The work of the late winter was a continuance of the perfecting of details, and at a meeting of the Administrative Board held in New York in February, 1904, a final approval was given to the programme and the speakers. The imminent approach of the Exposition and the work of the college commencement season made it impossible for further general meetings, and on June 1 the Organizing Committee was constituted a committee with power to fill vacancies in the programme or to amend the programme as circumstances might demand. All suggestions with reference to details were to be made directly to the Director of Congresses, upon whom devolved from this time forward the entire executive control of the Congress. ASSEMBLY HALLS The highly diversified nature of the Congress and the holding of one hundred twenty-eight section meetings in four days' time rendered necessary a large number of meeting-places centrally located. The Exposition was fortunate in having the use of the new plant of the Washington University, nine large buildings of which had been erected. Many of these buildings contained lecture halls and assembly rooms, seating from one hundred fifty to fifteen hundred people. Sixteen halls were necessary to accommodate the full number of sections running at any one time, and of this number twelve were available in the group of University Buildings; the other four were found in the lecture halls of the Education Building, Mines and Metallurgy Building, Agriculture Building, and the Transportation Building. The opening exercises, at which the entire Congress was assembled, was held in Festival Hall, capable of seating three thousand people. In the assignment of halls care was taken so far as possible to assign the larger halls to the more popular subjects, but it often happened that a great speaker was of necessity assigned to a smaller hall. Two of the halls also proved bad for speaking owing to the traffic of the Intramural Railway, and there was lacking in nearly all of the halls that academic peace and quiet which usually surrounds gatherings of a scientific nature. This, however, was to be expected in an exposition atmosphere, and was readily acquiesced in by the speakers themselves, and very little objection was heard to the halls as assigned. Every one seemed to recognize the fact that the immediate value of the meeting lay in the commingling and fellowship, and that the addresses, of which one could hear at most only one in sixteen, could not be judged in the proper light until their publication. SUPPORT OF THE SCIENTIFIC PUBLIC