19 



for this preparation for the work of directing religious thought tor all 

 after ages. 



The generous, or rather general qualities of mind and heart, which nec- 

 essarily have been but little called into activity during the years of pro- 

 fessional study, are likely never to be revived, and so the years of active 

 professional life usually are passed within the narrow limits of single pro- 

 fessions. Lawyers prefer lawyers, and chemists, chemists. Doctors care 

 only to talk with doctors, and preachers prefer to confine their attentions 

 to the cloth. In the literary professions there is even more exclusiveness, 

 for nothing is so dull and unattractive to writers of this class as the fields 

 of science. Dynamite is greatly preferred by them for the intruder who 

 would try to discuss a dynamo. 



The cure for all this is better fellowship. 



The Academy of Science purposes at the present session to cultivate 

 this liberalizing of different pursuits within the range of the general pur- 

 pose of the association. Instead of carrying out our programme by sec- 

 tions as heretofore, our desire is that the members may become interested 

 in the work of others than those in the same specialty. The biologist 

 must listen to the physicist, the chemist to the geologist, the archaologist 

 to the botanist, each for the time being esteeming the work of another 

 better than his own. Thus within the limits of the sciences we are try- 

 ing the interchange of thought for the better developing of thinking. 



If this experiment prove* successful may we not hope for a wider asso- 

 ciation of thinkers in some new organization, which will include all lib- 

 eral pursuits? 



The pleasant duty remains to me to extend fraternal greetings to the 

 members of the Indiana Academy of Science. 



This Academy is yet young in years, but the success already attained 

 and the recognition secured among associations of kindred character are 

 most gratifying to those of us who have been active members from the 

 beginning. The new names added to our list year by year give cheering 

 assurance of a prosperous future. 



We meet this year in the closing days of an epoch of four hundred years 

 of the world's history, dating from the birth of a hemisphere, and from 

 this holiday ending of the old extend our happy new era greeting to the 

 centuries to come. 



Next year we will celebrate this fourth century date at the marble city 



