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British Association for the Hdvancement of
Science.

DUNDEE MEETING, 1912

THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS

AND THE

SECTIONAL ADDRESSES

LONDON :
OFFICES OF THE ASSOCIATION,
BURLINGTON HOUSE, W.

Price Two Shillings.

“a8 SARS
DEC 15 1969

British Association for the Hdvancement of
Science,

DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

BY

Proressor E. A. SCHAFER, LL.D., D.Sc., M.D., F.B.S.,
PRESIDENT.

Ir is exactly forty-five years ago—to the day and hour—that the British
Association last met in this city and in this hall to listen to a Presi-
dential Address. The President was the Duke of
oo Buccleugh; the General Secretaries, Francis Galton and
T. Archer Hirst; the General Treasurer, William Spottiswoode; and
the Assistant General Secretary, George Griffith, who was for many
years a mainstay of the Association. The Evening Discourses were
delivered by John Tyndall ‘On Matter and Force,’ by Archibald Geikie
‘ On the Geological Origin of the Scenery of Scotland,’ and by Alexander
Herschel ‘ On the Present State of Knowledge regarding Meteors and
Meteorites.’ The Presidents of Sections, which were then only seven in
number, were for Mathematics and Physics, Sir William Thomson—
later to be known as Lord Kelvin; for Chemistry, Thomas Anderson ;
for Geology, Archibald Geikie, who now as President of the Royal
Society worthily fills the foremost place in science within the realm;
for Biology, William Sharpey, my own revered master, to whose
teaching and influence British physiology largely owes the honourable
position which it at present occupies ; for Geography, Sir Samuel Baker,
the African explorer, who with his intrepid wife was the first to follow
the Nile to its exit from the Albert Nyanza; for Economic Science,
Mr. Grant Duff; and for Mechanical Science, Professor Rankine.
Other eminent men present were Sir David Brewster, J. Clerk
Maxwell, Charles Wheatstone, Balfour Stewart, William Crookes,
J. B. Lawes and J. H. Gilbert (names inseparable in the history of
agricultural science), Crum Brown, et Be Liveing, W. H. Russell,
Alexander Williamson, Henry Alleyne Nicholson, William Allmann,
John Hutton Balfour, Spencer Cobbold, Anton Dohrn, Sir John
Lubbock (now Lord Avebury), William McIntosh, E. Ray Lankester,
A

2, PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

C. W. Peach, William Pengelly, Hughes Bennett, John Cleland, John
Davy, Alexander Christison, Alfred Russel Wallace, Allen Thomson,
William Turner, George Busk, Michael Foster (not yet founder of the
Cambridge School of Physiology), Henry Howorth, Sir Roderick
Murchison, Clements R. Markham, Sir William (afterwards Lord)
Armstrong, and Douglas Galton. Many of those enumerated have in
the course of nature passed away from us, but not a few remain, and we
are glad to know that most of these retain their ancient vigour in spite of
the five-and-forty years which separate us from the last meeting in this
place.
For the Address with which it is usual for the President to open
the proceedings of the annual assembly, the field covered by the aims
of the British Association provides the widest possible range
Selection of of material from which to select. One condition alone is
pai prescribed by custom, viz., that the subject chosen shall
lie within the bounds of those branches of knowledge which
are dealt with in the Sections. There can be no ground of complaint
regarding this limitation on the score of variety, for within the forty
years that I have myself been present (not, I regret to say, without a
break) at these gatherings, problems relating to the highest mathe-
matics on the one hand, and to the most utilitarian applications of
science on the other, with every possible gradation between these
extremes, have been discussed before us by successive Presidents ;
and the addition from time to time of new Sections (one of which, that
of Agriculture, we welcome at this Meeting) enables the whilom
occupant of this chair to traverse paths which have not been previously
trodden by his predecessors. On the last two occasions, under the
genial guidance of Professors Bonney and Sir William Ramsay, we
have successively been taken in imagination to the glaciers which
flow between the highest peaks of the Alps and into the bowels of
the earth; where we were invited to contemplate the prospective
disappearance of the material upon which all our industrial prosperity
depends. Needless to say that the lessons to be drawn from our visits
to those unaccustomed levels were placed before us with, all the
eloquence with which these eminent representatives of Geology and
Chemistry are gifted. It is fortunately not expected that I should be
able to soar to such heights or to plunge to such depths, for the branch
of science with which I am personally associated is merely concerned
with the investigation of the problems of living beings, and I am able
to invite you to remain for an hour or so at the level of ordinary
mortality to consider certain questions which at any rate cannot fail
to have an immediate interest for every one present, seeing that they
deal with the nature, origin, and maintenance of life.
Everybody knows, or thinks he knows, what life is; at least, we are

PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 3

all acquainted with its ordinary, obvious manifestations. It would,
therefore, seem that it should not be difficult to
find an exact definition. The quest has nevertheless
baffled the most acute thinkers. Herbert Spencer devoted two chapters
of his ‘ Principles of Biology’ to the discussion of the attempts at
definition which had up to that date been proposed, and himself
suggested another. But at the end of it all he is constrained to admit
that no expression had been found which would embrace all the
known manifestations of animate, and at the same time exclude those
of admittedly inanimate, objects.

The ordinary dictionary definition of life is ‘the state of living.’
Dastre, following Claude Bernard, defines it as ‘ the sum total of the
phenomena common to all living beings.’! Both of these definitions
are, however, of the same character as Sydney Smith’s definition
of an archdeacon as ‘ a person who performs archidiaconal functions.’
I am not myself proposing to take up your time by attempting to grapple
with a task which has proved too great for the intellectual giants
of philosophy, and I have the less disposition to do so because recent
advances in knowledge have suggested the probability that the dividing
line between animate and inanimate matter is less sharp than it has
hitherto been regarded, so that the difficulty of finding an inclusive.
definition is correspondingly increased.

As a mere word ‘ life ’ is interesting in the fact that it is one of those:
abstract terms which has no direct antithesis; although probably most.
persons would regard ‘ death’ in that light. A little consideration will
show that this is not the case. ‘Death * implies the pre-existence of
‘life’; there are physiological grounds for regarding death as a pheno-
menon of life—it is the completion, the last act of life. We cannot speak
of a non-living object as possessing death in the sense that we speak of
a living object as possessing life. The adjective ‘ dead’ is, it is true,
applied in a popular sense antithetically to objects which have never
possessed life; as in the proverbial expression ‘ as dead as a door-nail.’
But in the strict sense such application is not justifiable, since the use:
of the terms dead and living implies either in the past or in the present.
the possession of the recognised properties of living matter. On the
other hand, the expressions living and lifeless, animate and inani--
mate, furnish terms which are undoubtedly antithetical. Strictly andi
literally, the words animate and inanimate express the presence ore
absence of ‘ soul’; and not infrequently we find the terms ‘life’ and

‘soul’ erroneously employed as if identical. But it is

Definition.

Lifenot hardly necessary for me to state that the remarks I have
—* with to make regarding ‘life’ must not be taken to apply to

the conception to which the word ‘soul’ is attached.

* La vie et la mort, English translation by W. J. Greenstreet, 1911, p. 54.
A—]

tygty

4 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

The fact that the formation of such a conception is only possible
in connection with life, and that the growth and elaboration of the
conception has only been possible as the result of the most complex
processes of life in the most complex of living organisms, has doubtless
led to a belief in the identity of life with soul. But unless the use of
the expression ‘soul’ is extended to a degree which would deprive
it of all special significance, the distinction between these terms must
be strictly maintained. For the problems of life are essentially

problems of matter; we cannot conceive of life in the

Problems of scientific sense as existing apart from matter. The
leat prob- »henomena of life are investigated, and can only be inves-
matter. tigated, by the same methods as all other phenomena of

matter, and the general results of such investigations tend
to show that living beings are governed by laws identical with those
which govern inanimate matter. The more we study the manifestations
of life the more we become convinced of the truth of this statement and
the less we are disposed to call in the aid of a special and unknown form
of energy to explain those manifestations.
The most obvious manifestation of life is ‘ spontaneous ’ movement.
We see a man, a dog, a bird move, and we know that they are alive.
We place a drop of pond water under the microscope, and
Phenomena see numberless particles rapidly moving within it; we
rae affirm that it swarms with ‘ life.’ We notice a small mass
sient. of clear slime changing its shape, throwing out projections
of its structureless substance, creeping from one part of
the field of the microscope to another. We recognise that the slime
is living; we give it a name—Ameba limar—the slug amceba. We
observe similar movements in individual cells of our own body; in
the white corpuscles of our blood, in corinective tissue cells, in growing
nerve cells, in young cells everywhere. We denote the similarity
between these movements and those of the amceba by employing the
descriptive term ‘ amceboid ’ for both. We regard such movements as
indicative of the possession of ‘ life’; nothing seems more justifiable
than such an inference.
But physicists * show us movements of a precisely similar charac-
ter in substances which no one by any stretch of imagination can
regard as living; movements of oil drops, of organic and

caaeeminced oe inorganic mixtures, even of mercury globules, which are
m 3 ;

living and indistinguishable in their character from those of the
a i living organisms we have been studying: movements which
matter.

can only be described by the same term ameeboid, yet
obviously produced as the result of purely physical and chemical
reactions causing changes in surface tension of the fluids under exami-

2. Quincke, Annal. d. Physik u. Chem. 1870 and 1888.

PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 5

nation.* It is therefore certain that such movements are not specifically
‘vital,’ that their presence does not necessarily denote ‘ life.’ And
when we investigate closely even such active movements as those of a
vibratile cilium or a phenomenon so closely identified with life as the
contraction of a muscle, we find that these present so many analogies
with ameeboid movements as to render it certain that they are funda-
mentally of the same character and produced in much the same
-manner.* Nor can we for a moment doubt that the complex actions
which are characteristic of the more highly differentiated organisms
have been developed in the course of evolution from the simple move-
ments characterising the activity of undifferentiated protoplasm ; move-
ments which can themselves, as we have seen, be perfectly imitated
by non-living material. The chain of evidence regarding this particular
manifestation of life—movement—is complete. Whether exhibited as
the amceboid movement of the proteus animalcule or of the white
corpuscle of our blood; as the ciliary motion of the infusorian or of
the ciliated cell; as the contraction of a muscle under the governance
of the will, or as the throbbing of the human heart responsive to every
emotion of the mind, we cannot but conclude that it is alike subject
to and produced in conformity with the general laws of matter, by
agencies resembling those which cause movements in lifeless
material.*

It will perhaps be contended that the resemblances between the
movements of living and non-living matter may be only superficial,
and that the conclusion regarding their identity to which we are led
will be dissipated when we endeavour to penetrate more deeply into the
working of living substance. For can we not recognise along with the
possession of movement the presence of other phenomena which are

equally characteristic of life and with which non-living
eo material is not endowed? Prominent among the charac-
similation. teristic phenomena of life are the processes of assimilation
and disassimilation, the taking in of food and its elabora-

* The causation not only of movements but of various other manifestations
of life by alterations in surface tension of living substance is ably dealt with
by A. B. Macallum in a recent article in Asher and Spiro’s Ergebnisse der
Physiologie, 1911. Macallum has described an accumulation of potassium salts
at the more active surfaces of the protoplasm of many cells, and correlates this
with the production of cell-activity by the effect of such accumulation upon the
surface tension. The literature of the subject will be found in this article.

*G. F. Fitzgerald (Brit. Assoc. Reports, 1898, and Scient. Trans. Roy.
Dublin Society, 1898) arrived at this conclusion with regard to muscle from
purely physical considerations. ; ;

> * Vital spontaneity, so readily accepted by persons ignorant of biology.
is disproved by the whole history of science. Every vital manifestation is a
response to a stimulus, a provoked phenomenon. It is unnecessary to say this
is also the case with brute bodies, since that is precisely the foundation of the
great principle of the inertia of matter. It is plain that it is also as applicable
to living as to inanimate matter.’—Dastre, op. cit., p. 280.

A2

6 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

tion.® These, surely, it may be thought, are not shared by matter which
is not endowed with life. Unfortunately for this argument, similar
processes occur characteristically in situations which no one would
think of associating with the presence of life. A striking example of
this is afforded by the osmotic phenomena presented by solutions
separated from one another by semipermeable membranes or films, a
condition which is precisely that which is constantly found in living

matter.” .
It is not so long ago that the chemistry of organic matter was
thought to be entirely different from that of inorganic substances. But
the line between inorganic and organic chemistry, which

Chemical up to the middle of the last century appeared sharp,
phenomena 2 : 2 :

Recominanve subsequently became misty and has now disappeared.
ing life. Similarly the chemistry of living organisms, which is now

a recognised branch of organic chemistry, but used to be
considered as so much outside the domain of the chemist that it could
only be dealt with by those whose special business it was to study
‘ vital’ processes, is passing every day more out of the hands of the
biologist and into those of the pure chemist.

Somewhat more than half a century ago Thomas Graham published
his epoch-making observations relating to the properties of matter in
the colloidal state:* observations which are proving all-

ae ieee important in assisting our comprehension of the properties
of living of living substance. For it is becoming every day more
matter.

Identity of apparent that the chemistry and physics of the living
physical and Organism are essentially the chemistry and physics of

chemical —=— nitrogenous colloids. Living substance or protoplasm
processes in ; : 3
living and always, in fact, takes the form of a colloidal solution:
ena eod In this solution the colloids are associated with crystalloids
matter.

(electrolytes), which are either free in the solution or
attached to the molecules of the colloids. Surrounding and enclosing
the living substance thus constituted of both colloid and crystalloid
material is a film, probably also formed of colloid, but which may
have a lipoid substratum associated with it (Overton). This film
serves the purpose of an osmotic membrane, permitting of exchanges
by diffusion between the colloidal solution constituting the protoplasm

* The terms ‘assimilation’ and ‘ disassimilation’ express the physical and
chemical changes which occur within protoplasm as the result of the intake of
nutrient material from the cireumambient medium and its ultimate transforma-
tion into waste products which are passed out again into that medium; the whole
cycle of these changes being embraced under the term ‘ metabolism.’

* Leduc (The Mechanism of Life, English translation by W. Deane Butcher,
1911) has given many illustrations of this statement. In the Report of the
meeting of 1867 in Dundee is a paper by Dr. J. D. Heaton (On Simulations of
Vegetable Growths by Mineral Substances) dealing with the same class of
phenomena. The conditions of osmosis in cells have been especially studied by
Hamburger (Osmotischer Druck und Ionenlehre, Wiesbaden, 1902-4).

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 7

and the cireumambient medium in which it lives. Other similar films
or membranes occur in the interior of protoplasm. These films have
in many cases specific characters, both physical and chemical, thus
favouring the diffusion of special kinds of material into and out of
the protoplasm and from one part of the protoplasm to another. It
is the changes produced under these physical conditions, associated
with those caused by active chemical agents formed within protoplasm
and known as enzymes, that effect assimilation and disassimilation.
Quite similar changes can be produced outside the body (in vitro) by
the employment of methods of a purely physical and chemical nature.
Tt is true that we are not yet familiar with all the intermediate stages
of transformation of the materials which are taken in by a living body
into the materials which are given out from it. But since the initial
processes and the final results are the same as they would be on the
assumption that the changes are brought about in conformity with the
known laws of chemistry and physics, we may fairly conclude that all
changes in living substance are brought about by ordinary chemical
and physical forces.

Should it be contended that growth and reproduction are properties
possessed. only by living bodies and constitute a test by which we may
differentiate between life and non-life, between the animate

Similarity of and inanimate creation, it must be replied that no conten-

the processes

of growth tion can be more fallacious. Inorganic crystals grow and
- Sorbl multiply and reproduce their like, given a supply of the
living and requisite pabulum. In most cases for each kind of crystal
arto me there is, as with living organisms, a limit of growth which

is not exceeded, and further increase of the crystalline
matter results not in further increase in size but in multiplication of
similar crystals. Leduc has shown that the growth and division of
artificial colloids of an inorganic nature, when placed in an appropriate
medium, present singular resemblances to the phenomena of the growth
and division of living organisms. Even so complex a process as the
division of a cell-nucleus by karyokinesis as a preliminary to the multi-
plication of the cell by division—a phenomenon which would primd
facie have seemed and has been commonly regarded as a distinctive
manifestation of the life of the cell—can be imitated with solutions of
a simple inorganic salt, such as chloride of sodium, containing a
suspension of carbon particles; which arrange and rearrange themselves
under the influence of the movements of the electrolytes in a manner
indistinguishable from that adopted by ‘the particles of chromatin in a
dividing nucleus. And in the process of sexual reproduction, the
researches of J. Loeb and others upon the ova of the sea-urchin have
proved that we can no longer consider such an apparently vital

phenomenon as the fertilisation of the egg as being the result of living

8 ; PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

material brought to it by the spermatozoon, since it is possible to
start the process of division of the ovum and the resulting formation
of cells, and ultimately of all the tissues and organs—in short, to bring
about the development of the whole body—if a simple chemical reagent
is substituted for the male element in the process of fertilisation.
Indeed, even a mechanical or electrical stimulus may suffice to start
development. Kurz und gut, as the Germans say, vitalism
The question as a working hypothesis has not only had its foundations
piper undermined, but most of the superstructure has toppled
force. over, and if any difficulties of explanation still persist, we
are justified in assuming that the cause is to be found in
our imperfect knowledge of the constitution and working of living
material. At the best vitalism explains nothing, and the term ‘ vital
force’ is an expression of ignorance which can bring us no further
along the path of knowledge. Nor is the problem in any way advanced
by substituting for the term ‘ vitalism ’ ‘ neo-vitalism,’ and for ‘ vital
force ’ ‘ biotic energy.’* ‘ New presbyter is but old priest writ large.’
Further, in its chemical composition we are no longer compelled
to consider living substance as possessing infinite complexity, as was
thought to be the case when chemists first began to break
The possi- up the proteins of the body into their simpler con-
poe Hered i stituents. The researches of Miescher, which have been
living matter. continued and elaborated by. Kossel and his pupils, have
acquainted us with the fact that a body so important for
the nutritive and reproductive functions of the cell as the nucleus—which
may be said indeed to represent the quintessence of cell-life—possesses
a chemical constitution of no very great complexity; so that we may
even hope some day to see the material which composes it prepared syn-
thetically. And when we consider that the nucleus is not only itself
formed of living substance, but is capable of causing other living sub-
stance to be built up; is, in fact, the directing agent in all the principal
chemical changes which take place within the living cell, it must be
admitted that we are a long step forward in our knowledge of the chemical
basis of life. That it is the form of nuclear matter rather than its
chemical and molecular structure which is the important factor in
nuclear activity cannot be supposed. The form of nuclei,‘as every
microscopist knows, varies infinitely, and there are numerous living
organisms in which the nuclear matter is without form, appearing simply
as granules distributed in the protoplasm. Not that the form assumed
and the transformations undergone by the nucleus are without import-

* B. Moore, in Recent Advances in Physiology, 1906; Moore and Roaf, ibid. ;
and Further Advances in Physiology, 1909. Moore lays especial stress on the
transformations of energy which occur in protoplasm. See on the question of
vitalism Gley (Hevue Scientifique, 1911) and D’Arcy Thompson (Address to
Section D at Portsmouth, 1911).

PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 9

ance; but it is none the less true that even in an amorphous condition
the material which in the ordinary cell takes the form of a ‘ nucleus ’
may, in simpler organisms which have not in the process of evolution
become complete cells, fulfil functions in many respects similar to those
fulfilled by the nucleus of the more differentiated organism.

A similar anticipation regarding the probability of eventual synthetic
production may be made for the proteins of the cell-substance. Con-
siderable progress in this direction has indeed already been made by Emi]
Fischer, who has for many years been engaged in the task of building
up the nitrogenous combinations which enter into the formation of the
complex molecule of protein. It is satisfactory to know that the signiti-
eance of the work both of Fischer and of Kossel in this field of biological
chemistry has been recognised by the award to each of these distinguished
chemists of a Nobel prize.

The elements composing living substance are few in number. Those
which are constantly present are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.

With these, both in nuclear matter and also, but to a less
The chemical degree, in the more diffuse living material which we know
ee sa as protoplasm, phosphorus is always associated. ‘ Ohne
stance. Phosphor kein Gedank ’ is an accepted aphorism; ‘ Ohne

Phosphor kein Leben ’ is equally true. Moreover, a large
proportion, rarely less than 70 per cent., of water appears essential for
any manifestation of life, aithough not in all cases necessary for its
continuance, since organisms are known which will bear the loss of the
greater part if not the whole of the water they contain without per-
manent impairment of their vitality. The presence of certain inorganic
salts is no less essential, chief amongst them being chloride of sodium
and salts of calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron. The combina-
tion of these elements into a colloidal compound represents the chemi-
cal basis of life; and when the chemist succeeds in building up this
compound it will without doubt be found to exhibit the phenomena
which we are in the habit of associating with the term ‘ life.’ °

The above considerations seem to point to the conclusion that the

possibility of the production of life—t.e., of living material—is not so
remote as has been generally assumed. Since the experi-
Source of cai.
life. The ments of Pasteur, few have ventured to affirm a belief in the
possibility of spontaneous generation of bacteria and monads and other
spontaneous - : ats i
generation. | ‘™cro-organisms, although before his time this was by
many believed to be of universal occurrence. My
esteemed friend Dr. Charlton Bastian is, so far as I am aware, the only
scientific man of eminence who still adheres to the old creed, and Dr.
Bastian, in spite of numerous experiments and the publication of many
® The most recent account of the chemistry of protoplasm is that by Botazzi

(Das Cytoplasma u. die Korpersadfte) in Winterstein’s Handb. d. vergl. Physio-
logie, Bd. I., 1912. The literature is given in this article.

10 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

books and papers, has not hitherto succeeded in winning over any con-
verts to his opinion. I am myself so entirely convinced of the accuracy
of the results which Pasteur obtained—are they not within the daily and
hourly experience of everyone who deals with the sterilisation of organic
solutions ?—that I do not hesitate to believe, if living torulae or nrycelia
are exhibited to me in flasks which had been subjected to prolonged
boiling after being hermetically sealed, that there has been some fallacy
either in the premisses or in the carrying out of the operation. The
appearance of organisms in such flasks would not furnish to my mind
proof that they were the result of spontaneous generation. Assuming
no fault in manipulation or fallacy in observation, I should find it simpler
to believe that the germs of such organisms have resisted the effects
of prolonged heat than that they became generated spontaneously.
If spontaneous generation is possible, we cannot expect it to
take the form of living beings which show so marked a degree of
differentiation, both structural and functional, as the organisms which
are described as making their appearance in these experimental flasks.1°
Nor should we expect the spontaneous generation of living substance of
any kind to occur in a fluid the organic constituents of which have been
so altered by heat that they can retain no sort of chemical resemblance
to the organic constituents of living matter. If the formation of life—of
living substance—is possible at the present day—and for my own part
I see no reason to doubt it—a boiled infusion of organic matter—and still
less of inorganic matter—is the last place in which to look for it. Our
mistrust of such evidence as has yet been brought forward need not,
however, preclude us from admitting the possibility of the formation of
living from non-living substance."

Setting aside, as devoid of scientific foundation, the idea of immediate

* It is fair to point out that Dr. Bastian suggests that the formation of
ultramicroscopic living particles may precede the appearance of the microscopic
organisms which he describes. 7'he Origin of Life, 1911, p. 65.

‘' The present position of the subject is succinctly stated by Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell in his article on ‘ Abiogenesis’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Dr.
Mitchell adds : ‘ It may be that in the progress of science it may yet be possible
to construct living protoplasm from non-living material. _The refutation of
abiogenesis has no further bearing on this possibility than to make it probable
that if protoplasm ultimately be formed in the laboratory, it will be by a series
of steps, the earlier steps being the formation of some substance, or substances,
now unknown, which are not protoplasm. Such intermediate stages may have
existed in the past.’ And Huxley in his Presidential Address at Liverpool in
1870 says: ‘But though I cannot express this conviction’ (i.e., of the impossi-
bility of the occurrence of abiogenesis, as exemplified by the appearance of
organisms in hermetically sealed and sterilised flasks) ‘too strongly, I must
carefully guard myself against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no
such thing as abiogenesis ever has taken place in the past or ever will take
place in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics and physiology
yet in their infancy and every day making prodigious strides, [ think it would
be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which
matter assumes the properties we call ‘‘ vital’? may not, some day, be artificially
brought together.’

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 1l

supernatural intervention in the first production of life, we are not only
justified in believing, but compelled to believe, that living
Life a pro- =matter must have owed its origin to causes similar in
duct of evo- : : ,
Sefton. character to those which have been instrumental in pro-
ducing all other forms of matter in the universe; in other
words, to a process of gradual evolution.1? But it has been customary
of late amongst biologists to shelve the investigation of the mode of origin
of life by evolution from non-living matter by relegating its solution to
some former condition of the earth’s history, when, it is assumed,
opportunities were accidentally favourable for the passage of inanimate
matter into animate; such opportunities, it is also assumed, having
never since recurred and being never likely to recur.?°

Various eminent scientific men have even supposed that life has not
actually originated upon our globe, but has been brought to it from
another planet or from another stellar system. Some of my audience
may still remember the controversy that was excited when the theory
of the origin of terrestrial life by the intermediation of a meteorite was
propounded by Sir William Thomson in his Presidential Address at the
meeting of this Association in Edinburgh in 1871. To this ‘ mete-
orite ’ theory '* the apparently fatal objection was raised that it would
take some sixty million years for a meteorite to travel from the nearest
stellar system to our earth, and it is inconceivable that any kind of
life could be maintained during such a period. Even from the nearest
planet 150 years would be necessary, and the heating of the meteorite
in passing through our atmosphere and at its impact with the earth
would, in all probability, destroy any life which might have existed
within it. A cognate theory, that of cosmic panspermia, assumes
that life may exist and may have existed indefinitely in cosmic dust
in the interstellar spaces (Richter, 1865; Cohn, 1872), and may with
this dust fall slowly to the earth without undergoing the heating which
is experienced by a meteorite. Arrhenius,’® who adopts this theory,
states that if living germs were carried through the ether by luminous
and other radiations the time necessary for their transportation from
our globe to the nearest stellar system would be only nine thousand
years, and to Mars only twenty days!

7? The arguments in favour of this proposition have been arrayed by Meldola
in his Herbert Spencer Lecture, 1910, pp. 16-24. Meldola leaves the question.
open whether such evolution has occurred only in past years or is also taking place
now. He concludes that whereas certain carbon compounds have survived by
reason of possessing extreme stability, others—the precursors of living matter—
survived owing to the possession of extreme lability and adaptability to variable
conditions of environment. A similar suggestion was previously made by
Lockyer, Inorganic Evolution, 1900, pp. 169, 170.

13°T. H. Huxley, Presidential Address, 1870; A. B. Macallum, ‘On the
Origin of Life on the Globe,’ in 7'rans. Canadian Institute, VIII.

_ ** First suggested, according to Dastre, by de Salles-Guyon (Dastre, op. cit.,

p. 252). The theory received the support of Helmholtz. .
18 Worlds in the Making, transl. by H. Borns, chap. vili., p. 221, 1908.

|

12 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

But the acceptance of such theories of the arrival of life on the
earth does not bring us any nearer to a conception of its actual mode of
origin; on the contrary it merely serves to banish the investigation of
the question to some conveniently inaccessible corner of the universe and
leaves us in the unsatisfactory position of affirming not only that we
have no knowledge as to the mode of origin of life—which is unfortu-
nately true—but that we never can acquire such knowledge—which it is
to be hoped is not true.t® Knowing what we know, and believing what
we believe, as to the part played by evolution in the development of
terrestrial matter, we are, I think (without denying the possibility of
the existence of life in other parts of the universe }’) justified in regard-
ing these cosmic theories as inherently improbable—at least in com-
parison with the solution of the problem which the evolutionary
hypothesis offers.+*

I assume that the majority of my audience have at least a general
idea of the scope of this hypothesis, the general acceptance of which

has within the last sixty years altered the whole aspect not

ee ne only of biology, but of every other branch of natural
hypothesis as Science, including astronomy, geology, physics, and
applied to chemistry.?* To those who have not this familiarity I
Ee of would recommend the perusal of a little book by Professor

Judd entitled ‘The Coming of Evolution,’ which has
recently appeared as one of the Cambridge manuals. I know of no
similar book in which the subject is as clearly and succinctly treated.
Although the author nowhere expresses the opinion that the actual
origin of life on the earth has arisen by evolution from non-living
matter, it is impossible to read either this or any similar exposition in
which the essential unity of the evolutionary process is insisted upon

** «The history of science shows how dangerous it is to brush aside mysteries
—i.e., unsolved problems—and to interpose the barrier placarded ‘‘ eternal—no
vhoroughfare.’’ ’"—R. Meldola, Herbert Spencer Lecture, 1910.

*7 Some authorities, such as Errera, contend, with much probability, that
the conditions in interstellar space are such that life, as we understand it,
could not possibly exist there.

** As Verworn points out, such theories would equally apply to the origin of
any other chemical combination, whether inorganic or organic, which is met with
on our globe, so that they lead directly to absurd conclusions.—Allgemeine
Physiologie, 1911.

** As Meldola insists, this general acceptance was in the first instance largely
due to the writings of Herbert Spencer : ‘ We are now prepared for evolution in
every domain. . . . As in the case of most great generalisations, thought had been
moving in this direction for many years.... Lamarck and Buffon had suggested
a definite mechanism of organic development, Kant and Laplace a principle of
celestial evolution, while Lyell had placed geology upon an evolutionary basis.
The principle of continuity was beginning to be recognised in physical
science. ... It was Spencer who brought these independent lines of thought to
a focus, and who was the first to make any systematic attempt to show that the
law of development expressed in its widest and most abstract form was univer-
sally followed throughout cosmical processes, inorganic, organic, and super-
organic.’—Op, cit., p. 14,

-which are capable of passing through the pores of a Chamberland filter.

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS, 13

without coneluding that the origin of life must have been due to the
same process, this process being, without exception, continuous, and
admitting of no gap at any part of its course. Looking therefore at the
evolution of living matter by the light which is shed upon it from the
study of the evolution of matter in general, we are led to regard
it as having been produced, not by a sudden alteration, whether
exerted by natural or supernatural agency, but by a gradual process
of change from material which was lifeless, through material on the
borderland between inanimate and animate, to material which has all
the characteristics to which we attach the term ‘life.’ So far from
expecting a sudden leap from an inorganic, or at least an unorganised,
into an organic and organised condition, from an entirely inanimate
substance to a completely animate state of being, should we not rather
expect a gradual procession of changes from inorganic to organic
matter, through stages of gradually increasing complexity until material
which can be termed living is attamed? And in place of looking for

the production of fully formed living organisms in hermetically sealed

flasks, should we not rather search Nature herself, under natural con-
ditions, for evidence of the existence, either in the past or in the present,
of transitional forms between living and non-living matter?

The difficulty, nay the impossibility, of obtaining evidence of such

evolution from the past history of the globe is obvious. Both the

hypothetical transitional material and the living material which was
originally evolved from it may, as Macallum has suggested, have taken
the form of diffused ultra-microscopic particles of living substance ?°;
and even if they were not diffused but aggregated into masses, these
masses could have been physically nothing more than colloidal watery
slime which would leave no impress upon any geological formation.
Myriads of years may have elapsed before some sort of skeleton in

‘the shape of calcareous or siliceous spicules began to evolve itself, and

thus enabled ‘ life,’ which must already have possessed a prolonged

existence, to make any sort of geological record. It follows that in

attempting to pursue the evolution of living matter to its beginning in

‘terrestrial history we can only expect to be confronted with a blank wall

of nescience.
The problem would appear to be hopeless of ultimate solution, if

we are rigidly confined to the supposition that the evolution of life
has only occurred once in the past history of the globe. But are we
justified in assuming that at one period only, and as it were by a
fortunate and fortuitous concomitation of substance and circumstance,

‘living matter became evolved out of non-living matter—life became

20 There still exist in fact forms of life which the microscope cannot show
us (E. A. Minchin, Presidential Address to Quekett Club, 1911), and germs

A4

14 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

established? Is there any valid reason to conclude that at some previous
period of its history our earth was more favourably circumstanced for
the production of life than it is now??1_ I have vainly sought for such
reason, and if none be forthcoming the conclusion forces itself upon
us that the evolution of non-living into living substance has happened
more than once—and we can be by no means sure that it may not be
happening still.

It is true that up to the present there is no evidence of such hap-
pening: no process of transition has hitherto been observed. But on
the other hand, is it not equally true that the kind of evidence which
would be of any real value in determining this question has not hitherto
been looked for? We may be certain that if life is being produced from
non-living substance it will be life of a far simpler character than any
that has yet been observed—in material which we shall be uncertain
whether to call animate or inanimate, even if we are able to detect it
at all, and which we may not be able to visualise physically even after
we have become convinced of its existence.2? But we.can look with the
mind’s eye and follow in imagination the transformation which non-
living matter may have undergone and may still be undergoing to pro-
duce living substance. No principle of evolution is better founded than
that insisted upon by Sir Charles Lyell, justly termed by Huxley * the
greatest geologist of his time,’ that we must interpret the past history
of our globe by the present; that we must seek for an explanation of
what has happened by the study of what is happening; that, given
similar circumstances, what has occurred at one time will probably occur
at another. The process of evolution is universal. The inorganic
materials of the globe are continually undergoing transition. New
chemical combinations are constantly being formed and old ones broken
up; new elements are making their appearance and old elements dis-
appearing.?* Well may we ask ourselves why the production of living
matter alone should be subject to other laws than those which have
produced, and are producing, the various forms of non-living matter;
why what has happened may not happen? If living matter has been
evolved from lifeless in the past, we are justified in accepting the

71 Chalmers Mitchell (Article ‘Life,’ Hneycl. Brit., eleventh edition) writes
as follows : ‘ It has been suggested from time to time that conditions very unlike
those now existing were necessary for the first appearance of life, and must be
repeated if living matter is to be reconstituted artificially. No support for such
a view can be derived from observations of the existing conditions of life.’

22 “Spontaneous generation of life could only be perceptually demonstrated
hy filling in the long terms of a series between the complex forms of inorganic
and the simplest forms of organic substance. Were this done, it is quite possible

that we should be unable to say (especially considering the vagueness of our
definitions of life) where life began or ended.’—K. Pearson, Grammar of Science,
second edition, 1900, p. 350.

23 See on the production of elements, W. Crookes, Address to Section B, Brit.
Assoc., 1886; T. Preston, Nature, vol. 1x., p. 180; J. J. Thomson, PAil. Mae.,

1897, p. 311; Norman Lockyer, op. cit., 1900; G. Darwin, Pres. Addr. Brit.
Assoc., 1905.

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 15

conclusion that its evolution is possible in the present and in the future.
Indeed, we are not only justified in accepting this conclusion, we are
forced to accept it. When or where such change from non-living to
living matter may first have occurred, when or where it may have con-
tinued, when or where it may still be occurring, are problems as
difficult as they are interesting, but we have no right to assume that
they are insoluble.

Since living matter always contains water as its most abundant
constituent, and since the first living organisms recognisable as such
in the geological series were aquatic, it has generally been assumed that
life must first have made its appearance in the depths of the ocean.4
Is it, however, certain that the assumption that life originated in the sea
is correct? Is not the land-surface of our globe quite as likely to have
been the nidus for the evolutionary transformation of non-living into
living material as the waters which surround it? Within this soil almost
any chemical transformation may occur; it is subjected much more
than matters dissolved in sea-water to those fluctuations of moisture,
temperature, electricity, and luminosity which are potent in producing
chemical changes. But whether life, in the form of a simple slimy
colloid, originated in the depths of the sea or on the surface of the land,
it would be equally impossible for the geologist to trace its beginnings,
and were it still becoming evolved in the same situations, it would be
almost as impossible for the microscopist to follow its evolution. We
are therefore not likely to obtain direct evidence regarding such a trans-
formation of non-living into living matter in Nature, even if it is
occurring under our eyes.

An obvious objection to the idea that the production of living matter
from non-living has happened more than once is that, had this been the
case, the geological record should reveal more than one paleontological
series. ‘This objection assumes that evolution would in every case take
an exactly similar course and proceed to the same goal—an assumption
which is, to say the least, improbable. If, as might well be the case,
in any other paleontological series than the one with which we are
acquainted the process of evolution of living beings did not proceed
beyond Protista, there would be no obvious geological evidence regarding
it; such evidence would only be discoverable by a carefully directed
search made with that particular object in view.?> I would not by any
means minimise the difficulties which attend the suggestion that the

** For arguments in favour of the first appearance of life having been in the
sea, see A. B. Macallum, ‘The Paleochemistry of the Ocean,’ rans. Canad.
Instit., 1903-4.

*° Lankester (Art. * Protozoa,’ Kncycl. Brit., tenth edition) conceives that
the first protoplasm fed on the antecedent steps in its own evolution. F. J.
Allen (Brit. Assoc. Reports, 1896) comes to the conclusion that living substance
is probably constantly boeing produced, but that this fails to make itself evident

16 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

evolution of life may have occurred more than once or may still be
happening, but on the other hand, it must not be ignored that those
which attend the assumption that the production of life has occurred
once only are equally serious. Indeed, had the idea of the possibility
of a multiple evolution of living substance been first in the field, L
doubt if the prevalent belief regarding a single fortuitous production of
life upon the globe would have become established among biologists—so
much are we liable to be influenced by the impressions we receive in

scientific childhood !
Assuming the evolution of living matter to have occurred—whether
once only or more frequently matters not for the moment—and
in the form suggested, viz., as a mass of. colloidal shme

Further possessing the property of assimilation and therefore of
oa of growth, reproduction would follow as a matter of course.

life. For all material of this physical nature—fluid or semi-

fluid in character—has a tendency to undergo subdivision
when its bulk exceeds a certain size. The subdivision may be into
equal or nearly equal parts, or it may take the form of buds. In either
case every separated part would resemble the parent in chemical and
physical properties, and would equally possess the property of taking
in and assimilating suitable material from its liquid environment, grow-
ing in bulk and reproducing its like by subdivision. Omne vivum e
vivo. In this way from any beginning of living material a primitive
form of life would spread, and would gradually people the globe. The
establishment of life being once effected, all forms of organisation follow
under the inevitable laws of evolution. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui
cotte.

