169
THE EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES OF
LOCAL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES.
By H. A. MIERS, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S., Professor of Mineralogy, University of Oxford.
[Prof. Miers delivered the following address as Chairman
of the Conference of Delegates of Corresponding Societies
at Dublin on September 3rd, 1908. His observations are so
valuable and so pertinent to the past and future work of our
Club, that the Editor deems no apology necessary for printing
them in full.]
The subject which I have chosen for my brief Address
is one to which I think attention may be profitably drawn at the
present moment. The opportunities for scientific education
have become so changed during the last few years, and yet at the
same time the gulf between the amateur and the trained scientist
has been in a sense so widened, that the educational position
occupied by the Local Societies deserves to be reconsidered.
It will, I think, be generally granted that the London and
other central societies are becoming more and more the haunt of
the professional scientific man, and I wish to raise the question
whether under these circumstances it may not be hoped that the
Local Societies will accept an increased responsibility for the
amateur, for whom it is true they already do so much ? To me,
at any rate, it appears that this responsibility is also an
opportunity. Let us look back for a moment at their earlier
history.
The affiliated and associated societies number some which
came into existence nearly a hundred years ago, and many
of them date back to a time when there was no organisation
which attempted to diffuse a taste for science throughout the
country at large. These societies were doing pioneer work, not
only by arousing interest in research, but by creating a general
scientific atmosphere, and promoting ideas which were at that
time confined to a very small class. In fact, before the birth of
the British Association they were almost the only agencies
occupied in this sort of pioneer work. The British Association
itself was initiated by one cf them, and may be regarded
as a magnified society of the same character, changing its
habitat from year to year ; the importance of the early work
which is effected in popularising and promoting scientific ideas
cannot be over-estimated. For a long time the work of the
societies was not supplemented in any very adequate manner by
the publishers or the Press ; public interest in the general laws
that underlie the processes of Nature was only dawning ; the
prevailing attitude of mind was one of indulgent curiosity ; the
older generation regarded science as a curious and entertaining
M