Notes and Comments. 3IT 
such a popular ‘ picnic of science’ was scouted by many of the 
professorial scientists of the Universities, who rather resented 
the intrusion of the laymen and the amateur into their well- 
endowed patrimony. But the laymen—men like Vernon 
Harcourt and John Phillips, of York, the latter not till afterward 
a professor and till the end of his life an amateur in the best 
meaning of the word—with the inspiration and aid of such 
brilliant ‘ outsiders’ (from the University point of view) as 
Brewster and Dalton, made a success of the enterprise. When 
it was apparent that they would be done without, the university 
professors came in, but the faction feeling was for a long time 
strong in favour of confining membership to the select few— 
the really learned, with a sort of condescending or rather, 
perhaps, fawning concession to ‘the nobility, clergy, and 
gentry. Something of this old exclusiveness, this rather 
pedantic disdain for the vulgar herd, has been evident in recent 
years in some contemptuous references to picnics and garden 
parties. But garden parties and external attractions mean 
members—members means guineas—and a well-stored coffer 
enables much important and expensive research to be subsidised. 
So that if the scientific mind is a business mind, as the Presi- 
dent suggested, it is not quite easy to understand to what 
end his reminiscences of the old controversy were directed. 
SCIENCE AND HUMANITY. 
The President concluded by stating that he was drawing 
no ring round a privileged class, but urged that the hunger 
for intellectual enjoyment is universal, and everybody should 
be given the opportunity and leisure of appeasing it. The 
duty to work, the right to live, and the leisure to think, are 
the three prime necessities of our existence, and when one of 
them fails, we only live an incomplete life. In the struggle 
which convulses the world, all intellectual pursuits are vitally 
affected, and science gladly gives all the power she wields to 
the service of the State. Sorrowfully she covers her face because 
that power, accumulated through the peaceful efforts of the 
sons of all nations, was never meant for death and destruction ; 
gladly she helps, because a war wantonly provoked threatens 
civilisation, and only through victory shall we achieve a peace 
in which once more science can hold up her head, proud of her 
strength to preserve the intellectual freedom which is worth 
more than material prosperity, to defeat the spirit of evil that 
destroyed the sense of brotherhood among nations, and to 
spread the love of truth. 
THE HANDBOOK. 
Unfortunately the handbook issued by the local com- 
mittee, edited by H. M. McKechnie, is not up to the usual 
standard, and is even issued in paper covers, which is some 
1915 Oct. L 
