JUBILEE MEETING 117 



overseas is 2356, but this includes the figure for 

 Australia (5044) where proceedings took place in 

 five cities (see p. 134). Apart from this meeting, 

 the largest recorded attendances are at Manchester 

 (3838 in 1887 ; 3138 in 1861), at Newcastle-on-Tyne 

 (3335 in 1863), and at Liverpool (3181 in 1896) : 

 and these and the averages given above suggest that 

 the spiritual home of the Association is in Scotland 

 and the North of England. Certainly there is a 

 measure of geographical control over the figures, 

 and a charge brought sometimes against the Associa- 

 tion that its attendances do not show a progressively 

 upward tendency is therefore not justified. The 

 annual meeting is held on invitation from the place 

 concerned ; sometimes such invitations have been 

 inspired from headquarters, but, so far as appears, 

 rarely, and no period is found at which a scarcity of 

 invitations seems to have been apprehended. Kather, 

 it has not infrequently happened that the General 

 Committee (or the officers acting for them in advance) 

 have found need to exercise tact in discriminating 

 between competing claims. 



JUBILEE MEETING, 1881 



Special notice is due to the jubilee meeting in 

 1881. It was held, fittingly, at York as the birth- 

 place of the Association, and a powerful body of 

 eminent scientific men, from home and abroad, 

 gathered for the occasion. Lubbock was president, 

 and a past-president of the Association was found 

 to take the chair of every section except that of 

 Economics, over which Grant Duff, Governor of 

 Madras, presided. Thomson (Kelvin) was president 



