Editorial.

This issue contains the last call for abstracts for our annual meeting to be held next February in Oxford, Mississippi, and hosted by the University of Mississippi. The Academy has experienced some pleasant growth in the size of its meetings during the past few years, so a large number of abstracts are expected. Many of you have be thinking about what aspects or your research to present, and those of you with graduate students will find our annual meeting a particularly good opportunity to give that young scientist in your laboratory a chance to make a public presentation that is less ominous than their first presentation at a national meeting, but more challenging than presenting at the home institution.

I want to take this opportunity to request that you think about having your student publish an article in this journal. The journal is peer reviewed, but the extent of the research required is not necessarily that required in a national journal. Some of you are working on research that is of a local nature or of local interest. That type of research is especially welcome in a state academy journal. So while you are grooming your students to present research orally or with a poster at the annual meeting, I urge you also to consider having your student write that research in a formal paper and let them have the experience of the science peer review system.

The cover art for this and several past issues have been engravings for old works found in the archives at the library at the University of Southern Mississippi. These glimpses into our past make interesting cover art free from copyright restrictions. The two engravings on the cover of this particular issue come from an old work in the general area of natural theology. Attempts to understand God through study of natural history was popular in the eighteenth century. This approach was the forerunner of our science today.