680 _ NARRATIVE AND ITINERARY 
they did so at the meeting of the General Committee held in Sheffield 
on September 2, 1910. 
In anticipation of the invitation, the General Secretaries of the 
Association, in June 1910, had issued a circular letter addressed to 
Members of the General Committee and other representative Members, 
of professorial and similar standing, asking whether the recipients 
foresaw any possibility of attending a meeting in Australia or not. 
The proportion of Members who answered this inquiry in the affirmative 
was sufficient to warrant favourable consideration of the invitation. 
The General Committee unanimously accepted the invitation (after 
some discussion in private), and chose the later year offered (1914), 
having in view the consideration that the Association had twice in recent 
years (1905 and 1909) met outside the United Kingdom. 
Commonwealth Grant.—<As already indicated, the Commonwealth 
Government guaranteed from the outset a substantial sum to be devoted 
exclusively towards the expenses of the voyage overseas incurred by 
representative scientific Members to be selected and invited by the 
Council of the Association. The General Officers of the Association, 
judging (as events proved, rightly) that a representative body could be 
gathered together larger than that for which the sum originally proposed 
would have afforded sufficient provision, took advantage of the occasion 
of Their Majesties’ Coronation, when members of the Commonwealth 
Government were present in London, to discuss this matter with them. 
The suggestions then made from the point of view of the Association 
were received in the most generous spirit, and the Commonwealth 
Government subsequently increased its grant to £15,000, which was 
‘placed at the disposal of the Association under no other condition save 
that (in the words of a cablegram received by the High Commissioner 
from his Government in November 1912, and communicated by him to 
the Council of the Association) it was ‘ to cover passages of not less than 
150 official representatives, including selected Dominion and foreign 
scientists.’ The allocation of this sum formed, as will be presently 
seen, the most important function of a Committee appointed by the 
Council to deal with arrangements for the Meeting; it may be stated 
here that the actual number of representative Members who benefited 
under the grant was 155—approximately one-half of the Overseas 
Party. 
Letter to Universities—No great amount of preliminary work was 
found necessary in London during the Council’s sessions in 1910-12, 
though in June 1911 the Council authorised the General Secretaries to 
address a letter to universities and other educational institutions in the 
United Kingdom, requesting the authorities to do what lay in their 
power to relieve of examining and other duties, in July and September 
1914, any members of their teaching staff who might contemplate 
attending the Australian Meeting. The response to this request was 
favourable in the majority of cases, and very few instances came sub- 
sequently to the knowledge of the Association officers of Members 
prohibited by professional duties from accepting invitations to attend 
the Meeting. A letter in similar terms was sent independently by the 
Federal Council in Australia. 
