SUCCESS WITH SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS. 469 



the visitors, can in some degree requite the debt of hospitality. 

 In their main outlines the conquests of science, in the hands of a 

 skilled exponent, never fail to awaken the enthusiasm of popular 

 audiences. To the essential democracy of the sympathies of re- 

 search, conceived on broad lines, let the thousands testify who 

 have seen Prof. E. S. Morse at the blackboard busy with both 

 hands tracing the development of birds from reptilian forms, or 

 Prof. E. E. Barnard, of Lick Observatory, as he has thrown on 

 the screen images of myriad stars seized in new spheres of space 

 only through the exquisitely sensitive and tireless eye of the 

 camera. 



There is sound policy as well as justice in the sedulous culti- 

 vation of points of contact between every-day interests and the 

 highly specialized work which only remotely may issue in a util- 

 ity. A chemist may be enabled to experiment on di-nitro-sulpho- 

 phenol, and publish his results, because an intelligent manu- 

 facturer has through the labor of chemists found a market for 

 coal-tar products, or furnace slag, once thrown away. The links 

 between science pure and applied might well receive more illustra- 

 tion at scientific gatherings than they commonly do. In carefully 

 maintaining its features of popular instruction in this and other 

 respects, the British Association has done much to win its long- 

 sustained pre-eminence. To what else can that primacy be attrib- 

 uted ? To its continuity of work and supervision the year round. 

 Its committees, some fifty in Dumber, are charged with investi- 

 gations, botanical, zoological, and other ; they confer as to stand- 

 ards of measurement and establish them ; they ascertain the 

 properties of solutions, or consider electrolysis in its physical and 

 chemical bearings. All this labor is constantly enrolling new 

 workers, and enabling the officers to appraise the talents and 

 availability of workers new and old. At the meetings he must 

 be a specialist indeed who does not find his particular study illu- 

 minated in the committee reports. 



Be the object of a society what it may, on the programme of a 

 meeting the main items, of course, are the addresses and papers. 

 When by seasonable solicitation these latter are in hand, printed 

 copies of them, subject to revision, can be distributed prior to 

 their being formally offered. This plan, adopted by the Ameri- 

 can Institute of Mining Engineers and a few other organizations, 

 should become general. It saves time at a session, where only 

 abstracts need be presented ; or, where the writer of a paper can 

 instead of an abstract, give in an extemporaneous word the gist 

 of his manuscript, the printing a paper in advance gives those 

 who are interested in its subject the information needful for 

 comment and criticism. Discussion is of the very essence of a 

 meeting's value, and the institute just named always endeavors 



