258 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. X. 



The world's intellectual workers are, from the very nature of 

 their lives of thought and study, separated in some degree from 

 the mass of mankind. They feel however not less than others 

 the need of human sympathy and co-operatiou, and out of this 

 need have grown academies and learned societies devoted to the 

 cultivation of letters and of science. The records of these 

 bodies in Florence, in Rome, in Paris, in London, and elsewhere, 

 are the records of scientific progress for the last three centuries. 

 Such bodies do not create thinkers and workers, but they give 

 to them a scientific home, a centre of influence, and the means of 

 making known to the world the results of their labors. 



It was with a wise forethought that more than a century since 

 Franklin and his friends founded at Philadelphia the American 

 Philosophical Society. Its planting then seemed premature, but 

 its vigorous growth during a century has served to show that the 

 seed was not too early sown This, however, unlike many of the 

 academies of the old world to which we have adverted, had no 

 formal recognition from the state, and there came a period in the 

 growth of the American Union when the need of an official scien- 

 tific body was felt. Thus it was that nineteen years ago, in the 

 midst of the sjreat civil war, the American Coni^rress authorized 

 the erection of a National Academy of Sciences to which, as an 

 American citizen, I have the honor to belong. The aim proposed 

 in founding this Academy was to gather together what was best 

 and highest in the scientific life of the nation, and moreover, to 

 organize a body of councillors to which the executive authority 

 could always look for advice and direction in scientific matters 

 relating to the interests of the State. In that Academy — at first 

 consisting of fifty, and now practically limited to one hundred 

 members (a number which it has not yet attained) — the domain 

 of letters is unrepresented ; while the Royal Society of London 

 is in like manner, — although scholars and statesmen seek the 

 honors of its fellowship, — essentially an Academy of Sciences. 



Our infant organization attempts a larger plan, and embraces 

 with the mathematical and physical sciences, letters, philosophy, 

 and history, imitating the Royal Irish Academy, which, like this, 

 is divided into two classes; that of the Sciences, on the one hand, 

 and that of Polite Literature and Antiquities on the other. 

 The Institute of France, made up of five Academies, embraces 

 the Fine Arts in its still wider scheme. The second class 

 of our Society, with its two sections, aspires to cover the same 