We can trace in imagination the segregation of a more highly
phosphorised portion of the primitive living matter, which we may now
consider to have become more akin to the protoplasm of organisms
with which we are familiar. This more phosphorised portion might
not for myriads of generations take the form of a definite nucleus, but
it would be composed of material having a composition and qualities
similar to those of the nucleus of a cell. Prominent among these
qualities is that of catalysis—the function of effecting profound
chemical changes in other material in contact with it without itself
undergoing permanent change. This catalytic function may have been
exercised directly by the living substance or may have been carried

owing to the substance being seized and assimilated by existing organisms. He
believes that ‘in accounting for the first origin of life on this earth it is not
necessary that, as Pfliiger assumed, the planet should have been at a former
period a glowing fire-ball. He ‘prefers to believe that the circumstances
which support life would also favour its origin.’ And elsewhere : ‘ Life is not
an extraordinary phenomenon, not even an importation from some other sphere,
but rather the actual outcome of circumstances on this earth.’

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 17

on through the agency of the enzymes already mentioned, which are
also of a colloid nature but of simpler constitution than itself, and
which differ from the catalytic agents employed by the chemist in the
fact that they produce their effects at a relatively low temperature. In
the course of evolution special enzymes would become developed for
adaptation to special conditions of life, and with the appearance of
these and other modifications, a process of differentiation of primitive
living matter into individuals with definite specific characters gradually
became established. We can conceive of the production in this way
from originally undifferentiated living substance of simple differentiated
organisms comparable to the lowest forms of Protista. But how long it
may have taken to arrive at this stage we have no means of ascertain-
ing. To judge from the evidence afforded by the evolution of higher
organisms it would seem that a vast period of time would be necessary
for even this amount of organisation to establish itself.
The next important phase in the process of evolution would be the
segregation and moulding of the diffused or irregularly aggregated
: nuclear matter into a definite nucleus around which all the
Formation of ; LE : Pe
the nucleated Chemical activity of the organism will in future be
cell. centred. Whether this change were due to a slow and
gradual process of segregation or of the nature of a jump, such as
Nature does occasionaliy make, the result would be the advancement of
the living organism to the condition of a complete nucleated cell: a
material advance not cnly in organisation but—siill more important—
in potentiality for future development. Life is now embodied in the
cell, and every living being evolved from this will itself be either a
cell or a cell-aggregate. Omnis cellula e celluld.
After the appearance of a nucleus—but how long after it is im-
possible to conjecture—another phenomenon appeared upon the scene
in the occasional exchange of nuclear substance between
Establishment ce]]s. In this manner became established the process of
eke, sexual reproduction. Such exchange in the unicellular
Protista might and may occur between any two cells
forming the species, but in the multicellular Metazoa it became—
like other functions—specialised in particular cells. The result ot
the exchange is rejuvenescence; associated with an increased tendency
to subdivide and to produce new individuals. This is due to the intro-
duction of a stimulating or catalytic chemical agent into the cell which
is to be rejuvenated, as is proved by the experiments of Loeb already
alluded to. It is true that the chemical material introduced into the
germ-cell in the ordinary process of its fertilisation by the sperm-cell is
usually accompanied by the introduction of definite morphological
elements which biend with others already contained within the germ-
cell, and it is believed that the transmission of such morphological ele-

18 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

ments of the parental nuclei is related to the transmission of parental
qualities. | But we must not be blind to the possibility that these
transmitted qualities may be connected with specific chemical charac-
ters of the transmitted elements; in other words, that heredity also is
one of the questions the eventual solution of which we must look to the
chemist to provide.
So far we have been chiefly considering life as it is found in
the simplest forms of living substance, organisms for the most part
entirely microscopic and neither distinctively animal nor
ager vegetable, which were grouped together by Haeckel as
F a separate kingdom of animated nature—that of Protista.
But persons unfamiliar with the microscope are not in the habit of
associating the term ‘ life ’ with microscopic organisms, whether these
take the form of cells or of minute portions of living substance which
have not yet attained to that dignity. We most of us speak and think
of life as it occurs in ourselves and other animals with which we are
familiar; and as we find it in the plants around us. . We recognise it
in these by the possession of certain properties—movement, nutrition,
growth, and reproduction. We are not aware by intuition, nor can
we ascertain without the employment of the microscope, that we and all
the higher living beings, whether animal or vegetable, are entirely
formed of aggregates of nucleated cells, each microscopic and each
possessing its own life. Nor could we suspect by intuition that what
we term our life is not a single indivisible property, capable of being
blown out with a puff like the flame of a candle; but.is the aggregate
of the lives of many millions of living cells of which the body is com-
posed. It is but a short while ago that this cell-constitution was dis-
covered: it occurred within the lifetime, even within the memory, of
some who are still with us. What a mafvellous distance we have
travelled since then in the path of knowledge of living organisms! The
strides which were made in the advance of the mechanical sciences
during the nineteenth century, which is generally considered to mark
that century as an age of unexampled progress, are as nothing in
comparison with those made in the domain of biology, and their
interest is entirely dwarfed by that which is aroused by the facts relat-
ing to the phenomena of life which have accumulated within the ‘same
period. And not the least remarkable of these facts is the discovery of
the cell-structure of plants and animals!
Let us consider how cell-aggregates came to be evolved from
organisms consisting of single cells. Two methods are possible—
viz. (1) the adhesion of a number of originally separate
beta es of individuals; (2) the subdivision of a single individual with-
aggregate. out the products of its subdivision breaking loose from one
another. No doubt this last is the manner whereby the

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 19

cell-aggregate was originally formed, since it is that by which it is still
produced, and we know that the life-history of the individual is
an epitome of that of the species. Such aggregates were in the beginning
solid; the cells in contact with one another and even in continuity:
subsequently a space or cavity became formed in the interior of the
mass, which was thus converted into a hollow sphere. All the cells
of the aggregate were at first perfectly similar in structure and in func-
tion; there was no subdivision of labour. All would take part in
effecting locomotion; all would receive stimuli from outside; all would
take in and digest nutrient matter, which would then be passed into the
cavity of the sphere to serve as a common store of nourishment. Such
organisms are still found, and constitute the lowest types of Metazoa.
Later one part of the hollow sphere became dimpled to form a cup;
the cavity of the sphere became correspondingly altered in shape. With
this change in structure differentiation of function between the cells
covering the outside and those lining the inside of the cup made its
appearance. Those on the outside subserved locomotor functions and
received and transmitted from cell to cell stimuli, physical or chemi-
cal, received by the organism; while those on the inside, being freed
from such functions, tended to specialise in the direction of the
inception and digestion of nutrient material; which, passing from them
into the cavity of the invaginated sphere, served for the nourishment
of all the cells composing the organism. The further course of evolu-
tion produced many changes of form and ever-increasing complexity of
the cavity thus produced by simple invagination. Some of the cell-
aggregates settled down to a sedentary life, becoming plant-like in
appearance and to some extent in habit. Such organisms, complex in
form but simple in structure, are the Sponges. Their several parts
are not, as in the higher Metazoa, closely interdependent: the destruc-
tion of any one part, however extensive, does not either immediately
or ultimately involve death of the rest: all parts function separately,
although doubtless mutually benefiting by their conjunction, if only
by slow diffusion of nutrient fluid throughout the mass. There is
already some differentiation in these organisms, but the absence of a
nervous system prevents any general co-ordination, and the individual
cells are largely independent of one another.

Our own life, like that of all the higher animals, is an aggregate
life; the life of the whole is the life of the individual cells. The life
of some of these cells can be put an end to, the rest may continue to
live. This is, in fact, happening every moment of our lives. The
cells which cover the surface of our body, which form the scarf-skin
and the hairs and nails, are constantly dying and the dead cells are
rubbed off or cut away, their place being taken by others supplied
from living layers beneath. But the death of these cells. does not

20 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

affect the vitality of the body as a whole. They serve merely as a
protection, or an ornamental covering, but are otherwise not material
to our existence. On the other hand, if a few cells, such as those
nerve-cells under the influence of which respiration is carried on, are
destroyed or injured, within a minute or two the whole living machine
comes to a standstill, so that to the bystander the patient is dead; even
the doctor will pronounce life to be extinct. But this pronouncement
is correct only in a special sense. What has happened is that, owing
to the cessation of respiration, the supply of oxygen to the tissues is
cut off. And since the manifestations of life cease without this supply,
the animal or patient appears to be dead. If, however, within a short
period we supply the needed oxygen to the tissues requiring it, all the
manifestations of life reappear.

It is only some cells which lose their vitality at the moment of
so-called ‘ general death.’ Many cells of the body retain their indi-
vidual life under suitable circumstances long after the rest of the
body is dead. Notable among these are muscle-cells. © McWilliam
showed that the muscle-cells of the blood-vessels give indications of
of life several days after an animal has been killed. The muscle-cells
of the heart in mammals have been revived and caused to beat regu-
larly and strongly many hours after apparent death. In man this
result has been obtained by Kuliabko as many as eighteen hours after
life had been pronounced extinct: in animals after days had elapsed.
Waller has shown that indications of life can be elicited from various
tissues many hours and even days after general death. Sherrington
observed the white corpuscles of the blood to be active when kept in a
suitable nutrient fluid weeks after removal from the blood-vessels. A
French histologist, Jolly, has found that the white corpuscles of the
frog, if kept in a cool place and under suitable conditions, show at the
end of a year all the ordinary manifestations of life. Carrell and
Burrows have observed activity and growth to continue for long periods
in the isolated cells of a number of tissues and organs kept under obser-
vation in a suitable medium. Carrell has succeeded in substituting
entire organs obtained after death from one animal for those of another
of the same species, and has thereby opened up a field of surgical
treatment the limit of which cannot yet be descried. It is a well-
established fact that any part or organ of the body can be maintained
alive for hours isolated from the rest if the blood-vessels are perfused
with an oxygenated solution of salts in certain proportions (Ringer).
Such revival and prolongation of the life of separated organs is an
ordinary procedure in laboratories of physiology. Like all the other
instances enumerated, it is based on the fact that the individual cells of
an organ have a life of their own which is largely independent, so that
they will continue in suitable circumstances to live, although the rest
of the body to which they belonged may be dead.

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 21

But some cells, and the organs which are formed of them, are
more necessary to maintain the life of the aggregate than others, on
account of the nature of the ‘functions which have become specialised
inthem. This is the case with the nerve-cells of the respiratory
centre, since they preside over the movements which are necessary
to effect oxygenation of the blood. It is also true for the cells which
compose the heart, since this serves to pump oxygenated blood to all
other cells of the body: without such blood most cells soon cease to
live. Hence we examine respiration and heart to determine if life is
present: when one or both of these are at a standstill we know that
life cannot be maintained. These are not the only organs necessary for
the maintenance of life, but the loss of others can be borne longer, since
the functions which they subserve, although useful or even essential to
the organism, can be dispensed with for a time. The life of some cells
is therefore more, of others less, necessary for maintaining the life of
the rest. On the other hand, the cells composing certain organs have
in the course of evolution ceased to be necessary, and their continued
existence may even be harmful. Wiedersheim has enumerated more
than a hundred of these organs in the human body. Doubtless Nature
is doing her best to get rid of them for us, and our descendants will
some day have ceased to possess a vermiform appendix or a pharyngeal
tonsil: until that epoch arrives we must rely for their removal on the
more rapid methods of surgery!

We have seen that in the simplest multicellular organisms, where
one cell of the aggregate differs but little from another, the conditions

for the maintenance of the life of the whole are nearly as

Sie simple as those for individual cells. But che life of a
the life of cell-aggregate such as composes the bodies of the higher
— animals is maintained not only by the conditions for the

aggregate i E pa as :
the the maintenance of the life of the individual cell being kept

oy 2 favourable, but also by the co-ordination of the varied
mechanisms. 2Ctivities of the cells which form the aggregate. Whereas

in the lowest Metazoa all cells of the aggregate are alike in
structure and function and perform and share everything in common, in
higher animals (and for that matter in the higher plants also) the cells
have become specialised, and each is only adapted for the performance
of a particular function. Thus the cells of the gastric glands are only
adapted for the secretion of gastric juice, the cells of the villi for the
absorption of digested matters from the intestine, the cells of the kidney
for the removal of waste products and superfluous water from the blood,
those of the heart for pumping blood through the vessels. Each of
these cells has its individual life and performs its individual functions.
But unless there were some sort of co-operation and subordination to
the needs Gfathe body generally, there would be sometimes too little,

pa PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

sometimes too much gastric juice secreted ; sometimes too tardy, some-
times too rapid an absorption from the intestine; sometimes too little,
sometimes too much blood pumped into the arteries, and so on. As
the result of such lack of co-operation the life of the whole would cease
to be normal and would eventually cease to be maintained.

We have already seen what are the conditions which are favourable
for the maintenance of life of the individual cell, no matter where
situated. The principal condition is that it must be bathed by a nutrient
fluid of suitable and constant composition. In higher animals this fluid
is the lymph, which bathes the tissue elements and is itself constantly
supplied with fresh nutriment and oxygen by the blood. Some tissue-
cells are directly bathed by blood; and in invertebrates, in which there
is no special system of lymph-vessels, all the tissues are thus nourished.
All cells both take from and give to the blood, but not the same materials
or to an equal extent. Some, such as the absorbing cells of the villi,
almost exclusively give; others, such as the cells of the renal tubules,
almost exclusively take. Nevertheless, the resultant of all the give and
take throughout the body serves to maintain the composition of the
blood constant under all circumstances. In this way the first condition
of the maintenance of the life of the aggregate is fulfilled by insuring
that the life of the individual cells composing it is kept normal.

The second essential condition for the maintenance of life of the cell-
ageregate is the co-ordination of its parts and the due regulation of
their activity, so that they may work together for the benefit of the
whole. In the animal body this is effected in two ways: first, through
the nervous system; and second, by the action of specific chemical
substances which are formed in certain orgars and carried by the
blood to other parts of the body, the cells of which they excite to
activity. These substances have received the general designation of
‘hormones’ (éppdw, to stir up), a term introduced by Professor Starling.
Their action, and indeed their very existence, has only been
recognised of late years, although the part which they play in the
physiology of animals appears to be only second in importance to that
of the nervous system itself; indeed, maintenance of life may become
impossible in the absence of et of these hormones.

Before we consider the manner in which the nervous
Part played

by the system serves to co-ordinate the life of the cell-aggregate,
sind let us see how it has become evolved.

system in the ce ; :
maintenance The first step in the process was taken when certain of

He ageregate the cells of the external layer became specially sensitive to
Seahitipn of Stimuli from outside, whether caused by mechanical im-
a nervous pressions (tactile and auditory stimuli) or impressions of
system. light and darkness (visual stimuli) or chemical impres-

sions. The effects of such impressions were probably at first simply

PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 23

communicated to adjacent cells and spread from cell to cell throughout
the mass. An advance was made when the more impressionable cells
threw out branching feelers amongst the other cells of the organism.
Such feelers would convey the effects of stimuli with greater rapidity
and directness to distant parts. They may at first have been retractile,
in this respect resembling the long pseudopodia of certain Rhizopoda.
When they became fixed they would be potential nerve-fibres and would
represent the beginning of a nervous system. Even yet (as Ross
Harrison has shown), in the course of development of nerve-fibres, each
fibre makes its appearance as an amceboid cell-process which is at first
retractile, but gradually grows into the position it is eventually to occupy
and in which it will become fixed.

In the further course of evolution a certain number of these
specialised cells of the external layer sank below the general surface,
partly perhaps for protection, partly for better nutrition: they became
nerye-cells. They remained connected with the surface by a prolonga-
tion which became an afferent or sensory nerve-fibre, and through its
termination between the cells of the general surface continued to
receive the effects of external impressions; on the other hand, they
continued to transmit these impressions to other, more distant cells by
their efferent prolongations. In the further course of evolution the
neryous system thus laid down became differentiated into distinct
afferent, efferent, and intermediary portions. Once established, such
a neryous system, however simple, must dominate the organism,
since it would furnish a mechanism whereby the individual cells would
work together more effectually for the mutual benefit of the whole.

It is the development of the nervous system, although not proceeding
in all classes along exactly the same lines, which-is the most prominent
feature of the evolution of the Metazoa. By and through it all impres-
sions reaching the organism from the outside are translated into contrac-
tion or some other form of cell-activity. Its formation has been the
means of causing the complete divergence of the world of animals from
the world of plants, none of which possess any trace of a nervous:
system. Plants react, it is true, to external impressions, and these
impressions produce profound changes and even comparatively rapid
and energetic movements in parts distant from the point of application
of the stimulus—as in the well-known instance of the sensitive plant.
But the impressions are in all cases propagated directly from cell to
cell—not through the agency of nerve-fibres; and in the absence of
anything corresponding to a nervous systém it is not possible to suppose
that any plant can ever acquire the least glimmer of intelligence. In
animals, on the other hand, from a slight original modification of certain
cells has directly proceeded in the course of evolution the elaborate
structure of the nervous system with all its varied and complex func-

24 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

tions, which reach their culmination in the workings of the human
intellect. ‘ What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admir-
able! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! ’
But lest he be elated with his psychical achievements, let him remem-
ber that they are but the result of the acquisition by a few cells in a
remote ancestor of a slightly greater tendency to react to an external
stimulus, so that these cells were brought into closer touch with the outer
world; while on the other hand, by extending beyond the circumscribed
area to which their neighbours remained restricted, they gradually
acquired a dominating influence over the rest. These dominating cells
became nerve-cells; and now not only furnish the means for trans-
mission of impressions from one part of the organism to another, but
in the progress of time have become the seat of perception and con-
scious sensation, of the formation and association of ideas, of memory,
volition, and all the manifestations of the mind!
The most conspicuous part played by the nervous system in the
phenomena of life is that which produces and regulates the general
- movements of the body—-movements brought about by
Regulation Of the so-called voluntary muscles. These movements are
movements ae . :
by the ner- actually the result of impressions imparted to sensory
vous system. or afferent nerves at the periphery—e.g., in the skin or
bens st fy in the several organs of special sense; the effect of these
impressions may not be immediate, but can be stored for
an indefinite time in certain cells of the nervous ‘system. The regu-
lation of movements—whether they occur instantly after reception of
the peripheral impression or result after a certain lapse of time; whether
they are accompanied by conscious sensation or are of a purely reflex
and unconscious character-—is an intricate process, and the conditions
of their co-ordination are of a complex nature involving not merely the
causation of contraction of certain muscles, but also the prevention of
contraction of others. For our present knowledge of these conditions
we are largely indebted to the researches of Professor Sherrington.
A less conspicuous but no less important part played by the nervous
system is that by which the contractions of involuntary muscles are
regulated. Under normal circumstances these are always
Involuntary § independent of consciousness, but their regulation is
movements. A ‘
brought about in much the same way as is that of the
contractions of voluntary muscles—viz., as the result of impressions
received at the periphery. These are transmitted by afferent fibres to
the central nervous system, and from the latter other impulses are sent
down, mostly along the nerves of the sympathetic or autonomic system
of nerves, which either stimulate or prevent contraction of the involun-

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS, 25

tary muscles. Many involuntary muscles have a natural tendency to
continuous or rhythmic contraction which is quite independent of the
central nervous system ; in this case the effect of impulses received from
the latter is merely to increase or diminish the amount of such contrac-
tion. An example of this double effect is observed in connection with
the heart, which—although it can contract regularly and rhythmically
when cut off from the nervous system and even if removed from the
body—is normally stimulated to increased activity by impulses coming
from the central nervous system through the sympathetic, or to
diminished activity by others coming through the vagus. It is due to

the readiness by which the action of the heart is influenced
Effects of in these opposite ways by the spread of impulses generated
emotions. : : :

during the nerve-storms which we term ‘ emotions’ that
in the language of poetry, and even of every day, the word ‘ heart’ has
become synonymous with the emotions themselves.

