170
LOCAL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES.
pursuit, but chiefly fitted to be a pleasing pastime for the
young ; there was as yet no intellectual thirst for scientific know-
ledge sufficient to create a demand for a special literature. I am
of course leaving out of account for the moment the ardent
students and the earnest investigators and teachers who were
engaged in laying the foundations of scientific education and
research. For the majority, however, especially those who
lived out of reach of the great towns and Universities, and
beyond the personal influence of the few inspired workers and
teachers, there were as yet no books which would enable them
to acquire the rudiments of real scientific knowledge at home or
by individual effort. It was not easy even for those who had a
personal interest in some scientific subject to ascertain what
progress was being made at the great centres of discovery and
research.
It was only at a much later period, after the stimulus had
been supplied by the British Association, and by the Local
Societies (whose rapid increase was no doubt due in a great
measure to the influence of the British Association), that a real
thirst for information made itself felt, and created a sufficiently
widespread demand for a new class of scientific literature.
This resulted in the appearance of a number of excellent
cheap text-books of elementary science, designed to give a
certain amount of sound general knowledge and to stimulate the
desire for more, and for a considerable time these continued
to fulfil precisely the object for which they were intended. If
the day of the shilling primers, each including a whole science,
seems now to have closed, we must allow that in their time they
played a very important part in the history of science in the
British Isles. Written by acknowledged leaders of thought,
they challenged the attention of educated and intelligent people
to whom perhaps science had not meant much before. They
were written for and read by those who had not received any
advanced scientific training, and who would not have found else-
where the sort of information that they needed, presented
in so instructive a manner. But by fostering the desire for more
accurate and detailed knowledge these primers contributed
perhaps to their own extinction, for with the increase of special
training and the dissemination of expert knowledge they have
been more and more supplanted by the educational text-book
used in schools, and the specialist treatise which is now put into
the hands of the advanced student.
In other words, as scientific literature has become more
highly organised it has fallen more and more into the hands of
specialists. This is, no doubt, the merest commonplace to all
whom I am addressing ; but the conclusion that I wish to draw
is that from the point of view of the amateur this is to be
regretted ; for he can no longer get an adequate insight into the