CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES 595 
infection to the population of this country through the introduction of the 
malarial parasite by infected troops returning in large numbers from 
Macedonia, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and elsewhere. The Board accordingly 
instituted inquiries amongst local scientific societies to ascertain the pre- 
valence and distribution of anopheline mosquitoes in England and Wales. 
In the course of this investigation, the suspicion arose that an elusive tree- 
hole breeding species of anopheline mosquito (Anopheles plumbeus) was 
capable of becoming an infected intermediary host of the malarial parasite, 
and of transmitting it. This suspicion was confirmed, and special steps 
were promptly taken to ascertain the distribution of the noxious species. 
The task was not an easy one, and its accomplishment was due in no small 
degree to the officially-invited co-operation of the South-Eastern Union of 
Scientific Societies, by which inquiries were instituted among the affiliated 
societies throughout the Union’s area.1_ As the result of these and parallel 
researches, the danger was successfully countered; and the ravages of 
malaria, which have been ingeniously credited with the decline and fall of 
the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations, cannot now be saddled with 
the responsibility of any declension in our own. 
The example which I have just given emphasises the utility of regional 
congresses or unions of scientific bodies as a machinery for stimulating 
and co-ordinating effort. At the present moment, I believe, steps are 
being taken to form some such union for the great midland area in which 
we are meeting this week. The movement deserves all success, and should 
be followed in other parts of the country. The more numerous local 
scientific societies become—and they have increased rather than diminished 
in numbers since the war—the more urgent becomes the need for 
systematic co-ordination. A general meeting held once a year under the 
auspices of the British Association is no sort of substitute for regional 
organisation. Let me refer in this context to the co-operative movement 
which has, during the past decade, been growing in strength amongst the 
museums of England and Wales. The wasteful rivalries and petty jealousies 
which had tended to obstruct the proper functioning of local and, indeed, 
of national museums seemed to some of us not to be the inevitable 
alternative to apathy and ineffectiveness ; and schemes whereby smaller 
museums could work in affiliation with larger museums on a regional 
basis were brought into operation. The method was first evolved, I think, 
in Wales, which happens to be an obvious and convincing territorial unit 
and where, incidentally, co-ordination in a country so sharply subdivided 
by geography and tradition was specially desirable. The result of the 
experiment there has been completely successful; the local museums 
and the National Museum to which they are affiliated have alike benefited 
in various important directions which I need not here particularise. The 
Welsh example has been followed in Lancashire and Cheshire and elsewhere, 
and the movement as a whole received strong approval and encouragement 
from the recent Royal Commission on National Museums and Galleries. 
No central national organisation—however useful as an ultimate co- 
ordinating authority—can replace regional organisation of this kind, whether 
amongst museums or amongst other scientific institutions, as a practical 
solution of the problem with which I am here concerned. 
Lastly, as a mere spectator in the fields of natural science, I freely confess 
to a feeling of envy for the comparative simplicity of the problem of co- 
operation in those researches which do not directly relate to the handiwork 
of man. The distribution of a species, the ecology of a plant, can be 
1 The history of the investigation is summarised by Dr. Tierney in the 
Transactions of the South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies, 1923. 
