SESSION 1905-1906. xxiii 



he thought would act as a deterrent to the objects being sent 

 to the Treasury. He thought that a notice as to the law ought 

 to be put up at all post oflSces throughout the kingdom. The 

 law, in liis opinion, bore unjustly on local museums, which should 

 have a prior right of purchasing the objects at their value. 



Questions were asked as to the delegation by the Crown of its 

 rights, and were answered by Dr. Martin, and in reply to 

 a question as to treasure trove thrown up by the sea he said that 

 it was not really treasure trove, but probably belonged to the 

 Crown under the technical expression Droits of the Admiralty. 



Mr. W. Morris CoUes then opened a discussion on " The Law 

 of Copyright as affecting the Proceedings of Scientific Societies." 

 He said that the ordinary rules of copyright applied to papers 

 which were published by being placed on sale, but if they were 

 privately printed, the copyright, unless assigned, remained in the 

 authors by common law. Some Societies had bye-laws declaring 

 the copyright of all accepted papers to be vested in them, but it 

 was questionable whether these bye-laws were sufficient to give 

 them a good title to the copyright without assignment by a legal 

 document in such a form as to hold good against the members 

 contributing papers or against infringers. It was in fact a case 

 which could only be met by special contract. 



Mr. Harold Hardy dealt with the position of the author of 

 a paper read at a meeting of a Society. If the audience consisted 

 merely of members of the Society or a limited number of persons 

 invited or admitted by ticket, the author was entitled to copy- 

 right as in an unpublished manuscript. But if the public 

 generally were admitted, the author could only protect his copy- 

 right by one of two methods. He could print and publish it 

 before oral delivery and register it at Stationers' Hall, or he 

 could give two days' notice to two magistrates living within five 

 miles of the place where the paper was to be read, by which 

 procedure he would acquire copyright for twenty-eight years only. 

 Mr. Hardy suggested that oral lectures should be protected in 

 a similar way to that in which dramatic compositions are secured, 

 the author of a play having copyright and the right of repre- 

 sentation in public. It would be a lecturing right. 



Dr. H. R. Mill said that he thought a scientific man did not 

 wish to keep the result of his investigations to himself, once it 

 was given to a Society : he siu-ely desired his paper to be as widely 

 known and as much quoted as possible. 



Second Meeting. 



Professor G. S. Boulger introduced the subject of " The 

 Preservation of our Native Plants." He first spoke of the 

 danger of their extermination by inevitable causes such as 

 encroachments of the sea and the increasing density of population, 

 and then of avoidable causes such as the thoughtless excesses of 

 children, tourists, and botanists, and the work of trade collectors, 

 who mainly collect such plants as primroses and ferns which can 



