Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/872

850 it to some ill-advised attempt we are making to improve on natural institutions. Science has done much for the world in the past, but it has yet to do much more. It will yet give us a light to our feet in matters educational and political, and will liberate us from many of the yokes and trammels we have foolishly imposed upon ourselves. Mankind will then look into the face of Nature and see in it a new beneficence and brighter promises for the future of the race.

good attendance, with an unusually large proportion of men prominent in science, and most cordial welcome and painstaking care of the members by the Ohio Sate University and the citizens of Columbus, combined to make the forty-eighth annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science a most enjoyable and instructive one. The two features of the meeting which seem to deserve the most attention are: First, the tendency which was shown in every section to direct the papers and discussions to practical subjects, so that all could participate in the proceedings and each member feel justified in having a word to say in them; and, secondly, the perfect cordiality with which the association was received and the assiduous attention with which it was taken care of by the local committee. The smaller and apparently less important details, but at the same time those which so largely determine one's comfort in a strange community, were thoughtfully arranged, and to this alone much of the success of the meeting was due. The numerous excursions were not only exceedingly enjoyable, but were arranged in every case primarily for their instructive and scientific features, and an Easterner, at any rate, could not take any of them without learning something. Another feature of the meeting that was especially satisfactory was the possibility it afforded for the younger workers in science to meet their elders, who had hitherto led the way—who were present, as we have already said, in larger proportion than usual. The importance of this feature, as President Orton pointed out in these pages a few months ago, can not be overestimated. The instruction and encouragement which a new worker in the scientific field gains from a personal acquaintance with the older men who have already achieved success and reputation in his branch of science are obvious enough. With the increasing specialization which modern research is making absolutely unavoidable, the social feature of the annual gathering of such a company of scientists is coming to be its most important function. A slight extension of it might very readily lead to the adoption of a specific policy by the several sections of devoting at least a part of their time to such a general statement of what has been accomplished in their department or to some especially important work of general interest that some of the members have been engaged in as would be most instructive to the members of the other sections. In the earlier meetings of the association the sectional chairmen often made such presentations in their stated addresses, but as times and men have changed, the idea has been departed from and this feature has become an exceptional one. If it could be restored, in a modified if not an identical form, and made a regular part of the programme of at least one of the sections at each meeting, the interest would be greatly enhanced, and in this way the chemist, the geologist, the botanist, and the others could be given regularly an authoritative account of