Abstract
PROF. TAIT appears to have misunderstood my object in writing the letter published in your issue of January 24 (p. 287). It refers distinctly to his letter of December 27, and not directly to the review which began the correspondence. In that letter Prof. Tait stated publicly that he had not received certain publications of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. I desired, as secretary, to explain that it was not due to the neglect of the officers of the Society. He also says:—“NATURE would do a real service to science by collecting statistics as to the numbers of different centres... at which the Transactions of various scientific societies were freely accessible in 1883 (say) and also in 1853.” It was in my power to give the statistics for “Transactions or Proceedings or both” for the year 1883; in answer to part of Prof. Tait's suggestion I did so. There is no reference in my letter to the year 1854, so that Prof. Tait is not correct in stating (NATURE, January 31, p. 311) that the question between us is, “What was the state of matters in 1854?” The year 1869 was the earliest for which, with the data ready to hand, I could obtain the numbers, I therefore gave statistics for that year in addition; I had no knowledge of what may have been the case in 1854, and I said nothing about it. Prof. Tait referred to a malady and suggested a cure. I merely wished to show that the cure had already been applied. My remarks were addressed solely to that point, and were not “beside the question.” Prof. Tait, in your last issue, has an elaborate argument to prove that about one-third of the centres receiving publications receive Proceedings only. In this he is entirely mistaken. At present the number of such centres is 6; in 1854 it was o. The history of the case is as follows. Until the year 1843 the Cambridge Philosophical Society published no Proceedings. Between that year and 1864 short accounts of the papers read and of the discussions were published in the Phil. Mag., and separate copies were supplied to the Society. In 1864 these were collected, and form vol. i. of the Proceedings. At the time they were not circulated separately; circulation was given them in the Phil. Mag. In that year the arrangement with the Phil. Mag. came to an end, and notices of the same kind were printed by the secretaries and distributed to resident Fellows. Almost without an exception all the important papers published by the Society appeared in the Transactions. There was no need therefore to circulate Proceedings, and it was not done. This practice was continued up to 1876, when the second volume of the Proceedings was closed, and a new system begun. Thus up to 1876 all centres receiving publications necessarily received Transactions, and as a matter of fact nothing else. A few copies of vols. i. and ii. of the Proceedings have since been issued. Vol. iii. of the Proceedings was commenced in 1876, and both it and succeeding volumes contain in full the shorter or the less important communications made to the Society, as well as abstracts of matter published in full in the Transactions. Vols. iii. and iv., then, of the Proceedings have, as a general rule, been sent with the Transactions, and the centres have usually, since 1876, received both. Within the last few years, however, 6 centres have been added to the list which receive the Proceedings only. Thus in 1883 (omitting the honorary Fellows) 114 centres received Transactions only, or Transactions and Proceedings, in most cases the latter, and 6 received Proceedings only; while in 1853 all the publications distributed were Transactions. I do not pretend to know what the number of centres was at that date, and my first letter made no direct reference to it. Nothing in that letter, however, supports the arguments adduced by Prof. Tait to prove that “it follows from Mr. Glazebrook's data that the number of centres in 1854 must have been about 40 only.”
Article PDF
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
GLAZEBROOK, R. Diffusion of Scientific Memoirs. Nature 29, 335 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/029335a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/029335a0
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.