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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 416. 



• facing Blackwell 's Island and correspond- 

 ing to Riverside Park. Hospitals and 

 eleemosynary institutions could have been 

 built on this arm of the park and facing 

 it, while the various institutions for the 

 defective classes would have been on the 

 islands in the East River. The cross arm 

 of Central Park would always have been 

 near the center of population of the city, 

 and if it had been made a center for its in- 

 tellectual and higher social life a gain 

 would have resulted which it would scarcely 

 be possible to overestimate. Fifteen years 

 ago this could have been done as far as the 

 west side is concerned with little or no 

 expense to the city ; now it would cost 

 $30,000,000. I should gladly expend one 

 third the yearly income of the city for the 

 purpose; as I am helpless and harmless I 

 suppose there is no danger that I shall be 

 put in the institution on Ward's Island. 



The atrophied condition of the New 

 York Academy of Sciences is as lament- 

 able as the dispersal of our scientific 

 institutions, but fortunately it is not so 

 irremediable. The university, the library, 

 the museum and the academy are, as I have 

 already said, the four corner-stones of sci- 

 ence and culture. They should be parts 

 of one over-institution, and should, in my 

 opinion, be one of the chief cares and 

 adornments of the state, being no less es- 

 sential than the police or army and the 

 courts. As the institutions of the city can 

 not now be brought together, we must do 

 the best we can to give the Academy the 

 position it should have. It is immaterial 

 whether the institution be called the New 

 York Academy of Sciences or the Scientific 

 Alliance of New York. We must have an 

 institution that will coordinate the scientific 

 work accomplished in the city. We must 

 have a building for our meetings and 

 other work, and should have as part of it 

 or adjacent to it a club house. The build- 



ing should be situated near the Museum 

 of Natural History, this being without 

 doubt the most central position. Let us 

 get money from millionaires if we can, but 

 it seems to me that for the honor of the 

 city the building should be built by the 

 city. I see no reason why it should not 

 be part of the American Museum. The 

 large lecture halls could be used in com- 

 mon, and we should need only two or 

 three rooms of moderate size, one seating 

 about a hundred people, for ordinary so- 

 ciety meetings, and others for a committee 

 room and a room for the archives and sec- 

 retariats of the different societies. The 

 libraries and any collections there may be 

 could with advantage be merged in those 

 of the museum. Such rooms, if part of a 

 wing of the museum, would cost the city 

 perhaps $100,000. Then we should collect 

 one or two hundred thousand dollars for a 

 club-house to be placed across the street. 

 A few words remain to be said in re- 

 gard to the functions of an academy of 

 sciences under the conditions that obtain 

 at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

 Libraries, laboratories and museums are no 

 longer our charge. We are primarily guilds 

 of scientific men. The organization of 

 science in America toward which I believe 

 we are moving is this: We shall have a 

 national society for each of the sciences; 

 these societies wiU be affiliated and will 

 form the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, which will hold 

 migratory meetings. Winter meetings vdll 

 be held in large centers where all the so- 

 cieties will come together, and summer 

 meetings will be held at points of educa- 

 tional and other interest when the societies 

 will scatter somewhat. The council of the 

 American Association composed of dele- 

 gates from all the societies will be our chief 

 deliberative and legislative body. Our 

 national societies will consist of local sec- 



