THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 221 



the distinction of having carried the flag of their country to a 

 more northerly point than the bravest adventurers of any other 

 nation ; those who have measured the altitude of our most 

 famous mountains, have traced the windings of our coasts and 

 the meanderings of our rivers, have determined the geograph- 

 ical distribution of our fauna and flora, have enlightened us as 

 to the manners and customs of the aboriginal inhabitants of our 

 country, and marked out, even in advance of their coming, the 

 pathway of the storm and the course of the devastating flood — 

 all of them have their homes in the National Capital and are 

 pursuing their investigations in the service of the Government. 

 It was this assemblage in Washington of so many of the 

 most active contributors to geographic science that led to the 

 formation, on January 20, 1888, of the National Geographic So- 

 ciety, which, in pursuance of its constitutional object — the in- 

 crease and diffusion of geographic knowledge — has performed 

 from the first the double function of promptly presenting to the 

 American people the principal results of geographic exploration 

 and research and affording to the geographic workers of the 

 National Capital opportunity for the publication, through an 

 agenc}^ popular and } r et authoritative, of information that might 

 otherwise have lain buried in voluminous reports, more or less 

 dela^ved in publication, and perhaps too technical for popular 

 reading. The National Geographic Society began with 167 mem- 

 bers, and so steady and uninterrupted has been the increase in its 

 membership that, without the exertion of any special or system- 

 atic effort to excite interest in its work, it now has 1,100 active 

 or resident, and 500 corresponding or non-resident, members. 

 In Washington its annual course of lectures ha3 come to be 

 so important a feature of the intellectual life of the city that 

 the capacity of the largest available auditorium is inadequate 

 to its accommodation, and the erection of a building specially 

 adapted to its requirements is in contemplation. Its official 

 journal, The National Geographic Magazine, published for 

 the first eight years at irregular intervals and as the transac- 

 tions of a scientific society rather than as a magazine of general 

 geographic information, has, since January, 1896, been issued 

 monthly, and its increasing circulation among teachers and the 

 general public, independent of the Society's active and corre- 

 sponding membership, has done much to encourage its editors 

 in their efforts to keep it in the front rank of the geographic 

 magazines of the world, and to maintain its position as the 



