EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 
241 
ties, like those of organisms and of other institutions, result 
from efforts toward adjustment to environment and repre¬ 
sent the survival of the fittest through natural selection ; 
that the variation indicates evolution in a certain definite 
direction; and that failure on the part of their founders to 
recognize the conditions of success or failure of serials has 
never prevented evolution toward the optimum form and 
character. 
Methods of fixing Responsibility and their Evolution. 
In all the societies studied, the more important papers are 
published under the names of authors who thereby assume 
personal responsibility for statements of fact and expres¬ 
sions of opinion; but the responsibility for the publications 
does not end here. Every society is in itself or through 
its committees or other officers a professed censor of the 
papers read at its meetings or published under its auspices 
and therefore assumes a limited responsibility for all its 
publications, however conspicuous the type of the misleading 
and obsolescent disclaimer of responsibility displayed upon 
its title-pages. Moreover, in most societies the administra¬ 
tive records and reports of discussion and the abstracts of 
oral communications are prepared and arranged in greater 
or less part by officers of the society, and for all such work the 
society is responsible through its accredited officers. Again, 
it is the society, in itself or through its committees or other 
officers, that deals with printers and engravers, prepares copy, 
revises proofs, rejects or accepts engravings, and superintends 
the mechanical part of publication generally ; and so in 
another way the society incurs responsibility for its publi¬ 
cations. 
Now, it is interesting to note that, concurrently with the 
change in form and plan of publication, there has been a 
perceptibile movement in the direction of fixing and clearly 
setting forth the responsibility for the editorial and admin¬ 
istrative part of the publications. 
In the American Society of Civil Engineers the various 
