468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



executive board, by whatever name it may be called, should be a 

 body of competent, resourceful, and hard-working men. Their 

 main task is to insure good addresses and papers ; however little 

 of a speechmaker a man may be, he always talks willingly and 

 acceptably on a subject he has mastered and which is dear to his 

 heart ; for papers a selection is usually feasible from manuscripts 

 voluntarily offered, but it is ever found that the one way to have 

 interesting themes treated by the busy people who have a first- 

 hand knowledge of them is by tactful and timely solicitation. 



How grievously have audiences, learned and unlearned, suf- 

 fered from the coarseness of the sieve through which papers are 

 commonly sifted ! At the Toronto meeting of the American As- 

 sociation, in 1889, I heard a paper which, admittedly, had been 

 published five years before. It is a case all too frequent that a 

 paper is prolix or trivial, or covers ground thoroughly familiar, 

 or that its writer imagines dilution to be simplification. A very 

 ordinary offense is the technical description or argument which 

 wears its bones outside and spares its victims no jot of anatom- 

 ical detail. In securing contributions of high value the American 

 Economical Association sets a shining example. Jointly with 

 the International Statistical Institute it will hold sessions in Chi- 

 cago from September 9th to 16th ; all the principal papers were 

 arranged for months ago by the committee in charge. When a 

 writer is in this way given abundant time to prepare his manu- 

 script he can do justice to the public and to himself ; he has op- 

 portunity to secure publication in an appropriate journal or re- 

 view, an important point to people who have only their pens to 

 live by.. The presidents of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science are chosen two years and the presidents 

 of its sections one year before the delivery of their addresses; 

 with this ample time for elaboration and revision contributions 

 to scientific literature of the highest rank have been secured. At 

 the Boston meeting of 1880, the most interesting ever held by 

 the association, Prof. George F. Barker gave his address on Mod- 

 ern Aspects of the Life Question, a luminous summary of prog- 

 ress in physical, physiological, and psychological science, which, 

 enriched with its numerous references, can still serve the student 

 as a guide post. Prof. S. P. Langley, at Cleveland in 1888, out- 

 lined in masterly fashion the history of the doctrine of radiant 

 energy. Two years later, at Indianapolis, Dr. Frank Baker traced 

 The Ascent of Man in an address which is a model scientific 

 statement made plain and clear. While its addresses from the 

 chair have usually been excellent, in providing popular lectures 

 the association has left much to be desired. Here it has a good 

 deal to learn from its British namesake, which well understands 

 how a discourse, by interesting the community visited as well as 



