34 



light could penetrate ; and best of all, there will sometimes 

 come a chance and a disposition to get together, ignoring divi- 

 sion lines, on some joint cooperative enterprise too large and 

 too complex to lie wholly within the field of any one or any 

 class of us, and likely otherwise to be ignored or imperfectly 

 provided for. 



The State Academy of Science may, like any other state 

 society, do its part towards making the state interesting to 

 its own people, and especially to those who are newcomers 

 within its borders. In each of our great universities, and in 

 many of our colleges and scientific institutions, there is an al- 

 most continuous stream of newcomers, some to take new 

 places, others to replace those who are going away. Most of 

 these, as a rule, come to us from other states, and some from 

 foreign countries. They are often well prepared to make im- 

 portant contributions to our civic and our public life — to our 

 scientific and industrial progress — but are sometimes little dis- 

 posed on their arrival to go outside their special spheres of 

 interest. They may even live among us, and yet not be of us, for 

 years, concerning themselves but little with the state or its 

 people except as their duties bring them into necessary contact 

 with us, — a situation unfortunate for us and doubly so for 

 them. Often their training and learning, their special abilities, 

 their diflFerent standards, their tastes acquired elsewhere, make 

 them precisely fitted to do some needed thing for us which we 

 are not likely to do ourselves, and which does not get done 

 because nothing is done to effect a real transfer of their allegi- 

 ance. The very loyalty of their tempers, which would make them 

 invaluable to Illinois if they were really to become identified 

 with its interests, leaves them cold to us and makes them use- 

 less here for any general purpose, because it holds them still 

 to other interests and places which they have left behind. Their 

 own lives are more barren and lonely than they might be. and 

 their stay with us perhaps is short, because they take no suf- 

 ficient root in our soil. .Vn acclimatization scKicty is needed to 

 adjust them fully to their new environment; and such a society 

 the State Academy should actually be. 



