MEN OF SCIENCE IN LEICESTER AND LEICESTERSHIRE 97 
of meteorological instruments. The Museum was made a Government 
station. Observations were made and reported and tabulated, the work 
being at first shared between members of the Section and the Curator 
of the Museum. As time passed the Meteorological Station became a 
department of the Museum. In the Museum Report for 1890 the follow- 
ing paragraph occurs: ‘The death of the Meteorological Assistant 
(Mr. J. C. Smith), in 1888, led the Committee to consider if the expendi- 
ture of some £70 per annum in keeping up a station of the second class 
—so near to Loughborough, a station of the first class—was warranted 
by results. The Committee fully considered the matter in all its bearings, 
and unanimously decided to discontinue the observations.’ 
There is nothing in the printed records of the Society about the meetings 
of, or the subjects discussed by, the Section for Chemistry and General 
Physics between 1850 and 1870. 
In 1883 the Section was reconstituted for Astronomy, Physics and 
Chemistry. The Rev. Edward Atkins, B.Sc., was the chairman, and 
Mr. W. S. Franks, F.R.A.S., was the Secretary, till the Section again 
ceased in 1886-87. Summaries of several of the papers read are in the 
Transactions. They are on abstruse questions in the three branches of 
science for which the Section had been re-established. ‘There were not 
many members, and on some dates for which meetings had been announced 
no meetings were held. The report of the chairman to the Council of 
the Society in 1887 was a statement of the reasons why the Section resigned 
its existence. He said that the absence of any kind of apparatus was an 
almost insuperable barrier to the investigation of physical problems. 
There would not be enough students to justify the purchase of sufficient 
apparatus to meet even the elementary requirements of a Section whose 
title embraced the whole range of physical science from Astronomy down 
to Chemistry. Experimental researches in even one branch like 
Chemistry would need a properly equipped laboratory. The members of 
a Section which embraced as its basis so many sciences could not enter 
into each other’s work. The report ended with a recommendation that 
the Section should be omitted from the list of Sections for the coming 
year, for which no officers had been elected.”* 
A Section for Entomology was appointed by the Society in January 
1894. It ‘ made a vigorous beginning.’ It had a vigorous separate life 
for about twenty years. In 1919-20 it was amalgamated with the Section 
for Biology. When it was founded there were some keen students of 
Entomology who wished for a section of their own. Some practical 
work was done by a committee of this Section, which studied and gave 
advice about injurious insects in farms, gardens and orchards. 
After a paper by Mr. Frank Bouskell on October 28, 1896, on ‘ ‘The 
Disappearance of Certain Species of Insects, with notes on their Slaughter 
and Protection,’ it was decided to urge upon the Entomological Society 
25 The Rev. Edward Atkins was a master in the Wyggeston Boys’ School. 
The latter meetings of the Section were held in the new laboratory of the school. 
It seems that it was the first laboratory in Leicester. In 1883 the Society had 
contributed £100 towards its erection. 
