THE SECTIONS 81 



later president of a section in delivering an address. 

 Sectional transactions of sections appear in 1832, 

 but sections were at first formed in some measure 

 ad hoc to deal with such papers as were offered 

 and accepted. An extremely important function 

 of the ( committees of science ' (as they were 

 termed), however, was to call ' for reports 

 on the state and progress of particular sciences, 

 to be drawn up from time to time by competent 

 persons.' This practice, as we have seen (p. 25), 

 was suggested by Whewell. Some of these reports 

 were of extraordinary importance in their time. The 

 Earl of Rosse in his address in 1843 pointed out 

 ' that the man about to undertake the task of 

 endeavouring to advance any particular branch of 

 science may at once, by referring to one of these 

 reports, know where to look for that information 

 which is indispensable to success, namely, an exact 

 knowledge of all that has been done by others.' 

 4 Without such knowledge,' as Stokes observed 

 (presidential address, 1869), e there is always the risk 

 that a scientific man may spend his strength in doing 

 over again what has been done already.' Phillips in 

 his address in 1865 showed that ' many of the most 

 valuable labours of which we are now reaping the 

 fruits, were undertaken in consequence of the reports 

 on special branches of science which appear in the 

 early volumes of our transactions reports in which 

 particular data were requested for confirming or 

 correcting known generalisations, or for establishing 

 new ones. Thus a passage in Professor Airy's report 

 on Physical Astronomy first turned the attention 

 of Adams to the mathematical vision of Neptune ; 

 Lubbock's report on Tides came before the 



