124 ANNUAL MEETINGS 



with the Dominion Government as to (1) the impor- 

 tance and improvements of tidal observations on the 

 Canadian Atlantic coast, (2) encouraging investiga- 

 tion of the native tribes of the Dominion. The 

 committee on the Indian tribes produced in succeed- 

 ing years a specially full and valuable series of 

 reports, and the resolutions on which the Council took 

 action, while not immediately productive of the 

 results desired, indicated directions for further effort 

 in the future. Keference may also be made here to 

 Sir Oliver Lodge's evening discourse on dust, since 

 the experiment of the electric deposition of dust 

 shown on that occasion became the foundation for 

 important industrial obligations in America and 

 elsewhere under the name of the Lodge- Cottrell 

 process. 



What may be termed the side-issues of British 

 Association meetings sometimes prove to be as im- 

 portant as any incident of the meetings themselves, 

 or more so ; but the connexion may be difficult for the 

 historian to trace. The Montreal meeting, however, 

 supplies a good example. It happened that certain 

 heads of University Colleges in the United Kingdom 

 made the journey to attend the meeting ; among 

 them William Ramsay, then head of University 

 College, Bristol. It was he who, during the journey, 

 promulgated among those in similar positions the 

 idea of holding informal meetings at regular periods, 

 in order to ensure common action in such matters 

 as pressing the claims of such institutions upon the 

 Government. By this means, after not many years, 

 the financial position of these colleges was materially 

 improved, and a majority of them became indepen- 

 dent universities. 



