Xlviii PROCEEDINGS, 



for, althou<)jh held under the sanction of the Council, it was not 

 an official depai-tment of the Association. It was the second of 

 five unofficial Conferences due to his suggestion at Sheffield 

 in 1879, the first having been held at Swansea in 1880 and the 

 last at Montreal in 1884. Reports of these annual Conferences 

 were printed and distributed to the Corresponding Societies, 

 the Delegates or their Societies contributing to the expense of 

 printing and postage, and abstracts of these reports — the only 

 permanent record — appeared in the * Transactions of the Hert- 

 fordshire Natural History Society ' (Vol. VI, pp. 45-47). He 

 wished to impress upon all the Delegates that they were expected 

 to give a report, however brief, of the present Conference to 

 the Societies they represented, and to obtain its publication 

 by their Societies. They were asked to do this in the circulars 

 issued by the Corresponding Societies Committee, but he believed 

 that only a few Delegates complied with this request. 



At this meeting suggestions for a photographic survey of the 

 Counties of Creat Britain and Ireland would be brought before 

 the Conference by Mr. W. J. Harrison, and he thought that all 

 would admit that this was an important subject, and one which 

 well deserved the consideration of our County Societies. It was 

 becoming more and more desirable that a permanent repre- 

 sentation should be obtained of the interesting features of our 

 country, whether natural or the work of man ; for at no former 

 period had the destruction or mutilation of such features been 

 more rife, and never before had so much interest been taken in 

 their preservation. This apparent paradox might be explained 

 by the fact that the greater the vandalism the greater was the 

 protest it evoked. Nor should the ravages of time be overlooked, 

 nor the changes due to natural agencies, such as the encroach- 

 ment of the sea upon our coasts. The sooner the better, 

 therefore, would it be for a systematic attempt to be made to 

 obtain and preserve a picture of everything of interest admitting 

 of representation by the camera in all departments of science not 

 within the scope of any existing Committee of the Association. 

 This could best be done by our Natural History and Archaeo- 

 logical Societies, our Camera Clubs and Photographic Societies, 

 and our amateur photographers unattached to any Society or 

 Club, working in conjunction with some central body, such as 

 a Committee of the British Association ; for in this way only 

 could a photographic survey be sufficiently systematic in its 

 execution, and comparable results of value be achieved. 



In the absence of Mr. Harrison the paper by him on " The 

 Desirability of promoting County Photographic Surveys " was 

 read by the Secretary. 



This was an elaborate paper, filling rather more than six 

 pages in the report of this Conference in the annvial volume of 

 the British Association. Only a brief summary of the contents 

 can here lie given, and the paper should be read in its entirety 

 by anyone about to take up photo-survey work. It consists of the 



