CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES OF 
CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 
THE MESSAGE OF SCIENCE. 
ADDRESS BY 
Sir RICHARD GREGORY, 
PRESIDENT OF THE CONFERENCE. 
Ir is just forty years ago, at the York Meeting in 1881, that a Committee 
was appointed ‘to arrange for a conference of delegates from scientific societies 
to be held at the annual meetings of the British Association, with a view to 
promote the interests of the societies represented by inducing them to undertake 
definite systematic work on a uniform plan.’ The Association had been in 
existence for fifty years before it thus became a bond of union between local 
scientific societies in order to secure united action with regard to common 
interests. Throughout the whole period of ninety years it has been concerned 
with the advancement and diffusion of natural knowledge and its applications. 
The addresses and papers read before the various sections have dealt with new 
observations and developments of scientific interest or practical value; and, 
as in scientific and technical societies generally, questions of professional status 
and emolument have rarely been discussed. The port of science—whether pure 
or applied—is free, and a modest yawl can find a berth in it as readily as a 
splendid merchantman, provided that it has a cargo to discharge. Neither the 
turmoil of war nor the welter of social unrest has prevented explorers of 
uncharted seas from crossing the bar and bringing their argosies to the quayside, 
where fruits and seeds, rich ores and precious stones have been piled in profusion 
for the creation of wealth, the comforts of life, or the purpose of death, according 
as they are selected and used. 
All that these pioneers of science have asked for is for vessels to be chartered 
to enable them to make voyages of discovery to unknown lands. Many have 
been private adventurers, and few have shared in the riches they have brought 
into port. Corporations and Governments are now eager to provide ships which 
will bring them profitable freights, and to pay bounties to the crews, but this 
service is dominated by the commercial spirit which expects immediate returns 
for investments, and mariners who enter it are no longer free to sail in any 
direction they please or to enter whatever creek attracts them. The purpose 
is to secure something of direct profit or use, and not that of discovery alone, 
by which the greatest advances of science have hitherto been achieved. 
When science permits itself to be controlled by the spirit of profitable 
application it becomes merely the galley-slave of short-sighted commerce. Almost 
all the investigations upon which modern industry has been built would have 
been put aside at the outset if the standard of immediate practical value had 
been applied to them. To the man of science discoveries signify extensions of 
the field of work, and he usually leaves their exploitation to prospectors who 
follow him. His motives are intellectual advancement, and not the production 
of something from which financial gain may be secured. For generations he 
