12 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE Vol. XXIV, 1917 
lows. Many of the Associates have availed themselves of this 
privilege and their names will be presented at the business ses- 
sion. The Treasurer and the Secretary have continued their 
hurry-up campaign among those members who from one cause 
or another have grown lax in their interest in the Academy, The 
program which you have received will show that the members of 
the Academy have been busily engaged in their chosen lines of 
research, and that their work has been far from fruitless or pur- 
poseless. It may be of interest to recall that when the Academy 
met with Drake in 1907 twenty-three papers were presented. 
When the Academy returned to Drake last year eighty-five titles 
were on the program. When we met with Grinnell in 1910 
thirty papers was the maximum. Today there are already eighty- 
five titles printed on the program and others will be presented 
at this meeting. No doubt this increase represents in a very ac- 
curate way both the growth of scientific work in the state and the 
enlarged interest in the Iowa Academy of Science and apprecia- 
tion of the important place it fills in the scientific world. 
A large part of the work of the Secretary is editorial and 
much of his attention and effort must of necessity be directed 
in editorial channels. Upon liis shoulders rests the responsibility 
for the creditable appearance of the published Proceedings arid 
upon his shoulders, likewise, will fall the whip of censure for 
whatever shortcomings may be evident. One who has had no 
experience in the process of editing and publishing such a book 
as our Proceedings can not realize the amount of work neces- 
sary nor the details to which attention must be given. It is in 
the power of every contributor to the Proceedings, however, to 
assist in the work by seeing to it that his paper is correct in all 
its details. Such a paper is a joy to the editor, and to the printer 
as well. Experience has led me to feel confident that there is 
in this Academy a host of productive workers whose published 
contributions would have real literary value if they were pre- 
pared with the care that the merit of the subject would justify. 
We all realize that a subject of considerable worth may be so 
abused by the literary mistreatment which it receives in its in- 
troduction to the reading public that no one recognizes its true 
value and no one appreciates the ability of its progenitor. And 
yet in the face of this situation, to what extent does every author 
live up to his realization of his obligation to his subject, to the 
Academy and to the scientific world? This is a question to which 
