Abstract
At the 150th anniversary meeting of the Society it was shown that it regards natural history societies as workers in the same field. Many prominent fellows of the Society are keenly interested in their local natural history societies. Dr. Ramsbottom thinks it would be well if the Society encouraged the idea that election to the Linnean Society of London should be the hall-mark of excellence· in the study of natural history. If this were so the Society would continue to have that leaven of the amateur which is so necessary to the well-being of the Society. Amateurs were in the past the very backbone of British biology: it would be a sad blow to the democracy of science, even to science itself, if the Linnean Society were ever to be regarded as a domain reserved for the professional worker. “As a Society, then, our task during the War is to carry on as normally as possible, and to help others to do the same. In this connexion the Council has agreed to bring forward a motion, similar to one passed during the last War, that refugee biologists should be allowed certain privileges such as permission to attend meetings and to use the library”.
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Amateurs in Natural History. Nature 145, 1012 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/1451012c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1451012c0