44 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 367. 



members. The committee on convocation 

 week presented the report published in the 

 issue of this journal for December 27, 

 showing that both our institutions of 

 learning and our societies are unani- 

 mously cooperating in setting aside for the 

 meetings of learned and scientific societies 

 the week in which the first day of January 

 falls. A committee was appointed to con- 

 sider the question of the duty imposed on 

 scientific apparatus imported for educa- 

 tional institutions, a resolution was passed 

 advocating a national health service, and 

 other business was transacted. The most 

 interesting feature of the meeting was per- 

 haps the representation of Section K, 

 Physiology and Experimental Medicine, by 

 its first officers. Professors AVelch and Lee. 

 It was decided that the first meeting of the 

 Section should be held in Washington a 

 year hence, and that all scientific papers 

 must be presented through one of the 

 national societies devoted to the sciences 

 falling within the scope of the Section. 



While the affiliated scientific societies de- 

 voted to the biological sciences were meet- 

 ing in Chicago, the other scientific societies 

 that hold winter meetings were in session 

 in different cities. The American Geo- 

 logical Society met in Rochester, the Amer- 

 ican Chemical Society in Philadelphia, the 

 Astronomical and Astrophysical Society 

 of America in Washington, the American 

 Mathematical and Physical Societies and 

 the eastern branch of the Society for Plant 

 Morphology and Physiology in New York. 

 So far as can be judged from the pi-elimi- 

 nary programs and from accounts that 

 have reached us, the meetings were in all 



cases successful, and this will doubtless be 

 fully proved by the reports that will be 

 published in this journal. It will, how- 

 ever, be a gain to the separate societies and 

 especially to science as a whole when all 

 our men of science gather in one congress 

 as will be the case next year. 



Only those who have attended the meet- 

 ings of our scientific societies in recent 

 years can fully appreciate the improve- 

 ment that has taken place in the conduct 

 of the meetings, the increase in the volume 

 and value of scientific work, and the 

 friendly and cordial relations almost uni- 

 versal among scientific men. We are en- 

 titled to enjoy great satisfaction in the ad- 

 vances made by the Denver and Chicago 

 meetings, and to look forward with sure 

 anticipation of a further advance in the 

 great meeting to be held during convoca- 

 tion week next winter at Washington. 



THE MODERN SUBJECTION OF SCIENCE 

 AND EDUCATION TO PROPAGANDA. 



One of the sad pages in the history of 

 science and education is that which re- 

 lates how, on the death of Alexander the 

 Great, the teacher of his youth, the much 

 greater Aristotle, rightly regarded by the 

 Middle Age as the ' master of those who 

 know ' when more than sixty years old was 

 driven from Athens into exile by a patriotic 

 propaganda of the anti-Macedonians. A 

 darker and a bloody page tells how Hypatia 

 of Alexandria, the beautiful and learned 

 daughter of Theon,was cruelly and brutally 

 murdered in a Christian church in the 

 year 415 of our era as a victim of a fanat- 

 ical propaganda against paganism, con- 

 doned, if not conducted, by the Christian 

 Archbishop Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria. 

 Copernicus hesitated long before publish- 



