RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 247 



when the costs of publication were at their highest 

 after the period of the war. This estimate leaves 

 out of account the ample notices which are accorded 

 to the meetings themselves by the Press. The 

 Association, then, is the potential source of an 

 immense bulk and range of scientific literature. But 

 while maintaining this position its own power as a 

 publishing organisation is affected by the increase 

 of costs (and this from a period considerably anterior 

 to the war), unless, by adopting alternative methods 

 of publication, it should discover a wider demand. 

 An endeavour was made to do this by the publica- 

 tion, for the first time in 1920, of The Advancement 

 of Science, a book containing the presidential and 

 sectional addresses, during the period of the annual 

 meeting, when public interest far beyond the confines 

 of the meeting-rooms is aroused in them. The 

 immediate success of this measure may indicate 

 further similar possibilities. Tentative suggestions 

 toward the co-ordination of the results of scientific 

 investigations, and the provision of better guidance 

 to those who desire knowledge of those results, have 

 been made more than once before the Association. 

 Such a measure, for example, was in the mind of 

 Kelvin, when in his presidential address (1871) he 

 spoke as follows : 



1 To give any sketch, however slight, of scientific 

 investigation performed during the past year would, 

 even if I were competent for the task, far exceed 

 the limits within which I am confined on the pre- 

 sent occasion' (and even these limits Kelvin at 

 that historic meeting stretched, by all accounts, to 

 the full). ' A detailed account of work done and 



