Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/259

 1880-1920] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 227 last, in 1900, the Council agreed to take part in an international catalogue ; but the schedule of classification, about which the Council had not been consulted, was modified by a Committee appointed for the purpose. It was also decided that the cataloguing of British astronomical literature should be done by one person with assistance from an Advisory Committee, and that he should be paid 30 a year from the Society's funds. This was accordingly done from 1901 to 1914 inclusive, when the arrange- ment was discontinued. Early in 1918 a letter was received from the Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies, enquiring whether the Society would be prepared to co-operate in forming the astro- nomical section of a proposed subject catalogue of scientific literature, as it was more practicable for this to be done by a single country than by an international organisation. But the Council decided that the value of a subject-index was not sufficiently great to justify the considerable expense it would involve, and that the Council was therefore not prepared to undertake the work. We may mention here that the Conjoint Board was organised in 1916 for the purpose of promoting co-operation in appealing to the Government on matters relating to science, industry, and education. Our Society agreed to join as one of the constituent societies, and was represented on the Board by two members till 1922 April, when the Council decided to withdraw from the Board. But the Society is much more intimately associated with another co-operative organisation established in 1917. A strong Committee was appointed by the British Association to arrange for meetings for discussion of the various branches of geophysics. It was felt that though this subject is closely connected with several important sciences, there is not any Society in this country for promoting its interests or bringing workers on geophysical subjects into contact with each other. The first meeting was held in the rooms of our Society on Wednesday, 1917 November 7, when the Chair was taken by the Astronomer Royal.* He pointed out that the sciences concerned covered a wide field ; progress in several depended to some extent upon public departments as well as upon the private investigator, and there was a danger that the latter might not be acquainted with what was being done by the former. It was hoped that these meetings would keep scientific interest alive in the work done on these subjects, and keep workers in touch with researches in geophysics in various parts of the British Empire, much of which was published only in official reports. A further service the meetings would perform
 * See report in The Observatory, 40, 444.