55 Work Done by British Association Committees, 



liable to be more or less masked by the " fuss " attached to 

 the Annual meeting. It was remarked that, as in other 

 societies holding periodical meetings or conferences, a 

 great part of the really valuable work of the British 

 Association was done by committees appointed to in- 

 vestigate particular matters, and to report on them to the 

 annual meetings. The committees pursued their work all the 

 3ear round, sometimes for many years in succession, and were 

 aided by money grants from the Association. The total sum so 

 granted since the formation of the Association in 1832 up to 

 the present time amounted to about ^^66,700. In the Report 

 of the meeting of British Association at Bristol in 1898, 

 above referred to, 723 pages were occupied by Reports of 

 Committees and 303 by transactions of the Sections at the 

 Bristol meeting itself, the total number of Reports of Com- 

 mittees being nearly fifty, and a good many of these were 

 interim reports of Committees, some of which have been at 

 work for over thirty years. The Lecturer proceeded to remark 

 on the character and influence of the work of various com- 

 mittees of the Association, beginning with reports by Fairbairn 

 and Hodgkinson, so far back as 1837, on Hot and Cold Blast 

 Iron, whose relative merits were at that time a matter of con- 

 siderable importance, in consequence of the then just beginning 

 development of railways, and the free use of cast iron in bridges 

 and girders. Ultimately, as we now see, improvements in the 

 manufacture of wrought iron and steel and the consequent 

 reduction in the cost of bridges constructed of these materials, 

 compared with the cost of cast iron, coupled with the relative 

 disadvantages of the latter, had led to the abandonment of cast 

 iron as a material for bridge structures of any size, but until well 

 on in the fifties cast iron was an important part of the structure 

 of m.any bridges, and its properties formed the subject of in- 

 vestigation by the Association. These investigations were of 

 material use and assistance to the Commissioners on Railway 

 structures, whose report, made in 1848, forms the basis of the 

 present Board of Trade regulations for Railway Bridges and 

 similar works. 



