January 19, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



99 



our western and southern colleagues may 

 effect similar organization — with the like 

 •connection with the national society— is my 

 .earnest hope. 



Since deciding for it, I have been an 

 earnest and consistent advocate of the plan 

 for holding the annual national meeting 

 in affiliation with that of the American 

 Association. The first effort to bring- about 

 this united action was made in connection 

 with the Washington meeting of the asso- 

 ■ciation, a year after that of the naturalists 

 in Chicago. Washington is a Mecca for 

 every American. The interest of a visit to 

 the national capital alone forms a great 

 inducement to attend any meeting held 

 there, and the attendance at this meeting 

 was good and its program ample. Un- 

 fortunately, though, the meeting places 

 were so scattered that practical difficulty 

 ■was found in getting from place to place, 

 and the program seems not to have been 

 ■such as to give the concentration of special 

 interest that the naturalists originally or- 

 ganized for, although their attendance at 

 the meeting was large. I chanced to be 

 •closely connected with the provisions for 

 "the ensuing St. Louis meeting, and was 

 able to assist the local committee in avoid- 

 ing—so far as was in the power of such a 

 committee— dispersal or clash of the many 

 interests to be represented. Programs, 

 however, are in the hands of the bodies 

 that are to meet and not of a committee 

 that is to provide conveniences for a meet- 

 ing. The affiliating organizations were 

 given dignified place on the general pro- 

 gram of the association, their components 

 were appropriately correlated, and the St. 

 Louis committee had the satisfaction of 

 winning commendation for a nearly ideal 

 provision for the meeting, so far as its own 

 duties went. A persistent gratuitous effort 

 to adjust the meetings of sections and so- 

 cieties of like interests so that they should 

 not clash was also made by the local com- 



mittee, and met with the fullest coopera- 

 tion of the officers of the association. These 

 efforts resulted in very largely removing 

 the difficulties that had been experienced in 

 Washington, and led to the conviction that 

 all clashes might have been removed if a 

 little more care had been given to the prep- 

 aration of special programs with reference 

 to the work of the week as a whole. ' They 

 also showed very clearly that far greater 

 need exists than is generally and practically 

 recognized, for the advance cooperation of 

 the secretaries of all bodies that are to meet 

 together. 



The trial already made, however, had 

 failed to convince the naturalists that the 

 experiment of affiliation promised a full 

 measure of success. The American Society 

 of Natui'alists — I thought at the time 

 largely out of consideration for its presi- 

 dent, who was charged wii^h responsibility 

 for the local arrangements for the St. 

 Louis meeting— decided to meet again with 

 the association; but several of its strongest 

 component societies declined to follow the 

 time-honored' custom of adopting its meet- 

 ing place as theirs, and the purpose of the 

 naturalists not to meet in regular affiliation 

 with the association seemed to be clear to 

 a superficial observer, from what was over- 

 heard where men get together, and from 

 their selection of a separate meeting place 

 for this year, though I understand that a 

 very good joint meeting was held at Phila- 

 delphia last winter, and one is hoped for 

 at New York next year. 



Thus it comes that the Botanists of the 

 Central States have as presiding officer at 

 this meeting a member of their executive 

 committee and not the man whom they have 

 honored by election as their president, who, 

 called by conflicting duties at places as far 

 apart as the Gulf and the Great Lakes, 

 finds it possible to greet and thank his fel- 

 low members only through the voice of an- 

 other — exemplifying in his own person the 



