22 Notes and Comments. 
OS 
“ DISCUSSION ! ’ 
What perhaps might be described as a ‘ discussion’ certainly 
followed Dr. Hoyle’s paper, but as it resolved itself into an 
account of the good things done at the museums in the towns 
represented by the various delegates who spoke, the discussion 
might very easily have taken place at another Association 
which we know very well. 
PROVINCIAL SOCIETIES. 
Sir Thomas Holland presided at a meeting of delegates 
from corresponding societies, and spoke upon the necessity 
for organisation of scientific and learned societies. He said 
that the war would result, more completely than any of its 
puny predecessors, in recasting our national ideas, economical, 
political, and literary, and of the lessons we were likely to 
learn the one that so far promised most to affect the life of the 
nation might be summed up in the word ‘ organisation.’ 
GERMAN v. ENGLISH METHODS. 
‘In Germany the scientific, technical, and commercial 
community was mobilised, and each individual in it was given 
his appropriate function. In this country still, in these in- 
stitutions, we had the right men in the wrong places, while 
scientific activity seemed to be devoted to the voluntary 
formation of innumerable and often irresponsible committees 
with overlapping functions and no apparent common aim in 
view, and with convergent interests. The plan that had often 
occurred to him as a possible compromise between the claims 
of central organisation and provincial autonomy, was this. 
The recognised chief among the learned societies—the Royal 
Society of London—should, by affiliation of its provincial poor 
relations, take over the cost as well as the responsibility of 
their serious publicatiens. They would enjoy home rule so far 
as their meetings, discussions, and finances were concerned, 
but their papers offered for publication would be censored by 
the appropriate sectional committees of the Royal Society, and 
would rank technically for purposes of quotation and priority.’ 
A DANGER. 
This may be alright theoretically and, as we have pointed 
out on many occasions, an examination of the publications of 
the various societies, metropolitan and provincial, is a difficult 
problem. But it must be remembered that this London 
‘censorship’ may do harm. In the first place quite a number 
of important local notes and records would certainly be 
‘censored’ by a central governing and a central paying body. 
‘A List of the Diptera of Hull,’ or ‘ An Account of a Ramble 
of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union at Elland,’ or a ‘ List of 
the Fungi of Halifax,’ would in all probability be considered 
of insufficient importance from a Royal Society Committee’s 
Naturalist, 
