6 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Suss. LXxUI. 
One naturally thinks of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Field 
Club, which has done splendid work for many years. But 
there is ample room for more. This subject was touched 
upon in a most interesting way at the Dublin meeting of 
the British Association in September last in a paper by 
Professor H. A. Miers, F.RB.S., in which he said, “One of the 
most useful functions of a body like a.local society is to 
encourage a habit of expressing scientific results in simple 
and intelligible language that will appeal to the whole 
society. Indeed, nothing can be better or more useful for 
the scientific specialist himself than to attempt to explain 
his own work in simple language to a mixed audience.” 
In addition to this nothing is more wanted at the present 
day than books giving simple untechnical accounts of the 
living work by the worker himself, and this should be done 
not only in the newer fields of science, the popularisation 
of which is liable to be overdone, but in the more ordinary 
work of everyday science, which results in discoveries 
perhaps equally momentous, but at present buried beyond 
the reach of the amateur. 
The educative work that the local societies can best per- 
form through its members, who, though not children, have 
unprepared minds, is the encouragement of original research. 
This could be done, first, by inviting the trained and experi- 
enced workers to make known to them, through the medium 
of untechnical language, the beauty and interest of scientific 
work in the course of its progress, and of scientific dis- 
covery in the making; and secondly, by providing them 
with followers who will continue to prosecute, under their 
guidance, original observations and even experimental 
research. Enthusiasm has been instilled, and sincere 
students produced by the University extension movement; 
let the local societies initiate a new science extension move- 
ment by which the barrier between the professional man 
of science and the amateur, between the expert and the 
layman, will be broken down. 
The Buchan Field Club impresses me asa fine example 
of a Territorial Association for the promotion of regional 
research, and their territory becomes a cosmos in the 
investigation of which the members qualify for work in 
the wide world anywhere. Mr Haldane’s Territorial Army 
