136 Mathews Plan for American Biological Society [Oct. 



ceedings will suggest others ; and tlie advantages of labile Organiza- 

 tion of independent societies in natural interdependent relationships 

 will impel careful consideration of such additional projects as the 

 evolution of the biological sciences may suggest. I think we should 

 proceed as rapidly as possible in the direction of the Mathews plan 

 through the agency of the Federation — that we should perfect the 

 latter Organization and go forward with such further developments 

 as the growth of the Federation might suggest and determine.^ 



Philip B. Hawk, Jefferson Medical College, Phila. The 

 Mathews plan for the Organization of an Amer. Biolog. Soc'y ap- 

 pears to me to have much to commend it. 



Joseph S. Hepburn, Food-Research Lab., U. S.Dep'tof Agric, 

 Phila. While a federation of the various biological societies may 

 be consummated, their complete merger is a rather remote possi- 

 bility. Thus the chemical engineers, the electrochemists, and the 

 biological chemists have their separate organizations, entirely inde- 

 pendent of the Amer. Chem. Soc'y; the biological societies aremore 

 numerous than the chemical, and their complete merger would be a 

 more difficult proposition. A membership fee of $20 or $30 for 

 the new society would perhaps be prohibitive to many biochemists 

 who are already members of the Amer. Chem. Soc'y, and also pay 

 membership fees in one or more local scientific societies, Institutes 

 or academies, in order to gain access to the complete files of scien- 

 tific Journals, foreign and domestic, in the libraries of the latter in- 

 stitutions. Moreover, the average biochemist would constantly use 

 perhaps three, and occasionally perhaps as many more, Journals in 

 the list of fourteen; the others would be of very little use to him. 

 In this connection it should be remembered that the Amer. Chem. 

 Soc'y does not supply to its members all of the chemical Journals 

 published in the United States. The proposition to grant member- 

 ship and subscriptions to say any three or four Journals out of the 

 Hst of fourteen for a fee of about ten dollars would doubtless make 

 a strong appeal to the biochemist. 



The biological abstract Journal is a gigantic undertaking, since 

 it should include, in addition to abstracts of papers in the various 

 branches of botany and zoology, the material now found in the 



1 Editorial : Biochem. Bull., 1913, ii, p. 332. 



