422 CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 



I am afraid, will long be with us, and we must help ourselves, so far as we 

 can, by cultivating some skill in the writing of summaries. It behoves 

 every contributor to the paper harvest of a society to see to the prepara- 

 tion of a fair summary statement of his paper in as compact a form as 

 possible. Even a brief summary, available for reference, will suffice to 

 bring the work to the knowledge of others working on the same subject 

 or on one for which the investigation detailed may be helpful. It will 

 thus have its chance of bringing together workers who may be mutually 

 helpful. 



Preservation of Records. 



Whether printed or only recorded in MS., ' minutes ' and other filed 

 documents, the records of local scientific societies ought to be scrupu- 

 lously preserved. It is not always easy to secure the preparation of good 

 records, but these can be secured if the secretary or the editor is sufficiently 

 persistent. Some of the difficult members may be landed by the bait of 

 a draft which is obviously — it may be knowingly — inadequate. Once 

 secured, records must be preserved intact. 



Preservation of Examples. 



The preservation of valuable or interesting specimens is no less 

 important than that of documents. In the case of specimens it is of course 

 desirable to secure their early or ultimate deposit in a permanent institu- 

 tion, where they will be effectively preserved, while continuing to be 

 available for reference or other study. In any event, alike for specimens 

 and for documents, provision for preservation should take account of the 

 possibility of temporary or permanent discontinuance of a society or — and 

 this applies particularly to material examples — death or lapse of care of 

 interested holders. 



One case of such lapse of care is worth mentioning as a warning. 

 Many interesting examples of work of prehistoric man had been diligently 

 collected by an able collector resident in an area of special interest in this 

 respect. The owner of the land took much interest in the collection and 

 erected on the margin of a loch which was the centre of the area a delightful, 

 small permanent museum for the preservation and exhibition of the 

 collection. The collector died. The estate was sold, and with it the 

 museum and all it contained. The museum building was put to other 

 uses, and of the objects collected part only were passed to safe custody. 



The List of Papers. 



We all regret extremely that the publication of the ' List of Papers ' 

 prepared under the auspices of the Corresponding Societies Committee 

 has been interrupted. This publication is of very definite national value. 

 It is in effect a general index to a mass of good, honest work by a great 

 body of enthusiastic devotees of science, many of whom have both 

 exceptional opportunities and great ability. Collectively their interests 

 include many diverse subjects of study. In effect they form an army of 

 voluntary workers whose services throughout the field outlined by the 

 Corresponding Societies have a high potential value. 



