vi FIVE YEARS' RETROSPECT 



To the list of presidents of the Association it is necessary to add the name 

 of Sir William Hardy, F.R.S., who was elected to office for the year 1934. 

 He died on January 23 of that year, and was succeeded by Sir James Jeans, 

 F.R.S. At the Aberdeen Meeting one of the Evening Discourses was made 

 a memorial lecture for Hardy ; it was given by Sir Frank Smith, K.C.B.. 

 Sec. R.S., and dealt with the Storage and Transport of Food, illustrating the 

 far-reaching results of Hardy's work. 



On the figures of attendances of members at the annual meetings it is to 

 be remarked that there has never been previously a continuous succession 

 of five years in each of which the numbers have exceeded 2,000. This is 

 evidence of a widening of the appeal of the Association ; the fluctuation of 

 numbers from year to year has little significance in this connection, since 

 the attendance in any particular town is affected by various considerations, 

 such as its size (which reacts upon the local membership for the meeting) , 

 the existence of a university or other strong scientific element, the scientific 

 interests of the locality, etc. 



In 1932 an important change was made in the period of the presidential 

 office. It now coincides with the calendar year, instead of beginning with 

 the annual meeting. The principal argument in favour of this change was 

 that the President is responsible administratively for the major part of the 

 preparations for the annual meeting over which he is elected to preside 

 and his influence can be more directly brought to bear upon them. The 

 first official act of the new President is now to preside over the joint meeting 

 of the Organising Sectional Committees when, in January of each year, they 

 lay down the main lines of the programme for the ensuing annual meeting. 



In this connection it is appropriate to refer to the strong demand recently 

 encountered in the press and elsewhere that in the programmes of the 

 Association more systematic attention should be paid to the bearings of 

 scientific progress upon the welfare of the community. Efforts have been 

 and are being made to meet this demand, and not only in the transactions 

 of the annual meetings themselves. For in 1935 the Council decided to 

 initiate a series of quinquennial reviews of the progress of science (without 

 particular reference to the proceedings of the Association) : the first of 

 these reviews, covering the period 1931-1935, is in preparation, and is 

 intended to be published by Messrs. Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons in the autumn 

 of 1936. 



In 1931-1932 the Council considered in detail those expenses connected 

 with annual meetings which fall upon the locality in which the meetings 

 are held, and are met each year by a local fund. It was felt that such 

 expenses might tend, and indeed had tended, to increase unduly in sympathy 

 with the general rise of prices in the past twenty years ; but the Council 

 were able to make certain arrangements and proposals for the guidance of 

 local committees which have counteracted this tendency. One result of 

 this action has been the production of a systematic series of scientific surveys 

 of each successive place of meeting and its neighbourhood, in place of the 

 handbooks formerly produced by local committees on no fixed model and 

 sometimes at very large cost. The new series has made for economy of 

 production, and for a definite increase of scientific value inasmuch as in 

 course of time large areas of the whole country will be covered by orderly 

 studies of their outstanding scientific interests. These, moreover, will in 



