596 
was held, and spoke eloquently of the sea as contri- 
buting to the grandeur of the countries which it 
washes and to the heroism of their inhabitants. The 
annual report of the association was then read by 
Dr. Loir on behalt of the secretary, and gave evidence 
of good scientific work in various directions and of a 
sound financial condition. In the evening a reception 
was given by the municipality in the Hotel de Ville. 
On Tuesday morning a prehistoric exhibition was 
opened in an annexe of the Museum of Natural His- 
tory. It comprised a selection of false antiquities, a 
large collection of palzolithic implements found in 
the bed of the Seine, at Le Havre, and a well- 
classified collection of neolithic objects. The other 
contents of the Natural History Museum were de- 
scribed by Dr. Loir, the curator. 
At the meeting of the Conference of British Dele- 
gates of Corresponding Societies which, by the cour- 
tesy of the French Association, was made part of the 
proceedings of the Congress, and was held in the 
Salle des Conférences of the Hdétel de Ville, the 
chairman expressed the gratitude of the delegates to 
the Association for the compliment thus paid to them. 
The absence of Sir George Fordham, who had been 
nominated President of the Congress, was a dis- 
appointment, but it was, to some extent, made up for 
by his having sent the MS. of his presidential address, 
which was read. It comprised an interesting account 
of the origin of these conferences, in which Mr. John 
Hopkinson was the principal actor, and which have 
now been held for more than thirty years. The 
number of corresponding societies and of delegates 
has continuously increased, and the papers read at the 
conferences, the annual reports of the Corresponding 
Societies Committee, and especially the annual lists 
of papers read before local societies have been of 
great value; but Sir Geoge Fordham was of opinion 
that the advantages proposed by these annual con- 
ferences had not been fully realised, and attributed 
it, to some extent, to a want of interest in their work 
on the part of the secretaries of some societies, an 
evil for which he was unable to suggest a remedy. 
A similar opinion was expressed by Dr. Garson, but 
Dr. Bather and Mr. Hopkinson entertained a different 
view. A paper was then read by Mr. John Hopkin- 
son on local natural history societies and their publi- 
cations. He restricted his observations to those 
societies which were formed for the definite and prac- 
tical purpose of investigating the natural history of the 
locality in which they are formed. He urged upon 
such societies the necessity of division of labour, one 
member acting as meteorological recorder, another 
as geological recorder, another as recorder of birds, 
and so forth, after the plan adopted by the Hertford- 
shire Natural History Society, of which Mr. Hopkin- 
son is the secretary. For members who are not 
workers, popular lectures should be provided. He 
considered the subject of the publications of the 
societies entirely from the point of view of a biblio- 
grapher. On this he had many practical suggestions 
to make. Especially he urged that the papers printed 
should be those giving the results of original work, 
and he gave further examples from the publications 
of existing societies of the way in which this should 
be done, and emphasised the importance of accurately 
dating every publication. Dr. Loir approved of Mr. 
Hopkinson’s recommendations generally, but said 
that if they were constituted into rules, the system 
would not go down with French societies, who were 
too solicitous of their independence to agree to work 
on a uniform system. The subiect was afterwards 
further considered at a conference over which M. Ray 
presided, on the organisation of French societies. 
Besides the prehistoric exhibition, a retrospective 
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[AucusT 6, 1914, 
marine exposition, and expositions of medical elec- 
tricity and of odontology were organised by the sec- 
tions respectively concerned. 
The French Association has not the same dread of 
a multiplicity of sections that we entertain in Eng- 
land, inasmuch as the number of separate sections 
was not fewer than twenty. It is impossible in so short 
a notice as this to do justice to the work undertaken 
by all of them, but a few of the subjects dealt with 
may be noted. 
The questions submitted to the section of anthropo- 
logy, over which Prof. Gidon, of Caen, presided, 
related entirely to Normandy, and dealt with its ethno- 
graphy, its prehistoric deposits, its megaliths, and the 
recent discoveries in its prehistory. A subsection of 
this section was devoted to history and archeology, 
under the presidency of Dr. Leroy, of Le Havre, 
Here were discussed the Roman roads, their points of 
termination on the Norman coasts, and their relation 
with England, the Roman camps of the valley ot the 
Seine, the Norman influences on the architecture ot 
England, the appearance and development of statuary 
in Normandy, and other like subjects. 
The section of political economy and statistics, of 
which M. Granet was president, considered the utility 
of commercial agents to the foreigner, the increase in 
the cost of living, and a projet de loi upon the unifica- 
tion of measurements. 
Prof. Ray was president of the section of pedagogy 
and instruction, where were to be discussed the ques- 
tions of after-study, of the place of the Press in 
popular instruction and education, of the utilisation of 
museums in all branches of education, and of the 
educative value of the constitution of a conference of 
affiliated societies in connection with the French Asso- 
ciation. 
The Frencn Association, like the British, has had 
to create a special section tor agronomy, and this was 
presided over by M. de Coninck. It considered many 
questions of breeding, agricultural industry, rural 
economy, and agricultural engineering. 
As in England, the great subject of physics, com- 
prising mathematics, astronomy, geodesy, and 
mechanics, in respect of which two sections had been 
combined into one, asserted its pre-eminence, and M. 
Mesny, director of the School of Hydrography of the 
Navy, presided over both. Naturally, the subject of 
naval construction was one of those considered, and 
others were the history of the calculating machine 
and its possibilities, and the biography of those mathe- 
maticians whose careers have shed lustre on the 
departments of the Seine Inférieure. 
Two sections were also combined to deal with the 
sciences of navigation, aeronautics, and civil and 
military engineering. To these a large number and 
variety of questions were submitted, including mari- 
time fishery, the stabilisation of aeroplanes, canal 
transit, wireless telegraphy, and other problems of 
the day. M. Gobin was the president of the com- 
bined sections. 
The section of meteorology and terrestrial physics 
was presided over by M. Georges Lemoine, of the 
Institute. It considered maritime meteorology, sur- 
face winds, and the local meteorology of the depart- 
ment. 
The section of geology and mineralogy had for 
president M. Bigot, dean of the Faculty of Sciences, 
and the questions submitted to it related almost whollv 
to the geology of the district in which the meeting 
was held. 
The section of medical sciences, presided over bv 
Dr. Paul Engelbach, of Le Havre, also devoted itself 
largely to local problems, but it also took into con- 
sideration ‘alcoholism, the transfusion of blood, anti- 
