and well-selected list of nominees. The American Philosophical 

 Society, at its election last Spring, had seventy distinguished names 

 upon its preliminary preferential ballot from which only fifteen were 

 to be elected to the Society. The American Academy, under its 

 present rules for Fellowship, is limited to six hundred Fellows. This 

 number is not yet reached and when it has been reached the number 

 of persons disappearing annually from the list will probably exceed 

 twenty. The real problem of the Academy, therefore, is to maintain 

 annually a list of nominees of high merit sufficiently large so that the 

 Council may select twenty to thirty, and perhaps in the next few 

 years even more. That such a list can be prepared is amply demon- 

 strated by the experience of the American Philosophical Society. 



Your Committee recommends that the Council appoint annually, 

 in December, a nominating committee whose duty it shall be to coop- 

 erate with the Fellows of the Academy in seeing that a well-selected 

 list of nominees goes to the Academy on the Preferential Ballot. Your 

 Committee particularly recommends that the Nominating Committee 

 be appointed annually in order that each year the Council may use 

 its best judgment in putting upon the Committee those persons most 

 likely to take a keen interest in the nominations for that year. 



II. With respect to the professional requirements for election, 

 particularly as concerns younger men, your Committee believes that 

 it is entirely proper to continue for the present the distinction between 

 resident Fellows and non-resident Fellows, to the effect that the pro- 

 fessional requirements for election of resident Fellows are somewhat 



