CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES 
OF CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. | 
WEMBLEY, 1924. 
Tue Conference of Delegates of Corresponding Societies met on Tuesday, 
July 22, 1924, in the Conference Hall of the British Empire Exhibition at 
Wembley, on the invitation of the Museums Association, which was holding 
its annual meeting at that time. 
The Conference was attended by thirty-four delegates of Corresponding 
Societies, in addition to members of the Museums Association. 
The chair was taken by the Vice-Chairman of the Corresponding 
Societies Committee, Mr. T. Sheppard, M.Sc., who opened a brief dis- 
cussion of the recommendations of the Zoological Publications Committee 
for more uniform size of scientific periodicals. Dr. F. A. Bather, F.R.S., 
explained the recommendations of the Committee, which are printed in 
its Report to the Liverpool Meeting of the Association in 1923. 
The President of the Conference, Professor J. L. Myres, M.A., D.Sc., 
F.B.A., then delivered the following address :— 
The Conservation of Sites of Scientific Interest. 
“Les longs souvenirs font les grands peuples.’ ‘Public utility is not a purely 
material thing ; national traditions, history and art itself{—are they not, in truth, 
matters of public utility, as much as bridges and arsenals and roads?’ ‘ To make this 
feeling real is the task of the civic authorities. . . . It is a matter of intimate duty, 
of conscience, on the part of city governors, to care for the older monuments, not in 
amateur fashion as a by-work, but of set purpose, as one of the most important objects 
of civic administration.’ These three expressions of enlightened European opinion 
in the last century extracted from Professor Baldwin Brown’s indispensable book 
on ‘ The Care of Ancient Monuments,’ hardly need supplement, even to-day, except 
in one particular. We have, as we have known for some while, to ‘educate our 
masters’ ; it is not so widely appreciated that we also have to educate our servants ; 
that there is only one security that ‘ city governors’ will govern intelligently ; and 
that is an educated and watchful public opinion, ‘a certain force of intelligent belief in 
the need for agency of the kind’; and moreover, ‘some permanent agency repre- 
senting the public mind at its best, and always kept in working order.’ 
Such agencies are of several kinds, all resting on public opinion, which is the 
ultimate driving force behind them, and court of appeal—positive law, public enact- 
ment, or administrative decrees, to be obeyed under penalties; state-appointed 
commissions and conservators, with the authority of government and (it may be) 
legal powers to insist on conformity with the demands of public opinion; and private, 
unofficial agencies, such as our Societies for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings or 
for Controlling the Abuses of Public Advertising, or the National Trust for Places 
of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty. These last, being voluntary associations, 
can only make it one of their functions to influence public opinion in the direction of 
a proper respect for monuments or sites worthy of public regard. 
It may be of use to delegates, and to the societies which they represent, to review 
the growth of such public opinion, and define the point which it has reached now. 
This, at all events, will show most clearly what remains to be done, and how local 
scientific societies may help to do it. 
Four distinct categories of objects are in question here: ancient buildings and 
other monuments raised by the hand of man; sites of historic interest on account of 
some human achievement, such as a battle, or a treaty, which has occurred there ; 
