OVERSEAS MEETINGS 119 



in 1848) met at Montreal, and an endeavour was 

 made to attract British scientific men to the meeting 

 by offering special arrangements for the Atlantic 

 passage, but with little success. The Governor- 

 General hoped for a visit from the British Association 

 in 1883, during his term of office, when, moreover, 

 it was contemplated to form a Canadian Association. 

 An invitation elsewhere, however, had already been 

 accepted for 1883, by the General Committee. 

 The situation was subsequently complicated by the 

 withdrawal of this invitation, but there were other 

 competing claims, and the General Committee, at 

 one of its meetings in 1882, (a) received a proposal 

 that the meeting in 1883 should be held in Montreal, 

 (b) rejected an amendment that it should be held 

 in the United Kingdom, (c) reversed its own decision 

 by resolving that it should be held in Southport, 

 and (d) resolved that the meeting in 1884 should 

 be held in Montreal. Opposition was strong. One 

 hundred and forty-one members of the General 

 Committee signed a memorial to the Council, pro- 

 testing against the principle of an overseas meeting 

 on the main grounds that the founders of the Associa- 

 tion never contemplated meetings outside the United 

 Kingdom, and that the holding of a meeting at so 

 distant a point as Montreal would bear hardly upon 

 a number of life members and other regular members 

 who would be unable to attend and for whom the 

 continuity of the meetings would consequently be 

 broken, with injury to the business of the Association ; 

 finally, they urged the danger of the precedent. 

 Opposition was voiced elsewhere with greater freedom 

 than would befit a formal memorial : the General 

 Committee was suggested to have acted ultra vires ; 



