90 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



muster, perhaps, one thousand strong, but all who are sufficiently 

 interested in science to have selected special lines of study. 



We have, then, one person interested in science to about ten 

 thousand inhabitants. But the leaven of science is not evenly dis- 

 tributed through the national loaf. It is the tendency of scientific 

 men to congregate together. In Washington, for instance, there 

 is one scientific man to every 500 inhabitants, in Cambridge one 

 to 850, and in New Haven one to 1,100. In New Orleans the 

 proportion is one to 8,800, in Jersey City one to 24,000, in New 

 York one to 7,000, and in Brooklyn one to 8,500. I have before 

 me the proportions worked out for the seventy-five principal cities 

 of the United States. The showing is suggestive, though no doubt 

 in some instances misleading. The tendency to gregariousness 

 on the part of scientific men may, perhaps, be further illustrated by 

 a reference to certain societies. The membership of the National 

 Academy of Sciences is almost entirely concentrated about Bos- 

 ton, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and New Haven. 

 Missouri has one member, Illinois one, Ohio one, Maryland, New- 

 Jersey and Rhode Island three, and California four while thirty- 

 two States and Territories are not represented. A precisely sim- 

 ilar distribution of members is found in the American Society of 

 Naturalists. A majority of the members of the American Associ- 

 ation for the Advancement of Science live in New York, Massa- 

 chusetts, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Michigan, Min- 

 nesota, Ohio, Illinois and New Jersey. 



It has been stated that the average proportion of scientific 

 men to the population at large is one to ten thousand. A more 

 minute examination shows that while fifteen of the States and Ter- 

 ritories have more than the average proportion of scientific men, 

 thirty-two have less. Oregon and California, Michigan and Del- 

 aware have very nearly the normal number. Massachusetts, 

 Rhode Island, Connecticut, Illinois, Colorado and Florida have 

 about one to four thousand. West Virginia, Nevada, Arkansas, 



