246 RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 



meeting. Of these there are on an average upwards 

 of two hundred in all, some of considerable length, 

 if addresses, discourses, sectional papers, contribu- 

 tions to discussions, and reports of committees be 

 counted. As the number of sections increased and 

 the interests of the Association broadened, so did the 

 dimensions of its published annual reports, culminat- 

 ing in a volume of nearly fifteen hundred pages in 

 1885. It has often been questioned whether such a 

 receptacle be the most convenient form for the 

 medley of subjects comprised within the purview of 

 the Association, and even so the collection of material 

 in the Report has never been fully representative. 

 Kelvin in 1888 wrote as follows in The Times : 



6 No one not following the course of scientific 

 progress, generally or in some particular department, 

 can fully understand how much of practical impulse 

 is owing to the British Association for the contribu- 

 tions made in the course of the year to the scientific 

 societies and magazines, in which achieved results 

 of scientific investigation are recorded and published.' 



This important fact may be illustrated by example. 

 The annual Report takes some months to bring into 

 shape after the annual meeting, and in order to add 

 to its value as a work of reference, it has lately become 

 the practice to ask readers of communications at 

 the meeting, which are not to be published by the 

 Association, to furnish references to their publication 

 elsewhere. Out of 180 communications received at 

 a recent meeting, and not printed by the Association, 

 seventy were published (or arrangements had been 

 made to publish them) in over forty different journals, 

 within six months of the meeting ; and this in a yea 



