large. New York, long recognized as the great financial and commercial center of the Union, and pre-eminent in some other departments of the life of the century, has not been eminent in science. It has, indeed, as President Low said at the late joint meeting of the Alliance, many scientific men of the first order, and has a record of scientific work of the highest character that has been done by such men as Draper, Morse, Rutherfurd, Newberry, and Edison; but the fame of that work has been dissipated: it has never been concentrated, as in other metropolitan cities and many much smaller towns, under the panoply of a single organization, central for all the branches of research. London has its Royal Institute and Royal Society; Paris, Berlin, and other European capitals have their Academies of Sciences, where the work of the whole nation has a common home, and contributes to the fame of its chief city. In the United States, Boston has its Academy; Philadelphia, its Academy and the American Philosophical Society; Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Institute; and other cities, down to many relatively small ones, have central organizations through which the scientific work done by citizens receives all the credit it is entitled to; but New York, which should have been in the advance of all of these, has had only a few struggling societies devoted to specialties—nothing comprehensive enough to command the allegiance of students of different branches and the attention of the public. To use President Low's words again, "These bodies have revealed at once the strength and the weakness of New York in these directions. They have made clear beyond a doubt the vast resources of the city, both in men and means. But they have also revealed the fact that these resources are as yet insufficiently organized." To this time, by reason of the division among these special societies and the want of a general one. the scientific spirit of the city has lacked intensity of expression. It will be the object of the Scientific Alliance, as President Low believes it has the capacity, to give to New York the agency which it has long needed to develop to the utmost its activities of investigation and experiment in the direction of pure science.
Seven societies, each of which is well known and has done creditable work in its special field, have united in the formation of the Scientific Alliance. They are the New York Academy of Sciences, the Torrey Botanical Club, the New York Microscopical Society, the Linnæan Society of New York, the New York Mineralogical Club, the New York Mathematical Society, and the New York Section of the American Chemical Society.
The advantages which are expected to accrue to these societies and their work from united organization were well presented in the address of Mr. Charles F. Cox. Among them are "the stimulating and re energizing effect which will be wrought in them by the demand made upon them for an increased output of effort for the public good"; the re-enforcement and encouragement they and their members will receive from contact with one another; the saving of work in doing over again what has been already done which will be effected by bringing these laborers in different fields into co-operation and consultation with one another, and enabling them to contribute their several results to a common stock; in short, a union of forces to produce the best results.
The need of endowment for scientific research and publication was presented at the meeting for organization in an address by the Hon. Addison Brown. The existence of such a body as the Alliance, proving its efficiency by its work and extending its influence, may be expected to attract the gifts of liberal-minded capitalists, as do other enterprises for the public good that ac-
