PROCEEDINGS. 
445 
The General Committee has held 16 meetings in all—15 reg¬ 
ular and 1 special—the average attendance at which was 11, the 
maximum being 22 and the minimum 8. 
Sixteen meetings of the Society have been held, 14 of which 
were devoted to reading and discussion of papers, 1 to the Pres¬ 
ident’s annual address, and 1 to the annual reports and.election 
of officers. The average attendance at the 14 meetings was 29. 
Thirty-one separate papers were presented by 23 different 
members and 1 guest, and 3 biographies of deceased members, 
namely, James Clark Welling, Robert Stanton Avery, and Gar¬ 
rick Mallery, were read. 
All meetings have been held in the Assembly Hall of the 
Cosmos Club, except that of December 6, which, being the 
occasion of the annual address of the President, William H. 
Dali, was held in the lecture-room of the Columbian University 
by the courtesy of the authorities. 
On February 20 the organization of the Joint Commission of 
the Scientific Societies of this city, which was effected originally 
in 1888, was made more comprehensive by the adoption of a 
new constitution and the enlargement of the Commission to 
include the entire councils or governing bodies of the respective 
societies. Previously the Commission consisted of three dele¬ 
gates from each of the societies. 
The original Commission represented five societies, namely, 
the Anthropological, Biological, Chemical, National Geographic, 
and Philosophical. The present Commission includes, in addi¬ 
tion to these, the Entomological and Geological societies, making 
seven in all. A joint directory is published, and other arrange¬ 
ments are made from time to time of general interest and value 
in the form of joint meetings for special purposes and joint con¬ 
sideration of questions of common interest to the several societies. 
On the 17th of April a meeting of the secretaries of these so¬ 
cieties, called by the President of the Joint Commission, heard 
and considered favorably a request by Prof. J. McK. Cattell, 
editor of Science, that the secretaries should furnish from time 
to time, for publication in that journal, abstracts of the proceed¬ 
ings of the societies. This is being done by some, if not all, of 
the other societies, and recently the General Committee of this 
Society has authorized the Secretary to send to Science the titles 
of papers presented and names of the authors, and to forward 
