470 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their discoveries for months after they have been made is a ques- 

 tion, but the foreign practice in this regard has certainly much to 

 commend it. 



It would be a calamity of real magnitude to American science 

 if the sectional meetings of the association were abandoned to men 

 who have not done enough approved work to entitle them to places 

 in the several societies already named. The old title — The Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Science — might still be 

 retained, it is true, but what a humiliating misnomer it would be 

 if none of the men who have advanced science in the past by their 

 labors and none of those who are prepared to advance it in the 

 future by their training were now included ! It would be the omis- 

 sion of the part of Hamlet from the play. 



The foremost men in all the societies, our leaders in the branches 

 represented there, owe it to themselves, owe it much more to the 

 great name of American science, to maintain and magnify their 

 connection with, their service to, the American Association. 



At the second meeting of the association it was the illustrious 

 Joseph Henry who called the attention of his brethren to the fact 

 that the organization was, by its very name, consecrated to the 

 advancement of science — to the discovery of new truth. He re- 

 minded them that the association was not designed to furnish 

 opportunity for the restatement of what was already known. Its 

 purpose was rather to add to the existing body of knowledge in the 

 world. Let not the hopes of the founders be brought to naught 

 by allowing the organization from which they expected so much to 

 be thus eviscerated! 



We see, then, that the social feature, with what it legitimately 

 includes, deserves to hold as prominent a place among the objects 

 of the association at the end of the century as was given to it by 

 its founders when first established. 



Two other objects which were deemed worthy of being incor- 

 porated into the organic law of the association remain to be con- 

 sidered. To the treatment of each a few words will be devoted. 

 Neither of them commands as high regard from us as they seem to 

 have had at the beginning. 



2. The second object of the association as declared by the found- 

 ers was " to give a stronger and more general impulse and a more 

 systematic direction to scientific research in our country." 



It is not easy for those who were born after the middle point of 

 the century to think themselves back into the conditions under 

 which the words above quoted were written. At that time there 

 wore but two or throe schools of science in the United States, and 

 not one west of the seaboard. The degrees of bachelor, master, and 



