40 REPORT—1905. 
of well-to-do people, which has already carried on this practice for several 
years. By personal solicitation, which it is difficult to refuse, they induce 
professional men not only to lecture, but to take the trouble to make 
their lectures popularly entertaining ; and yet the members pay less for 
the whole season’s course than most of them would have neither hesita- 
tion nor difficulty in paying for a single seat at a concert. Now profes- 
sional scientific men, as a rule, are so much interested in their researches 
that they are only too ready to communicate whatever they can to any 
sympathetic inquirer ; but it rarely happens that their ordinary income 
is commensurate with the circumstances in which they are compelled to 
live. It is therefore unfair, to say the least, to expect them to do real 
hard work, such as a popular lecture entails, without being provided with 
the fee which would go as a matter of course to the medical man, 
lawyer, or musician in the exercise of any of his professional duties. If 
a Society decides to arrange for the highest type of instruction, it should 
in any case make the subscription sufticiently large to prevent this teach- 
ing from being done at the expense of those who can least afford it. 
Even in the case of Societies whose main object is to encourage 
original research, it is becoming more and more expedient to restrict the 
meetings almost entirely to general discourses and demonstrations. 
Nearly all original papers are now of necessity so technical that they 
must be studied closely in print before they can be appreciated ; and the 
most active even of the metropolitan Societies are those which make 
a special feature of ‘ exhibits’ while taking the majority of papers as 
‘read.’ TI have often thought that in the smaller local Societies much 
might be accomplished by making special arrangements for papers by real 
workers to treat of the unsolved problems of the sciences in which they 
are interested. I believe it is a maxim among ordinary teachers that the 
learner must be told facts as definitely as possible, and not allowed to 
suspect that there may be doubt about any of them. Consequently all 
elementary books of instruction are written to give the impression that 
there is no particular in which the knowledge they contain can be 
improved. For the guidance of more advanced students, who know 
better, we are distinctly in need of a series of books to treat of ignorance 
rather than knowledge ; and until these are forthcoming the Societies 
cannot do more important service to research than that of supplying the 
deficiency. 
The allusion to books of reference reminds me of another direction in 
which the local Societies might with advantage exert more influence than 
they are commonly accustomed to do. ‘The selection of books on natural 
science in many of our smaller public libraries can only be described as 
lamentable. Not only is the student of small means unable to borrow 
from this source the ordinary standard treatises which a competent Com- 
mittee should provide: he can rarely find even the most important books 
-descriptive of the natural history of the district in which the library is 
situated. I know one of these small libraries where the Librarian and 
Committee are so ignorant that, for lack of capacity to choose new books, 
they have confined their attention for many years to buying new copies 
of the old books that happen to have been worn out by prolonged and 
continual service. They have solved their difficulties by supplying what 
seemed to be in constant demand. TI believe, in response to public ridicule, 
the Committee have lately ordered their Librarian (a hopelessly illiterate 
man) to read the ‘ Publishers’ Circular’ and the ‘ Atheneum,’ so that he 
