Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/134

130 the functions of publication were delegated by the principal scientific bodies to a central bureau, in such manner as to secure a subject division of volumes, it is not probable that the Academy of Science of St. Louis would be found to oppose such a step, though its isolation may prevent it from taking the initiative.

Perhaps the most probable immediate change in the inner working of the academy lies in the direction of its meetings. It is hardly to be expected or even hoped that these as a whole will ever revert to the character of those held when Holmes presented critical and spicy analyses of the contents of such publications as came to hand, or Engelmann or Riley chatted from the master's seat on investigations being carried on. Publications to-day are too complex for most amateurs of science to care to follow them in detail, and the minutiae of current research promise but small audiences for their advance presentation.

In these changed conditions lies the mainspring of probable changes in the organization and meetings of the academy. No doubt, as heretofore, the results of research offered for publication will be presented at the general meetings, the manuscript, with data for discussion by experts, if these are present, lying on the table, and the processes and conclusions being briefly and clearly presented in abstract from the floor. No doubt, too, at such intervals as may prove best, specialists will continue to present in untechnical language, comprehensible to laymen and teachers, analyses of progress achieved in the scientific world. But it is more than probable that these general meetings will be supplemented by others held by small sections of restricted aims, within each of which will be found the enthusiasm for current literature and the warm interest in special detail that characterized the earlier meetings of the academy as a whole.

Under the constitution, such sectional organization is provided for. If I do not mistake the drift of the times, the growing number of engineers and chemists, whose professions rest upon and demand a continued touch with the current progress of science; of physicians and pharmacists, whose professional life is full of opportunities for the observation and record of scientific detail and generalization and of teachers with university training, but so fully occupied with the daily routine that they can not for the moment do research work although they can not afford, if they would, to lose touch with what others are doing in biology, chemistry and physics—are going to find in the organization of sections in the academy the most logical and economical way of meeting their own needs, while through community of interest they will reach a unity of purpose which will inevitably react on the entire community, to the common good.