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REPORT OF THE CLUB'S DELEGATE TO THE
CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES OF
CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES
(British Association Meeting in Blackfoot., 1936).
By D. J. SCOURFIELD, I.S.O., F.L.S., &c.
[Read 30th January, 1937.]
AS there are probably some members of the Essex Field
Club who are not yet aware of the relationship between
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, to give
it its full title, and local scientific Societies, I may be allowed,
perhaps, to preface my report with just a few words on that
subject.
For many years past the British Association has endeavoured
to keep in touch with local scientific societies and to help them,
to some extent, to keep in touch with one another, by arranging,
during its annual meeting, for a Conference of Delegates from
these societies. During last year an important series of recom-
mendations, from a committee appointed for the purpose, was
adopted by the Council of the Association, by which the con-
nection between the Delegates, and therefore the societies and
the Association, will, it is hoped, be made more intimate. The
chief of these is that to the "Corresponding Societies Com-
mittee," consisting of the President and General Officers of the
Association as before, has now been added six of the delegates
nominated at the annual conference. It will interest members
of the Essex Field Club to know that Mr. T. S. Dymond, a
former President of the Club, but now representing the Hastings
Natural History Society, was chosen as one of the six for the
current year.
During the meeting of the British Association at Blackpool
last September the President of the Delegates' Conference was
Dr. A. B. Rendle, F.R.S., formerly Head of the Botanical
Department of the Natural History Museum, who took as the
subject of his address the very appropriate one of "The preser-
vation of our native flora."
Dr. Rendle first of all asked whether it was worth while trying
to preserve our flora seeing that even a natural flora is merely
a stage in a continuous process, being only static when regarded
from our own limited idea of time, and that the floras of all