Science and Citizenship
in London, and periodically issue a series of oceanographic charts. Amongst the purely scientific societies, that which attains to the largest membership is the Royal Geographical, with its 4180 members. The functional activities of the Geographical Society are described as follows in the Science Year-book:—
I. Meetings.—Weekly, November-June, evening. Anniversary, 4th Monday in May.
II. Publications.—The Geographical Journal; monthly. Year-book and Record; and various special publications.
III. Miscellaneous.—Medals: Two Royal Gold Medals, the Founder's and the Patron's, awarded annually; and the Victoria Medal at intervals. Money grants are also made from trust funds. A fine library of upwards of 37,000 books and pamphlets is maintained, and a map-room. The latter receives a Government grant of £500 per annum, on condition that the public shall have access to the collection.
Now the monthly Geographical Journal, the chief organ of the society, is an invaluable publication, but the only person who, in all probability, reads it through is its own editor, and that is as it should be. Life is too short to read the Journal of the Geographical or any other scientific society. But what every one should do is to utilise the spiritual organisation whose visible organs are the whole series of scientific periodicals. To do this we must know how to consult the files of these periodicals; in other words, how to put and answer questions through their pages. All these learned periodicals would be more popular were the common and obvious fact known to editors and proprietors of newspapers—as conceivably some day it may be—-
35
