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THE POLICY OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR
THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.
I HAVE attended many meetings of the
American Association for the Advancement
of Science and have watched with great interest the progress that has been made-especially during the past three years. An able
standing committee looks after its policy, and
notwithstanding the large increase of members, this policy is to advise reducing the size
and value of the proceedings by printing only
the addresses of the president and vice-presidents, with list of officers and members and a
few other items, to the end that more money
may be accumulated, that it will earn more
interest and enable the society to give a very
few persons a small portion of the cost of engaging in some research.

Not many months ago SCIENCE contained a
large number of interesting communications
by way of gentle reminders as to how the
trustees of the Carnegie Institution could best
use the funds soon to be at their disposal.
This was a kind and thoughtful service and
no doubt highly appreciated by the trustees.
Among these gentle hints was named the
pressing need of means for publishing worthy
articles such as might not be published by
any of the numerous journals or might not
find a place in the proceedings of any of the
learned societies.

When the American Naturalist was established in 1868, I am sure the editors were not
troubled to find room for all worthy articles
in the entire field of botany and zoology, including some that bordered on geography and
geology. Workers in these broad fields were
comparatively few and far between. In these
days, universities and colleges have established
many courses attracting a large increase in
students, requiring numbers of teachers, some
of whom devote a portion of their time to
original work. The U. S. Department of
Agriculture employs many; the state experiment stations many; bureaus of geology, ethnology, and meteorology and others are growing rapidly.

I dare not attempt to name the journals and
transactions that are issued from time to time.
It is getting to be the plan for most universities to publish each from one to four or
more periodicals devoted to as many special
departments of learning, soon to find that the
members of the faculty, their fellows and advanced students, without any outside help,

write enough papers or nearly enough to fill
all the pages of these journals.

The programs of the meetings of the
American Association are filled with valuable
papers, at least if they are not valuable it is
the fault of the committees whose duty it is
to inspect the list before reading.

One of the reasons sometimes advanced for
omitting to print these papers in the Proceedings of the association is that any papers that
are worthy will be sought by the editors of
some scientific journals. We have now
reached a period when this is far from true.
The value of a paper can not be measured
by its popularity.

At the meetings of the American Association we hear papers read and we are interested in them-some we can not hear, owing
to numerous conflicts of programs. For myself I make a memorandum of those I hope
some day to be able to read, but by some hook
or crook I seldom get them.

In days past I have often looked in the
Proceedings for some article important to
me, to find an abstract of a few lines only,
or rarely a reference to some publication
where it has been printed.

I feel confident that if we had a full canvass, a large majority of the members would
be glad to see these papers printed in the
proceedings of the American Association. For
printing papers, it is true we have SCIENCE,
a magnificent publication, but we see even in
this there is not room for all.

Every few months our attention is called to
some new means of support for worthy investigators-and liberal support. I need not
enumerate them. The fees that the American
Association is able to pay for research are very
trifling. Why not use all the funds that 
henceforth accumulate, up to a certain specified amount, to defray the expenses of printing and illustrating first-class reports? What
better use could be made of the money?

If I am not mistaken, one reason for organizing some of the 'affiliated' societies was that
the members could publish the papers read at
their meetings. I have known a number of
instances in which itinerant societies for
worthy purposes have economized to save a

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fund, the interest of which might serve the
means of partial support, but through some
oversight a large portion of the original fund
was dissipated. I think our fund is as large
as it should be, perhaps larger. I shall be
surprised if some of the conservative and substantial fellows and members of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science
do not come out in support of the views here expressed.
W. J. BEAL.
AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, MICH.