CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. oi 



Second Meeting^ August 7. 



Mr. John Hopkinson, F.L.S., F.G.S., in the Chair. 



The Corresponding Societies Committee was represented by Mr. W. 

 Whifcaker, Rev. J. O. Bevan, Mr. Hopkinson, and Mr. Rudler. 



The Chairman, in opening the proceedings, said that it might not be 

 known to all who were present that a Conference of Delegates of Corre- 

 sponding Societies met at York twenty-five years ago. It was not 

 recorded in the Reports of the British Association ; for, although held 

 under the sanction of the Council, it was not an official department 

 of the Association. It was the second of five unofficial conferences 

 due to his suggestion, the first having been held at Swansea in 1880 

 and the last at Montreal in 1884. Reports of these five annual con- 

 ferences were printed, the delegates or their Societies contributing 

 towards the expense of printing and postage, and abstracts of these 

 reports were published in the ' Transactions of the Hertfordshire Natural 

 History Society ' (vol. vi. pp. 4-5-47). He wished to impress upon all tlie 

 delegates that they were expected to give some report, however brief, of 

 the present Conference to the Societies they represented, and to obtain 

 its publication by their Societies. They were asked to do so in the 

 circulars issued by the Corresponding Societies Committee, but only ;i 

 few, he believed, complied with this request. Though not bringing 

 forward his own reports published by the Hertfordshire Natural History 

 Society as a model to be followed, they might pei'haps be a help to some 

 of the delegates, and he had brought for distribution a few copies of 

 these reports for the years 1902 to 1904. That for 190-5 was not yet 

 printed. 



At this meeting suggestions for a Photographic Survey of the 

 Counties of Great Britain and Ireland would be brought before the 

 Conference by Mr.W. J. Harrison, and he thought that all would admit that 

 this was an important subject, and one which well deserved the considera- 

 tion of our county Societies. It was becoming more and more desirable 

 to obtain a permanent representation of the interesting features of our 

 country, whether natural or the work of man ; for at no former period 

 had the destruction or mutilation of such features been more rife, and 

 never before had so much interest been taken in their preservation. 

 This apparent paradox might be explained by the fact that the greater 

 the vandalism the greater was the protest evoked. Nor should the 

 ravages of time be overlooked, nor the changes due to natural agencies, 

 such as the encroachment of the sea upon our coasts. The sooner the 

 lietter, therefore, would it be for a systematic attempt to be made to 

 obtain and preserve a picture of everything of interest admitting of 

 representation by the camera in all departments of science not within the 

 scope of any existing Committee of the Association. This could best be 

 done by our Natural History and Archreological Societies, Camera Clubs, 

 and Photographic Societies, and amateur photographers unattached to 

 any Society or club, working in conjunction with some central body, 

 such as a Committee of the British Association ; for in this way only 

 could a photographic survey be sufficiently systematic in its execution, 

 and in this way only could comparable results of permanent value be 

 achieved. 



