744 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



work, and have used the Association for 

 the advancement of their personal ob- 

 jects and interests. 



Dissatisfied with the results of this 

 organization, several of its founders and 

 most prominent members drew off in 

 1863 and organized the JTational Acad- 

 emy of Sciences. Its plan was an imi- 

 tation of the French Academy ; it allied 

 itself to the General Government by 

 which it was incorporated, and was lim- 

 ited to fifty members, with whom was 

 the power of filling any vacancies that 

 might arise. Here at last was an Amer- 

 ican institution sufficiently exclusive 

 for the most exacting, and which could 

 not be meddled with by the crowd of 

 charlatans and incompetents without. 

 It would seem that this arrangement, by 

 giving original investigators a field of 

 their own, ought to have met the diffi- 

 culty and opened the way to the man- 

 agement of the original Association in 

 a more liberal spirit. It is hardly too 

 much to have expected that, when the 

 National Academy had been organized 

 on a basis which gave the most perfect 

 protection to original investigators, and 

 thus removed a serious American diffi- 

 culty, the American Association might 

 have widened its scope and placed 

 itself upon the broad ground occupied 

 by the British Association. But such 

 has not been the effect. Instead of ex- 

 tending its scope and laboring to in- 

 crease its general influence, the new 

 constitution just adopted holds to the 

 original aim of the Association, and con- 

 cedes nothing to the growing popular 

 demand for scientific guidance and en- 

 lightenment. Its main concernment 

 seems to be still about scientific dignity, 

 and it has actually entered upon the 

 funny experiment of creating distinc- 

 tions and distributing honors among its 

 members. The old and troublesome 

 question, " "Who shall be greatest ? " still 

 vexes the souls of the managing mag- 

 nates, who have solved it by the in- 

 genious procedure of creating an order 

 of "fellows." "We have characterized 



this proceeding as funny, but if the bare 

 fact be held as insufficient to justify 

 such a characterization, then we have 

 the further circumstance that the whole 

 rabble of the membership are allowed 

 to become "fellows" by the extra pay- 

 ment of two dollars apiece, which we 

 think is certainly a very puerile piece 

 of business. 



We have very great respect for this 

 Association, and believe that, notwith- 

 standing its limitations, it has been pro- 

 ductive of much good in this country. 

 We have attended many of its meetings 

 for the past twenty years, and found 

 them instructive and profitable, while 

 the past history of the organization 

 affords ground of hope that it will be 

 productive of still greater good in the 

 future. But we believe that it would 

 have been still more useful if it had 

 been dominated by a broader spirit, 

 and that as the interests of science are 

 widening and deepening, and coming 

 to be more generally recognized, it will 

 be still more necessary in the future 

 that the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science shall take 

 them into earnest and systematic ac- 

 count. 



NEW EXPERIMENTS IN EDUCATION. 



It was an important step in the 

 progress of knowledge when the bodily 

 constitution of man began to be studied 

 in the light of its relations to the inferior 

 orders of life, and it promises to be a no 

 less important step when the human 

 mind is also so regarded. The study of 

 mental manifestations in inferior creat- 

 ures is becoming a systematic branch 

 of inquiry, and the observers in this 

 field are beginning to apply their meth- 

 od in the human sphere. We do not 

 say that they have a new psychology, 

 or claim to have arrived at any re- 

 markable results ; it is only noteworthy 

 that those who have been engaged in 

 discriminating among the mental like- 

 nesses and differences of horses, dogs, 



