CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 129
sub-committees have been formed, to develop the work locally, I will
only here mention Ipswich, a place not far from the northern border
of Essex, at which the British Association will meet next year. It
is most desirable that residents in Essex interested in the
Ethnographical Survey should put themselves into communication
with the Ipswich sub-committee, in order to ascertain its mode of
work and the area with which it occupies itself, and thus economise
time and labour and prevent over lapping. Whether it would be
better for workers in Essex to report to Ipswich as their local centre,
or to establish another sub-committee in Essex, is a point which can
only be satisfactorily settled when it is known what the Ipswich
sub-committee has done, is doing, and proposes to do in the future.
It appears to me that the discussions at Oxford gained in interest
and concentration from the devotion of the whole of the first
meeting to a single subject, and of the second to the ordinary
sectional discussions. At Edinburgh or Nottingham it might
happen that Messrs. A, B, C, and D all intended to speak on a
certain subject. A and B might speak on it at the first meeting,
during the absence of C and D at a garden party, and C and D
might discuss it at the second, during a similar absence on the part of
A and B. At Oxford a delegate knew precisely when a special
subject would be discussed, and that he must either speak on it then
or lose his opportunity altogether.
It is impossible to find anything to object to in the terms of the
resolution about Local Museums. Indeed the delegates from some
districts may have felt that scarcely anything more could be
legitimately desired. In Essex, however, where the chief thing
required is the permanent establishment of a museum, the resolu-
tion will seem to have no practical interest. As the Rev. Canon
Tristam remarked at the Edinburgh Conference of Delegates, there
is urgent need either of endowment or of help from the County
Council to maintain a museum in working order. He added that
many museums had gone to utter decay from the want of an
endowment, while those at Newcastle, York. Manchester, Liverpool,
and Norwich were all endowed. It is indeed impossible that any local
society of naturalists can do much to maintain a museum, though
it may be a most powerful aid in the formation of one.
For, in the first place, its numbers will vary considerably from
time ; the loss of four or five of its most prominent members in the