IS 



A^DDRESSES 



THE ADVANTAGES OF A STATE ACADEMY 

 OF SCIENCE. 



T. C. Chamberlin. 



The opening address, by Professor Chamberlin, on The Ad- 

 vantages of a State Academy of Science, was given in the ex- 

 temporaneous fomi, and the following outline very imperfectly 

 represents what was said. 



Professor Chamberlin introduced his address by conveying 

 the felicitations of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and 

 sketched some of the salient features of its history of a little 

 more than fifty years as a means of giving concrete illustra- 

 tion to some of the problems which the new academy must 

 face. Special attention was directed to the radical change in 

 the nature and relations of scientific activity since the oldest 

 academies of the interior were established. In the pioneer days, 

 an almost virgin field was open to naturalists, and enthusiasts 

 in this field constituted the largest factor in the membership of 

 its academies of science during their early stages of develop- 

 ment. The results of these pioneer workers were much more 

 fully within the appreciation of all their colleagues and of the 

 intelligent public than are the products of the more highly 

 specialized investigations of today. So widely has research de- 

 ployed in the last fifty years, and so far has it reached into the 



