CHAPTEE XXI 



SCIENCE OBGANISATION I SOCIETIES, JOUENALS AND BEWARDS 



Though the organisation of Science at the Universities and 

 other centres of education was important, more important still 

 was its organisation through the learned societies, partly as 

 meeting places for scientific workers, partly as providing the 

 means of making scientific results easily accessible through 

 their pubHcations. Where these were inadequate to the 

 necessities of the case, estabhshed journals of Hterary repute 

 might be taken into alliance, publishing a scientific colunm 

 regularly, or, in the last resort, a Eeview entirely devoted to 

 Science might be set afoot. How heavy a burden such non- 

 original and administrative work imposed on very busy men 

 was to be learned from experience. 



One conclusion to which it pointed appears from a letter 

 to Huxley in the spring of 1861, when Bentham, who with 

 characteristic modesty never claimed to be more than an 

 amateur in botany, was proposed as President of the Linnean, 

 a post he held from 1861 to 1874. 



Kew : Wednesday. 



You know my prejudice against professional Scientifics 

 being Presidents of these heterogeneous bodies : and in 

 favour of independent men who make a bond of union between 

 Science as represented by the Society and the outer world 

 — and who if really Scientific, are so as amateurs. Bentham 

 is one such, and for the life of me I cannot find another at 

 all eligible on the whole list. 



On the other hand the methods of the societies which 

 combined Science with ' Society * and lionised travellers before 



VOL. I 405 2d 



