1894.] Scientific News. ` 553 
The Wollaston medal of the Geological Society of London, has been 
given to Prof. K. A. Zittel, the Palzontologist of Munich. 
The Proposed Division of the National Academy of 
Sciences.—The following letter explains itself. To the Committee 
appointed by the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, April, 1892, 
“to report such proposed modifications of the Constitution and By- 
Laws of the Academy as are likely in their judgment to increase its 
efficiency ” ete., of which Prof. T. C. Mendenhall is chairman ; 
Gentlemen: I take the liberty of making some suggestions with 
reference to the classification of the Academy into divisions, which will 
in the writer’s estimation “increase its efficiency” ete. This increase 
of efficiency is, in the writer’s view, chiefly to be accomplished at pres- 
ent, by electing to membership persons competent in their professions, 
in such proportionate numbers as to represent properly those profes- 
sions, as at present cultivated in the United States. At present the dis- 
proportion of membership in favor of some departments, and to the 
prejudice of other departments is great, as the following figures show. 
Of members which represent the physical sciences, we have now, accord- 
ing to the figures presented at the late meeting, (April, 1894), by your 
committee, 58; while but 31 represent the Natural Sciences. If the 
members which represent the proposed section F be added to the divi- 
sion of Natural Sciences, (which they should not be in a correct classi- 
fication) the latter will include 39 members as compared with 58. 
The Academy adopted, at its late meeting of April, 1894, two classes, 
I and II, those of the Physical and Natural Sciences. The former in- 
- eludes the proposed sections A, B, and C, of the committees original 
plan; and the latter the proposed classes D, E, and F, of that plan. 
This primary division appears to me to be more convenient in practice 
than a closer subdivision, for the reason that a nearly equal division of 
membership between those two classes accords more nearly with the 
relative numbers of cultivators of those sciences in this country and in 
the world generally, than any other divisions that can be proposed. 
As a matter of fact the cultivators of the Natural Sciences are more 
numerous than those of the Physical Sciences, as the relative extent of 
the literature of the two divisions indicates. I do not suggest that this 
preponderance of the Natural Sciences shall be represented in the Na- 
tional Academy, but that there shall be an equality of representation 
of the two. Ina closer subdivision the relative numbers of members of 
each division is more likely to be variable, or for various reasons more 
difficult to ascertain, and thus more likely to cause dissatisfaction from 
time to time. 
