CORRESrONDING SOCIETIES. 5J.1 



Amateur, for whom it is true they already do so much ? To me, at auy rate, it 

 appears that this responsibility is also an opportunity. Let us look back for a 

 moment at their earlier history. 



The affiliated and associated societies number some which came into existence 

 nearly a hundred years afro, and many of them date back to a time when there 

 was no organisation which attempted to diffuse a taste for science throughout the 

 country at large. I'hese societies were doing pioneer work, not only by arousing 

 interest in research, but by creating a general scientific atmosphere, and promoting 

 ideas which were at that time confined to a very small class. In fact, hefore 

 the birth of the British Association they were almost the only agencies occupied 

 in this sort of pioneer work. The British Association itself was initiated by 

 one of them, and may be regarded as a magnified society of the same character, 

 changing its habitat from year to year : the importance of the early work which 

 it effected in popularising and promoting scientific ideas cannot be over-estimated. 

 For a long time the work of the societies was not supplemented in any very 

 adequate manner by the publishers or the Press ; public interest in the general 

 laws that underlie the processes of Nature was only dawning; the prevailing 

 attitude of mind was one of indulgent curiosity ; the older generation regarded 

 science as a curious and entertaining pursuit, but chiefiy fitted to be a pleasino- 



f)astime for the young ; there Avas as yet no intellectual thirst for scientific know- 

 edge sufficient to create a demand for a special literature. T am of course 

 leaving out of account for the moment the ardent students and the earnest inves- 

 tigators and teachers who were engaged in laying the foundations of scientific 

 education and research. For the majority, however, especially those who lived 

 out of reach of the groat towns and universities, and beyond the personal in- 

 fluence of the few inspired workers and teachers, there were as yet no hooka 

 which would enable them to acquire the rudiments of real scientific knowledge at 

 home or by individual effort. It was not easy oven for those who had a personal 

 intere.st in some scientific subject to ascertain what progress was being made at 

 • the great centres of disc()very and research. 



It was only at a much later period, after the stimulus had been supplied by 

 the British Association, and by the Local Societies (whose rapid increase was no 

 doubt due in a great measure to the influence of the British Association) that a 

 real thirst for information made itself felt, and created a sufficiently widespread 

 demand for a new class of scientific literature. 



This resulted in the appearance of a number of excellent cheap text-hooks of 

 elementary science, designed to give a certain amount of sound general knowledo'e 

 and to stimulate the desire for more, and for a considerable lime these continued 

 to fulfil precisely the object for which they were intended. If the day of the 

 shilUng primers, each including a whole science, seems now to have closed, we 

 must allow that in their time they played a very important part in the history of 

 science in the British Isles. Written by acknowledged leaders of thought, they 

 challenged the attention of educated and intelligent people to whom perhaps science 

 had not meant much before. They were written for and read by those who had 

 not received any advanced scientific training, and who would not have found else- 

 where the sort of information that they needed, presented in so instructive a 

 manner. But by fostering the desire for more accurate and detailed know- 

 ledge these primers contributed perhaps to their own extinction, for with the in- 

 crease of special training and the dissemination of expert knowledge they have 

 been more and more supplanted by the educational text-book used in schools, and 

 the specialist treatise which is now put into the hands of the advanced student. 



In other words, as scientific literature has become more highly organised it has 

 fallen more and more into the hands of specialists. This is, no doubt, the merest 

 commonplace to all whom I am addressing ; but the conclusion that I wish to 

 draw is that from the point of view of the amateur this is to be regretted; for he 

 can no longer get an adequate insight into the modern advances of science without 

 either going through a course of special reading in text-books of various grades — ■ 

 for which he has no time — or attempting to master a treatise which ho can hardly 

 be expected to understand without a preliminary training of some sort. 



