Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/379

The Eleventh Annual Meeting was held in rooms of Yale University, New Haven, Conn., on Thursday and Friday, December 28 and 29, at the same time with other affiliated societies, namely, the American Society of Naturalists, the Association of American Anatomists, the American Physiological Society, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology, Section H, Anthropology, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Society met for business on Thursday, at 11 A.M., the President, Prof. Charles L. Edwards, in the chair. The Permanent Secretary presented the Annual Report of the Council, which was adopted.

At the conclusion of the twelfth year of the organization of the American Folk-Lore Society, the usual duty devolves upon the Council, to point out the inadequacy of the means of recording primitive tradition as compared with the magnitude of the opportunity now rapidly vanishing. The number of qualified workers in this field is all too few, while every year has brought the loss of some eminent collector or investigator, whose place remains unfilled. On this occasion we have to lament the absence of one of those who have been most prominently identified with the Society from its origin, the honored Daniel Garrison Brinton. The advance of anthropological research, and its rapid extension in the universities, will indeed supply a number of qualified and enthusiastic young students; but a few brief years will end the chance which still exists, to observe aboriginal life in its survivals, and to obtain new material for solving the most important facts of mental history, problems which are difficult only on account of the lack of adequate information, and which in the absence of such record will forever remain the uncertainties of philosophical conjecture.

Even in the closing years of the century, a rich gleaning remains for the collector; but the value of such gathering depends upon its accomplishment by capable and trained workers, possessed of linguistic knowledge. On the other hand, the remnants of the Indian tribes have now arrived at the point where contributions to ethnography may be expected from educated members of those tribes. The Council would suggest, that in view of the importance to local history of proper acquaintance with the races that our forefathers