94 ORGANISATION 



the working of the annual meeting were considered 

 without any very marked effect ; save that there was 

 expressed a sentiment, which has since matured, 

 against allowing general excursions to conflict too 

 strongly with the scientific interests of the meeting. 

 In 1910 the Council again urged (but only permis- 

 sively) the desirability of joint meetings between 

 sections, and of organised discussions, and put to the 

 committees the point that presidential addresses in 

 subjects of kindred interest ought not to be allowed 

 to clash in the hours of delivery. The relationship 

 of the sections generally and the possibility of a new 

 division were also brought under review, and in 1911 

 a scheme of sectional meetings was brought forward 

 under which not all sections would necessarily 

 assemble daily throughout the meeting, and the 

 demands upon room-accommodation would thus be 

 modified ; but the time was not ripe. It is perhaps 

 worth recording these discussions of reform for no 

 other reason than to show, when periodical demands 

 for reform are made, that the controlling bodies of 

 the Association have not been wholly unsympathetic 

 to such demands in the past. In preparing for the 

 meeting in 1921 the Council, with the concurrence 

 of organising sectional committees, authorised the 

 general officers to arrange the hours of presidential 

 addresses and important discussions, thus enabling 

 the programme, as regards its salient features, to be 

 co-ordinated, instead of being left wholly in the hands 

 of a dozen independent committees. 



CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES 



' The spontaneous awakening of important places 

 to scientific activity,' as Phillips had it in a passage 



