CHEMISTRY IN NEW YORK 97 



odicals, enable everybody to obtain a hearing; but it does 

 seem to me that the cost of subscribing to all of these journals 

 is excessive, and that much unnecessary expense is incurred 

 through duplication of administrative efforts, as well as 

 through duplication of abstracts, etc. This, of course, is a 

 problem with which we, as a local section, are not directly 

 called upon to deal; nevertheless, it is proper to call the at- 

 tention of those who are interested in the management of 

 chemical societies in America to the fact that membership 

 alone in the various chemical organizations of New York costs 

 upwards of fifty dollars per year, and that it would be but 

 fair to so arrange matters that the total cost would be re- 

 duced by a sort of clubbing arrangement, proportionately 

 to the number of societies to which a member belongs. It 

 seems to me, however, that in one particular point we are at 

 a distinct disadvantage as compared with the foreign chem- 

 ists: the frequency of regular meetings at which papers can 

 be presented for the purpose of securing priority of publica- 

 tion. Would it not be possible for our various local sections, 

 including the Chemical Section of the New York Academy 

 of Sciences, to arrange the dates of their meetings conjointly 

 in such a way that a meeting would occur once a week during 

 nine months, and once a month during the summer, thus se- 

 curing for the New York chemist the same opportunities for 

 the early presentation of a scientific discovery that are pos- 

 sessed by his brethren in European centres? There is, of 

 course, another remedy which appeals to me, though I do not 

 express it with any degree of urgency; namely, the consolida- 

 tion of all local sections into a single organization which would 

 affiliate its members automatically with all the national bodies 

 now in existence, and would turn over the scientific material 

 of its meetings to those journals for which it seemed most 

 suited. As a matter of fact, glancing over the annual lists of 



