104 ^^^^ Irish Naturalist. September, 1922. 



Wlicwcll wondering if all was going well with Miller's " Treatise on 

 Crystallography " ; and the gentle Kelvin, writing a good word for a 

 student whom he treated as a colleague in research. The Association 

 performed its greatest function when it brought men in outlying towns, 

 men already enthusiastic in promoting their local societies, into contact 

 with leaders such as these. Visits to Montreal in 1884, Toronto in 1897, 

 South Africa in 1905, Winnipeg in 1909, and Australia in 1914, spread in 

 the self-satisfied centre of our commonwealth a knowledge of developments 

 overseas. Members may have felt that they had much to learn about 

 river-erosion at Niagara, the tribal ceremonies of Zulus in Natal, or the 

 proteacean flora in New South Wales ; but they actually learnt more 

 from watching a railhead being pushed westward through the forest, from 

 a glimpse of two red-coated riders keeping the British peace upon " the 

 Plains," or from sitting at the same table, looking out on the Zambesi, 

 with the quiet courteous commissioners who held the scales of justice 

 between native and settler in Rhodesia. 



Mr. Howarth, in telling us of the more memorable discussions at the 

 meetings of the Association, traces, under subject-headings, the history 

 of scientific investigation in recent times. The people who call the 

 Association the " B.A.," as if the letters had no other signification, and 

 who attend meetings regularly for the sake of gossiping about them after- 

 wards, probably grow fewer year by year. Thanks to the work done, 

 however grudgingly, in our schools, a knowledge of the real purport of 

 eiiperiment and research is far more common than it was even twenty 

 years ago. The excellent volume before us shows how the British Associa- 

 tion kept hope alive in times when education was less liberal, and also 

 how it has contributed largely, by grants from its funds and by the co- 

 operation of members of committees, to the maintenance of natural 

 knowledge and the promotion of discovery in new fields. Its meetings 

 are not the place for the reading of small papers that may be suitable 

 for scientific journals, but have no width of outlook or appeal. The 

 tendency at present seems to be a happy development of broad discussions, 

 often inter-sectional, and the exhibition to local workers, depressed at 

 times by isolation, of the hosts that are really on their side. In Hull, 

 Dundee, or shall we say Dublin, the eyes of the young man are opened, 

 and he sees the mountain of scientific achievements full of horses and 

 chariots of fire. 



Grenville a. J. Cole 



