I.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

"THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENCES IN KANSAS." By LYMAN C. WOOSTER, Ph. D., State Normal School, Emporia.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENCES IN KANSAS.

By LYMAN C. WOOSTER, Ph. D., Emporia.

Presidential address, delivered at Lawrence, December 1, 1905, before the thirty-eighth annual meeting of the Kansas Academy of Science.

IN preparing this address, the speaker has kept constantly in mind

the needs and special interests of those who are beginners in scientific work or are actively engaged in exploring fields that are new and difficult. More than thirty years of science work in the schoolroom have fostered within him a most earnest desire to help in all scientific enterprises.

The membership of our Academy of Science has been nearly doubled during the past few years by reason of somewhat urgent efforts on the part of its officers and members. Similar efforts made during the past thirty-seven years of the existence of our organization have been attended with equal success, and so, undoubtedly, like efforts will be made during 'the future years of its existence.

Why should we attempt to increase the attendance at our meetings? Some of the answers that might be given would undoubtedly be the following:

1. All people should be in some degree naturalists, for they will thus have their hours of happiness largely increased.

2. The state needs more naturalists and scientists, for her industries must always be largely agricultural, horticultural and mining in their character, and the prosperity of farmers, miners and orchardists is in large measure dependent on our knowledge of minerals and of plant and animal friends and foes.

3. The schools of the state are giving a large place each year to nature studies and to natural-science subjecís, and the teachers in the public schools must be more largely naturalists and scientists if they do this work successfully.

4. The pupils in the public schools need manuals containing serviceable keys of Kansas plants; Kansas insects; Kansas fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals; Kansas crustaceans, mollusks, worms, hydra, sponges, and Protozoa; and Kansas fossils and minerals. These keys and natural histories should be prepared by Kansas naturalists and scientists under the auspices of this Acad

emy or some similar organization containing men and women of large and varied experience in many fields of natural history.

5. A large membership gives the Academy a larger influence throughout the state and with the members of the state legislature. We are sadly in need of such recognition of the worth of our reports and of our library and museum, that abundant appropriations may be easily forthcoming.

6. The attendance at common meeting-places at stated times of large numbers of men of science would enable the Academy so to divide its work as to make it possible for those engaged in similar lines of investigation to meet in sections, and thus enable naturalists, scientists and philosophers to learn by personal conference what is being done in related lines of research.

7. With many contributors to their pages, the Academy could issue more valuable volumes of proceedings and a series of monographs on special subjects.

These seven reasons why we should continue to work for a larger membership to the Academy could easily be extended to several more, but those named will serve as an introduction to what it is desired to present for the favorable consideration of this audience. It is not intended to discuss the propositions embodied in the reasons just given in the order in which they have been presented, but an effort will be made to discuss them as they find place in the orderly unfolding of the subject of this address: The Development of the Sciences in Kansas.

On September 1, 1868, a number of lovers of nature gathered at what is now Washburn College and organized themselves into the Kansas Natural History Society. The name was well chosen, for its members were truly naturalists, and as such have done work of the highest value for themselves and the state.

If those of our members who have made collections of naturalhistory specimens and data will remember the experiences of collecting trips, or those attending investigations in the laboratory, they must declare that this work has brought more hours of happiness than almost any other that has engaged both hands and minds.

The speaker's own most persistent work as a naturalist has been done in collecting fossils, though insects, birds and plants have been collected with almost equal pleasure.

There is great delight in going through one's collections to feast one's eyes on some rare forms possessed by few others. Each time the hand rests on the specimen there is experienced anew the wild delight that was present when there was first found a specimen of

Eurypterus pachychirus, Petalodus alleghaniensis, or Hydreionocrinus kansasensis. Each detail of each great find is indelibly stamped on the memory. The only moments of regret come when it is remembered how the unfortunate individual who has been so indiscreet as to ask about the collections has been bored as the rare things have been brought out, their possessor forgetting that the poor victim knew little or nothing of what he was pleased to show him, and that he cared even less.

As a teacher of the sciences anxious to discover the best ways of presenting the subjects that belong to his department, the speaker has asked himself and others, Why do naturalists value their collections so highly, and why were most scientists first naturalists?

A glance through the reports of this Academy would make one marvel at the amount of space taken by lists of species contributed by its members, were it not known by personal experience that naturalists prize their collections even more than they do the knowledge that this or that species of plant or animal is a friend or a foe to the farmer, orchardist, or gardener.

In the first volume of proceedings issued by this Academy there is found a catalogue of plants, by J. H. Carruth, with additions by F. H. Snow and E. Hall; a catalogue of birds, by F. H. Snow; and a collection of facts on the climate of Kansas, by F. H. Snow. The lists show that great care had been taken to make them as complete as possible. They occupy more than half of the space of the volume, and must have been very helpful to other naturalists. The succeeding eighteen volumes are almost equally rich in lists of species-in all, more than ninety different lists. Of these, flowering plants furnish nearly one-third of the list, and, in the order named, Coleoptera, birds, minerals, fossils, Lepidoptera and some twelve or thirteen other groups the remainder.

To these lists of species should be added numerous lists of facts of observation and experiment. These comprise numerous references to work done in chemistry, physics, meteorology, mathematics, field geology, astronomy, psychology, and philosophy.

To show still further the intense interest of naturalists in collecting, a few members of the Academy have been asked to give, for use in this address, the number of species represented in their private collections.

Mr. Warren Knaus, of McPherson, reports that he has collected or obtained by exchange, since 1880, 5512 species of Coleoptera, distributed among 38 families.

Prof. Alfred W. Jones, of Salina, says that during the past ten