50 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



Societies had been engaged in valuable, original, anthropological work, and 

 at least a hundred individuals had conti-ibuted anthropological papers to 

 their ' Transactions.' They occupied the whole country from Penzance to 

 Inverness, and from Rochester to Belfast. During each of the twenty- 

 one years I have published an answer to tlie same question in the form 

 of a brief note on that portion of the annual report which relates to 

 Section H. On more than one occasion I have had the honour of 

 attending your Conferences as a repi'esentative of Section H, and of 

 addressing you on one or other of the movements which have interested 

 that Section. Though I have not until now been a member of your body, 

 I may claim that I have been from the very first in close touch with you, 

 and a sincere admirer of the excellent work v/hich is done in all parts of 

 the country by the local scientific Societies and Field Clubs. 



I hope we shall find in the course of our Conference that the afliliated 

 and associated Societies are alike capable of useful work in connection 

 with the sciences which are cultivated in all or nearly all the Sections ; 

 but I will not attempt in these opening remarks to go beyond the three 

 Sections, F, H, and L, in which I am personally interested. I have no 

 commission from the Organising Committee of Section F to lay before you 

 any special problem of economic science ; but when I consider how wide 

 is the range of subjects bearing upon the welfare of mankind with which 

 that Section has to deal, and at the same time how complicnted are the local 

 considerations which affect them, I cannot but reconnnend to your atten- 

 tion the great advantage which may be derived from local investigation. 

 To take one subject only which has recently acquired great importance, 

 that of the unemployed workman. It is obvious that that is a subject 

 which ought not to be dealt with upon general principles without careful 

 local investigation, in all parts of the country, of the processes whicli 

 make for mobility of labour and of all the other elements of the problem. 



It is thought by many that the establishment of labour exchanges in 

 correspondence with one another a.11 over the country wovdd tend to a 

 solution of the difficulty ; but no such general scheme could be set on foot 

 without careful consideration of the economic position of every locality. 

 Accurate statistics of the number employed in each branch of industry 

 and of the demand for labour and a precise estimate of the reserve of 

 labour required to meet occasional calls would have to be obtiiined, and 

 could only be made complete by enlisting the co-operation of local 

 scientific men. 



Other great economic questions whicli occasionally come to the front, 

 and are tre;ited by the ordinary statistician upon broad general lines, 

 acquire an altogether different aspect when examined in detail in their 

 application to a particular locality. The questions of population whicli 

 emerge upon any general census, the important consideration of the 

 decline in the birth-rate, vv'ith all the moral and economic consequences 

 that it implies, the rate of infant mortality, the ijicrease in the employ- 

 ment of women, are all matters which affect one locality differently from 

 another, and therefore call for local treatment. 



With regard to Section H what I have already said may sufKciently 

 exemplify the special work of local Societies. Each locality has its own 

 ancient monuments, its own relation to past history, its own mixed 

 population, with special racial affinities ; its own ancient customs, some 

 of their roots going far down into the past ; its own folklore, its own 

 dialect, its own place-names ; and thus every local Society has an interest 



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