- 
1897.] Editor’s Table. 897 
change of thought. To such a meeting the term ‘international’ seems 
almost misapplied. It may rather be described as a family gathering, 
in which our relatives, more or less distant in blood, hut still intimately 
connected with us in language, literature and habit of thought, have 
spontaneously arr:nged to take part.” 
Our space will not allow us to print a list of the papers presented 
nor to reproduce in full the various valuable addresses given. Any 
summary or abstract would do injustice to some of the most scholarly 
summaries of progress which we have ever known. As these are pre- 
sented in full in both Science and Nature, the limitations of our pages 
are the less to be regretted. We may, however, indulge in a few notes 
Upon matters suggested by the meetings and by the addresses given. 
Naturally the contrasting features of the two associations come first 
to mind. In some respects our association seems the better, in others 
we have something to learn from our transatlantic cousins; while in 
still other features the two organizations are essentially identical. 
Thus both are subdivided into sections (the sections, however, not hav- 
ing the same limits in the two). These sections listen to papers and to 
Presidential Addresses, and the association, as a whole, is offered num- 
erous entertainments, junkets, and the like, by its hosts. 
It is not necessary to detail the points in which we think our own 
association is the better, but we may be pardoned if we point out some 
features in which we think the British Association superior to our 
own. ' 
In the first place the Presidental Addresses delivered before the 
British Association strike us as, on the whole, better than those with 
which our audiences are greeted. While now and then an American 
address will rise to as high a standard as anything that Great Britain 
can boast, theirs are on the average the more thoughtful and scholarly, 
‘While ours too often have a prefunctory air and lack in breath of view. 
In personnel of those who attend, the British Association again has 
the advantage. In England it is the fashion to attend these annual 
meetings, and no one there has reached such a pinnacle of greatness 
that he can afford to ignore or neglect this national society. As a re- 
sult, at their gatherings one can be reasonably certain of meeting most 
of those who are the leaders in English scientific thought. In Amer- 
tea, on the other hand. the tendency is in the other direction. It would 
an easy matter to give a considerable list of names of those promi- 
nent in American science, whose faces are never seen at the association 
Meetings. 
. 