The involuntary muscle of the arteries has its action similarly
balanced. When its contraction is increased, the size of the vessels is
lessened and they deliver less blood; the parts they supply accordingly
become pale in colour. On the other hand, when the contraction is
diminished the vessels enlarge and deliver more blood; the parts which
they supply become correspondingly ruddy. These changes in the
arteries, like the effects upon the heart, may also be produced under the
influence of emotions. Thus ‘blushing’ is a purely physiological
phenomenon due to diminished action of the muscular tissue of the
arteries, whilst the pallor produced by fright is caused by an increased
contraction of that tissue. Apart, however, from these conspicuous
effects, there is constantly proceeding a less apparent but not less
important balancing action between the two sets of nerve-fibres dis-
tributed to heart and blood-vessels ; which are influenced in one direction
or another by every sensation which we experience and even by impres-
sions of which we may be wholly unconscious, such as those which
oceur during sleep or anesthesia, or which affect our otherwise insensi-
tive internal organs.

A further instance of nerve-regulation is seen in secreting glands.
Not all glands are thus regulated, at least not directly; but in those

which are, the effects are striking. Their regulation is of
Regulation of ihe same general nature as that exercised upon involuntary
secretion by §=muscle, but it influences the chemical activities of the
the nervous :
system. gland-cells and the outpouring of secretion from them. By

means of this regulation a secretion can be produced or
arrested, increased or diminished. As with muscle, a suitable balance
is in this way maintained, and the activity of the glands is adapted to
the requirements of the organism. Most of the digestive glands are

26 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

thus influenced, as are the skin-glands which secrete sweat. And by the
action of the nervous system upon the skin-glands, together
Regulation of with its effect in increasing or diminishing the blood-
body tem-
perature. supply to the cutaneous blood-vessels, the temperature of
our blood is regulated and is kept at the point best suited
for maintenance of the life and activity of the tissues.
The action of the nervous system upon the secretion of glands is
strikingly exemplified, as in the case of its action upon the heart and
blood-vessels by the effects of the emotions. Thus an

Effects of emotion of one kind—such as the anticipation of food—will
emotions on : . ,
specouan! cause saliva to flow—‘ the mouth to water’; whereas an

emotion of another kind—such as fear or anxiety—will stop
the secretion, causing the ‘ tongue to cleave unto the roof of the mouth,’
and rendering speech difficult or impossible. Such arrest of the sali-
vary secretion also makes the swallowing of dry food difficult: advan-
tage of this fact is taken in the ‘ ordeal by rice’ which used to be
employed in the East for the detection of criminals.

The activities of the cells constituting our bodies are controlled,
as already mentioned, in another way than through the nervous
system, viz., by chemical agents (hormones) circulating in
the blood. Many of these are produced by special

Regulation by : -

chemical glandular organs, known as internally secreting glands.
pas oi Ps The ordinary secreting glands pour their secretions on the
Internal exterior of the body or on a surface communicating with

secretions. the exterior; the internally secreting glands pass the

materials which they produce directly into the blood. In
this fluid the hormones are carried to distant organs. Their influence
upon an organ may be essential to the proper performance of its func-
tions or may be merely ancillary to it. In the former case removal
of the internally secreting gland which produces the hormone, or its
destruction by disease, may prove fatal to the organism. This is the
case with the suprarenal capsules: small glands which are
adjacent to the kidneys, although having no physiological
connection with these organs. A Guy’s physician, Dr. Addison, in
the middle of the last century showed that a certain affection, almost
always fatal, since known by his name, is associated with disease of
the suprarenal capsules. A short time after this observation a French
physiologist, Brown-Séquard, found that animals from which the supra-
renal capsules are removed rarely survive the operation for more than
a few days. In the concluding decade of the last century interest in
these bodies was revived by the discovery that they are constantly
yielding to the blood a chemical agent (or hormone) which stimulates
the contractions of the heart and arteries and assists in the promotion
of every action which is brought about through the sympathetic nervous

Suprarenals.

PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. Pat

system (Langley). In this manner the importance of their integrity
has been explained, although we have still much to learn regarding
their functions.

Another instance of an internally secreting gland which is essential
to life, or at least to its maintenance in a normal condition, is the
thyroid. The association of imperfect development or
disease of the thyroid with disorders of nutrition and inac-
tivity of the nervous system is well ascertained. The form of idiocy
known as cretinism and the affection termed myxcedema are both asso-
ciated with deficiency of its secretion: somewhat similar conditions to
these are produced by the surgical removal of the gland. The symptoms
are alleviated or cured by the administration of its juice. On the other
hand, enlargement of the thyroid, accompanied by increase of its
secretion, produces symptoms of nervous excitation, and similar symp-
toms are caused by excessive administration of the glandular substance
by the mouth. From these observations it is inferred that the juice con-
tains hormones which help to regulate the nutrition of the body and
serve to stimulate the nervous system, for the higher functions of which
they appear to be essential. To quote M. Gley, to whose researches we
owe much of our knowledge regarding the functions of this organ: ‘ La
genése et l’exercice des plus hautes facultés de l’homme sont con-
ditionnés par l’action purement chimique d’un produit de sécrétion.
Que les psychologues méditent ces faits! ’

The case of the parathyroid glandules is still more remarkable.
These organs were discovered by Sandstrém in 1880. They are four
minute bodies, each no larger than a pin’s head,
imbedded in the thyroid. Small as they are, their internal

secretion possesses hormones which exert a powerful influence upon
the nervous system. If they are completely removed, a complex of
symptoms, technically known as ‘tetany,’ is liable to occur, which
is always serious and may be fatal. Like the hormones of the
thyroid itself, therefore, those of the parathyroids produce effects upon
_the nervous system, to which they are carried by the blood; although
the effects are of a different kind.

Another internally secreting gland which has evoked considerable
interest during the last few years is the pituitary body. This is a small
structure no larger than a cob-nut attached to the base of
the brain. It is mainly composed of glandular cells. Its
removal has been found (by most observers) to be fatal—often within
two or three days. Its hypertrophy, when occurring during the general
growth of the body, is attended by an undue development of the skeleton,
so that the stature tends to assume gigantic proportions. When the
hypertrophy occurs after growth is completed, the extremities—viz., the
hands and feet, and the bones of the face—are mainly affected; hence

Thyroid.

Parathyroids.

Pituitary.

28 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

?

the condition has been termed ‘ acromegaly’ (enlargement of extre-
mities). The association of this condition with affections of the
pituitary was pointed out in 1885 by a distinguished French physician,
Dr. Pierre Marie. Both ‘ giants’ and ‘ acromegalists’ are almost
invariably found to have an enlarged pituitary. The enlargement
is generally confined to one part—the anterior lobe—and we conclude
that this produces hormones which stimulate the growth of the body
generally and of the skeleton in particular. The remainder of the
pituitary is different in structure from the anterior lobe and has a
different function. From it hormones can be extracted which, like
those of the suprarenal capsule, although not exactly in the same
manner, influence the contraction of the heart and arteries. Its
extracts are also instrumental in promoting the secretion of certain
glands. When injected into the blood they cause a free secretion of
water from the kidneys and of milk from the mammary glands, neither
of which organs are directly influenced (as most other glands are)
through the nervous system. Doubtless under natural conditions
these organs are stimulated to activity by hormones which are pro-
duced in the pituitary and which pass from this into the blood.

The internally secreting glands which have been mentioned (thyroid,
parathyroid, suprarenal, pituitary) have, so far as is known, no other
function than that of producing chemical substances of this character
for the influencing of other organs, to which they are conveyed by
the blood. It is interesting to observe that these glands are all of very
small size, none being larger than a walnut, and some—the parathy-
roids—almost microscopic. In spite of this, they .are essential to the
proper maintenance of the life of the body, and the total removal of
any of them by disease or operation is in most cases speedily fatal.

There are, however, organs in the body yielding internal secretions
to the blood in the shape of hormones, but exercising at the same time
other functions. A striking instance is furnished by the
pancreas, the secretion of which is the most important of
the digestive juices. This—the pancreatic juice—forms the external
secretion of the gland, and is poured into the intestine, where its action
upon the food as it passes out from the stomach has long been recog-
nised. It was, however, discovered in 1889 by von Mering and Min-
kowski that the pancreas also furnishes an internal secretion, containing
a hormone which is passed from the pancreas into the blood, by which
it is carried first to the liver and afterwards to the body generally. This
hormone is essential to the proper utilisation of carbohydrates in the
organism. It is well known that the carbohydrates of the food are con-
verted into grape sugar and circulate in this form in the blood, which
always contains a certain amount; the blood conveys it to all the cells of
the body, and they utilise it as fuel. If, owing to disease of the pan-

Pancreas.

PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 29

creas or as the result of its removal by surgical procedure, its internal
secretion is not available, sugar is no longer properly utilised by the
cells of the body and tends to accumulate in the blood; from the
blood the excess passes off by the kidneys, producing diabetes.

Another instance of an internal secretion furnished by an organ,
which is devoted largely to other functions is the ‘ pro-secretin ’ found
in the cells lining the duodenum. When the acid gastric
juice comes into contact with these cells it converts their
pro-secretin into ‘ secretin.’ This is a hormone which is passed into
the blood and circulates with that fluid. It has a specific effect on the
externally secreting cells of the pancreas, and causes the rapid out-
pouring of pancreatic juice into the intestine. This effect is similar
to that of the hormones of the pituitary body upon the cells of the
kidney and mammary gland. It was discovered by Bayliss and
Starling.

The reproductive glands furnish in many respects the most interest-
ing example of organs which—besides their ordinary products, the

germ- and sperm-cells (ova and spermatozoa)—form
ee ag hormones which circulate in the blood and efiect
the repro- changes in cells of distant parts of the body. It is
= through these hormones that the secondary sexual

characters, such as the comb and tail of the cock, the
mane of the lion, the horns of the stag, the beard and enlarged larynx
of a man, are produced, as well as the many differences in form and
structure of the body which are characteristic of the sexes. The
dependence of these so-called secondary sexual characters upon the
state of development of the reproductive organs has been recognised
from time immemorial, but has usually been ascribed to influences pro-
duced through the nervous system, and it is only in recent years that
the changes have been shown to be brought about by the agency of
internal secretions and hormones, passed from the reproductive glands
into the circulating blood.*

It has been possible in only one or two instances to prepare and
isolate the hormones of the internal secretions in a sufficient condition

of purity to subject them to analysis, but enough is known
Chemical about them to indicate that they are organic bodies of a not
nature of r - j
liacnes. very complex nature, far simpler than proteins and even

than enzymes. ‘Those which have been studied are all
dialysable, are readily soluble in water but insoluble in alcohol, and are
not destroyed by boiling. One at least—that of the medulla of the
suprarenal capsule—has been prepared synthetically, and when their

Duodenum.

*° The evidence is to be found in F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Repro-
duction, 1911.

30 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

exact chemical nature has been somewhat better elucidated it will
probably not be difficult to obtain others in the same way.

From the above it is clear that not only is a co-ordination through
the nervous system necessary in order that life shall be maintained in a
normal condition, but a chemical co-ordination is no less essential.
These may be independent of one another; but on the other hand they
may react upon one another. For it can be shown that the production
of some at least of the hormones is under the influence of the nervous
system (Biedl, Asher, Elliott); whilst, as we have seen, some of the
functions of the nervous system are dependent upon hormones.

Time will not permit me to refer in any but the briefest manner
to the protective mechanisms which the cell aggregate has evolved

for its defence against disease, especially disease produced
kaa by parasitic micro-organisms. These, which belong with
mechanisms. few exceptions to the Protista, are without doubt the
Toxins and = most formidable enemies which the multicellular Meta-
antitoxins. ae : : ;

- zoa, to which all the higher animal organisms belong,
have to contend against. To such micro-organisms are due inter
alia all diseases which are liable to become epidemic, such as anthrax
and rinderpest in cattle, distemper in dogs and cats, small-pox, scarlet
feyer, measles, and sleeping sickness in man. The advances of modern
medicine have shown that the symptoms of these diseases—the disturb-
ances of nutrition, the temperature, the lassitude or excitement, and
other nervous disturbances—are the effects of chemical poisons
(toxins) produced by the micro-organisms and acting deleteriously
upon the tissues of the body. The tissues, on the other hand,
endeavour to counteract these effects by producing other chemical
substances destructive to the micro-organisms or antagonistic
to their action: these are known as anti-bodies. Sometimes the
protection takes the form of a subtle alteration in the living
substance of the cells which renders them for a long time,
or eyen permanently, insusceptible (immune) to the action of the
poison. Sometimes certain cells of the body, such as the white
corpuscles of the blood, eat the invading micro-organisms and destroy
them bodily by the action of chemical agents within their protoplasm.
The result of an illness thus depends upon the result of the struggle
between these opposing forees—the micro-organisms on the one hand
and the cells of the body on the other—both of which fight with
chemical weapons. If the cells of the body do not succeed in destroy-
ing the invading organisms it is certain that the invaders will in the
long run destroy them, for in this combat no quarter is given. For-
tunately we have been able, by the aid of animal experimentation,
to acquire some knowledge of the manner in which we are attacked
by micro-organisms and of the methods which the cells of our body

PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 31

adopt to repel the attack, and the knowledge is now extensively utilised
to assist our defence. For this purpose protective serums or anti-
toxins, which have been formed in the blood of other animals, are
employed to supplement the action of those which our own cells
produce. It is not too much to assert that the knowledge of the
parasitic origin of so many diseases and of the chemical agents which

on the one hand cause, and on the other combat, their

sora symptoms, has transformed medicine from a mere art
nature o é ~
Dildisien. practised empirically, into a real science based upon

experiment. The transformation has opened out an illimit-
able vista of possibilities in the direction not only of cure, but, more
important still, of prevention. It has taken place within the memory
of most of us who are here present. And only last February the world
was mourning the death of one of the greatest of its benefactors—a
former President of this Association ?7—who, by applying this know-
ledge to the practice of surgery, was instrumental, even in his own
lifetime, in saving more lives than were destroyed in all the bloody
wars of the nineteenth century! f
The question has been debated whether, if all accidental modes of
destruction of the life of the cell could be eliminated, there would
remain a possibility of individual cell-life, and even of
aia penrg aggregate cell-life, continuing indefinitely ; in other words,
Are the phenomena of senescence and death a natural and
necessary sequence to the existence of life? To most of my audience
it will appear that the subject is not open to debate. But some
physiologists (e.g., Metchnikoff) hold that the condition of senescence
is itself abnormal ; that old age is a form of disease or is due to disease,
and, theoretically at least, is capable of being eliminated. We have
already seen that individual cell-life, such as that of the white blood-
corpuscles and of the cells of many tissues, ean under suitable con-
ditions be prolonged for days or weeks or months after general death.
Unicellular organisms kept under suitable conditions of nutrition have
been observed to carry on their functions normally for prolonged periods
and to show no degeneration such as would accompany senescence.
They give rise by division to otHers of the same kind, which also, under
favourable conditions, continue to live, to all appearance indefinitely.
But these instances, although they indicate that in the simplest forms
of organisation existence may be greatly extended without signs of
decay, do not furnish conclusive evidence of indefinite prolongation of
life. Most of the cells which constitute the body, after a period of
growth and activity, sometimes more, sometimes less prolonged,
eventually undergo atrophy and cease to perform satisfactorily the

*7 Lord Lister was President at Liverpool in 1896.

32 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

functions which are allotted to them. And when we consider the body
as a whole, we find that in every case the life of the aggregate consists
of a definite cycle of changes which, after passing through the stages
of growth and maturity, always leads to senescence, and finally
terminates in death. The only exception is in the reproductive cells,
in which the processes of maturation and fertilisation result in
rejuvenescence, so that instead of the usual downward change towards
senescence, the fertilised ovum obtains a new lease of life, which is
carried on into the new-formed organism. The latter again itself
ultimately forms reproductive cells, and thus the life of the species
is continued. It is only in the sense of its propagation in this way
from one generation to another that we can speak of the indefinite
continuance of life: we can only be immortal through our descendants !

The individuals of every species of animal appear to have
eee of 22 average duration of existence.** Some species are
life and pos- known the individuals of which live only for a few hours,
sibility of its Whilst others survive for a hundred years.?? In man
Ervippeeee himself the average length of life would probably be greater
than the three-score and ten years allotted to him by the Psalmist
if we could eliminate the results of disease and accident; when these
results are included it falls far short of that period. If the terms of
life given in the purely mythological part of the Old Testament were
credible, man would in the early stages of his history have possessed
a remarkable power of resisting age and disease. But, although many
here present were brought up to believe in their literal veracity, such
records are no longer accepted even by the most orthodox of theolo-
gians, and the nine hundred odd years with which Adam and his
immediate descendants are credited, culminating in the nine hundred
and sixty-nine of Methuselah, have been relegated, with the account of
Creation and the Deluge, to their proper position in literature. When
we come to the Hebrew Patriarchs, we notice a considerable diminu-
tion to have taken place in what the insurance offices term the ‘ expec-
tation of life.’ Abraham is described as having lived only to 175
years, Joseph and Joshua to 110, Moses to 120; even at that age
‘his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated.’ We cannot say
that under ideal conditions all these terms are impossible; indeed,
Metchnikoff is disposed to regard them as probable; for great ages are
still occasionally recorded, although it is doubtful if any as consider-
able as these are ever substantiated. That the expectation of life was

28 This was regarded by Buffon as related to,the period of growth, but the
ratio is certainly not constant. The subject is discussed by Ray Lankester in an
early work : On Comparative Longevity in Man and Animals, 1870.

29 The approximately regular periods of longevity of different species of
animals furnishes a strong argument against the theory that the decay of old
age is an accidental phenomenon, comparable with disease.

PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. ao

better then than now would be inferred from the apologetic tone adopted
by Jacob when questioned by Pharaoh as to his age: * The days of the
years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil
have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto
the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their
pilgrimage.” David, to whom, before the advent of the modern
statistician, we owe the idea that seventy years is to be regarded as the
normal period of life,*° is himself merely stated to have ‘ died in a good
old age.’ The periods recorded for the Kings show a considerable falling-
off as compared with the Patriarchs; but not a few were cut off by
violent deaths, and many lived lives which were not ideal. Amongst
eminent Greeks and Romans few very long lives are recorded, and
the same is true of historical persons in medieval and modern
history. It is a long life that lasts much beyond eighty; three such
linked together carry us far back into history. Mankind is in this
respect more favoured than most mammals, although a few of these
surpass the period of man’s existence.*! Strange that the brevity of
human life should be a favourite theme of preacher and poet when the
actual term of his ‘erring pilgrimage’ is greater than that of most
of his fellow creatures !

