9 
CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. BY 4 
The Rev. R. Ashington Bullen (South-Eastern Union of Scientific 
Societies) introduced the following subject :— 
The Advisability of Appointing a Committee for the Photographic Survey 
of Ancient Remains in the British Islands. 
Last year, at York, the Delegates had the advantage of listening to 
a clear, concise, and comprehensive paper by Mr. W. Jerome Harrison on 
the ‘ Desirability of Promoting County Photographic Surveys.’ Nothing 
but good can come out of such a discussion as that paper initiated, and 
in one sense I am, so to speak, continuing that discussion, so that some- 
thing of a practical character may result. 
I have lately sought for some of the earliest references to the practical 
application of photography to scientific purposes, and the earliest which 
I could find dates back to the forties of the last century. In a book of 
J. L. Stephens’s on ‘ Incidents of Travel in Yucatan’ (in the year 1841) it 
is stated that ‘the descriptions are accompanied by full-page illustrations 
from daguerreotype views and drawings taken on the spot by Mr. Cather- 
wood, and the engravings were executed under his personal superin- 
tendence.’ The object of that expedition was to visit the almost forgotten 
cities of Yucatan, and the work of faithfully reproducing the hiero- 
glyphics and carved images must have been considerably aided even by 
the somewhat clumsy and uncleanly process of daguerreotyping. 
Again, in 1859, when the too tempting rewards offered by Boucher 
de Perthes had caused many spurious flint implements to be included 
among the genuine work of paleolithic man, Prestwich called in the aid 
of photography, and by employing a photographer from Amiens he was 
able to exhibit photographs of palzolithic implements still a stu at 
St. Acheul, in the very pit from which remains of Hlephas primigenius, 
Rhinoceros tichorhinus, &c., had been obtained. 
Again, on the one hand how valuable would have been photographs 
of the seventeen inverted urns unearthed in cutting Fordingbridge Rail- 
way, of which Dr. Blackmore tells me no account has been published, nor 
illustrations given ; and, on the other hand, how useful the photographs of 
the cists in the late Keltic cemetery at Harlyn Bay have proved, seeing 
that the human bones sent to Truro were so damp that most of them fell 
to pieces on the way thither. 
I have always regretted that the prehistoric slate-built hut at Con- 
stantine Island, Cornwall, was never photographed before it was reduced 
to ruins by some unknown searcher for buried treasure. The treasure 
was there, but it was not of gold—only the cunningly placed hut of 
neolithic man upon an old raised beach. One could easily multiply 
instances of the utility of photography in furnishing valuable corro- 
borative evidence ; but let the above instances sufiice. 
There can only be one opinion as to the value of Mr. Jerome 
Harrison’s suggestive paper, already referred to ; but the work to which 
he invites the British Association is so vast that it would need a 
separate organisation in order to attain an adequate measure of success. 
Such a work seems rather to be suitable for a Society like the 
‘National Photographic Record Association.’ Since the British Associa- 
tion has members in every county of the British Isles it is believable 
that the inclusion of the subject of County Photographic Surveys for 
discussion at this meeting may help to advertise the desirability of such 
