FIVE YEARS' RETROSPECT 



III. Research. 



The average number of research committees appointed or reappointed 

 by the General Committee at each annual meeting during the period, and 

 carrying on their work during the ensuing year, was fifty-two. Of these, 

 again on average each year, twenty-six received grants of money from the 

 funds of the Association. The total expenditure on grants to research 

 committees, during the nearest period to the quinquennium for which 

 completed accounts are available, 2 was £6,173 I0S - 5^-> which is the highest 

 in any quinquennial period since 1831, excepting one. 3 The average 

 quinquennial expenditure on grants since 1831 has been £4,900. Some 

 further reference to this aspect of the Association's activities will fall under 

 the later heading of Finance (Section V). 



The Association has maintained its support of the researches carried 

 on, under committees, by selected workers at the marine laboratory, 

 Plymouth, the zoological station at Naples, and the freshwater biological 

 station at Wray Castle, Windermere. Proposals for the establishment of 

 a freshwater biological station originated at the meetings of the Associa- 

 tion in 1927-28 ; the preliminary work of a committee formed thereafter 

 was followed by the creation of the Freshwater Biological Association of 

 the British Empire, and in 193 1 the Wray Castle Station was opened, with 

 financial assistance from H.M. Government, the Royal Society, the 

 Fishmongers Company, the Manchester Waterworks Committee, the 

 Metropolitan Water Board, and other learned societies, institutions, and 

 individuals. 



The prolonged connection of the Association with seismological research, 

 the calculation of mathematical tables, the publication of the Zoological 

 Record, and the collection and registration of geological photographs has 

 been continued. 



The Seismology Committee — and no less the Association as a whole- 

 lost an outstanding supporter on the death of Prof. H. H. Turner, F.R.S., 

 in 1930. The publication of the International Seismological Summary, 

 which he initiated, was continued. In 1933 the University of Oxford 

 agreed to house and to meet part of the operating expenses of the I.S.S. 

 Reports on earthquakes both in this country and abroad have been 

 regularly presented, together with notes on research embracing such 

 questions as periodicity, travel and transmission times, long-wave phases 

 and prediction of earthquakes. In 1935 the Association published a 

 Catalogue of Earthquakes for 1925-1930 inclusive (Annual Report, 1935, 

 p. 230), based on the International Seismological Summary, and com- 

 piled by Miss E. F. Bellamy in continuation of the previous catalogue 

 compiled by Prof. Turner (1928). 



During the quinquennium the following volumes have been published 



* Viz. July 1, 1930, to March 31, 1935. The period is three months short of a 

 complete quinquennium because the dates of the financial year were changed in 



1932-33- 



3 This was the period 1866-70, when about ^8,600 was paid. A policy of 

 accumulating funds had apparently been in force before that time but had been 

 reversed ; moreover the Association was then devoting substantial sums to the 

 committee charged with the maintenance of Kew Observatory, which was trans- 

 ferred to the control of the Royal Society in 1872. 



