NOTES AND COMMENT 
 
 
and Fisheries were appointed during the year. Dr. D. T. MacDougal urged this
as a 
possible means of securing funds for research, but little in the way of funds
was found. 
    The first Pacific Coast meeting was held at San Diego in 1916, and the
meeting at 
New York came off without a field trip and also without a dinner address.
Dr. Shreve 
promised to put the writer in the East River if he tried to deliver one.
There were none 
of these, which tended to keep the society out of the 'regular' group for
many years. 
Finally however a president unfamiliar with the original ban succeeded with
one and the 
rest have followed suit. 
    The chairman of the Committee on the Preservation of Natural Conditions
was ap- 
pointed March 17, 1917, by Elsworth Huntington, second president of the Society
in the 
following words, "My dear Professor Shelf ord:-I am very glad you have
taken the 
initiative in suggesting a committee on the Preservation of Natural Conditions
for 
Ecological Study. . . . I take pleasure in appointing you chairman of such
a committee 
with power to select your associates . . . five members at present. Apart
from any im- 
mediate measures having to do with legislation would it not be well for the
committee to 
. . . list typical areas which ought to be preserved in various parts of
the country." In 
getting the list together a series of state representatives were appointed
to describe natu- 
ral areas and enlist the support of local societies in securing their preservation.
This 
committee has functioned 20 years. 
    A journal was discussed in 1917-the writer recalls a letter from Dr.
Huntington 
about it. It was brought to attention at the 1919, St. Louis meeting, the
project having 
been developed by Barrington Moore, and began publication in the following
year. It so 
happened that a President succeeded himself giving continuity the following
year. For- 
rest Shreve found it necessary to retire as secretary-treasurer in 1919 and
was succeeded 
by A. 0. Weese. The society was guided and its policies given continuity
for the first 16 
years of its existence through the unbroken services of these two men whose
enthusiasm 
kept life and progress in the organization while maintaining an unusual harmony
because 
of their kindly and cordial personalities. 
                                                                  V. E. SHELFORD

     UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 
166 
 
 
January, 1938