The British Association

Abstract

MANCHESTER, Tuesday Evening. ABOUT the success of the Manchester meeting there seems to be only one opinion. In mere numbers—the most popular gauge of success—it has by several hundreds surpassed all former meetings; the number of tickets sold very closely approaches 4000. As a natural result, the amount of money collected and available for the purposes of research is unprecedentedly great, as will be seen by the list of grants which have been allotted to the various Committees. The great increase in attendance over all former years is to a considerable extent due to the large number of foreign visitors, who have formed a marked and prominent feature of the present meeting. In the proceedings of nearly every Section the representatives of foreign science have taken an active part, with the result that the time of the whole meeting has been more intensely scientific than in the case of any previous meeting. This has been especially shown in the case of the important discussions which had been arranged for, and which most of them bore the character of real debate; the only exception, we believe, being the case of electrolysis, in Sections A and B, the “discussion” consisting mostly of the reading of a series of papers. Quite otherwise, however, was it with the discussions on heredity, introduced by Prof. Lankester, and on the cell theory, introduced by Prof. Schäfer, in Section A—discussions in which the subjects were threshed out very thoroughly. To some extent it is generally conceded that the great mixture of foreigners has to some extent solved the problem of an International Scientific Congress, which in any formal way is generally considered impracticable. Their presence here has certainly added a stimulating variety to the meeting, and the honour has been duly appreciated by the Corporation and citizens of Manchester. The foreigners have all been hospitably entertained as guests, and there have been not a few special entertainments got up for their special behoof. At the great dinner to be given to-morrow by the Mayor and Corporation nearly half of the guests will be foreigners. One of the pleasantest gatherings of the meeting was at a little dinner given on Sunday night by a few of the biologists to a select few of their foreign co-workers, especially botanists, at which De Bary delighted everybody present.