MEMBERSHIP 99 



administrative details is the position of women in 

 the Association. We have already seen (p. 16) 

 that the admission of women to scientific meetings 

 was frowned upon by early supporters of the Associa- 

 tion, and we have quoted Buckland's strictures upon 

 their attendance. But the administration apparently 

 failed to practise what it preached as to regulating 

 women's attendance, for Hooker, writing of the 

 Newcastle meeting in 1838, remarks that in the 

 Natural History Section ' there were not above fifty 

 people in the room, and almost no ladies ; those few 

 who were there had come in by accident, and I was 

 afterwards much surprised to hear that ladies were 

 precluded from attending this section of Botany and 

 Zoology on account of the nature of some of the 

 papers belonging to the latter division. ' l 



Again, in a letter on the same meeting, 2 Sir John 

 Herschel writes to his wife : 



' And, by the bye, though one should not tell one's 

 own good things, here is one so good that you must 

 have it ! Sedgwick, in his talk on Saturday, said 

 that the ladies present were so numerous and so 

 beautiful that it seemed to him as if every sunbeam 

 that had entered the windows in the roof (it is all 

 windows), had deposited there an angel. Babbage, 

 who was sitting by me, began counting the panes, 

 but, his calculation failing, he asked me for an 

 estimate of the number. ' I can't guess," was my 

 answer ; ' but, if what Sedgwick says be true, you 

 will admit that for every little pane there is a great 

 pleasure." 



1 Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, by Leonard Huxley, i, 34. 

 This was Hooker's first meeting, and he found that * the scientific 

 department fell far behind the amusement and eating.' 



2 Quoted in Life and Letters of Adam Sedgwick, i, 515. 



