1831 - 1841 .] LADIES AND THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 123 
Association had to decide was whether or not women 
were to be admitted to the meetings. “ I was most 
anxious to see you,” writes Buckland to Murchison in 
1832, “to talk over the proposed meeting of the British 
Association at Oxford in June. Everybody whom 1 spoke 
to on the subject agreed that, if the meeting is to be of 
scientific utility, ladies ought not to attend the reading 
of the papers—especially in a place like Oxford — as it 
would at once turn the thing into a sort of Albemarle- 
dilettanti-mceting, instead of a serious philosophical union 
of working men. I did not see Mrs. Somerville ; but her 
husband decidedly led me to infer that such is her opinion 
of this matter, and he further fears that she will not come 
at all.” In the end Mrs. Somerville decided not to attend 
the meeting, for fear that her presence should encourage 
less capable representatives of her sex to be present. In 
this respect, as in many others, at Oxford and elsewhere, 
the lapse of sixty years has made vast alterations. 
Another change which is not unworthy of notice is in the 
attitude of the great newspapers towards such gatherings 
as that of the Association at Oxford. Almost the only, 
if not absolutely the only, reference to the meeting which 
occurs in the Times is contained in a leading article for 
June 28th, 1832: “Wc have received,” says the article, 
certain ambulatory societies in Germany. These excellent persons, not 
aware of their own possible importance, formed the most moderate 
prognostics of success, and were even apprehensive of total failure. 
Professor Buckland, however, with a generosity most chivalrous, invited 
the infant body to the hospitable halls of Oxford. Here its numbers 
doubled, and the celebrity of the place gave celebrity to the institution.” 
—The Oxfo?'d University Magazine, November 1834. 
