December 27, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



897 



Cahokia Mound of Madison County," of 

 which the writer had just completed a sur- 

 vey; one by Professor Burrill on "Some 

 Vegetable Poisons, ' ' and one by Mr. Forbes 

 on "The First Food of the White-fish." 

 Professor N. C. Ricker, of the university, 

 read a paper on "The 'Blue Process' of 

 Copying by Photography," just coming 

 into use for the duplication of papers and 

 drawings; James Forsythe, of Champaign, 

 gave an account of the life history of a 

 jellyfish studied by him at Beaufort, S. C. ; 

 Dr. Evans gave a paper on "The Subter- 

 ranean Waters of the Northwest"— a dis- 

 cussion of the origin of the artesian waters 

 of northern Illinois and southern Wiscon- 

 sin; Mr. A. B. Seymoi;r, botanist to the 

 State Laboratory of Natural History, read 

 a paper on "Field Work on Parasitic 

 Fungi ' ' ; Mr. Cyrus W. Butler, also a state 

 laboratoiy assistant, gave some zoological 

 notes from the field-book of a naturalist; 

 J. A. Armstrong presented an abstract of 

 the papers read at a recent meeting of the 

 University Natural History Society; and 

 Professor Rolf e read brief papers on ' ' Ex- 

 periments with Germinating Seeds," and 

 on "The Rings of Wood as indicating the 

 Growth of Trees." 



In 1880 the question of an enlargement 

 of the field of the society to include the 

 physical and mathematical sciences came 

 up for discussion, and was decided nega- 

 tively, on the ground that the interests 

 represented by physicists, chemists and 

 mathematicians were so separate from 

 those of the naturalists that a common 

 society was not desirable — a conclusion 

 perhaps warranted in view of the kind of 

 naturalists that most of us were. 



In 1882, when the treasurer reported a 

 balance of $150 in his hands and $122 more 

 due from members in annual fees, the ques- 

 tion of a publication of papers and pro- 

 ceedings was brought forward in the secre- 

 tary's report and referred to a committee; 



but no steps were taken to that end on the 

 ground that it was not desirable to mul- 

 tiply centers of publication unnecessarily, 

 and that there was no lack of opportunity 

 to publish really valuable papers in estab- 

 lished periodicals. 



Following upon these conclusions, and 

 possibly in part because of them, the paid- 

 up membership of the society began to 

 decline. Indeed, of the sixty-six persons 

 who completed their membership during 

 the first year, thirty-nine did not continue 

 their payments thereafter, and at the end 

 of the second year the actual paid-up mem- 

 bership was fiftj'-two. The following year 

 it was fifty-four, then fifty-two, then forty- 

 three and finally, in 1884, it fell to twenty- 

 seven. The executive committee took these 

 facts to indicate that there was at the time 

 no sufficiently general and urgent desire 

 for the permanent maintenance of a society 

 of this description to warrant its continu- 

 ance, and after the Jacksonville meeting 

 of 1885, which passed without a formal 

 election of officers, it was not called to- 

 gether again. 



And now I hardly need say that, after 

 the lapse of twenty-two years of amazing 

 progress in science and in scientific educa- 

 tion, an entirely new situation again exists 

 in Illinois— one so radically different from 

 that of the early eighties that the conclu- 

 sions then reached have no very important 

 bearing on our problem of to-day. There 

 are more college specialists here to-day 

 from one department of one institution 

 than there were in our whole membership 

 in 1879. Indeed, that list is not so long 

 that I can not give it to you now, to em- 

 phasize the contrast. It consisted of J. D. 

 Conley, of Carlinville; T. J. Burrill, of 

 Urbana; S. H. Peabody, of Champaign; 

 Rev. Francis X. Shulak, of St. Ignatius 

 College, and E. S. Bastin, of the old Uni- 

 versity of Chicago— five men, one of whom, 

 Dr. Bastin, did not meet with us again. 



