CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES 409 
as it should be. The Report of the Advisory Council of the Science 
Museum, London, which has just been published, states that issues of books, 
etc., from the Science Library to external readers during 1933 exceeded 
16,000, an increase of 3,000 on the previous year ; but this seems to be a very 
small drain on its resources when we learn that the number of current 
scientific and technical periodicals which are being regularly received there 
is 8,696, while the stock of the library now numbers some 230,000 volumes, 
dealing with almost every branch of science and technology except medicine. 
The card-index to subjects contains now nearly two million references. 
Here, at any rate, is an inexhaustible source of information for the investi- 
gator in industrial research, of which he can with profit make use to a far 
greater extent than has hitherto been the case. 
It would seem, therefore, that in most cases there should not be any 
great difficulty in facilitating the acquisition of information needed by 
scientific workers in any part of this country if local resources are utilised, 
and the necessary enthusiasm is forthcoming. ‘The technical matters which 
research workers may wish to discuss will not always be attractive to some 
of the members of the scientific society concerned, but perhaps special 
meetings for this purpose could be arranged. Some thirty years ago meet- 
ings of this kind at a small scientific society, Cairo, where technical libraries 
were then non-existent, proved to be of the greatest value to its members, 
who at them exchanged views, acquired information over a much wider 
field than that in which their own activity lay, and brought out many pieces 
of information which otherwise would never have come to light, and which 
later developed into scientific records of permanent value. 
However, reliable and well-planned accounts of the direction in which 
modern science is advancing are always acceptable and can be made to be 
extremely interesting, even to those who may have no special knowledge of 
the subject. 
The larger part that science is playing and must increasingly play in 
industrial progress, as well as that understanding of the relations between 
the advance of science and the life of the community which this meeting 
of the Association is specially emphasising, provides for scientific societies 
throughout the country a wide and fertile field of endeavour, and in this 
task they will find that both their museums and their public libraries will be 
able to render most valuable assistance, each in its own sphere. 
Prof. P. G. H. Boswett, O.B.E., F.R.S.—Town and country planning 
schemes in relation to sites of scientific importance. 
Under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1932, a local authority or 
joint committee must obtain the approval of the Minister of Health to a 
resolution deciding to prepare a scheme. Among the objects of such a 
planning scheme, as cited in Section 1 of the Act, are ‘ preserving existing 
buildings or other objects of architectural, historic and artistic interest and 
places of natural interest or beauty, and generally of protecting existing 
amenities whether in urban or rural portions of the area.’ Arrangements 
have now been made under which the Ministry of Health is systematically 
notifying the British Association of the areas in which planning schemes 
are proposed. The Association is well fitted by its aims and constitution, 
and by its liaison with its Corresponding Societies, to make representations 
when necessary to the Ministry and to appropriate local authorities or joint 
committees for the preservation of sites or objects of exceptional scientific 
interest—botanical, zoological, geological, birthplaces or domiciles of 
