NOTES 299 



The British Association has just published a book dealing with the history 

 of its formation and work during the last ninety years {The British Association : 

 a Retrospect, by O. J. R. Howarth, pp. 318, with 11 portraits and other illus- 

 trations. Burlington House, 1922). The Association owed its formation to 

 Sir David Brewster and John Phillips, the secretary of the Yorkshire Philoso- 

 phical Society, aided by Sir John Robinson, Prof. Johnston, J. D. Forbes, 

 Vernon Harcourt, and Sir Roderick Murchison. It was modelled on the 

 lines of the Deutscher Naturforscher Versammlung, a society originated by 

 Prof. Lorenz Oken, of Jena, at Leipzig in 1822. The first meeting of the 

 English Association was held at York in 1831, Viscount Milton, President of 

 the Yorkshire Society, being in the chair ; in 1832 the members met at Oxford, 

 and in 1833 at Cambridge. A reproduction of a sheet of signatures collected 

 at this meeting contains the names of some of the most famous men in the 

 history of English science : Faraday, Brewster, Forbes, Adam Sedgwick, 

 WiUiam Smith, Whewell, and others. For some years after its formation 

 the Association met with much opposition and ridicule, notably The Times 

 newspaper (hence Palmerston's consolatory remark to Murchison, " Never 

 mind them; a man who is not Times proof cannot succeed in life ! " This 

 in 1846). Dickens's crude satire, " The Mud-fog Papers," first published 

 in Bentley's Miscellany (1837-9), is probably, however, the best-known. 

 In quite early days the difficulty of balancing the scientific and holiday 

 aspects of the meetings was apparent. After the 183 1 meeting it was con- 

 sidered advisable not to arrange papers or lectures in the evening after 

 dinner. In 1837 Sedgwick wrote: 



"Let me, then, transport you to Liverpool, among mountains of venison 

 and oceans of turtle. Were ever philosophers so fed before ? Twenty 

 hundred-weight of turtle were sent to fructify in the hungry stomachs 

 of the sons of science. Well may they body forth, before another 

 returning festival, the forms of things unkiiown ! But I will not 

 anticipate the monsters of philosophy which such a seed-time portends. 

 The crop no doubt will be of vast dimensions." 



Murchison's writings gave a similar impression of good feeding. Edward 

 Forbes seems to have been a leader of the picnic party. He arranged a 

 dance in the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, in 1850, to Brewster's great disgust, 

 and previously in 1839 had founded the Red Lion Club, of which it is said : 

 "... Their chairman became the Lion King ; new members, on admission, be- 

 came cubs ; the organisers of the arrangements, jackals. On rising to speak 

 (or otherwise to entertain the company) they must roar and flourish their 

 coat tails as an introductory ritual. ..." It is indicated that this club is 

 still in existence, but presumably with a revised constitution ! For all this, 

 the convivial spirit has not played a large part in the history of the Association. 

 Its record of work is a magnificent one, and it has been carried out almost 

 entirely from the subscriptions of the members. Large donations have been 

 surprisingly few ; so few, indeed, that they can be mentioned here in their 

 entirety : 1903, Sir Frederick BramweU, £50, for a lecture to be delivered 

 in 1931 on prime movers ; 1912, Sir James Caird, ;/^io,ooo ; 1913, Sir James 

 Caird, £1,000 for radio-active research ; 1922, Sir Charles Parsons, ;,^io,ooo. 

 There was, in addition, a fund, privately subscribed in 1919, to enable the 

 Association to continue its grants during the period immediately following 

 the war. The expenditure on grants to scientific investigations totals ;^83,ooo, 

 including ;^i2,ooo spent on Kew Observatory, ;^i,ooo on Electrical Standards, 

 ;^2,6oo on Seismological Investigations, ;^i.37o on a Star Catalogue, ;^3,8oo 

 on the Table at the Zoological Station, Naples, ;^2,6oo on Cave Exploration, 

 etc. Mr. Howarth is to be congratulated on the valuable and interesting 

 book he has compiled from what must have appeared most unpromising 

 material. His " Retrospect " surveys a very important part of the scientific 



