81 



I question whether it would be advisable to inflict 

 upon you all the names of principles which have 

 been deduced by the study of composition. Many 

 of you certiinly don't care to know them by name 

 only, and have them ticketed and placed in their 

 proper pigeon-holes, but all of you, no doubt, 

 would like to have a general idea upon which to 

 build more cr less, as you find your other occupa- 

 tions will allow, but one thing I should strongly 

 advise you to do is to make many slight sketches 

 of compositions which appeal to you. and of 

 those which are considered to be of the best, 

 and try to analyse them for yourselves. The 

 sketches need only be scratches, and anybody who 

 can use a pen or pencil can make them ; their 

 only purpose is to enable you to attain facility in 

 recognising when a subject is well composed or well 

 placed on your plates, and it is only reasonable to 

 suppose that if you cannot set down in this sketch- 

 ing way an abstract of any composition, you cer- 

 tainly cannot recognise, when confronted by 

 nature, a fine composition. It is a sort of thing 

 you ought to insist upon yourselves doing, and 

 don't let the thought of wasting paper deter you, 

 because if you throw the sketch away it has 

 probably served its purpose by increasing your 

 facility of hand, and impressing something of 

 composition on your mind ; idle moments and the 

 backs of letters or butcher's bills can be made 

 profitable in this way. Tour best friends will 

 heap scorn and contumely on these sketches, they 

 will call them your mad efforts towards becoming 

 a Royal Academician, but as time goes on you will 

 find them surreptitiously admiring your progress. 

 Tou have now quite enough principles to begin 

 with, and a word or two might be said about 

 selection. The first consideration, of course, is to 

 photograph the kind of thing you have a natural 

 liking for. If you like effects of sunlight see to it 

 that your composition has a good balance of light 

 and shade, and, as a rich and sparkling effect 

 suggests sunlight best, get this effect, but let 

 • some part of your picture be occupied by a broad 

 mass of quiet shade, so that by contrast you 

 heighten or force the effect of sunlight. If you 

 like quiet morning or evening or mist effects, 

 see that you choose something with a quietness or 



calmness in the transition from the darks to the 

 lights, otherwise, if you get your contrasts too 

 strong or in too abrupt a manner, you destroy the 

 feeling you aim at showing. Don't trouble too 

 much about getting the clouds and landscape on 

 the same negative, but study carefully the values 

 or tones of both, so that when you print clouds in 

 you can teU when you have obtained the proper 

 relation of tone. When yon come across an 

 especiilly fine effect of cloud and landscape make 

 two negatives, one for the cloud and one for the 

 landscape, and combine them in your print. 



If you incline to figures or animals, see they are 

 well grouped, not set to partners, nor standing 

 side by side, but that one fijure shall balance 

 another, or one group balance another. To 

 help you in this, make sketches of the lines 

 and masses in any well-known good figure 

 compositions, so that when you see a good group 

 in nature you will recognise it. By sketches, 

 of course, I mean only scratches of which you 

 may make a dozen in a short visit to the National 

 Gallery, or dozens from reproductions of good 

 pictures. 



Architecture and old buildings are, of course, 

 subject to the same principles. I have said 

 nothing about seutiuent in pictures, and I have 

 referred to none of the great masters of composi- 

 tion, but you will agree that to do justice to these 

 things would require a serious literary effort and 

 a series of well and carefully chosen examples, I 

 therefore think them best left alone on this 

 occasion. I must warn yon, perhaps needlessly, 

 that you cannot learn the principles of composition 

 in a week, nor can you learn them by rote ; it is 

 only by gradual study and careful building up of 

 an incessant number of structures, only to have 

 them pulled about your ears from time to time, 

 and then patiently rebuilding, that you will in 

 time erect an edifice worthy of the name of com- 

 position. 



Mr. Ogden then showed on the screen a number 

 of lantern slides, kindly lent at short notice by 

 Mr. W. H. Hammond, Mr. F. C. Snell, and Coun- 

 cillor J. T. Smith for such slides, and passed a few 

 remarks upon each, which gave an idea of how 

 these things are judged. 



REPORT ON THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES 



OF THE CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 



FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE— CAMBRIDGE, 1904. 



By ABTHna S. Eeid, M.A.,F.G.S., Delegate for East Kent Scientific and Natural History Society. 



To the President and Council 0/ the East Kent Natural History Society 

 Gentlemek — I have to report that I attended, as your Delegate, the two Conferences of the 

 Delegates of the Corresponding Societies of the British Association, which were held this year on 

 Thursday, August 18th, and Tuesday, August 23rd, in GonvUle and Caius College Cambridge 



At the first Conference, Principal E. H. Griffiths, M.A., D.So., F.R.S.,was in the chair" and after 

 the report had been read, gave a short address, dealing with the question of how best to educate " the 

 man in the street, or rather the boy in the street, to realize that the advancement of science is of 

 personal and vital value to hun, in that the earning of his daily bread is intimately connected with 

 research work m the Laboratory. He pleaded for a better system of scientific education rather than 

 more science tacked on to existing curricula, and, above aU, he laid great stress on his own experience 

 in convincing the "working man" that it was to his advantage to assist research and see that 

 Educational Authorities gave due weight to growing scientific requirements. 



