57 



3rd April^ igoo 



Mr. Robert Young, C.E., J.P., Vice-President in the Chair. 



SOME OF THE WORK DONE BY COMMITTEES 

 OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



By Professor Maurice F. FitzGerald, B.A., M.I.M.E. 



The Lecturer began by remarking that many people, including 

 some ,who might have attended meetings of the British 

 Association, had Httle, if any, conception that that society was 

 more than an organisation for carrying out annually a sort of 

 scientific picnic. The Association, like many other societies, 

 had a yearly meeting or conference, held usually in the end of 

 summer or beginning of autumn, which lasted for a week, and 

 which constituted, to the outsider, the most obvious and 

 apparently important part of the work of the Associa- 

 tion. This impression was natural enough, and was encouraged 

 by the large attendance of scientific and other notabihties, and 

 by the immense number of papers read and discussed, during 

 this annual meeting, the Association being divided into sections 

 (now numbering nine) which have separate meeting rooms, 

 so that a large number of papers are read, or subjects discussed 

 every day simultaneously. As an example taken at random, 

 the Bristol meeting of 1898 might be instanced, when the 

 number of items in the sectional proceedings was 304. It was 

 pointed out, that however large the amount of work represented 

 by the labour undergone in listening to the maximum possible 

 number of these communications, by any person attending the 

 meeting, such work was not itself of any particular scientific 

 value, and that the real importance of the Association was 



