556 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
earlier years we met in the lectore-room of the National Museum, and, 
as is so often the case in the history of societies, the meetings during the 
first two or three years after organization were perhaps more numerously 
and more enthusiastically attended than they have been since. The his¬ 
tory of the Society fully justifies the wisdom of organizing as an inde¬ 
pendent body. At present we have 195 members, of whom 154 are active 
and 44 corresponding. From the beginning it was decided not to make 
much effort to publish an elaborate volume of proceedings, on the ground 
that, as most of the members were connected in some way with the scien¬ 
tific work of the Government, the more important communications would 
find other avenues for publication. It thus results that the proceedings 
have been confined very largely to the publication of the annual addresses 
of the presidents, which are delivered at a special meeting following the 
annual meeting. It has become an unwritten law of the Society that the 
president shall be reelected for a second term, and hence it comes that 
during the twelve years of its existence the Society has had but six presi¬ 
dents, and after honoring in this way the more illustrious of its members 
has been obliged to turn to the less deserving. Our first president was 
Theodore N. Gill, who served us during 1881- 82. Following him at 
intervals of two years were 0. A. White, G. Brown Goode (your present 
worthy president), W. H. Dali, Lester F. Ward, and C. Hart Merriam. 
If I should attempt to indicate the characteristics which have more 
particularly distinguished the Biological Society, I think I might say, 
without boastfulness, that no other organization has done more during 
the time of its existence for American biology. Its work has been re¬ 
markable also for its original character. Thus in reference to our extreme 
northwest Pacific coast and our Alaskan possessions we have been par¬ 
ticularly fortunate in the amount of information that has been received, 
and this will not surprise you when I say that, in addition to special 
papers by others, including Dr. Merriam and Mr. Palmer, we have had 
repeated communications by Messrs. Dali and Henry W. Elliott, giving 
the results of their rich experiences in these regions. In ichthyology the 
work of the Society has also been most interesting, not only from the 
economic side, but from the systematic, for we have had a large number 
of communications from members of the Fish Commission, and particu¬ 
larly a number of learned and critical papers on the classification of fishes 
by Dr. Gill. In paleontology the communications have been equally rich 
and original, as might be expected with men like White, Dali, Walcott, 
and others to draw from on the zoological and Professor Ward from the 
botanical side, while Dr. White dealt more particularly in his annual 
addresses with certain phases in the geological history of the North Amer¬ 
ican continent, biologically considered, and with the application of biol¬ 
ogy to geological history. In conchology we have had not only some 
notable communications, but Mr. Dali’s annual addresses dealt with the 
conditions under which deep-sea mollusks exist and with the work and 
writings of the more notable American conchologists. In botany we 
have had many notable papers, from the economical and horticultural 
