Decembkk 19, 19U2.] 



SCIENCE. 



965 



purpose of each expenditure, and of the 

 results reached by it. 



These suggestions involve no reflection 

 upon the eminent citizens who form the 

 board of regents of the institution. We 

 are sure tliat none will grasp the situation 

 more readily than they when once it is 

 brought to their attention. We feel that 

 they are abundantly able to judge of the 

 good policy of expending almost the entire 

 income of the fund entrusted to them in 

 eking out the appropriations made by con- 

 gress for the National Museum and other 

 local objects. If the claim is made that 

 the Smithsonian Institution is in touch 

 with the science of the world by its sys- 

 tem of international exchanges, and with 

 the people of the country through its an- 

 nual reports, they are abundantly able to 

 see that the prosecution of the first is a 

 source of gain to the institution, and that 

 its annual reports, being printed by Con- 

 gress, cost the institution far less than the 

 profit upon exchanges, so that the entire 

 income is still available for other objects. 

 We believe that the more carefully the 

 able members of the board of regents con- 

 sider this subject, in the light of past ex- 

 periences and present conditions, the more 

 fully they will appreciate the force of the 

 considerations we have suggested. 



, THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.* 

 TwENTY-THEEE ccnturies ago, when the 

 first and fairest flowers of civilization were 

 in blossom, Plato and his friends met to- 

 gether in an Athenian garden to talk of the 

 things that appeared to them to be beauti- 

 ful, good and true. The garden was called 

 * Address of the president of the New York 

 Academy of Sciences, read on December 15, 1902. 



' The Academy, 'and the word has ever since 

 maintained the high traditions of its origin, 

 uniting the ideas of friendly social inter- 

 course and the search for truth. The phi- 

 losophy of Plato was passed on to his dis- 

 ciples, so that we read of fourth and fifth 

 academies; it was transplanted to Rome, 

 where Cicero named his country house 

 'The Academy,' and to Alexandria, where 

 mystical neo-platonism long resisted the 

 dogmatic rationalism of the church. 



As part of the Italian renaissance, when 

 civilization was once more young, vigorous 

 and beautiful, as in the Greek period, the 

 word 'academy' was revived and used to 

 name a society of scholars. Cosimo dei 

 Medici, the Elder, established at Florence 

 in the fifteenth century a Platonic Acad- 

 emy, and academies of letters by the 

 hundred flourished in Italy during the six- 

 teenth century. In 1560 there was estab- 

 lished at Naples by the versatile Giambat- 

 tista della Porta the first academy of sci- 

 ences— AcacZemm Secretorum Naturce,--to 

 which only those were admitted who had 

 contributed to the advancement of science 

 or medicine. The academy at Naples was 

 suppressed on the accusation that it prac- 

 tised the black arts; but soon afterwards 

 there was established at Rome, with Galileo 

 as one of its members, the Accaclemia dei 

 Lincei, which was later revived and is now 

 one of the great national academies. 



The mere word 'academy' is of course 

 unimportant; societies of scholars are not 

 always called academies, nor are all acad- 

 emies societies of scholars. The beginnings 

 of associations for the advancement of 

 knowledge are to be found in savage tribes, 

 developing with the state of civilization, 

 (isually in the form of guilds of priests, 

 until we reach the Greek period, whence 

 we date our philosophy and our science. 

 The culture of Greece was carried to 

 Alexandria, where Ptolemy Soter, supposed 

 to be the son of Alexander the Great, estab- 



