PHILOSOPHY AND SPECIALTIES. 7 
vice versa. Though this supposition may be erroneous, its 
practical effect is so strong that every artist must adopt and 
adhere to a certain line of production. 
But there is no need of examples from without to show 
the progress of specialization. Nine years ago the Philo¬ 
sophical Society was the only scientific society in Washing¬ 
ton, and it embraced all branches of science. Now we are in 
the midst of a centrifugal storm—an anticyclone, or perhaps 
a volcanic eruption of societies. To be still more generous 
in giving choice of metaphors, it seems that each season 
brings forth a new organism from the parent stem, until 
danger is apprehended that fissiparous growths may cumber 
the field to the common injury. 
A severe critic might carp at the definition by some of the 
younger societies of their aims and scope as not being ex¬ 
plicitly in the line of specialization. He might suggest that 
their several preempted claims were too broad, hut might 
explain that tendency by the Washington endemic, the char¬ 
acteristic symptom of which is that every department and 
bureau of the National Government considers every other 
department and bureau to be properly its subordinate. It 
is not easy for an anthropologic and a biologic society to 
set forth their respective claims without mutually overlap¬ 
ping each other’s territory, and some debatable ground or 
free zone must be allowed between them; hut the youngest 
of the societies, the Geographic, like some other young organ¬ 
isms, seems to be rapacious. It divides its functions into 
“ Geography of the Land,” “ of the Air,” “ of the Sea,” and 
“ of Life.” In this grasp would surely be included all geol¬ 
ogy, biology, and meteorology, and perhaps astronomy, his¬ 
tory, biography, and sociology—in fact, all topics relating 
to this world, down to tariff for revenue or protection and 
the fisheries imbroglio. Yet this comprehension is not with¬ 
out defense, since proper commercial relations and prosperous 
food-supplies act markedly upon the changes and activities 
of populations that modify the earth’s surface. The German 
term for this branch of science is anthrop-geography, and 
