Editorial Comment. 135 
Kind of complimentary resolution which has heen euphoniously 
called in the British Association, "butter." 
An appendix to the report of the general secretary, giving 
the excursions and entertainments, fills one page, and the finan- 
cial statement of the permanent secretary five pages. Ten 
pages are devoted to the index. 
T'o recafitiilaic. 
159 pages of presidential and vice-presidential addresses. 
141 pages of abstracts of papers printed, 100 not printed. 
Six pages of speeches and "butter." 
Six pages of financial statement and excursions. 
Two pages of action on scientific matters. 
This is all that is published in the annual volume. 
Each Section has its secretary who is presumed to make 
minutes of all matters acted upon by the Section, and to for- 
ward these notes to the permanent secretary, but they nowhere 
appear in print, and the writer is officially informed that if any 
member of the Association wishes to know what action has been 
taken by the Section he addresses the permanent secretary who 
then looks over the minutes of that Section handed in and, if 
the inquirer be a member of the Section about the action of 
which he seeks information, the permanent secretary writes to 
him giving it. 
No opportunity is given to correct erroneous minutes before 
the Section adjourns, and these minutes, never having been read 
to and approved by the Section, are unreliable. By the next 
meeting there is a complete change of officers and no one has 
at his finger's ends the business of the last session. 
The evil effects of this want of system are most marked, and 
extend to complete confusion as to the state of important mat- 
ters. Having occasion some time ago to look up the history 
of a certain special committee it was found that, owing to the 
complete ignorance of what had been done at previous meetings, 
first, two different committees had been confounded and merged 
into one; second, a committee having been finall}' discharged was 
re-endowed with life on the statement of one of its original 
members that he had a report to present from a committee en- 
tirely outside of the American Association and which could 
not by any possibility report to the Association. Yet this self- 
