1897] NOTES AND COMMENTS 363 



The International Zoological Congress, 1898 



The meeting of the General Committee appointed to arrange for the 

 next meeting of the International Zoological Congress was marked 

 by an unfortunate lack of union. One well-known zoologist described 

 it as the most turbulent meeting he had ever attended. The Congress 

 is to meet in England next August, and the original arrangement was 

 that it should be held in London, which, for various reasons, has now 

 been altered to Cambridge. The success of a similar Congress in 

 America in 1891 was seriously affected by a change in the place of 

 meeting, which led to the abstention of a great number of American 

 men of science, who objected to the alteration. Cambridge does not 

 now oeeupy the position in the English zoological world which it did 

 in the days of F. M. Balfour. There are no doubt strong reasons 

 for the selection of Cambridge, although the town is not central. 

 But remembering the consequences of the change of locality of the 

 American Congress in 1891, the advocates of Cambridge might have 

 done their best to conciliate provincial representatives. Their attitude 

 was decidedly the reverse. When, for example, Colonel Wardlaw 

 Bamsay proposed that in order to secure one Scottish member on 

 the executive, Sir William Turner should be elected a vice-president, 

 Professor Newton formed the minority of one who voted against it. 

 Professor Poulton, also anxious to make the committee more repre- 

 sentative, proposed that the presidents of the Linnean and Entomo- 

 logical Societies should be ex officio vice-presidents, which secured at 

 once the warm support of the meeting. The chairman, however, 

 expressed himself confident that Mr Poulton, on thinking the 

 question over, would see the advisability of withdrawing his resolu- 

 tion and allowing the executive committee to select itself the 

 additions to its number. But Mr Poulton remarked that he 

 did not see the advisability of his withdrawing his resolution, and 

 thought it much better not to trust the executive committee to make 

 the additions recommended. The resolution was carried by an over- 

 whelming majority. So the cut and dried plans of those who had 

 arranged the agenda were not accepted quite as they stood. A 

 member who proposed one of the official resolutions read it out as 

 " the resolution I have been ' instructed ' to propose ; " and then re- 

 commended it to the meeting by one hostile criticism. Dr Murie 

 proposed that the executive committee should be composed of an 

 equal number of members from England, Ireland and Scotland, a re- 

 markable suggestion that only fell non-seconded because the zoologist 

 who attempted the feat could not complete his sentence until the 

 meeting was well advanced in the consideration of the next business. 

 A few proposals of this sort, by claim for zoological independence for 

 Wales and the Manxmen, kept the meeting merry. But it seems 