The modern applications of the principles of preventive medicine and
hygiene are no doubt operating to lengthen the average life. But even
if the ravages of disease couid be altogether eliminated, it is certain that

at any rate the fixed cells of our body must eventually grow
sig auto? old and ultimately cease to function; when this happens to

cells which are essential to the life of the organism, general
death must result. This will always remain the universal law, from
which there is no escape. ‘All that lives must die, passing through
nature to eternity.’

Such natural death unaccelerated by disease—is not death by disease
as unnatural as death by accident ?—-should be a quiet, painless pheno-
menon, unattended by violent change. As Dastre expresses it, ‘ The
need of death should appear at the end of life, just as the need of sleep
appears at the end of the day.” The change has been led gradually up
to by an orderly succession of phases, and is itself the last manifestation
of life. Were we all certain of a quiet passing—were we sure that
there would be ‘ no moaning of the bar when we go out to sea "—we
could anticipate the coming of death after a ripe old age without appre-
hension. And if ever the time shall arrive when man will have learned
to regard this change as a simple physiological process, as natural as

** The expectation of life of a healthy man of fifty is still reckoned at about
twenty years.

** “Hominis evum ceterorum animalium omnium superat preter admodum
paucorum.’—Francis Bacon, Historia vite et mortis, 1637.

34 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.

the oncoming of sleep, the approach of the fatal shears will be as gener-
ally welcomed as it is now abhorred. Such a day is still distant; we
ean hardly say that its dawning is visible. Let us at least hope that,
in the manner depicted by Diirer in his well-known etching, the sun-
shine which science irradiates may eventually put to flight the melan-
choly which hovers, bat-like, over the termination of our lives, and
which even the anticipation of a future happier existence has not
hitherto succeeded in dispersing.

Pritish Association for the Hdvancement of
Science.

SECTION A: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

TO THE

MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE SECTION

BY
Proressor H. L. CALLENDAR, LL.D., F.RBS.,

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

My first duty on taking the chair is to say a few words in commemoration of the
distinguished members whom we have lost since the last meeting.

George Chrystal, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh
for more than thirty years, officiated as President of this section in the year
1885, and took a prominent part in the advancement of science as Secretary of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh since 1901. Of his brilliant mathematical work and
his ability in developing the school at Edinburgh, I am not competent to speak,
but I well remember as a student his admirable article on ‘Electricity and
Magnetism’ contributed to the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica,’ which formed at
that time the groundwork of our studies at Cambridge under Sir J. J. Thomson.
It would be difficult to find a more complete and concise statement of the
mathematical theory at the time when that article was written. One can well
understand the value of such a teacher, and sympathise with his University in
the loss they have sustained.

John Brown, F.R.S., who acted as Local Secretary for the Association at
Belfast in 1902, will be remembered for his work on the Volta contact effect
between metals, which he showed to be in the main dependent on chemical
action, and tg be profoundly affected by the nature of the gas or other medium
in which the plates were immersed. Although the theory of this difficult subject
may not yet be completely elucidated, there can be little doubt that his work
takes the first rank on the experimental side.

William Sutherland, D.Sc., who at one time acted as Professor of Physics at
Melbourne, is best known for his familiar papers on the subject of molecular
physics in the ‘ Philosophical Magazine.’ His work was always remarkable for
its wide range and boldness of imagination. Many of his hypotheses cannot yet
be weighed in the balance of experiment, but some have already been sub-
stantiated. For instance, his theory of the variation of viscosity of gases with
temperature has been generally accepted, and results are now commonly
expressed in terms of Sutherland’s constant.

Osborne Reynolds, the first Professor of Engineering at Owens College, was
President of Section G in 1887, but belongs almost as much to mathematics and
physics, in which his achievements are equally memorable. It would be hardly
possible for me to enumerate his important contributions to the science of
engineering, which will be more fittingly commemorated elsewhere. His mastery
of mathematical and physical methods, while contributing greatly to his success
as a pioneer in the engineering laboratory, enabled him to attack the most difficult
problems in physics, such as the theory of the radiometer and the thermal
transpiration of gases. His determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat

A

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A.

is a most striking example of accurate physical measurement carried out on an
engineering scale. His last great work, on the ‘Submechanics of the Universe,’
is so original in its ideas and methods that its value cannot yet be fully appre-
ciated. While it differs so radically from our preconceived ideas that it fails to
carry immediate conviction, it undoubtedly represents possibilities of truth which
subsequent workers in the same field cannot afford to ignore.

The present year has been one of remarkable activity in the world of
Mathematical and Physical Science if we may measure activity by the number
and importance of scientific gatherings like the present for the interchange of
ideas and the general advancement of science. The celebration: of the 250th
Anniversary of the Foundation of the Royal Society brought to our shores a
number of distinguished delegates from all parts of the world, to promote the
ever-growing fellowship among men of science which is one of the surest
guarantees of international progress. The Congress of Universities of the
Empire brought other guests from distant British dominions, and considered, as
one of the principal points in its programme, the provision of facilities for the
interchange of students between different universities, which will doubtless prove
particularly advantageous to the scientific student in the higher branches of
research. In the special branches of knowledge more particularly associated
with this section, the International Congress of Mathematics at Cambridge, while
it affords to Cambridge men like myself a most gratifying recognition of our
Alma Mater as one of the leading schools of mathematics in the world, has given
us the opportunity of meeting here a number of distinguished foreign mathema-
ticians whose presence and personality cannot be otherwise than inspiring to our
proceedings, and will compensate for any deficiency in our own mathematical
programme. The Optical Convention held this year in London, by the import-
ance of the papers contributed for discussion, and by its admirable exhibition
of British instruments, has revealed the extent of our optical industry and talent,
and has done much to dispel the impression, fostered by an unfortunate trade
regulation, that the majority of optical instruments were ‘made elsewhere.’ The
Radio-Telegraphic Conference, held under the auspices of the British Govern-
ment, has formulated recommendations for regulating and extending the appli-
cation of the discoveries of modern physics for saving life and property at sea.
The work of this Conference will be fittingly supplemented on the scientific side
by the discussion on wireless telegraphy which has been arranged to take place in
this section in conjunction with Section G.

It would be impossible, even if it were not out of place, for me to attempt
to review in detail the important work of these conzresses, a full account of
which will shortly be available in their several reports of proceedings now in
course of publication. In the present age of specialisation and rapid publication
it would be equally impossible to give any connected account in the time at my
disposal of recent developments in those branches of science which come within
the range of our section. The appropriate alternative, adopted by the majority
of my predecessors in this chair, is to select some theory or idea, sufficiently
fundamental to be of general interest, and to discuss it in the light of recent
experimental evidence. It may sometimes be advantageous to take stock of our
fundamental notions in this way, and to endeavour to determine how far they
rest on direct experiment, and how far they are merely developments of some
dynamical analogy, which may represent the results of experiment up to a certain
noint, but may lead to erroneous conclusions if pushed too far. With this object
I propose to consider on the present occasion some of our fundamental ideas with
regard to the nature of heat, and in particular to suggest that we micht with
-dvantace import into our modern theory some of the ideas of the old calorie or
material theory which has for so long a time been forgotten and discredited. In
so doing I may appear to many of you to be taking a retrograde step, because
the caloric theory is generally represented as being fundamentally onnosed to the
kinetic theory and to the law of the conservation of energy. TI would, therefore,
remark at the outset that this is not necessarily the case, provided that the theory
is rightly interpreted and applied in accordance with experiment. Mistakes have
been made on both theories, but the method commonly adopted of selecting all
the mistakes made in the application of the caloric theory and contrasting them
with the correct deductions from the kinetic theory has created an erroneous

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. bj

impression that there is something fundamentally wrong about the caloric theory,
and that it is in the nature of things incapable of correctly representing the facts.
T shall endeavour to show that this fictitious antagonism between the two theories
is without real foundation. They should rather be regarded as different ways
of describing the same phenomena. Neither is complete without the other. The
kinetic theory is generally preferable for elementary exposition, and has come
to be almost exclusively adopted for this purpose; but in many cases the caloric
theory would have the advantage of emphasising at the outset the importance of
fundamental facts which are too often obscured in the prevailing method of
treatment.

The explanation of the development of heat by friction was one of the
earliest difficulties encountered by the caloric theory. One explanation, main-
tained by Cavendish and others, was simply that caloric was generated de novo
by friction in much the same way as electricity. Another explanation, more
commonly adopted, was that the fragments of solid, abraded in such operations
as boring cannon, had a smaller capacity for heat than the original material.
Caloric already existing in the substance was regarded as being squeezed or
ground out of it without any fresh caloric being actually generated. The proba-
bility of the second explanation was negatived by the celebrated experiments of
Rumford and Davy, who concluded that friction did not diminish the capacities
of bodies for heat, and that it could not be a material substance because the
supply obtainable by friction appeared to be inexhaustible. Rumford also
showed that no increase of weight in a body when heated could be detected by
the most delicate apparatus available in his time. Caloric evidently did not
possess to any marked extent the properties of an ordinary ponderable fluid ; but,
if it had any real existence and was not merely a convenient mathematical
fiction, it must be something of the same nature as the electric fluids, which had
already played so useful a part in the description of phenomena, although their
actual existence as physical entities had not then been demonstrated. Heat, as
Rumford and Davy maintained, might be merely a mode of motion or a
vibration of the ultimate particles of matter, but the idea in this form was too
vague to serve as a basis of measurement or calculation. The simple conception
of caloric, as a measurable quantity of something, sufficed for many purposes,
and led in the hands of Laplace and others to correct results for the ratio of the
specific heats, the adiabatic equation of gases, and other fundamental points of
theory, though many problems in the relations of heat and work remained
obscure.

The greatest contribution of the caloric theory to thermodynamics was the
production of Carnot’s immortal ‘ Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.’ It
is one of the most remarkable illustrations of the undeserved discredit into which
the caloric theory has fallen, that this work, the very foundation of modern
thermodynamics, should still be misrepresented, and its logic assailed, on the
ground that much of the reasoning is expressed in the language of the caloric
theory. In justice to Carnot, even at the risk of wearying you with an oft-told
tale, I cannot refrain from taking this opportunity of reviewing the essential
points of his reasoning, because it affords incidentally the best introduction to the
conception of caloric, and explains how a quantity of caloric is to be measured.

At the time when Carnot wrote, the industrial importance of the steam-engine
was already established, and the economy gained by expansive working was
generally appreciated. The air-engine, and a primitive form of the internal-com-
bustion engine, had recently been invented. On account of the high value of the
latent heat of steam, it was confidently expected that more work might be
obtained from a given quantity of heat or fuel by employing some other working
substance, such as alcohol or ether, in place of steam. Carnot set himself to
investigate the conditions under which motive-power was obtainable from heat, -
how the efficiency was limited, and whether other agents were preferable to
steam. These were questions of immediate practical importance to the engineer,
but the answer which Carnot found embraces the whole range of science in its
ever widening scope.

In discussing the production of work from heat it is necessary, as Carnot
points out, to consider a complete series or cycle of operations in. which the
working substance, and all parts of the engine, are restored on completion of the

AQ

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A.

cycle to their initial state. Nothing but heat, or its equivalent fuel, may be
supplied to the engine. Otherwise part of the motive power obtained might be
due, not to heat alone, but to some change in the working substance, or in the
disposition of the mechanism. Carnot here assumes the fundamental axiom of
the cycle, which he states as follows: ‘ When a body has undergone any changes,
and, after a certain number of transformations, is brought back identically to its
original state, considered relatively to density, temperature, and mode of aggre-
gation, it must contain the same quantity of heat as it contained originally.’
This does not limit the practical application of the theory, because all machines
repeat a regular series of operations, which may be reduced in theory to an
equivalent cycle in which everything is restored to its initial state.

The most essential feature of the working of all heat-engines, considered
apart from details of mechanism, is the production of motive power by alternate
expansion or contraction, or heating and cooling of the working substance. | This
necessitates the existence of a difference of temperature, produced by com-
bustion or otherwise, between two bodies, such as the boiler and condenser of a
steam-engine, which may be regarded as the source and sink of heat respectively.
Wherever a difference of temperature exists, it may be made a source of motive-
power, and conversely, without difference of temperature, no motive-power can
be obtained from heat by a cyclical or continuous process. From this considera-
tion Carnot deduces the simple and sufficient rule for obtaining the maximum
effect : ‘Zn order to realise the maximum effect, it is necessary that, in the process
employed, there should not be any direct interchange of heat between bodies at
sensibly different temperatures.’ Direct transference of heat between bodies at
sensibly different temperatures would be equivalent to wasting a difference of
temperature which might nave been utilised for the production of motive-power.
Equality of temperature is here assumed as the limiting condition of thermal
equilibrium, such that an infinitesimal difference of temperature will suffice to
determine the flow of heat in either direction. An engine satisfying Carnot’s
rule will be reversible so far as the thermal operations are concerned. Carnot
makes use of this property of reversibility in deducing his formal proof that an
engine of this type possesses the maximum efficiency. If in the usual or direct
method of working such an engine takes a quantity of heat Q from the source,
rejects heat to the condenser, and gives a balance of useful work W per cycle,
when the engine is reversed and supplied with motive-power W per cycle it will
in the limit take the same quantity of heat from the condenser as it previously
rejected, and return to the source the same quantity of heat Q as it took from it
when working direct. All such engines must have the same efficiency (measured
by the ratio W/Q of the work done to the heat taken from the source) whatever
the working substance, provided that they work‘between the same temperature
limits. For, if this were not the case, it would be theoretically possible, by
employing the most efficient to drive the least efficient reversible engine back-
wards, to restore to the source all the heat taken from it, and to obtain a balance
of useful work without the consumption of fuel; a result sufficiently improbable
to serve as the basis of a formal proof. Carnot thus deduces his famous principle,
which he states as follows : ‘ The Motive Power obtainable from Heat is indepen-
dent of the agents set at work to realise it. Its quantity is fixed solely by the
temperatures between which in the limit the transfer of heat takes place.’

Objection is commonly taken to Carnot’s proof, on the ground that the combina-
tion which he imagines might produce a balance of useful work without infringing
the principle of conservation of energy, or constituting what we now understand
as perpetual motion of the ordinary kind in mechanics. It has become the fashion
to introduce the conservation of energy in the course of the proof, and to make
a final appeal to some additional axiom. Any proof of this kind must always be
to some extent a matter of taste; but since Carnot’s principle cannot be deduced
from the conservation of energy alone, it seems a pity to complicate the proof
by appealing to it. For the particular object in view, the absurdity of a heat-
engine working without fuel appears to afford the most appropriate improbability
which could be invoked. The final appeal must be to experiment in any case.
At the present time the experimental verification of Carnot’s principle in its widest
application so far outweighs the validity of any deductive proof, that we might

well rest content with the logic that satisfied Carnot instead of confusing the issue
by disputing his reasoning.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5

Carnot himself proceeded to test his principle in every possible way by com-
parison with experiment as far as the scanty data available in his time would
permit. He also made several important deductions from it, which were con-
trary to received opinion at the time, but have since been accurately verified.
He appears to have worked out these results analytically in the first instance, as
indicated by his footnotes, and to have translated his equations into words in
the text for the benefit of his non-mathematical readers. 1n consequence of this,
some of his most important conclusions appear to have been overlooked or attri-
buted to others. Owing to want of exact knowledge of the properties of sub-
stances over extended ranges of temperature, he was unable to apply his principle
directly in the general form for any temperature limits. We still labour to a less
extent under the same disability at the present day. He showed, however, that
a great simplification was effected in its application by considering a cycle of in-
finitesimal range at any temperature ¢. In this simple case the principle is
equivalent to the assertion that the work obtainable from a unit of heat per degree
fall (or per degree range of the cycle) at a temperature ¢, is some function F’¢ of
the temperature (generally known as Carnot’s Function), which must be the same
for all substances at the same temperature. From the rough data then available
for the properties of steam, alcohol, and air, he was able to calculate the
numerical values of this function in kilogrammetres of work per kilocalorie of
heat at various temperatures between 0° and 100° C., and to show that it was
probably the same for different substances at the same temperature within the
limits of experimental error. For the vapour of alcohol at its boiling-point
78°°7 C., he found the value F’¢ = 1-230 kilogrammetre per kilocalorie per
degree fall. For steam at the same temperature he found nearly the same value,
namely, F’¢ = 1212. Thus no advantage in point of efficiency could be gained
by employing the vapour of alcohol in place of steam. He was also able to show
that the work obtainable from a kilocalorie per degree fall probably diminished
with rise of temperature, but his data were not sutticiently exact to indicate the
law of the variation. ;

The equation which Carnot employed in deducing the numerical values of
his function from the experimental data for steam and alcohol is simply the direct
expression of his principle as applied to a saturated vapour. It is now generally
known as Clapeyron’s equation, because Carnot did not happen to give the
equation itself in algebraic form, although the principle and details of the calcula-
tion were most minutely and accurately described. In calculating the value of
his function for air, Carnot made use of the known value of the difference ot the
specific heats at constant pressure and volume. He showed that this difference
umst be the same for equal volumes of all gases measured under the same tempera-
ture and pressure, whereas it had always previously been assumed that the ratio
(not the difference) of the specific heats was the same for different gases. He also
gave a general expression for the heat absorbed by a gas in expanding at constant
temperature, and showed that it must bear a constant ratio to the work of ex-
pansion. These results were verifiedyexperimentally some years later, in part by
Dulong, and more completely by Joule, but Carnot’s theoretical prediction has
generally been overlooked, although it was of the greatest interest and import-
ance. The reason of this neglect is probably to be found in the fact that Carnot’s
expressions contained the unknown function F’¢ of the temperature, the form of
which could not be deduced without making some assumptions with regard to the
nature of heat and the scale on which temperature should be measured.

It was my privilege to discover a few years ago that Carnot himself had
actually given the correct solution of this fundamental problem in one of his most
important footnotes, where it had lain buried and unnoticed for more than eighty
years. He showed by a most direct application of the caloric theory, that if
temperature was measured on the scale of a perfect gas (which is now universally
adopted) the value of his function F’t on the caloric theory would be the same
at all temperatures, and might be represented simply by a numerical constant A
(our ‘ mechanical equivalent’) depending on the units adopted for work and heat.
In other words, the work W done by a quantity of caloric Q in a Carnot cycle of
range T to T, on the gas scale would be represented by the simple equation :

We= AQ (ie .):
It is at once obvious that this solution, obtained by Carnot from the caloric

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A.

theory, so far from being inconsistent with the mechanical theory of heat, is a
direct statement of the law of conservation of energy as applied to the Carnot
cycle. If the lower limit T, of the cycle is taken at the absolute zero of the gas-
thermometer, we observe that the maximum quantity of work obtainable from a
quantity of caloric Q at a temperature T is simply AQT, which represents the
absolute value of the energy carried by the caloric taken from the source at the
temperature T. The energy of the caloric rejected at the temperature T, is
AQT,. The external work done is equal to the difference between the quantities
of heat energy supplied and rejected in the cycle.

The analogy which Carnot himself employed in the interpretation of this
equation was the oft-quoted analogy of the waterfall. Caloric might be regarded
as possessing motive-power or energy in virtue of elevation of temperature just
as water may be said to possess motive-power in virtue of its head or pressure.
The limit of motive-power obtainable by a reversible motor in either case would
be directly proportional to the head or tall measured on a suitable scale. Caloric
itself was not motive-power, but must be regarded simply as the vehicle or carrier
of energy, the production of motive-power trom caloric depending essentially (as
Carnot puts it) not on the actual consumption of caloric, but on the fall of
temperature available. The measure of a quantity of caloric is the work done
per degree fall, which corresponds with the measure of a quantity of water by
weight, 7.e., in kilogrammetres per metre fall.

