CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 1 29 



sub-committees have been formed, to develop the work locally, I will 

 only here mention Ipswich, a place not far from the northern border 

 of Essex, at which the British Association will meet next year. It 

 is most desirable that residents in Essex interested in the 

 Ethnographical Survey should put themselves into communication 

 with the Ipswich sub-committee, in order to ascertain its mode of 

 work and the area with which it occupies itself, and thus economise 

 tune and labour and prevent over lapping. Whether it would be 

 better for workers in Essex to report to Ipswich as their local centre, 

 or to establish another sub-committee in Essex, is a point which can 

 only be satisfactorily settled when it is known what the Ipswich 

 subcommittee has done, is doing, and proposes to do in the future. 



It appears to me that the discussions at Oxford gained in interest 

 and concentration from the devotion of the whole of the first 

 meeting to a single subject, and of the second to the ordinary 

 sectional discussions. At Edinburgh or Nottingham it might 

 happen that Messrs. A, B, C, and D all intended to speak on a 

 certain subject. A and B might speak on it at the first meeting, 

 during the absence of C and U at a garden party, and C and D 

 might discuss it at the second, during a similar absence on the part of 

 A and B. At Oxford a delegate knew precisely when a special 

 subject would be discussed, and that he must either speak on it then 

 or lose his opportunity altogether. 



It is impossible to fir.d anything to object to in the terms of the 

 resolution about Local Museums. Indeed the delegates from some 

 districts may have felt that scarcely anything more could be 

 legitimately desired. In Essex, however, where the chief thing 

 required is the permanent establishment of a museum, the resolu- 

 tion will seem to have no practical interest. As the Rev. Canon 

 Tristam remarked at the Edinburgh Conference of Delegates, there 

 is urgent need either of endowment or of help from the County 

 Council to maintain a museum in working order. He added that 

 many museums had gone to utter decay from the want of an 

 endowment, while those at Newcastle, York, Manchester, Liverpool, 

 and Norwich were all endowed. It is indeed impossible that any local 

 society of naturalists can do much to maintain a museum, though 

 it may be a most powerful aid in the formation of one. 



For, in the first place, its numbers will vary considerably from 

 time ; the loss of four or five of its most prominent members in the 



