American Fisheries Society 331 



have since appeared annually. Thus in the Society's forty 

 years of existence there have been thirty-eight separate 

 reports, and these have comprised more than five thousand 

 pages and 432 papers and addresses. 



Some confusion as to the correlation of meetings and the 

 published reports of the Society has led to complication in 

 the numbering of the reports w^hich has but recently been 

 set right. The report of the organization meeting in New 

 York City December 20, 1870, was published in 1872 to- 

 gether with the proceedings of the second meeting held at 

 Albany February 7 and 8 of that year. This combined 

 report, however, was called the first, and until 1909 each 

 succeeding annual report has been numbered consecutively 

 from this beginning. Thus the 1908 report was made to 

 refer to the thirty-seventh meeting, but the last, or 1909, 

 report was properly designated as the Transactions of the 

 thirty-ninth meeting. This does not take into account the 

 special meeting at Philadelphia in 1876, to which a few 

 pages of the 1877 report are devoted. 



For a period beginning in 1874. Forest and Stream, 

 founded a year previously, was the official organ of the 

 Society, with the privilege of printing the papers presented 

 at the meetings and elsewhere published only in the official 

 reports. Objection on the part of other journals to this 

 exclusive privilege occasioned considerable debate at the 

 1888 meeting and ultimately led to a more liberal attitude 

 on this subject. 



The officially published Transactions have always been 

 free to members. Some discussion of this matter occurred 

 in 1888, but the proposition to sell current reports was dis- 

 countenanced. Back numbers, it was decided in 1900, 

 should be sold at 25 cents per copy, a price which in 1905 

 was increased to 50 cents. 



Successive recommendations and actions by the Society 

 have effected improvement in style and form of the Trans- 

 actions, which are now published under the direction of a 

 standing editorial committee. 



