123 Editorial Comment. 
Summing all this six days work up it amounts to this: The 
first day is consumed in organizing and listening to addresses; 
the sixth day is consumed in electing officers and winding up 
the affairs of the meeting. Of the remaining four days one is 
entirely given up to excursions; another is half given up to the 
same purpose. Or in other words thirteen hours are given to 
organizing and disorganizing; sixteen hours to excursions dur- 
ing the day, and (at a most liberal estimate) fifteen hours and 
a half are devoted to the business which has ostensibly called 
this crowd of people together from distant parts of this and 
sometimes of other continents. That is to say, counting as the 
average one day and a half, which it has taken them to reach 
the place of meeting, and the same time to get home, there have 
been spent out of 216 hours in all \'^]/, hours in the discussion 
of subjects of science. 
Taking the Buffalo meeting of 18S6 as a sample of the num- 
ber of papers which are disposed of at an ordinary meeting at 
the present time, it will be found that excluding the addresses 
of the vice-presidents, there were papers read as follows: 
Read. Read by title. 
Section A. ( Mathematics and Astronomy; 11 13 
•' B. (Physics) 19 8 
C. (Chemistry) — 30 
" D. (Mechanical Science) 13 6 
" E. (Geolosjy and Geography) .36 8 
" F. (Biology) 19 17 
" H. (Anthropology) 15 13 
" I. (Economic Science and Statistics) 5 5 
There were thus 119 papers considered in eight Sections, or 
about an average of 15 to a Section, under better auspices than 
could have been attained by printing them in a scientific journal. 
The reading and discussion of each of the papers could have 
occupied one hour had they all been of equal length and interest. 
But they were not. Some of the papers took an hour each in 
the reading, and in some of the Sections ( notable that of Geology 
and Geography) an average of less than half an hour apiece 
was awarded to the reading and discussion of each paper. When 
one looks at the titles and names of authors this time will be 
sure to be .absurdly inadequate to the purpose. Again icx) 
papers were never read at all, and only secured the empty 
honor of being read and printed by title, though it would be 
hard to imagine what purpose is served by such a disposition. 
Two hundred and sixteen hours at an expense of say fifty 
