SUCCESS WITH SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS. 465 



credited to tlie American Forestry Association, a comparatively 

 small body, which, in its peregrinations north and south, and east 

 and west, has brought many thousands of people to its way of 

 thinking, and with them not a few of their lawmakers. In 1891 

 Congress authorized the President to set apart as a reservation 

 any public land wholly or in part covered with trees; in two 

 years this law has recovered tracts aggregating twelve million 

 acres. For the proper forestry administration of these and other 

 lands of the Federal Government the association is the only or- 

 ganized means of agitation in the country. Perhaps one reason 

 why the American Social Science Association does not exert the 

 influence it merits is that its gatherings always take place in 

 Saratoga ; this, too, while its British prototype observes the rule 

 of itineracy. Even the National Academy of Sciences, whose in- 

 vestigations are of the most recondite order, migrates for one of 

 its semi-annual meetings. To take the example of an industrial 

 organization that keeps to the road let the National Electric Light 

 Association be named: its tours throughout the land serve to 

 refresh men devoted to an arduous profession ; in their examina- 

 tion, on these tours, of all kinds of electrical installations practice 

 everywhere tends to rise to the level of the best ; and wherever 

 the association goes it gives a local stimulus to the interest in 

 Nature's master force in all that it means for the relief of toil and 

 the refinement of life. When an organization to promote science 

 pure or applied is put on wheels another advantage arises : its 

 visits to a chain of towns and cities rarely fail to bring out a good 

 deal of amateur talent — confirming tastes and talents which do 

 much to cheer their possessors amid the drudgery of office or 

 shop. The trained inquirer may look askance at the amateur, but 

 it is well to remember that Dr. William Huggins, the President 

 of the British Association in 1891, an astronomer who has notably 

 furthered the science and art of stellar spectroscopy, calls him- 

 self but an amateur ; Mr. Thomas D. Anderson, of Edinburgh, 

 another amateur, last year discovered the new star in Auriga so 

 earnestly discussed as probably confirming the meteoritic hy- 

 pothesis of stellar accretions ; an amateur, too, it was who, in the 

 person of James Prescott Joule, first ascertained the mechanical 

 equivalent of heat, the basis of the doctrine of the conservation of 

 energy. In no infrequent case an intellectual man of leisure, who 

 has not yet formed habits of idleness, has had a genuine and last- 

 ing interest aroused by the advent of a learned or scientific society 

 in his neighborhood. 



While the advancement of science is the stated purpose of the 

 American Association, it has accomplished much else that could 

 ill have been spared. It has periodically brought together old 

 friends whom the exigencies of professional or business careers 



tol. xliii. — 32 



