SESSION 1896-97. xlv 



Committee ; a Wild Birds and Eggs Protection Committee ; and 

 a Mycological Committee. All these Committees reported annually, 

 and their reports were presented to the British Association. An 

 annual meeting of the Union was held in one of the Yorkshire 

 towns. For excursion purposes Yorkshire was divided into five 

 districts, and a meeting was held annually in each of them. One 

 meeting every year took place on the sea-coast. Great care was 

 taken by the secretaries before each excursion to get all the 

 geological, botanical, and other information obtainable about the 

 place to be visited, and, when there, an endeavour was made to get 

 each member to do some special work, every effort being made to 

 train workers in the various departments of natural science. 



Mr. M. H. Mills gave some account of the organization of the 

 Federated Institution of Mining Engineers. He said that the 

 rules of the Federation had been carefully considered by the 

 secretaries and councils of the various societies composing it, and 

 it had been found that the best kind of federation was that which 

 touched only the publication of their papers. Each society did 

 its work independently, as before the existence of the Federation, 

 but now they had one publication instead of many. Members of 

 the societies composing the Federation paid but one subscription, 

 a portion of it only being devoted to printing the publications, 



Professor T. Johnson mentioned that in Ireland they had a good 

 example of a Union. It comprised four clubs, one in Dublin, 

 another in Belfast, a third in Cork, and a fourth in Limerick, 

 which combined to form the Irish Field Club Union. A yearly 

 meeting was held in various parts of the country, and they had 

 a publication which was common property — the ' Irish Naturalist.' 

 There was a poll-tax of twopence from each member to defray the 

 expenses of the Union, and there was a Committee formed of the 

 president and secretaries of the four societies. They had an 

 arrangement by which a specialist belonging to one club could 

 have his expenses paid if he lectured to another club. They were 

 also forming a directory, so that students coming to Ireland would 

 shortly be able to learn who was working at any given subject and 

 where he might be found. They made a point of sending their 

 specimens to museums. In addition, they had short courses of 

 lectures to arouse the interest of amateurs, with occasional excur- 

 sions. The fees received from persons attending the lectures were 

 used for excursion purposes, the lecturer himself receiving nothing 

 [beyond his expenses] from the course. 



After a considerable amount of further discussion, in which most 

 of the Delegates present took part, a sub-committee was appointed 

 to consider the question and report to the Corresponding Societies 

 Committee. The recommendations of this sub-committee were : — 



(1) That Mr. G. Abbott's paper on "District Unions of Natural 

 History Societies" be distributed by the Committee of the Corre- 

 sponding Societies amongst all the Natural History Societies in the 

 United Kingdom, with the request that their opinion on the 

 feasibility of the plan advocated in the paper be communicated 



