February 14, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



245 



of naturalists. I shall not try to show how 

 they aid in the development of science. All 

 of us are willing for the love of research to 

 work ten to fifteen hours a day; but it is 

 the coming meeting at which we have an- 

 nounced a paper that stimulates us to work 

 all night. Furthermore, as scientific men 

 have no longer time to read, if it were not 

 for this annual treatment of fifty doses of 

 papers taken in fifty quarter hours we 

 should be more ignoramuses than savants. 

 I assume, therefore, that it is agreed that 

 naturalists should get together once a year. 

 The question is: How inclusive should 

 these meetings be? Some naturalists, even 

 of the Mississippi Valley, urge that all of 

 the naturalists of the country should meet 

 together every winter. That is not prac- 

 ticable. As evidence it is only necessary 

 to point out that if it were possible it 

 would have happened already. As a matter 

 of fact, the proportion of naturalists from 

 the Central States attending the meetings 

 of the American Society has always been 

 small. At the present meeting, despite the 

 most cordial interest of the eastern natu- 

 ralists, we are all regretting the absence of 

 many of our eastern friends and colleagues. 

 Again, the experience of the American As- 

 sociation for the Advancement of Science 

 proves that the great majority of the nat- 

 uralists of one section of the country will 

 not exceed a certain limit of time and ex- 

 pense to attend meetings in another section. 

 At the Boston meeting of the Association 

 666 members, or about 74 per cent, of those 

 in attendance, were from the Middle and 

 New England States. At Denver, with 

 great attractions for a summer meeting, 

 there were 82 such members in attendance, 

 or 27 per cent, of all attending. From 

 the nature of the case you can't draw defi- 

 nite limits of distance and expense for the 

 regular attendance of naturalists on meet- 

 ings. But experience indicates that most 

 naturalists will not travel regularly more 



than for about fifteen hours to attend a 

 meeting, nor spend more than fifty dollars. 

 In other words, an institution that will 

 regularly send a majority of its naturalists 

 to a meeting must be within 500 miles of 

 the place of meeting. These facts teach 

 that it is futile to hope that all naturalists 

 of this country will meet regularly to- 

 gether ; or even that those east of the Rocky 

 mountains will do so. 



A second proposition is that the Natur- 

 alists' meeting should be held in successive 

 years in diif erent sections of the country to 

 meet the needs of the naturalists located in 

 those sections. Thus, it might meet suc- 

 cessively in New York, Chicago, Denver 

 and San Francisco. 



The objections to this plan are too 

 obvious to require debate. It does away 

 with the precious opportunity of an an- 

 nual meeting of the naturalists of any one 

 section of the country. Local societies 

 would spring up to fill the need and the 

 American Society would be sapped of its 

 strength by them. The advancement of 

 science demands that naturalists gather at 

 least once a year. 



A third proposition was made by a com- 

 mittee of the American Society of Natural- 

 ists at its last meeting. It is that the name 

 ' American Society ' should be abandoned. 

 That the eastern society should reassume 

 the name of ' Society of Naturalists of the 

 Eastern United States,' with which it 

 started. That the naturalists of the Cen- 

 tral States might then form an independent 

 and coordinate society. This plan would be 

 a good one, perhaps, if the central and east- 

 ern sections were sharply marked off from 

 each other or were politically distinct as, 

 thank God, they are not. The Boston nat- 

 iiralist of this year will very likely be lo- 

 cated in Chicago next year and the Michi- 

 gan naturalist of a decade ago is a scientific 

 leader in New York to-day. "We change 

 hoiises with facility, but we do not change 



