FIVE YEARS' RETROSPECT xiii 



in 1935 of an important work in economics under the title of Britain in 

 Depression, published by Messrs. Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, with the 

 authority of the Council. This is a record of British industries since 

 1929 in which, in addition to chapters dealing with currency and banking 

 and with industrial relations, there are twenty-one chapters dealing with 

 separate industries by authoritative writers. 



IV. Down House. 



It was in 1929, and therefore outside the period of this review, that 

 Mr. (now Sir) Buckston Browne, F.R.C.S., gave the Association Down 

 House, Downe, Kent, the home of Charles Darwin from 1842 until his 

 death in 1882, to be held in trust as a national memorial, freely open to 

 the public. Appreciation of this most generous act of homage to the 

 memory of one of the greatest names in the advancement of science has 

 been so widely expressed as to need no repetition here. The memorial 

 rooms and grounds have been visited, on an average, by over 7,000 persons 

 each year during the period under review. During the Centenary Meet- 

 ing of the Association (193 1), nearly 700 members of the Association 

 visited the house, and the President (General Smuts) and Sir Buckston 

 Browne entertained there a large number of distinguished guests. The 

 house and grounds are open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. from April to 

 September, and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. from October to March, including 

 Sundays, but excepting Christmas Day. 



Sir Buckston Browne, with the aid of members of the Darwin family 

 and others, had already in 1929 collected many articles of furniture, 

 portraits and pictures, letters, and other objects, either Darwin's own or 

 appropriate to the collection of Darwiniana ; and during the quinquen- 

 nium under notice a number of further gifts have been received. Darwin's 

 library has been restored to his own study, on loan from Dr. A. C. 

 Seward, F.R.S., Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge, 

 the library having been left by Sir Francis Darwin to the holder of that 

 chair for the time being. In one of the rooms portraits of past presidents 

 and others appropriate to the history of the Association are shown, together 

 with some of the former series of presidential banners, and here also is a 

 repository of early records of the Association, all too scanty, but including 

 some dating from its foundation, and lately recovered by Prof. Sollas, 

 F.R.S., in the Geological Department of Oxford University, where they 

 had been preserved by John Phillips, the first secretary of the Association, 

 afterwards Professor of Geology at Oxford. The garden at Down, long 

 uncared for before the house was acquired, has been enriched by gifts of 

 plants from Kew Gardens and the John Innes Horticultural Institution. 



Many societies make Down House an objective in the course of excur- 

 sions, and the Genetics Society held one of its meetings there in 1934. 

 No regular scientific work has as yet been established there, though 

 Miss Saunders of Goldsmiths College, and others, have been able to 

 make some use of accommodation at the house for parties of teachers in 

 training and other students working on plant ecology in the neighbour- 

 hood. A recent gift to the house afforded opportunity for an interesting 

 investigation. In 1934 a box of seeds of flowering plants and vegetables 