That Carnot did not pursue the analogy further, and deduce the whole
mechanical theory of heat from the caloric theory, is hardly to be wondered at
if we remember that no applications of the energy principle had then been made
in any department of physics. He appears, indeed, at a later date to have caught
a glimpse of the general principle when he states that ‘ motive-power [his equiva-
lent for work or energy] changes its form but is never annihilated.’ It is clear
from the posthumous notes of his projected experimental work that he realised
how much remained to be done on the experimental side, especially in relation to
the generation of caloric by friction, and the waste of motive-power by conduction
of heat, which appeared to him (in 1824) ‘ almost inexplicable in the present state
of the theory of heat.’

One of the points which troubled him most in the application of the theoretical
result that the work obtainable from a quantity of caloric was simply propor-
tional to the fall of temperature available, was that it required that the specific
heat of a perfect gas should be independent of the pressure. This was incon-
sistent with the general opinion prevalent at the time, and with one solitary
experiment by Delaroche and Bérard, which appeared to show that the specific
heat of a gas diminished with increase of pressure, and which had been explained
by Laplace as a natural consequence of the caloric theory. Carnot showed that
this result did not necessarily follow from the caloric theory, but the point was
not finally decided in his favour until the experiments of Regnault, first pub-
lished in 1852, established the correct values of the specific heat of gases, and
proved that they were practically independent of the pressure.

Another point which troubled Carnot was that, according to his calculations,
the motive-power obtainable from a kilocalorie of heat per degree fall appeared
to diminish with rise of temperature, instead of remaining constant. This
might have been due to experimental errors, since the data were most uncertain.
But, if he had lived to carry out his projected experiments on the quantity of
motive-power required to produce one unit of heat, and had obtained the result,
424. kilogrammetres per kilocalorie, subsequently found by Joule, he could ‘hardly
have failed to notice that this was the same (within the limits of experimental
error) as the maximum work AQT obtainable from the kilocalorie according to his
equation. (This is seen to be the case when the values calculated by Carnot per
degree fall at different temperatures were multiplied by the absolute temperature
in eath case. Z.g., 1212 kilogrammetre per degree fall with steam at 79° C. or
352° Abs. 1°212 x 352 = 426 kilogrammetres.) The origin of the apparent dis-
crepancy between theory and experiment lay in the tacit assumption that the
quantity of caloric in a kilocalorie was the same at different temperatures.
There were no experiments at that time available to demonstrate that the caloric
measure of heat as work per degree fall, implied in Carnot’s principle, or more
explicitly stated in his equation, was not the same as the calorimetric measure -
obtained by mixing substances at different temperatures. Even when the energy

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7

principle was established its exponents failed to perceive exactly where the dis-
crepancy between the two theories lay. In reality both were correct, if fairly
interpreted in accordance with experiment, but they depended on different
methods of measuring a quantity of heat, which, so far from being inconsistent,
were mutually complementary.

The same misconception, in a more subtle and insidious form, is still prevalent
in such common phrases as the following : ‘ We now know that heat is a form of
energy and not a material fluid.’ The experimental fact underlying this state-
ment is that our ordinary methods of measuring quantities of heat in reality
measure quantities of thermal energy. When two substances at different tempera-
tures are mixed, the quantity remaining constant, provided that due allowance
is made for external work done and for external loss of heat, is the total quantity
of energy. Heat is a form of energy merely because the thing we measure and
call heat is really a quantity of energy. Apart from considerations of practical
convenience, we might equally well have agreed to measure a quantity of heat
in accordance with Carnot’s principle, by the external work done in a cycle per
degree fall. Heat would then not be a form of energy, but would possess all the
properties postulated for caloric. The caloric measure of heat follows directly
from Carnot’s principle, just as the energy measure follows from the law of
conservation of energy. But the term Aeat has become so closely associated with
the energy measure that it is necessary to employ a different term, caloric, to
denote the simple measure of a quantity of heat as opposed to a quantity of heat
energy. The measurement of heat as caloric is precisely analogous to the measure
of electricity as a quantity of electric fluid. In the case of electricity, the
quantity measure is more familiar than the energy measure, because it is generally
simpler to measure electricity by its chemical and magnetic effects as a quantity
of fluid than as a quantity of energy. The units for which we pay by electric
meter, however, are units of energy, because the energy supplied is the chief
factor in determining the cost of production, although the actual quantity of
fluid supplied has a good deal to do with the cost of distribution. Both methods
of measurement are just as important in the theory of heat, and it seems a great
pity that the natural measure of heat quantity is obscured in the elementary
stages of exposition by regarding heat simply as so much energy. The inadequacy
of such treatment makes itself severely felt in the later stages.

Since Carnot’s principle was adopted without material modification into the
mechanical theory of heat, it was inevitable that Carnot’s caloric, and _ his
solution for the work done in a finite cycle, should sooner or later be redis-
covered. Caloric reappeared first as the ‘thermo-dynamic function’ of Rankine,
and as the ‘equivalence-value of a transformation’ in the equations of Clausius;
but it was regarded rather as the quotient of heat energy by temperature than as
possessing any special physical significance. At a later date, when its import-
ance was more fully recognised, Clausius gave it the name of entropy, and estab-
lished the important property that its total quantity remained constant in
reversible heat exchanges, but always increased in an irreversible process. Any
process involving a decrease in the total quantity of entropy was impossible.
Equivalent propositions with regard to the possibility or impossibility of trans.
formations had previously been stated by Lord Kelvin in terms of the dissipa
tion of available energy. But, since Carnot’s solution had been overlooked, no
one at the time seems. to have realised that entropy was simply Carnot’s caloric
under another name, that heat could be measured otherwise than as energy, and
that the increase of entropy in any irreversible process was the most appropriate
measure of the quantity of heat generated. Energy so far as we know must
always be associated with something of a material nature acting as carrier, and
there is no reason to believe that heat energy is an exception to this rule. The
tendency of the kinetic theory has always been to regard entropy as a purely
abstract mathematical function, relating to the distribution of the energy, but
having no physical existence. Thus it is not a quantity of anything in the kinetic
theory of gases, but merely the logarithm of the probability of an arrangement.
In a similar way, some twenty years ago the view was commonly held that
electric phenomena were due merely to strains in the ether, and that the electric
fluids had no existence except as a convenient means of mathematicai expression.
Recent discoveries have enabled us to form a more concrete conception of a charge
of electricity, which has proved invaluable as a guide to research. Perhaps

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A.

it is not too much to hope that it may be possible to attach a similar conception
with advantage to caloric as the measure of a quantity of heat.

It has generally been admitted in recent years that some independent measure
of heat quantity as opposed to heat energy is required, but opinions have differed
widely with regard to the adoption of entropy as the quantity factor of heat.
Many of these objections have been felt rather than explicitly stated, and are
therefore the more difticult to answer satisfactorily. Others arise from the diffi-
culty of attaching any concrete conception of a quantity of something to such
a vague and shadowy mathematical function as entropy. The answer to the
question *‘ What is caloric?’ must necessarily be of a somewhat speculative nature.
But it is so necessary for the experimentalist to reason by analogy from the seen
to the unseen, that almost any answer, however crude, is better than none at
all. The difficulties experienced in regarding entropy as a measure of heat quan-
tity are more of an academic nature, but may be usefully considered as a pre-
liminary in attempting to answer the more fundamental question.

The first difficulty felt by the student in regarding caloric as the measure of
heat quantity is that when two portions of the same substance, such as water,
at different temperatures are mixed, the quantity of caloric in the mixture is
greater than the sum of the quantities in the separate portions. The same diffi-
culty was encountered by Carnot from the opposite point of view. The two
portions at different temperatures represented a possible source of motive-power.
the question which he asked himself may be put as follows: ‘If the total quan-
tity of caloric remained the same, when the two portions at different temperatures
were simply mixed, what had become of the motive-power wasted?’ The answer
is that caloric is generated, and that the quantity generated is such that its
energy is the precise equivalent of the motive-power which might have been
obtained if the transfer of heat had been effected by means of a perfect engine
working without generation of caloric. The caloric generated in wasting a
difference of temperature is the necessary and appropriate measure of the quan-
tity of heat obtained by the degradation of available motive-power into the less
available or transformable variety of heat energy.

The processes by which caloric is generated in mixing substances at different
temperatures, or in other cases where available motive-power is allowed to run
to waste, are generally of so turbulent a character that the steps of the process
cannot be followed, although the final result can be predicted under given con-
ditions from the energy principle. Such processes could not be expected @ priori
to throw much light on the nature of caloric. The familiar process of conduction
of heat through a body, the parts of which are at difierent temperatures, while
equally leading to the generation of a quantity of caloric equivalent to the motive-
power wasted, affords better promise of elucidating the nature of caloric, owing
to the comparative simplicity and regularity of the phenomena, which permit
closer experimental study. The earliest measurements of the relative con-
ducting powers of the metals for heat and electricity showed that the ratio of
the thermal to the electric conductivity was nearly the same for all the pure
metals, and suggested that, in this case, the carriers of heat and electricity were
the same. Later and more accurate experiments showed that the ratio of the
conductivities was not constant, but varied nearly as the absolute temperature. At
first sight this might appear to suggest a radical difference between the two
conductivities, but it results merely from the fact that heat is measured as energy
in the definition of thermal conductivity, whereas electricity is measured as a
quantity of fluid. If thermal conductivity were defined in terms of calorie or
thermal fluid, the ratio of the two conductivities would be constant with respect
to temperature almost, if not quite, within the limits of error of experiment. On
the hypothesis that the carriers are the same for electricity and heat, and that
the kinetic energy of each carrier is the same as that of a gas molecule at the
same temperature, it becomes possible, on the analogy of the kinetic theory of
gases, to calculate the actual value of the ratio of the conductivities. The value
thus found agrees closely in magnitude with that given by experiment, and may
be regarded as confirming the view that the carriers are the same, although the
hypotheses and analogies invoked are somewhat speculative.

When the electrons or corpuscles of negative electricity were discovered it was
a natural step to identify them with the carriers of energy, and to imagine that
a metal contained a large number of such corpuscles, moving in all directions,

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

and colliding with each other, and with the metallic atoms, like the molecules of
a gas on the kinetic theory. If the mass of each carrier were 1/1700 of that of
an atom of hydrogen, the velocity at 0° C. would be about sixty miles a second,
and would be of the right order of magnitude to account for the observed values
of the conductivities of good conductors, on the assumption that the number of
negative corpuscles was the same as the number of positive metallic atoms, and
that the mean free path of each corpuscle was of the same order as the distance
between the atoms. The same hypothesis served to give a qualitative account of
thermo-electric phenomena, such as the Peltier and Thomson effects, and of
radiation and absorption of heat, though in a less satisfactory manner. When
extended to give a consistent account of all the related phenomena, it would
appear that the number of free corpuscles required is too large to be reconciled,
for instance, with the observed values of the specific heat, on the assumption that
each corpuscle possesses energy of translation equal to that of a gas molecule at the
same temperature.

Sir J. J. Thomson has accordingly proposed and discussed another possible
theory of metallic conduction, in which the neutral electric doublets present in
the metal are supposed to be continually interchanging corpuscles at a very high
rate. Under ordinary condition these interchanges take place indifferently in all
directions, but under the action of an electric field the axes of the doublets are
supposed to become more or less oriented, as in the Grotthus-chain hypothesis
of electrolytic conduction, producing a general drift or current proportional to
the field This hypothesis, though fundamentally different from the preceding
or more generally accepted view, appears to lead to practically the same relations,
and is in some ways preferable, as suggesting possible explanations of difti-
culties.encountered by the first theory in postulating so large a number of free
negative corpuscles. On the other hand, the second theory requires that each
neutral doublet should be continually ejecting corpuscles at the rate of about
10** per second. There are probably elements of truth in both theories, but,
without insisting too much on the exact details of the process, we may at least
assert with some confidence that the corpuscles of caloric which constitute a
current of heat in a metal are very closely related to the corpuscles of electricity,
and have an equal right to be regarded as constituting a material fluid possessing
an objective physical existence.

If I may be allowed to speculate a little on my own account (as we are all here
together in holiday mood, and you will not take anything I may say too seriously),
I should prefer to regard the molecules of caloric, not as being identical with the
corpuscles of negative electricity, but as being neutral doublets formed by the
union of a positive and negative corpuscle, in much the same way as a molecule
of hydrogen is formed by the union of two atoms. Nothing smaller than a
hydrogen atom has yet, so far as I know, been discovered with a positive charge.
This may be merely a consequence of the limitations of our experimental methods,
which compel us to employ metals to so large an extent as electrodes. In the
symmetry of nature it is almost inconceivable that the positive corpuscle should
not exist, if only as the other end of the Faraday-tube or vortex-filament repre-
senting a chemical bond. Professor Bragg has identified the X or y rays with neu-
tral corpuscles travelling at a high velocity, and has maintained this hypothesis
with brilliant success against the older view that these rays are not separate
entities, but merely thin, spreading pulses in the «ther produced by the collisions
of corpuscles with matter. JI must leave him to summarise the evidence, but if
neutral corpuscles exist, or can be generated in any way, it should certainly be
much easier to detach a neutral corpuscle from a material atom or molecule than
to detach a corpuscle with a negative charge from the positive atom with which
it is associated. We should therefore expect neutral corpuscles to be of such
exceedingly common and universal occurrence that their very existence might be
Overlooked, unless they happened to be travelling at such exceptionally high
velocities as are associated with the y rays. According to the pulse theory, it is
assumed that all y rays travel with the velocity of light, and that the enormous
variations observed in their penetrative power depend simply on the thickness
of the pulse transmitted. On the corpuscular theory, the penetrative power, like
that of the a and @ rays, is a question of size, velocity, and electric charge.
Particles carrying electric charges, like the a and f rays, lose energy in producing
ions by their electric field, perhaps without actual collision. Neutral or y rays do

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A.

not produce ions directly, but dislodge either y rays or 8 rays from atoms by
direct collisions, which are comparatively rare. The f rays alone, as C. T. R.
Wilson’s photographs show, are responsible for the ionisation. Personally, I
have long been a convert to Professor Bragg’s views on the nature of X rays, but
even if we regard the existence of neutral corpuscles as not yet definitely proved,
it is, | think, permissible to assume their existence for purposes of argument, in
order to see whether the conception may not be useful in the interpretation of
physical phenomena. ;

lf, for instance, we assume that these neutral corpuscles or molecules of caloric
exist in conductors and metallic bodies in a comparatively free state of solution,
and are readily dissociated into positive and negative electrons owing w the
high specific inductive capacity of the medium, the whole theory of metallic con-
duction follows directly on the analogy of conduction in electrolytic solutions.
But, whereas in electrolytes the ions are material atoms moving through a
viscous medium with comparatively low velocities, the ions in metallic conductors
are electric corpuscles moving with high velocities more after the manner postu-
lated in the kinetic theory of gases. It is easy to see that this theory will give
similar numerical results to the electronic theory when similar assumptions are
made in the course of the work. But it has the advantage of greater latitude in
explaining the vagaries of sign of the Hall effect, and many other peculiarities in
the variation of resistance and thermo-electric power with temperature. For good
conductors, like the pure metals, we may suppose, on the electrolytic analogy,
that the dissociation is practically complete, so that the ratio of the conductivities
wilt approach the value calculated on the assumption that all the carriers of heat
are also carriers of electricity. But in bad conductors the dissociation will be
far from complete, and it is possible to see why, for instance, the electric resist-
ance of cast iron should be nearly ten times that of pure iron, although there is
comparatively little difference in their thermal conductivities. The numerical
magnitude of the thermo-electric effect, which is commonly quoted in explana-
tion of the deviation of alloys from the electronic theory, is far too small to
produce the required result; and there is little or ao correspondence between
the thermo-electric properties of the constituents of alloys and the variations of
their electric conductivities.

One of the oldest difficulties of the material theory of heat is to explain the
process of the production of heat by friction. The application of the general
principle of the conservation of energy leads to the undoubted conclusion that
the thermal energy generated is the equivalent of the mechanical work spent in
friction, but throws little or no light on the steps of the process, and gives no
information with regard to the actual nature of the energy produced in the form
of heat. It follows from the energy principle that the quantity of caloric
generated in the process is such that its total energy at the final temperature
is equal to the work spent. If a quantity of caloric represents so many neutral
molecules of electricity, one cannot help asking where they came from, and
how they were produced. It is certain that in most cases of friction, wherever
slip occurs, some molecules are torn apart, and the work spent is represented
in the first instance by the separation of electric ions. Some of these ions are
permanently separated as frictional electricity, and can be made to perform
useful work; but the majority recombine before they can be effectively separated,
leaving only their equivalent in thermal energy. ‘The recombination of two ions
is generally regarded simply as reconstituting the original molecule at a high
temperature, but in the light of recent discoveries we may perhaps go a step
further. It is generally, admitted that X or y rays are produced by the sudden
stoppage of a charged corpuscle, and Lorentz, in his electron theory of radia-
tion, has assumed that such is the case however low the velocity of the electron.
A similar effect must occur in the sudden stoppage of a pair of ions rushing
together under the influence of their mutual attraction. Rays produced in this
way would be of an exceedingly soft or absorbable character, but they would
not differ in kind from those produced by electrons except that their energy,
not exceeding that of a pair of ions, would be too small to produce ionisation,
so that they could not be detected in the usual way. If the X rays are cor-
puscular in their nature, we cannot logicaliy deny the corpuscular character even
to the slowest moving rays. We know that X rays continually produce other
X rays of lower velocity. The final stage is probably reached when the average

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. il

energy of an X corpuscle or molecule of caloric is the same as that of a gas
molecule at the same temperature, and the number of molecules of . caloric
generated is such that their total energy is equal to the work originally spent in
friction.

In this connection it is interesting to note that Sir J. J. Thomson, in a recent
paper on ‘ Ionisation by Moving Particles,’ has arrived, on other grounds, at
the conclusion that the character of the radiation emitted during the recombina-
tion of the ions will be a series of pulses, each pulse containing the same amount
of energy and being of the same type as very soft X rays. If the X rays are
really corpuscular, these definite units or quanta of energy generated by the
vecombination of the ions bear a close resemblance to the hypothetical molecules
of caloric.

It may be objected that in many cases of friction, such as internal or viscous
friction in a fluid, no electrification or ionisation is observable, and that the
generation of caloric cannot in this case be attributed to the recombination ot
ions. It must, however, be remarked that the generation of a molecule of
caloric requires less energy than the separation ot two ions; that, just as the
separation of two ions corresponds with the breaking of a chemical bond, so
the generation of one or more molecules of caloric may correspond with the
rupture of a physical bond, such as the separation of a molecule of vapour
from a liquid or solid. The assumption of a molecular constitution for caloric
follows almost of necessity from the molecular theories of matter and electricity,
and is not inconsistent with any well-established experimental facts. On the
contrary, the many relations which are known to exist between the specific
heats of similar substances, and also between the latent heats, would appear to
lead naturally to a molecular theory of caloric. For instance, it has often been
noticed that the nrolecular latent heats of vaporisation of similar compounds
at their boiling-points are proportional to the absolute temperature. It follows
that the molecular latent caloric of vaporisation is the same for all such com-
pounds, or that they require the same number of molecules of caloric to effect the
same change of state, irrespective of the absolute temperatures of their boiling-
points. From this point of view one may naturally regard the liquid and gaseous
states as conjugate solutions of caloric in matter and matter in caloric respec-
tively. The proportion of caloric to matter varies regularly with pressure and
temperature, and there is a definite saturation limit of solubility at each tem-
perature.

