September 12, 1912] 



NATURE 



41 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT 

 DUNDEE. 



XT is often pointed out that the meetings of the 

 British Association can never be so important 

 in the future in the estimation of the pubHc as 

 they were in the past. First, because tliere used 

 to be only one yearly congress attracting general 

 attention ; now there are many, and any such 

 meeting is a great expense to a town. Secondly, 

 the most important function of the meeting, the 

 temporary creation of an interest in natural 

 science, is less wanted, because everybody now 

 takes an interest in science, and almost every city 

 now visited has a science college where evening 

 lectures are given. Thirdly, the disappearance of 

 the pioneers of the Huxley type, whose names 

 were well known outside scientific circles. 

 Fourthly, the death of that interest which used to 

 be excited by the quarrel between science and 

 religion. 



The Dundee meeting shows that the British 

 -Association excites as much interest, not merely 

 among scientific men, but in the general public, 

 as it has ever done in the past. In the hotels 

 here there is still hanging a notice of some weeks 

 ago referring to the expectation that the member- 

 ship of this meeting may reach 1200 in number. 

 As I write, the number is more than 2460, a 

 number greater than that of the members of the 

 Dundee meeting of forty-five years ago, which 

 is often referred to as a great meeting. 



There has been a little grumbling that there 

 were some hundreds of members who could not 

 get seats for the president's address and some 

 of the evening lectures. Naturally, the local 

 secretaries are blamed, but they have the valid 

 excuse that nobody could have expected the meet- 

 ing to be so successful as to numbers, and they 

 were probably afraid that the hall provided might 

 actually be too large. Much of the success of 

 a British Association meeting is due to the 

 recognition by the local authorities that some 

 one man of great energy and knowledge and tact 

 and good humour must devote himself to its 

 organisation for eighteen months beforehand. 

 Large subscriptions of money are wanted ; en- 

 thusiasm must be created and maintained in an 

 army of hard-working members of committees. 

 Nobody denies that it is to Prof. D'Arcy Thompson 

 that the enormous success of this meeting is due. 

 Everybody knows the grumbling which in some 

 irritable members is sometimes very loud, when 

 they meet with slight inconveniences. Whether 

 it is that the arrangements are more perfect than 

 usual or that members are in better temper, I 

 do not know, but there is certainly less than the 

 usual amount of complaint. 



Almost everybody expected the weather to be 

 bad. Except that we had rather windy weather 

 for a day, and some occasional threats of rain 

 which came to nothing, the weather has been very 

 good. The hotel accommodation is not great for 

 so important a town, but there is much private 

 hospitality, and on the whole the physical com- 

 forts of the visitors are better looked after than 

 NO. 2237, VOL. 90] 



a person acquainted with Dundee could have 

 anticipated. 



At every meeting of the British Association it 

 is found by the visitors that most of the good 

 reserved seats for the presidential address are 

 txjoked by local people before the first day of the 

 meeting. It is probable that the pressure of the 

 local desire for seats is always too great for the 

 resistance of the local secretaries. The conse- 

 quent heartburning has been greater than usual 

 this year, because the number of members so 

 largely exceeds all expectation. 



The success of a meeting depends greatly on 

 the attention paid to certain details some of 

 which might seem unimportant. First, the re- 

 ception room should be large, and should have 

 such ample accommodation of many kinds that 

 members, when there, shall feel almost as if they 

 were in a club. It ought to be in a central posi- 

 tion, as near as possible to the most frequented 

 section. It is essential that the meetings of the 

 council and general committee and the committee 

 of recommendations should be held in some neigh- 

 bouring place, if not in the same building. 

 Secondly, there are now twelve sections, and meet- 

 ing rooms must be provided for each of them, 

 each with its committee room, and sometimes one 

 section may split up into two or three. These 

 rooms must all be large and conveniently 

 arranged, because changes cannot be made near 

 the time of the meeting, and any of the sections 

 may turn out to be exceedingly popular, and be 

 unexpectedly well attended. Thirdly, although 

 there are many members who wish to attend only 

 one section, and the Recorders try to keep 

 papers of one particular kind of interest to one 

 section, on any one day, a member always finds 

 that there are papers interesting to him in two 

 or more sections, and he desires to hear them. 



It is therefore important to have facilities for 

 getting rapidly from one section to another. I 

 am now speaking of the scientific members. But 

 besides these, the non-scientific people must be 

 thought about, the people who divide their atten- 

 tion over all the sections, and who desire to 

 hear as many interesting papers as possible on 

 quite diverse subjects. It is evident that the 

 best of all cities for a British Association meeting 

 is one which can house all the twelve sections and 

 reception room in one great building or in a few 

 large buildings which are close together. But 

 as this is generally impossible, the best com- 

 promise is to place the sections near one another 

 in groups of allied subjects. It is evident that 

 great attention has been paid to this most im- 

 portant idea at Dundee, and, considering the 

 accommodation of the town, it is impossible to 

 suggest a change for the better. 



The sections for mathematics and physics, 

 chemistry and engineering, are in the University 

 College buildings, not too easily reached from the 

 reception room, a fifteen minutes' walk or bv infre- 

 quent tram-car ; with these we have zoology and 

 physiology. The College buildings are well 

 away from the other groups. One other such 

 group is of geology, botany, and agriculture ; 



