28 



In 1882, when the treasurer reported a balance of $150 in 

 his hands and $122 more due from members in annual fees, the 

 question of a publication of papers and proceedings was 

 brought forward in the secretary's report and referred to a 

 committee; but no steps were taken to that end on the ground 

 that it was not desirable to multiply centers of publication un- 

 necessarily, and that there was no lack of opportunity to pub- 

 lish really valuable papers in established periodicals. 



Following upon these conclusions, and possibly in part be- 

 cause of them, the paid-up membership of the society began to 

 decline. Indeed, of the sixty-six persons who completed their 

 membership during the first year, thirty-nine did not continue 

 their payments thereafter, and at the end of the second year 

 the actual paid-up membership was fifty-two. The following 

 year it was fifty-four, then fifty-two, then forty-three, and 

 finally, in 1884, it fell to twenty-seven. The executive com- 

 mitte took these facts to indicate that there was at the time 

 no sufficiently general and urgent desire for the permanent 

 maintenance of a society of this description to warrant its con- 

 tinuance, and after the Jacksonville meeting of 1885, which 

 passed without a formal election of officers, it was not called 

 together again. 



And now I hardly need say that, after the lapse of twenty- 

 two years of amazing progress in science and in scientific educa- 

 tion, an cntirel.v new situation again exists in Illinois — one so 

 radically different from that of the early eighties that the con- 

 clusions then reached have no very important bearing on our 

 problem of today. There are more college specialists here to- 

 day from one department of one institution than there were 

 in our whole membership in 1879. Indeed that list is not so 

 long that I cannot give it to you now, to emphasize the con- 

 trast. It consisted of J. D. Conley, of Carlinville; T. J. Bur- 



