SCIENCE. 



109 



SCIENCE: 



A Weekly Record of Scientific 

 Progress. 



JOHN MICHELS, Editor. 



Published at 



229 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 



P. O. Box 3838. 



SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1880. 



THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



We cordially congratulate the managers of the Amer- 

 ican. Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 on the very thorough success which has attended its 

 twenty-ninth annual meeting, held last week at Boston. 

 We have in this issue devoted nearly the whole 

 of our space to chronicling its proceedings, and we 

 draw special attention to the masterly address of the 

 retiring President, Professor George F. Barker, which 

 we present in full. 



The address of welcome delivered by the venerable 

 Professor William B. Rogers, L. L. D., will also be 

 read with interest ; he traces the history of the Asso- 

 ciation from its cradle, when it was called the Asso- 

 ciation of American Naturalists and Geologists, to 

 its high position at this moment, when, as he 

 hopefully said, it may be even fairly on its 

 way to overtake the British Association, which has 

 a roll of membership of 3,500 persons, and an income 

 of $12,500, and at the same time 1,000 life members. 

 The success of the present meeting, and the addi- 

 tion of nearly six hundred new members, would seem 

 to warrant the most brilliant anticipations for the 

 future of the Association • and if its members follow 

 the excellent advice of Professor Rogers, and do what- 

 ever is in their power to " quicken scientific thought, 

 to accumulate scientific facts and investigate scien- 

 tific laws," and generally to advance science, the 

 result must elevate this Association to a position 

 ' second to no other in the civilized world. 



We are also reminded by Professor Rogers that 

 while the chief function of the Association is to ad- 

 vance the progress of science; the term advance- 

 ment necessarily implies diffusion, it would, therefore, 

 appear an appropriate moment to speak of the value 

 of this Journal in this connection. In addition to 

 our report in this issue the addresses of Professor 



Hall, of Washington, and Professor Agassiz will 

 be published in full. Of the two hundred and 

 eighty papers read before the Association, some 

 will be published by us verbatim, commencing next 

 week with that of Mr. Alexander Graham Bell on his 

 new instrument, the Photophone, illustrated with 

 twelve drawings, placed at our disposal by Mr. Bell; 

 and of the other papers, we hope to give extracts of 

 the most important. 



If, then, the advancement of science necessarily 

 implies its diffusion, we may, with justice, claim for 

 this journal some credit in the great work, as Professor 

 Rogers said, in sowing the seeds of science as widely 

 as possible through the world, waking up in all quar- 

 ters those latent spirits, whose inborn talent and ten- 

 dencies will hereafter blossom and fructify in scientific 

 results. 



AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE- 

 MENT OF SCIENCE. 



The twenty-ninth meeting of this Association met at 

 Boston, Mass., on the 25th of last month, under the presi- 

 dency of Professor Lewis H. Morgan, of Rochester, N. Y. 



Professor George F. Barker having called the meeting to 

 order, and introduced the President elect, the proceedings 

 commenced by an address of welcome from Professor Wil- 

 liam B. Rogers, L. L. D., President of the Massachusetts 

 Institute of Technology. After a few preliminary remarks, 

 Professor Rogers continued as follows: 



The American Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

 ence has never yet held a meeting in this city of Franklin, 

 and I may say, also, the city of Bowditch, not to mention 

 the long line of other scientific worthies, prominent among 

 whom is our great instructor, our adopted citizen, Louis 

 Agassiz. It seems a fitting place for such an association to 

 convene. Its spirit, its institutions, its history, its habits 

 and sympathies, all favor such a reunion between its citi- 

 zens and the advocates and votaries of science. It was my 

 good fortune, if it is a good fortune of any man to be able 

 to date back his life for a long period of years, to have 

 been familiar with the cradle of this institution in the form 

 in which it first presented itself as the Association of Ameri- 

 can Naturalists and Geologists. This, however, was not 

 by any means the earliest congress of science assembled in 

 the world. The origination of this thought of a parlia- 

 mentary annual meeting of scientific men seems properly 

 to belong to a great German philosopher and speculator (?), 

 who as early as 1822 organized the German Association for 

 the Advancement of Science. For eight or nine years this 

 example was not followed, but in 1S31 Brewster, aided by 

 Brougham, established the great British Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, which we are to regard as 

 the parent institution from which we have sprung. This 

 British association, meeting in the ancient city of York in 

 1831, had its annual assemblings for a series of years in all 

 the gre't capitals and some of the secondary cities in Great 

 Britain. Faithfully administering to the needs and stimu- 

 lating the energies of scientific inquiry, and publishing its 

 annual solid quarto, which is a library representing the 

 progress of physical and natural science of that time com- 

 parable to any that can be presented on the shelves of any 

 collection of books in the world. Now this British asso- 

 ciation is holding to-day its fiftieth annual meeting; and 

 now, in the afternoon of its assembling, I can imagine 

 clearly in my mind's eye some of those great dignitaries of 

 science that are there assembled. I can think of Sir Joseph 

 Hooker, of Sir William Thomson, of Huxley, of Tyndal, 

 of Balfour Stewart, and of all the great worthies that illus- 

 trate physical, mathematical and natural science for the last 

 generation ; and as I look back on the records preceding 