One of the most difficult cases of the generation of caloric to follow in detail
is that which occurs whenever there is exchange of heat by radiation between
bodies at different temperatures. If radiation is an electro-magnetic wave-
motion, we must suppose that there is some kind of electric oscillator or
resonator in the constitution of a material molecule which is capable of respond-
ing to the electric oscillations. If the natural periods of the resonators
correspond sufficiently closely with those of the incident radiation the ampli-
tude of the vibration excited may be sufficient to cause the ejection of a
corpuscle of caloric. It is generally admitted that the ejection of an electron
may be brought about in this manner, but it would evidently require far less
energy to produce the emission of a neutral corpuscle, which ought therefore
to be a much more common effect. On this view, the conversion of energy of
radiation into energy of’ caloric is a discontinuous process taking place by definite
molecular increments, but the absorption or emission of radiation itself is a con-
tinuous process. Professor Planck, by a most ingenious argument based on
the probability of the distribution of energy among a large number of similar
electric oscillators (in which the entropy is taken as the logarithm of the
probability, and the temperature as the rate of increase of energy per unit of
entropy), has succeeded in deducing his well-known formula for the distribu-
tion of energy in full radiation at any temperature; and has recently, by a
further extension of the same line of argument, arrived at the remarkable con-
clusion that, while the absorption of radiation is continuous, the emission of
radiation is discontinuous, occurring in discrete elements or quanta. Where
an argument depends on so many intricate hypotheses and analogies the possible
interpretations of the mathematical formule are to some extent uncertain;
but it would appear that Professor Planck’s equations are not necessarily

12 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A.

inconsistent with the view above expressed that both emission and absorption of
radiation are continuous, and that his elementu quanta, the energy of which
varies with their frequency, should rather be identified with the molecules of
caloric, representing the conversion of the electro-magnetic energy of radiation
into the form of heat, and possessing energy in proportion to their temperature.

Among the difficulties felt rather than explicitly stated, in regarding entropy
or caloric as the measure ot heat quantity, 1s its awkward habit of pecoming
infinite, according to the usual approximate formule, at extremes of pressure
or temperature. I[f caloric is to be regarded as the measure of heat quantity,
the quantity existing in a finite body must be finite, and must vanish at the
absolute zero of temperature. In reality there is no experimental foundation
for any other conclusion. According to the usual gas formule it would be
possible to extract an infinite quantity of caloric from a finite quantity of gas
by compressing it at constant temperature. It is true that (even if we assumed
the law of gases to hold up to infinite pressures, which is far from being the
case) the quantity of caloric extracted would be of an infimitely low order of
infinity as compared with the pressure required. But, as a matter of fact,
experiment indicates that the quantity obtainable would be finite, although its
exact value cannot be calculated owing to our ignorance of the properties of
gases at infinite pressures. In a similar way, if we assume that the specific
heat as ordinarily measured remains constant, or approaches a finite limit at
the absolute zero of temperature, we should arrive at the conclusion that an
infinite quantity of caloric would be required to raise the temperature of a finite
body from 0° to 1° absolute. The tendency of recent experimental work on
specific heats at low temperatures, by Tilden, Nernst, Lindemann, and others, is
to show, on the contrary, that the specific heats of all substances tend to vanish
as the absolute zero is approached and that it is the specific capacity for caloric
which approaches a finite limit. The theory of the variation of the specific
heats of solids at low temperatures is one of the most vital problems in the
theory of heat at the present time, and is engaging the attention of many active
workers. Professor Lindemann, one of the leading exponents of this work, has
kindly consented to open a discussion on the subject in our section. We are
very fortunate to have succeeded in securing so able an exponent, and shall
await his exposition with the greatest interest. For the present I need only add
that the obvious conclusion of the caloric theory bids fair to be completely
justified.

A most interesting question, which early preseuted itself to Rumford and
other inquirers into the caloric theory of heat, was whether caloric possessed
weight. While a positive answer to this question would be greatly in favour of a
material theory, a negative answer, such as that found by Rumford, or quite
recently by Professor Poynting and Phillips, and by Mr. L. Southerns working
independently, would not be conclusively against it. The latter observers found
that the change in weight, if any, certainly did not exceed 1 in 10° per 1° C. It
the mass of a molecule of caloric were the same as that generally attributed to an
electron, the change of weight, in the cases tested, should have been of the order
of 1 in 10’ per 1¥ C., and should not have escaped detection. It is generally
agreed, however, that the mass of the electron is entirely electro-magnetic. Any
such statement virtually assumes a particular distribution of the electricity in a
spherical electron of given size. But if electricity itself really consists of electrons,
an argument of this type would appear to be so perfectly circular that it is ques-
tionable how much weight should be attached to it. If the equivalent mass of
an electron in motion arises solely from the electro-magnetic field produced by its
motion, a neutral corpuscle of caloric should not possess mass or energy of trans-
lation as a whole, though it might still possess energy of vibration or rotation
of its separate charges. For the purpose of mental imagery we might picture the
electron as the free or broken end of a vortex filament, and the neutral corpuscle
as a vortex ring produced when the positive and negative ends are united; but a
mental picture of this kind does not carry us any further than the sphere coated
with electricity, except in so far as either image may suggest points for experi-
mental investigation. In our ignorance of the exact mechanism of gravity it is
even conceivable that a particle of caloric might possess mass without possessing
weight, though, with the possible exception of the electron, nothing of the kind

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 13

has yet been demonstrated. In any case it would appear that the mass, if any,
associated with a quantity of caloric must be so small that we could not hope to
learn much about it by the direct use of the balance.

The fundamental property of caloric, that its total quantity cannot be
diminished by any known process and that it is not energy but merely the
vehicle or carrier of energy, is most simply represented in thought by imagining
it to consist of some indestructible form of matter. The further property, that
it is always generated in any turbulent or irreversible process, appears at first
sight to conflict with this idea, because it is difficult to see how anything inde-
strnetible can be so easily generated. When, however, we speak of caloric as
being generated, what we really mean is that it becomes associated with a material
body in such a way that we can observe and measure its quantity by the change
of state produced. The caloric may have existed previously in a form in which
its presence could not be detected. In the light of recent discoveries we might
suppose the caloric generated to arise from the disintegration of the atoms of
matter. No doubt some caloric is produced in this way, but those corpuscles
that are so strongly held as to be incapable of detection by ordinary physical
methods require intense shocks to dislodge them. A more probable source of
caloric is the «ether, which, so far as we know, may consist entirely of neutral
corpuscles of caloric. The hypothesis of a continuous ether has led to great
difficulties in the electro-magnetic theory of light and in the kinetic theory of
gases. A molecular, or cellular-vortex, structure appears to be required. Accord-
ing to the researches of Kelvin, Fitzgerald, and Hicks, such an ether can be
devised to satisfy the requirements of the electro-magnetic theory without requir-
ing it to possess a density many times greater than that of platinum. So faras the
properties of caloric are concerned. a neutral pair of electrons would appear to
constitute the simplest tyve of molecule, though without more exact knowledge
of the ultimate nature of an electric charge it would be impossible to predict
all its properties. Whether an xther composed of such molecules would be com-
petent to discharge satisfactorily all the onerous functions expected from it, mav
be difficult to decide, but the inquiry, in its turn, would probably throw light
on the ultimate structure of the molecule.

Without venturing too far into the regions of metaphysical speculation, or
reasoning in vicious circles about the natiire of an electric charge, we may at
least assert with some degree of plausibility that material bodies under ordinary
conditions probably contain a number of discrete physical entities, similar in kind
to X rays or neutral corpuscles, which are capable of acting as carriers of energy,
and of preserving.the statistical equilibrium between matter and radiation at any
temperature in virtue of their interchanges with electrons. If we go a step
further and identify these corpuscles with the molecules of caloric, we shall cer-
tainly come in conflict with some of the fundamental dogmas of the kinetic
theory, which tries to express everything in terms of energy, but the change
involved is mainly one of standpoint or expression. The experimental facts
remain the same, but we describe them differently. Caloric has a physical
existence, instead of being merely the logarithm of the probability of a com-
plexion. In common with many experimentalists, I cannot help feeling that we
have everything to gain by attaching a material conception to a quantity of caloric
as the natural measure. of a quantity of heat as opposed to a quantity of heat
energy. In the time at my disposal I could not pretend to offer you more than
a suggestion of a sketch, an apology for the possibility of an explanation, but
T hope I may have succeeded in conveying the impression that a caloric theory of
heat is not so entirely unreasonable in the light of recent experiment as we are
sometimes led to imagine. :

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Science.

SECTION B: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

TO THE

CHEMICAL SECTION

BY

Proressor A. SENIER, Pu.D., M.D., D.Sc.
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Parr I.

Pernars there is no intellectual occupation which demands more of the faculty
of imagination than the pursuit of chemistry, and perhaps also there is none

which responds more generously to the yearnings of the inquirer.
The Nature It is surely no commonplace occurrence that in experimental labora-
and method ties day by day the mysterious recesses of Nature are disclosed and
of Chemistry. facts previously quite unknown are brought to light. The late

Sir Michael Foster, in his presidential address at the Dover meeting,
said: ‘ Nature is ever making signs to us, she is ever whispering the beginnings
of her secrets.’ The facts disclosed may have general importance, and neces-
sitate at once changes in the general body of theory; and happily, also, they
may at once find useful application in the hands of the technologist. Recent
examples are the discoveries in radio-activity, which have found an important
place as an aid to medical and surgical diagnosis and as a method of treatment,
and have also led to the necessity of our revising one of the fundamental
doctrines of the theory of chemistry—the indivisibility of atoms. But the facts
disclosed may not be general or even seem important; they may appear isolated
and to have no appreciable bearing on theory or practice—our journals are
crowded with such—but he would be a bold man who would venture to predict
that the future will not find use for them in both respects. To be the recipient
of the confidences of Nature; to realise in all their virgin freshness new facts
recognised as positive additions to knowledge, is certainly a great and wonderful
privilege, one capable of inspiring enthusiasm as few other things can.

While the method of discovery in chemistry may be described, generally,
as inductive, still all the modes of inference which have come down to us
from Aristotle, analogical, inductive and deductive, are freely made use of. A
hypothesis is framed which is then tested, directly or indirectly, by observation
and experiment. All the skill, all the resource the inquirer can command, is
brought into his service; his work must be accurate; and with unqualified devo-
tion to truth he abides by the result, and the hypothesis is established, and
becomes part of the theory of science, or is rejected or modified. In framing
or modifying hypotheses imagination is indispensable. It may be that the
power of imagination is necessarily limited by what is previously in experience—
that imagination cannot transcend experience; but it does not follow, therefore,
_ that it cannot construct hypotheses capable of leading research. I take it
that what imagination actually does is—it rearranges experience and puts it
into new relations, and with each successive discovery it gains in material for
this process. In this respect the framing of a hypothesis is like experimenting,
wherein the operator brings matter and energy already existing in Nature into

B

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B.

new relations, new circumstances, with the object of getting new results. The
stronger the imaginative power the greater must be the chance of success. The
‘Times,’ in a recent leading article on Science and Imagination, says: ‘It has
often been said that the great scientific discoverers . . . see a new truth before
they prove it, and the process of proof is only a demonstration of the truth to
others and a confirmation of it to their own reason.’ While never forgetting
the essentially tentative nature of a hypothesis, still, until it has been tested
and found wanting, there should be some confidence or faith in its truthfulness ;
for nothing but a belief in its eventual success can serve to sustain an inquirer’s
ardour when, as so often happens, he is met by difficulties well-nigh insuperable.
In a well-known passage Faraday says: ‘The world little knows how many of the
thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investi-
gator have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism
and adverse examination; that in the most successful instances not a tenth of
the suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the preliminary conclusions have been
realised.’

But a hypothesis to be useful, to be admitted as a candidate for rank as a
scientific theory, must be capable of immediate, or at least of possible, verification.
Many years ago, in the old Berlin laboratory in the Georgenstrasse, when our
imaginations were wont, as sometimes happened, to soar too far above the
working benches, our great leader used to say: ‘I will listen readily to any
suggested hypothesis, but on one condition—that you show me a method by
which it can be tested.’ Asa rule, I confess we had to return to the workaday
world, to our bench experiments. No one felt the importance of the careful
and correct employment of hypotheses more than Liebig. In his Faraday
lecture Hofmann says of Liebig: ‘If he finds his speculation to be in contra-
diction with recognised facts, he endeavours to set these facts aside by new
experiments, and failing to do so he drops the speculation.’ Again, he gives
an illustration of how on one occasion, not being able to divest himself of a
hypothesis, he missed the discovery of the element bromine. While at Kreuznach
he made an investigation of the mother-liquor of the well-known salt, and
obtained a considerable quantity of a heavy red liquid which he believed to
be a chloride of iodine. ‘He found the properties to be different in many respects
from chloride of iodine; still, he was able to satisfy all his doubts, and he
put the liquid aside. Some months later he received Balard’s paper announcing
the discovery of bromine, which he recognised at once as the red liquid which
he had previously prepared and studied. Thus, though imagination is indis-
pensable to a chemist, and though I think chemists should be, and let us hope
are, poets, or at least possess the poetic temperament, still, little can be achieved
without a thorough laboratory training; and he who discovers an improved
experimental method or a new differentiating reaction is as surely contributing to
the advancement of science as he who creates in his imagination the most
beautiful and promising hypothesis.

It may never be possible to trace in civilisation’s early records the exact
period and place of the origin and beginnings of our science, but the historical
student has been led, it appears to me, by a sure instinct to search for this
in such lands of imaginative story as ancient Egypt and Arabia. For is there
anything more fittingly comparable with the marvellous experiences of a chemical
laboratory than the wonderful and fascinating stories that have come\down to
us in ‘The Arabian Nights’ ? Those monuments of poetical building of which
Burton, in the introduction to his great translation, says that in times of official
exile in less-favoured lands, in the wilds of Africa and America, he was lifted
in imagination by the jinn out of his dull surroundings, and was borne off by
him to his beloved Arabia, where under diaphanous skies he would see again
‘the evening star hanging like a golden lamp from the pure front of the western
firmament; the after-glow transfiguring and transforming as by magic the
gazelle-brown and tawny-clay tints and the homely and rugged features of the
scene into a fairyland lit with a light which never shines on other soils for
seas. Then would appear, &c.’ I cannot help thinking that the study of such
books as this, the habit of exercising the imagination by reconstructing the
scenes of beauty and enchantment which they describe, might do much to
strengthen and sharpen the imaginative faculty, and greatly increase its efficiency

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 3

as an indispensable tool in the hands of the pioneer who seeks to extend the
boundaries of knowledge. The ‘Times,’ in the leading article already quoted,
says that, as with a Shakespeare, ‘it is the same with imaginative discoverers in
science. . . . But the faculty is not merely a fairy gift that can be exercised
without pains. As the sense of right is trained by right action, so the sense
of truth is trained by right thinking and by all the labour which it involves.
That is as true of the artist as of the man of science; and one of the greatest
achievements of science has been to prove this fact and so to justify the imagina-
tion and distinguish it from fancy.’

Again, let it not be forgotten that chemistry in its highest sense—that is,
in its most general and useful sense—is purely a world of the imagination, is
purely conceptual. And in addition to this, moreover, it is based, like all
science, on the underlying assumption of the uniformity of Nature, an assump-
tion incapable of proof. If we think of the science as a body of abstract general
theory, and exclude for the moment from our purview its innumerable practical
applications, and also all special individual facts not yet known to be related to
general theory, then what remains’are the more or less general facts or laws.
These it is which give the power of prediction in newly arising cases of a
similar character; the power of foresight by which the claim of chemistry to
its position as a science is justified. Chemistry, as such, is a complicated ideal
structure of the imagination, a gigantic fairy palace, and, be it noted, can only
continue to exist so long as there are minds capable of reproducing it. Think
of all the speculation—and speculation too of the highest utility when trans-
lated into concrete applications—about the internal structure of molecules.
I venture to say that the most magnificent creations of the world’s greatest archi-
tects are not more elaborate or more beautiful or more fairylike than the chemist’s
conception of intramolecular structure and the magical transformations of which
molecules are capable; and yet no one has had direct sensuous experience of
any molecule or atom, or possibly ever will. It is well from time to time to
recall these truths and realise where we are. But although the conceptual
nature of science is unquestionable, it certainly contains truth in some form as
tested by deductive concrete realisation, by correctness of prediction, and during
the last century or two has undoubtedly given to man a mastery over Nature
never before dreamt of.

The foundations of chemistry, as we now know it, were laid under the
influence, the guidance, of three great theories : first, the theory of the alchemists

of the transmutation of metals by means of the philosopher’s stone;
A brief his- second, the theory of phlogiston, connected so much with the names
torical retro- of Becher and Stahl, which held sway for some two centuries; third,
spect. the theory of combustion, the quantitative period of chemistry,

inaugurated by the great Scottish chemist Black by his introduction
of the balance. How this led to a veritable renascence of chemistry in the
hands of Lavoisier and the other giants of that stirring period—the close of the
eighteenth and commencement of the nineteenth centuries—is well known.
Looking back at the warfare which was waged about these older theories, for
and against them, one realises now that there were elements of truth on both
sides; for have we not in the work of Sir William Ramsay and others the
revival of transmutation, and does not the essential truth of phlogiston survive
in the modern doctrine of heat? In one of Dr. Johnson’s letters to Boswell
there is a curious reference to transmutation. He says that a learned Russian
had at last succeeded, but, fearing the consequences to society, he had died
without revealing the secret.

After the discovery of oxygen and the beginnings of quantitative chemistry,
the science was ready for Dalton’s great discoveries respecting combination
by weight; the corresponding discoveries by Gay-Lussac on combination of
gases by volume, and, through the latter, for Avogadro’s famous hypothesis.
Dalton had indeed, by reviving an old Greek suggestion, proposed to explain
his discoveries by his atomic theory, but neither this nor our molecular theory,
though the latter was inherent in the laws of gaseous combination of Gay-Lussac
and in Avogadro’s hypothesis, were finally put upon their present basis until
Cannizzaro took up the subject half a century later. Meanwhile Dulong and
Petit had completed their studies of atomic heat, and Mitscherlich had pointed

.

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B.

out the relation between isomorphism and molecular structure. When it is con-
sidered how little is known of solid or liquid structure, and that our present
knowledge of molecules is only of gaseous molecules, it is fortunate that these
methods of study of solids are available. The same may be said of the results
of the work of Kopp and his successors on molecular volumes. Of other aids
to fixing our conception of molecules and atoms I need only refer to the periodic
law, the studies of the properties of dilute solutions, of electrolytic dissociation,
and of surface tension of liquids.

