Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/857

Rh a larger place; nor will this involve the least diminution, but rather an increase, in its other aspects of usefulness.

As to how this end may be attained, a few closing hints may be offered. Every meeting of the association should aim to leave a distinct impress on the community where it is held. In a general way, as we have said, this has been done; but it has been rather incidental than designed. Every community has its limited circle of science-lovers, with perhaps a local society, little known, however, and little recognized, amid the interests of business and politics; it has its library and museum, its colleges and high schools, often struggling, with limited facilities, to arouse or to maintain an interest in scientific culture. All such local agencies should receive a definite accession of strength from a visit of the association; this result should be distinctly held in view as one of the objects of the meeting, and the city or town should find itself not only stirred and quickened by the temporary assemblage of scientists and scholars, but permanently enriched and uplifted. The association might well have a special committee, composed of one or two representatives from each of its sections, whose function should be to ascertain in advance the status of local societies and institutions in the place of meeting, and provide for some enduring advantage to them, as a memorial of the gathering and a return for the courtesies and hospitalities of the community. What forms such action should take would depend altogether upon local conditions, and would vary greatly in consequence thereof; but such a policy could not fail of important advantages to the cities visited and conduce to the strength and prosperity of the association.

In the matter of lectures, too, the association can accomplish much. The custom referred to, of giving one or more such lectures by leading members of the body to the people of the city, should be carefully maintained at each meeting. The recent case of Boston was exceptional in its conditions, but ordinarily this should be one of the "strong points." The character of the lectures should be high, and yet popular in the best sense; not merely interesting or attractive, but instructive. There are many important departments of science bearing upon practical questions—of health, of social conditions, of public advantage—upon which either little is generally known or the partial knowledge derived from magazines, newspapers, and irresponsible lecturers is crude and unreliable. To furnish a clear, careful, and "up-to-date" presentation of some subjects of this kind, in a form at once interesting and accurate, should form a part of every meeting, and would be highly valued by the community. Such addresses would probably be widely published by the higher-class newspapers of the country, and would not only be useful to the