106 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 



tee room and a room for the archives and secretariats of the 

 different societies. The Hbraries and any collections there may 

 be could with advantage be merged in those of the museum. 

 Such rooms, if part of a wing of the museum, would cost the 

 city perhaps jS 100,000. Then we should collect one or two 

 hundred thousand dollars for a club-house to be placed across 

 the street. 



A (ew words remain to be said in regard to the functions of 

 an academy of sciences under the conditions that obtain at the 

 beginning of the twentieth century. Libraries, laboratories and 

 museums are no longer our charge. We are primarily guilds 

 of scientific men. The organization of science in America 

 toward which I believe we are moving is this : We shall have a 

 national society for each of the sciences ; these societies will be 

 affiliated and will form the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, which will hold migratory meetings. 

 Winter meetings will be held in large centers where all the 

 societies will come together, and summer meetings will be held 

 at points of educational and other interest when the societies 

 will scatter somewhat. The council of the American Associa- 

 tion composed of delegates from all the societies will be our 

 chief deliberative and legislative body. Our national societies 

 will consist of local sections, and these sections will unite to 

 form an academy of sciences. The men who are in one neigh- 

 borhood and engaged in the same kind of work are the natural 

 unit. They should unite on the one hand with those in other 

 neighborhoods to form a national society ; they should join on 

 the other hand with the men of science of the same neighbor- 

 hood to form an academy of sciences. This plan of organiza- 

 tion may appear to be almost too logical for a world that is 

 somewhat careless of logic, but it is in part already realized. 

 It will in my opinion result as a necessary condition from the 

 state of affairs. Our academy has already contributed to it, 

 and it seems to me that we should continue to do consciously 

 what we have hitherto done rather blindly. 



We have two main external functions — our meetings and 

 our publications. For both of these the men of science inter- 



