250 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 372. 



that the Council of the Amei'icaii Associa- 

 tion might well serve as the nucleus for 

 such aji organization. To-day a still more 

 promising nucleus for a national scientific 

 organization of unprecedented dignity and 

 power may be glimpsed through eyes of 

 hope; for it is within bounds to anticipate 

 joint meetings of the Councils of America's 

 two representative organizations of science, 

 and joint action with all the strength of 

 union, at no distant day. 



W J McGee. 

 Bureau of American Ethnologt. 



It is not long since a gathering as rep- 

 resentative of American science as the 

 present one would have been a very differ- 

 ent kind of audience. It would have been 

 much smaller, without men enough spe- 

 cially representative of any one branch of 

 knowledge to warrant them in meeting to- 

 gether as a section, but composed of men 

 practically all of whom would have heard 

 with interest and discussed with intelli- 

 gence any paper on the program. 



Recent years have brought about a 

 marked change in science as in other things. 

 Material prosperity has made it possible 

 for more men than formerly to devote 

 themselves to the acquisition and diffusion 

 of learning, and the means and appliances 

 at their hand have increased to no less a 

 degree. With this has come, as a means to 

 the performance of the more difficult tasks 

 of research, specialization and attendant 

 division of labor, so that the scientific or- 

 ganizations are now commonly not only 

 larger, but far more complex, and one often 

 goes away from a meeting with something 

 like an intellectual dyspepsia, induced by 

 the many and extremely varied courses 

 offered on the program. 



In another important respect conditions 

 have greatly changed. The time was when 

 the great distances lay beyond the workers 

 in science. To-day, because of the develop- 



ment of the whole country, they lie be- 

 tween the workers, not equally, but in such 

 a manner as to cause a concentrated eastern 

 and a more scattered western population. 

 Though distances are now traveled in hours 

 that formerly required days, the expendi- 

 ture of time and money involved in passing 

 these great distances is so great as to seri- 

 ously interfere with the holding of truly 

 national meetings, and I desire to express 

 my full appreciation of the action of this 

 society in setting aside a geographic re- 

 striction of its constitution in order that 

 this most successful meeting might be held 

 in Chicago. Shortly before leaving home 

 I received a letter from a friend, in which 

 regret was expressed that the eastern 

 botanists who commonly meet in conjunc- 

 tion with this Society had not felt it wise to 

 set aside a like provision of their own con- 

 stitution, so that they are now meeting in 

 the east, and adding that, much as would 

 be gained by meeting with the affiliated 

 societies now in session here, it did not seem 

 quite right to depart from their custom 

 and so deprive the younger men, not blessed 

 with a superabundance of this world's 

 goods, of a meeting that they desired and 

 were entitled to, but for which they could 

 not travel far. 



In our childhood we all learned the fable 

 of the man who one day brought in an 

 armful of twigs, and, handing them one 

 after another to his son, asked him to 

 break them, which was readily done; but 

 when a like number were closely bound to- 

 gether into a bunch, they could not be 

 broken nor even greatly bent. I believe it 

 was the schoolmaster who first made prac- 

 tical use of this particular demonstration 

 of the strength that lies in union, but be- 

 fore my own time he had abandoned it be- 

 cause of the greater flexibility of the unit. 

 Business men have recently begun to make 

 much and profitable application of the 

 principle, and as, in manufacture and 



