480 
fested in a special way. Though nowadays 
what is done anywhere is soon known 
everywhere, the news of a discovery being 
often flashed over the globe by telegraph, 
there is an increasing activity in the direc- 
tion of organization to promote interna- 
tional meetings and international cooper- 
ation. In almost every science inquirers 
from many lands now gather together 
at stated intervals in international con- 
gresses to discuss matters which they 
have in common at heart, and go away 
each one feeling strengthened by having 
met his brother. The desire that in the 
struggle to lay bare the secrets of Nature 
the least waste of human energy should be 
incurred is leading more and more to the 
concerted action of nations combining to 
attack problems the solution of which is 
difficult and costly. The determination of 
standards of measurement, magnetic sur- 
veys, the solution of great geodetic prob- 
lems, the mapping of the heavens and of 
the earth—all these are being carried on by 
international organizations. 
Tn this and in other countries men’s minds 
have this long while past been greatly 
moved by the desire to make fresh efforts 
to pierce the dark secrets of the forbidding 
Antarctic regions. Belgium has just made 
a brave single-handed attempt ; a private 
enterprise sailing from these shores is 
struggling there now, lost for the present to 
our view; and this year we in England and 
our brethren in Germany are, thanks to the 
promised aid of the respective Governments, 
and no less to private liberality, in which 
this Association takes its share, able to 
begin the preparation of carefully organized 
expeditions. That international amity of 
which I am speaking is illustrated by the 
fact that in this country and in that there 
is not only a great desire, but a firm pur- 
pose, to secure the fullest cooperation be- 
tween the expeditions which will leave the 
two shores. If in this momentous attempt 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Von. X. No. 249. 
any rivalry be shown between the two na- 
tions, it will be for each a rivalry, not in 
forestalling, but in assisting the other. 
May I add that if the story of the past may 
seem to give our nation some claim to the 
seas as more peculiarly our own, that claim 
bespeaks a duty likewise peculiarly our own 
to leave no effort untried by which we may 
plumb the seas’ yet unknown depths and 
trace their yet unknown shores? That 
claim, if it means anything, means that 
when nations are joining hands in the 
dangerous work of exploring the unknown 
South, the larger burden of the task should 
fall to Britain’s share ; it means that we in 
this country should see to it, and see to it 
at once, that the concerted Antarctic expe- 
dition which in some two years or so will 
leave the shores of Germany, of England, 
and, perhaps, of other lands, should, so far 
as we are concerned, be so equipped and so 
sustained that the risk of failure and dis- 
aster may be made as small, and the hope 
of being able not merely to snatch a hurried 
glimpse of lands not yet seen, but to gather 
in with full hands a rich harvest of the 
facts which men not of one science only, 
but of many, long to know, as great as pos- 
sible. 
Another international scientific effort de- 
mands a word of notice. The need which 
every inquirer in science feels to know, and 
to know quickly, what his fellow-worker, 
wherever on the globe he may be carrying 
on his work or making known his results, 
has done or is doing, led some four years 
back to a proposal for carrying out by in- 
ternational codperation a complete current 
index, issued promptly, of the scientific lit- 
erature of the world. Though much labor 
in many lands has been spent upon the un- 
dertaking, the project is not yet an accom- 
plished fact. Nor can this, perhaps, be 
wondered at, when the difficulties of the 
task are weighed. Difficulties of language, 
difficulties of driving in one team all the 
