THE FUTURE OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 327 



of the overseas meetings ; certainly no better opportunities 

 for real discussion and exchange of ideas can be found than on 

 these long journe3^s. To the youngster who is struggling to get 

 some work done in science there can be no more fruitful or 

 encouraging experience than one of these visits, and the British 

 Association is not unmindful of its duty of helping such men to 

 join its parties. 



But if the scientific man is satisfied with the British Associa- 

 tion the general public would seem to be blowing more coldly ; 

 the numbers of members do not grow as they might be expected 

 to do and though the press still gives the meetings a front place 

 and dredges the sectional proceedings for anything that can be 

 trimmed up to the pitch of a headline, there are not wanting 

 signs of criticism. The Times indeed has this year deliberately 

 asked each section to justify its existence and show cause for 

 the attention (and hospitality) demanded from the public, not 

 without hints that the whole proceedings seem barbarously 

 technical and pedantic. Now it is easy to repudiate the opinion 

 that the public and especially the press has any voice in the 

 matter, to maintain the rights of the man of science to manage 

 his own affairs in his own way and insist on good honest doctrine 

 with no backslidings towards the popular. Indeed the efforts 

 of some of the newspapers to manufacture duly sensational copy 

 make such a high and dry view only too congenial. But is there 

 not something in this demand, are we not even in some degree 

 responsible for the coruscations of the cheaper press, which 

 must sensationalise out of sheer despair at not finding better 

 pabulum ? The public is pathetically anxious for information ; 

 the British Association, without in the least hurting its 

 dignity or declining from its purist position, might on these 

 occasions give it a great deal. The meetings are after all of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science, the sub- 

 scriptions are mainly provided by the general public and the 

 great towns one after the other are drawn upon for their hospi- 

 tality ; it cannot be argued that we have no duty to the public. 

 And while this is a positive dut}^, on the negative side we can 

 say that the British Association is no place for papers by the 

 pure specialist ; every science has nowadays its own society, its 

 own journals for every branch of the subject — these are the 

 recognised gathering grounds for the expert and there is no 

 suggestion that they do not function properly. But the British 



