THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT DUBLIN. 685 
condemned to attend meetings where the language spoken 
was a strange and uncouth tongue. 
( ould not the local societies in addition to their ordinary 
work, make a special effort to satisfy the needs of the many 
intelligent people who had not access to laboratories, museums 
and scientific libraries, but who desired to know more of 
science. He considered that very much of the estrangement 
between different sciences or even between the branches of 
the same science was due to the exaggerated use of technical 
language, where it was not necessary. The most useful func- 
tion in 1 1 is opinion that could be performed by local societies, 
was to encourage the habit of expressing scientific results in 
simple and intelligible language that would appeal to the 
whole society. There were very few scientific ideas or facts 
that could not be expressed in homely language freed from 
technical terms, and though it was necessary for purposes of 
brevity and precision to make use of technical terms in the 
journals of the more specialised societies, it ought to be wholly 
unnecessary to do so in societies which embraced a number 
of interests and whose members were to a great extent persons 
without scientific training. Nothing could be better or 
more useful for the specialist himself than to try and explain 
his work in simple language to a mixed audience ; and if the 
local societies could encourage the specialist to come to them 
and describe his own researches in simple language, they 
would do him as much good as they did themselves. 
Let the professional scientist become less professional and 
let the amateur become less amateurish when they came 
together at the meetings of such societies. He believed that 
many a scientific investigator could enlist an army of willing 
workers through the local societies if he were given the 
opportunity of interesting them in his own work, suggesting 
to them lines on which to work and helping them on by advice 
and criticism. Something of the sort was occasionally done 
in the study of local flora and fauna — that it was not done 
more widely, was due to the prevalent and growing idea that 
none could take up original work without the preliminary of 
scientific training. Anything that tended to break down the 
