THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.
At the New Orleans meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science the council voted that in addition to the regular winter meeting, a summer meeting should be held at Ithaca, N. Y., from June 29 to July 3. For such an experiment, and the holding of more than one meeting a year is avowedly an experiment, the place is well chosen. Ithaca is a university town and well adapted by climate and situation for a summer meeting. The campus, where these sessions will be held, is green and well shaded. It is nearly 1,000 feet above sea level and overlooks from a height of 400 feet one of the most famous and beautiful of the lakes of central New York.
In the immediate neighborhood of Ithaca are many places of scenic as well as scientific interest. At Taughannock, about eight miles away, a water fall, 215 feet in height, plunges into an amphitheater the forest-topped walls of which rise vertically more than 300 feet above the bed of the stream. Lucifer Falls at Enfield about the same distance and numerous other cataracts in the glens formed by the tributaries of Cayuga Lake are also of great interest and beauty. The local committee is arranging for various short excursions to these places and also one to the widely known sociological colony—the George Junior Republic. Some of the sections are planning to devote their meetings exclusively to field work and excursions. Papers will be read and discussions held at the places visited during the excursions.
On Thursday evening. June 28. there will be an informal smoker at the Town and Gown Club of Ithaca. On Friday afternoon, June 29, the new Physics Laboratory of Cornell University—Rockefeller Hall—will be opened and several well-known men of science will speak. On Monday evening, July 2, a public address, by Professor J. C. Branner, of Stanford University, on 'The Great California Earthquake,' under the auspices of the society of the Sigma Xi will commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the founding of that organization. Other public lectures will be given by President David Starr Jordan, of Stanford University, on 'The San Francisco Disaster'; by Professor Henry S. Carhart, of the University of Michigan, on 'The South African Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,' and by Major General George W. Davis, U.S.A., on 'The Great Canals of the World.'
In addition to the usual meetings of sections, a number of special societies will hold sessions in conjunction with the American Association. Among these are the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the Society for Chemical Industry and the American Microscopical Society.
As has been said the holding of a summer as well as a winter meeting of the association is an experiment, but it is an experiment which should have the active cooperation of all those who are interested in the advancement and diffusion of science. Until 1902 the association met in the summer, and other scientific societies met in groups during the Christmas holidays. For a large and technical meeting, the winter is the best season, and a large city
