are besides not concerned with academic holidays. Similar conditions have led the engineers to meet apart from the American Association, and the societies devoted to economics, history, philology and other sciences which have been called "unnatural" and "inexact" meet separately. The convocation week meetings have consequently never fully represented the whole weight of science in America, and it is probably undesirable that they should attempt to do so every year. Such a gathering can only be held in one of the great cities, and there are advantages in small meetings as well as in a large congress. It would, however, be an admirable plan if once in five years all organizations concerned with research, higher education and the applications of knowledge could come together in order to demonstrate to themselves and to the world the great part that science plays in modern civilization.
Cleveland is perhaps the most central city in the United States for a scientific meeting. It is north and east of the center of population, but very close to the center of scientific population. A radius of 500 miles may include nine tenths of the scientific men of the country. The city has good hotel accommodations and, what is even more important, institutions which offer excellent places for the sessions and themselves add an attraction to the meeting. The adjacent main buildings of the Western Reserve University and the Case School of Applied Science are shown in the accompanying illustration. Western Reserve College opened in Hudson in 1827 and removed to Cleveland in 1882. As Western Reserve University since 1804, it has enjoyed a prosperous history, to the original Adelbert College there having been added a college for women and a graduate school, and in addition to professional schools of medicine and law, there are a dental school, a school of pharmacy and a library school. The medical school is one of the strongest in the country. having ten years ago adopted the requirement of three years of college work for entrance and having an endowment of one and a half million dollars, two thirds of which has been recently obtained. What is of even more consequence, it has on its faculty men of high distinction both in the scientific and clinical departments.
The Case School of Applied Science in like manner takes a leading position among our technical schools. It enjoys an educational affiliation with Western Reserve University by which students may complete their course by taking the first three years at the university and the last two years at the technical school. It will be a pleasure to physicists and chemists to meet in the laboratory named in honor of Professor Edward W. Morley, for many years professor in the university, a past president of the American Association and one of the most active of its supporters. There are other personal associations with the meeting in the fact that the vice-president of the section of mechanical science and engineering, Dr. Charles S. Howe, is president of the Case School, and Professor George T. Ladd, vice-president for the section of anthropology and psychology, is a graduate of Western Reserve University and has been a lecturer there. The other vice-presidents of the association and the presidents of the affiliated societies will give addresses of general interest, and there will be a number of discussions and general meetings that will bring together men of science working in different departments and should be attractive to those who are not professionally engaged in scientific work. The president of the association, Professor Charles E. Bessey, of the University of Nebraska, has chosen as the subject of his address "Some of the Next Steps in Botanical Science." At the opening session he will introduce the president of the meeting, Dr. Edward C. Pickering, director of Harvard College Observatory.
