CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 225 
We have decided that for many reasons the civil parish will form the most 
generally suitable unit of area, and that a local survey should deal with at 
least one parish, or more often with a group of parishes around a civic centre. 
The grouping of parishes into survey areas, and of these again into larger 
natural regions, is a piece of work that will take some time, and will depend 
for its success largely upon the help of local societies, 
2. The preparation of an outline scheme or ‘ conspectus’ for local surveys.— 
This will be a general and detailed analysis of the whole field of survey, with 
suggestions for the maps to be made and work to be done in each section. 
Appended to the committee’s report in the forthcoming volume of Trans- 
actions of the South-Eastern Union will be some notes on a method of surveying 
rural parishes which will be useful to anyone engaging in survey work in 
country districts. 
3. A regional survey bibliography.—This will contain references to books, 
pamphlets, maps, manuscripts, &c., dealing with any part of the Union’s area 
and with any subject, and its arrangement will follow that of the conspectus. 
4. The preparation of a series of maps of the Union’s area showing different 
features of interest.—This will be on a small scale (4 inch) series to serve as av 
index series to the larger scale maps prepared by the local societies. 
‘Since the formation by the South-Eastern Union of a Regional Survey Com- 
mittee some of its affiliated societies have taken up survey work. After the 
war we expect several others will do the same, and possibly in some unrepre- 
sented districts new societies for carrying out surveys will be formed. 
I may now appropriately repeat what Professor Lebour said in his Presi- 
dential Address to this Conference last year, and I may claim that the regional 
survey offers to local societies a means both practical and thorough of carrying 
out the spirit of his suggestions. 
‘The above are some only of very many directions in which the clubs and 
societies, working on pre-arranged lines with each other, may, in the field of 
our branch of science alone (geology), induce their members to take part in 
Wide-reaching research with the certainty that no bit of work, however small, 
will, so long as it is honestly and carefully done, be lost, but will find its place 
as a stone in some worthy edifice erected by the joint efforts of many others. 
Co-operation of the kind I have in mind should be so planned that the 
maximum value in useful results will be obtained from the maximum number 
of co-workers. . . . The machinery to carry out such schemes must be left to 
those in whose hands lies the management of the different societies.’ 
In conclusion, let us take a brief glance at the Regional Association. This 
Association has wider contacts than either the Croydon Society or the South- 
Eastern Union, inasmuch as it covers the whole of the British Isles and takes 
an active interest in the application of regional survey to education, to town- 
planning, and to civic development generally. It was formed as the Provisional 
Committee for the development of Regional Survey at a conference held at 
the Outlook Tower at Edinburgh in 1914, and having done much good work 
under that title is now preparing its constitution as the Regional Survey 
Association. Professor Geddes, to whom, perhaps, more than anyone else the 
Regional Survey movement in its wider sense owes its inspiration, is the 
President of the Association. It is an itinerant Association, holding one or 
two meetings annually at different centres and an annual meeting in London. 
In the three and a half years of its existence it has held meetings of a week 
or more duration at Edinburgh, Dublin, Aberystwith, Ludlow, and Newbury. 
The Association has, among its several committees, a Publication Com- 
mittee, which, in addition to obtaining reprints of regional survey contributions 
to other societies’ publications for distribution, has issued three leaflets with 
suggestions for starting regional surveys written respectively from the physio- 
graphical, natural history, and humanistic standpoints.‘ Others are in the 
course of preparation. 
Finally, what shall we do with our accumulating survey material? It is not 
in the spirit of the movement that we should hide it away in cupboards at our 
* Obtainable from Geo. Morris, B.Sc., 18 West Road, Saffron Walden, 
Essex. 
1917. Q 
