May 23, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



805 



support of public opinion. It is therefore 

 incumbent upon scientists to sustain so- 

 cieties which spread their activities as 

 widely as possible. 



The constituencies of national and of 

 local societies are naturally different, the 

 national society taking its members from 

 all over the country, while local societies 

 are primarily confined to the inhabitants 

 of a certain city, or, at most, of a limited 

 district. For this reason the means ap- 

 plied by local and by national societies to 

 extend their membership cannot always be 

 the same. 



A ditificult problem often arises among 

 those societies which are most successful in 

 popularizing the subject matter of their 

 science, because the lay members largely 

 outnumber the scientific contributors. 

 "Wherever this is the case there is a tend- 

 ency towards lowering the scientific value 

 of disciission, because, out of regard for the 

 general public, purely technical matter is 

 often excluded from the discussions. Thus 

 the necessity arises of giving opportunity 

 for technical discussions, in order to en- 

 able the society to fulfill its purely scien- 

 tific mission, namely, to serve the advance- 

 ment of science by means of discussions 

 among scientists, and by the publication of 

 technical papers. The greater the public 

 interest in a science, and the less technical 

 knowledge it appears to require, the 

 greater is the danger that meetings may 

 assume the character of popular lectures. 

 Anthropology is one of the sciences in 

 which this danger is ever imminent, and 

 in which for this reason great care must be 

 taken to protect the purely scientific in- 

 terests. 



It seems to my mind that the problem of 

 liow to effect the best organization of an- 

 thropologists cannot be solved without a 

 discussion of the general organization of 

 scientific societies. The problems with 

 which we are confronted in various 



branches of science are practically the 

 same, and the general tendencies that mani- 

 fest themselves should be considered in 

 guiding our actions. 



At the present time our active societies 

 may be classed as follows: First, we have 

 a group of miscellaneous societies, such as 

 our local academies, in which all sciences 

 are represented with a large lay member- 

 ship ; secondly, there are local special so- 

 cieties with unlimited membership, such as 

 our geographical, anthropological and 

 zoological societies ; thirdly, the Amei'icaa 

 Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

 ence represents a class by itself, similar in 

 character to the local academies, but in- 

 tended to embrace the whole country. 

 There are a number of somewhat special 

 societies of a similar character, which, how- 

 ever, are more or less devoted to applied 

 science. All these societies cater to a very 

 great extent to the lay public. As a reac- 

 tion to the popularizing tendencies of these 

 societies, and intended to fill the demand 

 for an opportunity for technical discus- 

 sion, a number of purely scientific national 

 societies and the American Society of Nat- 

 uralists have arisen. The formation of the 

 National Academy is also partly due to this 

 demand. 



It has evidently been found impossible 

 to hannonize the popular and technical 

 elements in the meeting of the general so- 

 cieties, else it would be difficult to under- 

 stand why the national purely scientific 

 societies should have arisen, notwithstand- 

 ing the existence of the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science. The 

 fact that so many societies of this character 

 have sprung up recently shows clearly that 

 it is necessary to provide for pi;rely scien- 

 tific meetings. 



A consideration of the methods of publi- 

 cation of our societies brings out a num- 

 ber of points of considerable interest. We 

 find that throughout the country it is the 



