INITIATION OF RESEARCH WORK 151 



application to the purposes of research. In 1913 

 Caird made a further gift of 1,000 for the purpose 

 of investigations in radioactivity. In 1919, at the 

 Bournemouth meeting, a fund was initiated by Sir 

 Charles Parsons, then President, for the main purpose 

 of enabling the Association temporarily to maintain 

 its grants, during a period when research was with 

 difficulty readjusting itself to peaceful channels 

 after the years in which the war had in great measure 

 diverted it from them, and the Association, through 

 the intermission of its annual meetings for two years 

 (1917-18), and for other obvious reasons throughout 

 the period of stress, found its ordinary inflow of 

 income seriously diminished. 1 



INITIATION OF RESEARCH WORK 



By our founders, wisely, no hint was given in 

 1831 of any possibility of subsidising research ; but 

 within three years of the foundation it appeared that 

 a credit balance would emerge from the annual work- 

 ing, and it was immediately decided that research 

 should benefit. ' Resolved, on the motion of Mr. 

 Harcourt ' thus runs a minute of the General 

 Committee dated ' Cambridge, June 1833 ' ' that 

 the sectional committees be requested to select 

 from time to time those points of science which 

 on a review of the former recommendations of the 

 committees or those contained in the reports pub- 

 lished by the Association, or from suggestions made 

 at the present meeting, they may respectively think 

 most fit to be advanced by an application of the funds 



1 This book was about to go to press when Sir Charles Parsons added 

 to his benefaction a gift of 10,000 War Stock (April 1922)- 



