GRANTS FOR RESEARCH 149 



100, in 1899 ; the grants to the Corresponding 

 Societies Committee (p. 94), amounting to 753 14s. Id., 

 since 1889 ; and grants of 10 made to the newly 

 established Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies 

 in each of the years 1920 and 1921. These miscel- 

 laneous grants make a total of 1047 165. Id. 



The above statement shows a total expenditure 

 upon grants, from 1834 to 1921, of 82,855 2s. Sd. 

 Great care has always been exercised upon the allo- 

 cation of money for scientific investigations and, 

 indeed, upon the approval of any investigation, 

 whether with a grant or not, proposed to be under- 

 taken under the segis of the Association. Any such 

 proposals have to pass under the consideration of (i) 

 the appropriate sectional committee, (ii) a Committee 

 of Recommendations formed of representatives of all 

 the sections and certain ex-officio members, and (iii) 

 the General Committee, or, alternatively, the Council. 

 A total sum of less than 83,000, spread over a term 

 of eighty-six years, is not, truly, an imposing figure 

 when applied to investigations in every department 

 of science, and on more than one occasion a derisory 

 picture has been drawn, by critics of the Association, 

 of the best scientific brains in the country occupied 

 in wrangling the allocation, it must be admitted, 

 has occasionally been accompanied by a process 

 which may be thus described over the yearly distri- 

 bution of a paltry thousand pounds. The criticism 

 is ungenerous. The British Association was not 

 established as a society for the accumulation of funds 

 for scientific objects, nor has it ever adopted (though 

 it might have done and may yet do so) any systematic 

 method of accumulating funds save through the 

 subscriptions of members to whom it offers, as quae 



