‘LOCAL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES.’ 321 
‘The Conference of Delegates shall be summoned by the Secretary of 
the Association to hold one or more meetings during each annual meeting 
of the Association, and shall be empowered to invite any member or 
associate to take part in the meetings. 
‘The Secretaries of each Section shall be instructed to transmit to 
the Secretaries of the Conference of Delegates copies of any recommen- 
dations forwarded by the Presidents of Sections to the Committee of 
Recommendations bearing upon matters in which the co-operation of 
Corresponding Societies is desired; and the Secretaries of the Con- 
ference of Delegates shall invite the authors of these recommendations to 
attend the meetings of the Conference and give verbal explanations of 
their objects and of the precise way in which they would desire to have 
them carried into effect. 
‘It shall be the duty of the Delegates to make themselves familiar 
with the purport of the several recommendations as brought before the 
Conference, in order that they and others who take part in the meetings 
may be able to bring the recommendations clearly and favourably before 
their respective Societies. The Conference may also discuss propositions 
bearing on the promotion of more systematic observation and plans of 
operation, and of greater uniformity in the mode of publishing results.’ 
The Committee believe that the distinction accorded to a Society 
through its selection and formal recognition by the British Association as 
one of its Corresponding Societies, the advantage of a widely-circulated 
notice of its local work in so important a volume as the Report of the 
British Association, and the honourable and useful duties assigned to 
its Delegate, would give considerable value to the title. 
They also anticipate that a Society which had asked for and received 
recognition as a representative centre of the scientific institutions in its 
district, would be thereby stimulated to exercise that very creditable and 
important function with increased zeal and efficiency. The result would 
be to strengthen the mutual relations of the larger and the smaller 
Societies, to ensure the encouragement of any disposition to co-operate 
in systematic investigations, and to establish a practice of printing the 
scattered results obtained by the smaller Societies of any district in a 
consolidated form in the publications of their leading Society. 
Finally, the Committee believe that the annual meetings of the pro- 
posed Conference of Delegates, under the chairmanship of a distinguished 
member of the Association, would have large influence in harmonising 
the action of their several Societies, without in any way tending to 
compromise their independence, and that they would offer a facility 
that does not now exist for the natural and healthy growth of a federa- 
tion between remote Societies which have no more direct bond of union 
than through the British Association. 
1883. Y 
