SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIIT. No. 985 



Academy in its brilliant days under the 

 first empire. 



Nature is so varied in her manifestations and 

 phenomena, and the difE-Culty of elucidating their 

 causes is so great, that many must unite their 

 knowledge and efforts in order to comprehend 

 her and force her to reveal her laws. This union 

 becomes indispensable when the progress of the 

 sciences, multiplying their points of contact, and 

 no longer permitting a single individual to under- 

 stand them all, throws upon a group of investiga- 

 tors the task of furnishing the mutual aid which 

 they demand. Thus the physicist appeals to the 

 mathematician in his efforts to arrive at the gen- 

 eral causes of observed phenomena, and the 

 mathematician in his turn consults the physicist, 

 in order to render his investigations useful by 

 practical applications, and in the hope of opening 

 up new possibilities in mathematics. But the 

 chief advantage of academies is the philosophic 

 spirit which must develop within them, thence dif- 

 fusing itself throughout the nation and permeating 

 every interest. The isolated scholar may yield 

 with impunity to the tendencies of the systema- 

 tist, since he hears only from afar the criticism 

 that he arouses. But in an academy the impact 

 of such tendencies ends in their destruction, and 

 the desire for mutual conviction necessarily es- 

 tablishes the rule of admitting only the results of 

 observation and calculation. Furthermore, ex- 

 perience has shown that since the origin of acad- 

 emies the true spirit of philosophy has prevailed. 

 By setting the example of submitting everything 

 to the test of severe logic, they have overthrown 

 the preconceived notions which too long domi- 

 nated science, and were shared by the ablest 

 minds of previous centuries. Their useful influ- 

 ence on public opinion has dissipated errors 

 greeted in our own time with an enthusiasm 

 which would have perpetuated them in earlier 

 days. Equally removed from the credulity which 

 denies nothing and the conservatism which would 

 reject everything that departs from accepted 

 ideas, they , have at all times wisely awaited the 

 result of observation and experiment on difficult 

 questions and unusual phenomena, promoting 

 them by prizes and by their own researches. 

 Measuring their approval no less by the greatness 

 and difficulty of a discovery than by its immediate 

 utility, and convinced, by many examples, that 

 what appears to be least fruitful may ultimately 

 yield important consequences, they have encour- 

 aged the pursuit of truth in all fields, excluding 



only those which the limitations of the human 

 understanding render forever iaaccessible. 

 Finally, we owe to them those great theories, ele- 

 vated by their generality above the comprehen- 

 sion of the layman, which through numerous ap- 

 plications to natural phenomena and the arts, 

 have become inexhaustible sources of happiness 

 and enlightenment. Wise governments, convinced 

 of the usefulness of scientific societies, and re- 

 garding them as one of the principal causes of 

 the glory and prosperity of empires, have estab- 

 lished such bodies in their very midst, in order 

 to profit by their counsel, which has often 

 brought lasting benefits.*^ 



George Ellert Hale 



TSE BALTIMORE MEETING OF TEE NA- 

 TIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



The JSTational Academy of Sciences will 

 meet November 18 and 19 at the Johns Hop- 

 kins University, Baltimore. The council will 

 meet the evening before; and on these two 

 dates there will be public sessions with papers 

 by members of the academy and others. 



A preliminary program of these papers is 

 as follows : 



Henry Fairfield Osborn: Final Results on 



the Phylogeny or Lines of Descent in the 



Titanotheres. 

 Thomas H. Morgan: The Constitution of the 



Chromosomes as Indicated hy the Heredity 



of Linked Characters. 



The paper is a discussion of recent dis- 

 coveries in sex-linked inheritance and their 

 bearing on the mechanism of heredity and the 

 constitution of the chromosomes. Starting 

 with the assumption that Mendel's law of 

 segregation finds a plausible explanation in 

 the processes known to occur in the ripening 

 of the egg and sperm, an attempt is made to 

 analyze the ratios that appear in sex-linked 

 inheritance — ratios that depart from those that 

 rest on the assumption of independent assort- ■:'^ 

 ment of pairs of characters. It is shown how 

 these departures find a reasonable explanation 

 on the assumption that interchange takes 

 place between members of the same pair of 

 chromosomes. The Mendelian ratios, on the 



*2 ' ' Exposition du Systeme du Monde, ' ' Oeuvres, 

 Vol. VI., p. 418. 



