The meetings of the National Academy of Sciences held annually at Washington during the third week of April, pass without the general attention that they deserve. For the Academy meets not only to listen to special scientific papers, but also as the official scientific adviser of the Government. As knowledge increases in range and exactness, it is evident that expert advice becomes more and more necessary, both for the enactment of legislation and for carrying it into effect. It may, indeed, be fairly claimed that the advisory or expert department of the Government should rank coördinate with its legislative, executive and judicial branches. The National Academy has on occasion been called to investigate scientific questions--thus it has recently presented a report to the Department of the Interior on a policy for the forested lands of the United States--but it has been of less service in this direction than was intended by the act of incorporation or than sound policy dictates. This limitation to the usefulness of the Academy seems to depend in part on the small membership, and the fact that it consists of the most eminent rather than the most efficient men of science of the country. The Academy has less than one hundred members, only one fourth as many as the Royal Society. Professor Jastrow shows in the present number of this journal that men of science do not become eminent until rather late in life, and the members of the Academy are apt to be somewhat lacking in initiative. University professors are now selected chiefly from younger men of promise, who are expected not only to attain scientific eminence, but also to possess executive ability and to exert personal influence. The National Academy needs a membership of this character, and has fortunately to some extent obtained it within recent years. Thus the members elected at the present meeting are Prof. James E. Keeler, director of the Lick Observatory; Prof. Franz Boas, of Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History; Prof. Henry F. Osborn, also of Columbia University and the American Museum, and Prof. Samuel L. Penfield, of Yale University. * * * * *