October 4, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



423 



The regulations then laid down still guide 

 the Association in the distribution of its 

 grants. At that ear'ly meeting the Associa- 

 tion was enabled to apply £600 to these 

 objects. 



I have always wondered at the foresight 

 of the framers of the constitution of the 

 British Association, the most remarkable 

 feature of which is the lightness of the tie 

 which holds it together. It is not bound by 

 any complex central organization. It con- 

 sists of a federation of Sections, whose 

 youth and energy are yearly renewed bj^ a 

 succession of Presidents and Vice-Presi- 

 dents, whilst in each Section some contin- 

 uity of action is secured bj^ the less mov- 

 able Secretaries. 



The governing bodj^ is the General Com- 

 mittee, the members of which are selected 

 for their scientific work; but their control- 

 ing power is tempered by the law that all 

 changes of rules, or of constitution, should 

 be submitted to, and receive the approval 

 of, the Committee of Recommendations. 

 This Committee may be described as an 

 ideal Second Chamber. It consists of the 

 most experienced members of the Associa- 

 tion. The administration of the Association 

 in the interval between annual meetings is 

 carried on by the Council, an executive 

 body, whose duty it is to complete the 

 work of the annual meeting (a) by the 

 publication of its Proceedings; (h) by giving 

 effect to resolutions passed by the General 

 Committee; (c) it also appoints the Local 

 Committee and organizes the personnel of 

 each Section for the next meeting. I be- 

 lieve that one of the secrets of the long- 

 continued success and vitality of theBritish 

 Association lies in this purely democratic 

 constitution, combined with the compul- 

 sory careful consideration which must be 

 given to suggested organic changes. 



The Association is now in the sixty-fifth 

 year of its existence. In its origin it in- 

 vited the philosophical societies dispersed 



throughout Great Britain to unite in a 

 cooperative union. Within recent years it 

 has endeavored to consolidate that union. 

 At the present time almost all important 

 local scientific societies scattered through- 

 out the country, some sixty-six in number, 

 are in correspondence with the Association. 

 Their delegates hold annual conferences at 

 our meetings. The Association has thus 

 extended the sphere of its action; it places 

 the members of the local societies engaged 

 in scientific work in relation with each 

 other, and brings them into cooperation 

 with members of the Association and with 

 others engaged in original investigations, 

 and the papers which the individual socie- 

 ties pu-blish annually are catalogued in our 

 report. Thus by degrees a national cata- 

 logue will be formed of the scientific work 

 of these societies. The Association has, 

 moreover, shown that its scope is cotermin- 

 ous with the British Empire bj' holding one 

 of its annual meetings at Montreal, and we 

 are likely soon to hold a meeting in Toronto. 



The Association, at its first meeting, be- 

 gan its work by initiating a series of reports 

 upon the then condition of the several sci- 

 ences. . A i-apid glance at some of these re- 

 ports will not only show the enormous strides 

 which have been made since 1831 in the in- 

 vestigation of facts to elucidate the laws of 

 nature, but it may afford a slight insight 

 into the impediments offered to the progress 

 of investigation by the mental condition of 

 the community, which had been for so long 

 satisfied to accept assumptions without 

 undergoing the labor of testing their truth 

 by ascertaining the real facts. This habit 

 of mind may be illustrated by two instances 

 selected from the early reports made to the 

 Association. The first is afforded by the 

 report made in 1832, by Mr. Lubbock, on 

 ' Tides.' 



This was a subject necessarily of impor- 

 tance to England as a dominant power at 

 sea. But in England records of the tides 