Liebig, in his first inquiry, begun before he went to Gay-Lussac in Paris,
- proved that silver fulminate and silver cyanate, though distinct substances,
had exactly the same composition; thus was opened that great chapter in the
history of chemistry which Berzelius named isomerism. Perhaps nothing in
chemistry has given rise in recent years to more intellectual and practical
activity than isomerism. Wohler’s classical synthesis of urea, by the meta-
stasis of ammonium cyanate, added another instance of isomerism, and Berzelius
soon afterwards announced the isomerism of tartaric and racemic acids.
Wohler’s synthesis of urea, followed, as it was, by numerous other laboratory
syntheses, showed that substances which occur in living organisms are not
different from those which may be prepared artificially, and the old distinction
between inorganic and organic chemistry disappeared—there is, of course,
only one chemistry. The words it is true have survived, but only for reasons
of ‘practical convenience.

After isomerism the next great step forward in the study of intra-molecular
structure was the discovery of groups partially individualised which are capable
of remaining intact through many reactions. Gay-Lussac had previously
noticed the Cyanogen group as common to cyanides; but it was the celebrated
paper by Wohler and Liebig on ‘The Radical of Benzoic Acid’ which finally
established the existence of compound radicals or groups such as benzoyl, and
obtained for the theory of compound radicals the position in chemistry it now
holds. Bunsen followed somewhat later with the discovery of cacodyl, and now
such groups are almost innumerable. In many respects, by the experimental
skill which it shows, the clearness of its logical method, and the beauty of its
form and diction, this memoir is a model of what a scientific communication
should be. I will read the opening paragraph, using Hofmann’s translation :
‘When a chemist is fortunate enough to encounter, in the darksome field of
organic nature, a bright point affording him guidance to the true path by follow-
ing which he may hope to explore the unknown region he has good reason to con-
gratulate himself, even though he may be conscious of being still far from the
desired goal.’ Of this memoir Belzelius, in a letter quoted by Hofmann (Faraday
lecture), says: ‘The facts put forward by you give rise to such considerations
that they may well be regarded as the dawn of a new day in vegetal (organic)
chemistry.’

The history of the advance of chemistry since the days of the Giessen
laboratory is bewildering in its extent. This has been largely due to the
Giessen laboratory itself, which sent trained investigators, each carrying with
him some touch of its master’s magic, into all civilised lands. I cannot attempt
to even catalogue the results here. One thing may be said, that chemistry is
not worked out, as some have thought; but rather the. opportunities of dis-
covery seem greatér and more promising than at any previous period.

Parr II.

Whether in the light of recent researches it may become necessary to give
up that portion of Dalton’s theory of atoms in which he regards them as

undecomposable and indivisible; or whether we may consider them,
Sub-atoms, as Prout suggested a hundred years ago, as’ different aggregates
atoms, mole- of sub-atoms of a uniform kind of matter; or whether they must
cules, mole- be regarded as complexes built in the manner supposed by the
cular aggre- electron hypothesis; also what should be our attitude towards the
gates ; related problem of transmutation—all this I pass over, the more
valency. willingly that these subjects were discussed so recently by so high

an authority as Sir William Ramsay in his address to the Association
last year at Portsmouth.

I assume that we are fairly satisfied with our present atoms and their

a

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5

respective weights, and this no matter how the atoms are constructed, and that
we shall be satisfied with them so long as they disport themselves in chemical
changes as indivisible entities. And further, I assume that we are satisfied
with our molecules and their respective weights, as determined by the application
of Avogadro’s hypothesis. Whether the molecular weight is obtained by direct
determination of gaseous density or by taking advantage of the properties of
dilute solutions, in either case the molecular weight which results is the weight
of a supposed gaseous molecule, for the latter method depends for its justifica-
tion on the former. All our molecular weights are weights of molecules in the
gaseous state or are supposed to be; they are not necessarily applicable to
liquids, and much less to solids: solids and liquids may well consist of far more
complex particles.

Gradually the central problem of chemistry has become more and more the
study of the internal structure of molecules—of gaseous molecules. The enormous
number and variety of the compounds of carbon, with which so many workers
have enriched the science during the last hundred years, and the special adapta-
bility of these compounds to the experimental study of molecular structure, has
led investigators to make use of them rather than of the so-called inorganic com-
pounds: thus out of inquiries into the intramolecular structure of these com-
pounds arose and were developed the theories of types of Gerhardt, Williamson
and Kekulé. These are now, however, looked upon more as aspects of the
general problem. More fruitful has been the study of the compound radicals or
individualised groups of Wohler and Liebig. But gradually these molecular struc-
tures have been regarded, in agreement with the views of Dumas, as complete
wholes; like fairy temples, which from different points of view show different
parts in-relief, accentuating, it may be, this or that column or frieze or pediment.
Kekule’s brilliant and suggestive theory of chain compounds and ring compounds
did more than any other theory to guide and stimulate research in chemistry in
recent times. Like Gay-Lussac’s theory of gaseous combination, though built
in the first place only upon a few facts, this theory has proved true of the
thousands of others with which we have since become acquainted; there seems
indeed to be a need of a new psychology to account for such truly marvellous
foresight as is here exhibited. The atoms forming these varied structures were,
however, regarded as being arranged in a plane, until the great discoveries of
Pasteur made it necessary for chemists to extend their conceptions and to frame
hypotheses of three dimensions. Thus has arisen in the hands of Le Bel and
van’t Hoff and others our modern theories of stereo-chemistry. When isomerism
occurs in an element Berzelius names it allotropy. It seems to me that now,
when molecules of the elements do not differ essentially from molecules of com-
pounds, there is no longer any distinctive meaning in the term, and that it
might well be abandoned. I would like also to make another suggestion respect-
ing nomenclature : that when we distinguish ring compounds as cyclic we might
appropriately adopt the word hormathic (from the Greek word for a chain or
a row) for chain compounds.

But in order to understand the linking of atoms in these molecular edifices
some combining value had to be assigned to the different atoms. This idea of
valency of the atoms was, no doubt, implied in Gerhardt’s theory of types;
but it did not gain much attention until later, when Frankland and Kolbé
formulated an empirical theory of variable valency. Kekulé thought that atoms
could not vary in their valency; but the alternative formule which he put
forward to explain cases of difficulty would appear to be, rather, an attempted
explanation of variable valency. It might be more correct to say that Kekulé’s
formule constitute an anticipation of Werner’s theory of auxiliary valencies,
the theory which seems to find most favour at the present day. Fixed valency
can scarcely now be defended, in view of the existence of such compounds, for
example, as the two fluorides and the two chlorides of phosphorus; the two
oxides of carbon, ammonia and ammonium chloride; and, for example, the two
series of compounds respectively of iron, mercury and copper. - Variable valency
of atoms is empirically, at least, an established fact.

By the latest conceptions of variable atomic valency and its extension almost
without limit—so that, for example, oxygen may be regarded as quadrivalent
and even sexivalent—no doubt. the existence of numerous compounds which

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B.

previously presented difficulties can be explained. There are, however, others
long known to chemists, such as double salts and the combination of water with
salts, formerly called ‘ molecular compounds,’ definite and individual, in which
these views do not assist us. These compounds do not exist as gases, and
unless they admit of experimental study by the methods of dilute solution, even
their gaseous molecular weights cannot be ascertained. ,

It is noteworthy that in most of the instances recently investigated where
variable valency has been assumed the compounds studied have been easily
decomposable solids or liquids, and for one reason or another their gaseous
molecular weights could not be determined. Many of these compounds, indeed,
only exist at low temperatures. As instances of work of this kind I may
mention Collie and Tickle on quadrivalent oxygen in dimethylpyrone derivatives ;
Gomberg on triphenylmethyl; Landolf on acetone di-hydrofluoride; Thiele and
Peter on methyl-iodo-dichloride; and similar studies by Kehrmann, Willstatter
and Iglauer, Bilow and Sicherer, Baeyer and Villiger, Archibald and McIntosh,
Chattaway, Pfeiffer and Truskier, and others.

Another most interesting class of solids which are capable of existing in two
isomeric forms distinguished from each other by such physical properties as
density or colour are the Schiff’s bases or anils. Some of these were studied
by Hantzsch, who proposed to explain their existence by the Hantzsch-Werner
stereo hypothesis :—

HO.C,H,.CH, HC.C,H,OH
|

|
NR’ NR’

But since only a few, and these not very satisfactory compounds, show this
isomerism, which do not contain the hydroxyl group, other suggestions have
been put forward to account for the isomerism, by Anselmino and by Manchot.

In my own laboratory, associated with Mr. F. G. Shepheard and also with
Miss Rosalind Clarke, I have made a study of various Schiff’s bases for the purpose
of investigating the remarkable property which some of these bases exhibit of
phototropy. By phototropy is meant the capability of reversible change of colour
in solids depending upon the presence or absence of light. Incidentally, too, I
wished to study another physical property which many Schiff’s bases possess, in
common with other substances, of reversible change of colour with raising or
lowering of temperature. This property we have called thermotropy, and many
old instances will be remembered of substances of simpler constitution which
exhibit it : thus, when subjected to the temperature of solid carbon dioxide,
ordinary sulphur becomes colourless, red oxide of mercury becomes yellow, ver-
milion becomes scarlet, and on return to the ordinary temperature the original
colours reappear.

As has been pointed out in a recent communication by Biilman, it is most
important in these discussions that we should be perfectly clear in the use of
terms. I take it for granted that isomerism is a general term for compounds
differing in some respect but having the same composition. If the molecules
(gaseous) have the same weights they are metamerides; if of different weights
they are polymerides. When solids crystallise in more than one form they are
polymorphous. Now it does not seem reasonable to suppose that reversible
colour changes such as those exhibited by phototropes or thermotropes involve
such violent intra-molecular changes as the breaking and reconnecting of atomic
linkages. For example, take the three bases, salicylidene-m-toluidine,
which in the dark or immediately it is exposed to light is yellow, but on con-
tinued exposure to light quickly becomes orange, and changes back again to
its original colour in the dark; salicylidene-m-aminophenol, which at ordinary
temperatures is orange, but is much paler at the temperature of solid carbon
dioxide, on raising the temperature to nearly the melting-point (128-99) becomes
orange red, and these changes take place in the reverse order again on cooling;
salicylidene-p-aminobenzoic acid, studied by ourselves and by Manchot and
Furlong independently, shows a wider range of thermotropic change between
bright yellow and blood-red, and is also phototropic.

To explain such changes as these and the others of a similar nature previously
referred to, I think some less drastic hypothesis should be sought than intra-

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. i

molecular breaking, and consequent metastasis or polymerisation, Though doubt-
less the hypothesis of Hantzsch and Werner could be invoked, or the modified
hypotheses of Manchot or Anselmino, I think there should be some simpler
explanation. Someone suggests polymorphism. Now polymorphism means that
a change of crystalline form takes place which might doubtless connote change
of colour. If one watches phototropic crystals changing colour under the influence
of light from yellow to red, and notices that after remaining in the dark that
the same crystals have changed back to the original colour, and, remember,
that these changes can be repeated with the same crystals apparently without
limit, it will not be considered likely that this phenomenon depends on a rever-
sible change of crystalline form. In a communication to the Chemical Society
some three years ago Mr. Shepheard and I put forward the following suggestion :
‘Evidence is accumulating of reversible isomeric reactions, like those described
in this paper, which are indicated by physical differences, such as changes of
colour. It is possible that these may be explained by hypotheses, similar to
that of Hantzsch and Werner assuming intra-molecular rearrangement; but in
the case of phototropy and thermotropy it should not be forgotten that the
substances exhibiting these phenomena are solids. No one will doubt, however,
that these differences of colour depend on isomeric change of some kind, but
in the case of solids we know practically nothing of their molecules, not even
of their relative molecular weights. The molecules of solids are probably far
more complex than those of liquids or gases; indeed, they may be rather complex
groups or aggregates of ordinary gaseous molecules, which would give rise to
far more numerous possibilities of isomerism. It appears to us that phototropic
and thermotropic reactions are more probably due to isomeric changes affecting
the aggregation of molecules in solids than to intra-molecular change of molecules
derived from a study of gases.’

It seems to me that just as atoms may be structures built of sub-atoms of some
kind, and just as molecules of gases are built of atoms variously linked together,
that it is reasonable to conceive that molecules might combine to form aggregates,
particularly when constituting solids; that as the sub-atoms may be conceived
to have a combining valency, and the atoms are already accredited with this
property, and in addition, as is supposed with Thiele’s partial or Werner’s
auxiliary valencies, that molecules may have valencies also whereby to combine
into molecular aggregates. It may be presumed that such aggregates are more
complicated in structure, and thus may give rise to greater variety of isomerides,
and be more readily transmutable than gaseous molecules. If such aggregates
of gaseous molecules exist they might explain not only the easily changed
isomerides recently studied, but also the large class of ‘molecular compounds’
of the older chemists. I imagine someone saying that in suggesting this hypo-
thesis—which by the way is not new, for it is mentioned in Ostwald’s ‘ Outlines’
—TI am violating the canon to which I have myself subscribed, as a condition
of a scientific hypothesis, that it should be verifiable. Perhaps we carry our
critical faculty sometimes too far. It is most highly scientific to doubt, but
doubt which is merely destructive has little value; rather, with Descartes, it
should lead on to construction, for he who builds even imperfectly is better
than he who simply destroys. And I do not doubt that some way will be
found to study solids and obtain data that will lead to the determination of their
molecular aggregate weights. The study of molecular volumes of solid solutions ;
the remarkable results obtained by Pope and Barlow; Tutton’s work on crystal-
lography, and much besides, induce the hope that some day solids like gases will
find their Avogadro.

Parr TEL:

In the pursuit of all this abstract theory, and still more so in the bewildering
multitude of undigested individual facts, there is danger that important and
fundamental, even moral, considerations may be lost sight of. For
example take the fundamental question, Why should we pursue
chemistry? No doubt it is considered by its votaries, those who
by ite uaefal seek in our laboratories to advance the science, that they are entitled

licability. '° have provided for them, and will be rewarded by the provision
appucaDUty> of the ordinary means of livelihood; but these, it will scarcely be
denied, could generally be far better assured by other pursuits. It is: suggested
that intellectual discipline is a reason; but, I ask, for what purpose? Will any-

Pursuit of
Chemistry
justified

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B.

one pretend that intellectual discipline without utilitarian object, without the
possibility of using it for the betterment of society, is a worthy pursuit? I
think not. But, in any case, none of us have devoted ourselves to chemistry
merely for the sharpening of our wits. Again, someone suggests that chemistry
and learning generally should be pursued for their own sake. In a recent most
interesting and inspiring academic address* Professor Sir Walter Raleigh com-
mends ‘those who seek nothing from knowledge but the pleasure of understand-
ing.’ If such a statement bears its most obvious meaning then, I venture to
think that, in common with intellectual discipline without the intention of
applying to a useful object the intellect so trained, such a reason is selfish,
inadequate, and unworthy, and does not justify the pursuit of anything. No:
research in chemistry apart from the possibility of applying it to the advantage
of humanity cannot be defended. The mastery of the seemingly unlimited
resources of Nature which chemistry achieves more and more and its use to
alleviate the misery and add to the happiness of mankind is the only worthy and
effective defence. And that this is the underlying ideal, in point of fact, that
leads the chemist onward, not necessarily that he is always conscious of it, but
always when he reflects, I think cannot be doubted. But, of course, no narrow
idea of utility must be aimed at. Practically any chemical inquiry may lead to
results of material advantage. Certainly nothing could be more mischievous than
to make a narrow immediate utility the test. It would be easy to illustrate all
this from the records of science, but instances in point are so well known that it
is unnecessary.

On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that in making use of the
manifold advantages derived from the growth of science, humanity, on its part,
owes a great debt to scientific inquirers, and ought to feel it a sacred duty to do
in return all in its power by support and encouragement to further scientific
research. As Sir Walter Raleigh, in the address already referred to, says : ‘ It
is so easy to use the resources of civilisation that we fall into the habit of
regarding them as if they were ours by right. They are not ours by right;
they come to us by free gift from the thinkers.’

That this advantage to civilisation has been, and is, the result of the pursuit
and consequent advance of chemistry is happily a truth that is well known.

There is scarcely an industry or a profession that has not been
Some con- materially influenced or even created by the discoveries of chemistry,
crete appli- and therefore the welfare of nations is most intimately concerned
cations of in promoting its advancement. Now, it is common knowledge that
the Science. no country has appreciated this to the same degree as Germany. It

will, therefore, be worth our while to consider a moment the inau-
guration in Berlin, a year ago, of an entirely new institution, the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institut, for the promotion and organisation of chemical research. This research
is to be effected throughout the German Empire, in the universities, the technical
high schools, or in works, and it is supported mainly, at least at first, by sub-
scriptions of the chemical manufacturers. An address of very great importance
was delivered at its opening by Professor Emil Fischer, than whom, perhaps, no
one living has added more to the progress of chemistry. A translation of this
address appeared in ‘ Nature,’ and, with additions, has since been published in a
convenient book form.* In this address an authoritative account is given of the
main contributions of chemistry to the national welfare, which even to those:
familiar with the subject must be astonishing in their importance, varjety, and
universality. It includes the applications of the science to problems of nourish-
ment, to agriculture, and food supply; to engineering, metallurgy, cements; to
clothing, artificial silk, or to colouring—dyes; to indiarubber production, both
natural and artificial; to perfumery—artificial violet and other artificial floral
perfumes, even that of the rose; to synthetic camphor; to drugs and synthetic
materia medica, including the recent arsenic and selenium organic compounds
which promise so much in the treatment of cancer and other fatal diseases; to
radio-activity, to therapeutics, to the destruction of pathogenic microbes; to
methods of sewage disposal; to the preparation of efficient explosives; and to

* ©The Meaning of a University.’ Clarendon Press, 1911.
* ‘Chemical Research in its Bearings on National Welfare.’ London, 1912.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

many other useful objects. In connection with the manufacture of explosives
the public should know that the ability to wage war is becoming more and more
dependent on the work of chemists. When the supply of mineral nitrates is
exhausted, or even before that event, the requisite nitrogen compounds will have
to be provided in some other way, and almost certainly they will be obtained
synthetically from the atmospheric gases which even now are becoming a com-
mercial source.
But students of history know that there are certain periods that for some
unexplained reason are specially fruitful in certain departments of intellectual
or artistic development. Professor Sir Walter Raleigh, for instance,
The Time- a high authority on this subject, says: ‘The human body, so far
spiritand as we know, has not been improved within the period recorded by
Science. history; nor has the human mind, so far as we can judge, gained
anything in strength or grace.’ Further, regarding literature : ‘ The
question is not by how much we can excel our fathers, but whether with toil
and pains we may make ourselves worthy to be ranked with them.’ Again:
‘In the beautiful art which models the human figure in stone or some other
enduring material, who can hope to match the Greeks? In the art of building
who can look at the crowded confusion of any great modern city, with all its
fussy and meaningless wealth of decoration, like a pastrycook’s nightmare, and
not marvel at the simplicity, the gravity, the dignity and the fitness of the
ancient classic buildings? How can the seasoned wisdom of life be better or
more searchingly expressed than in the words of Virgil or Horace, not to speak
of more ancient teachers?’ Thus all things are not progressing. The time-
spirit now, and for some two centuries past, seems to have chosen to take under
its particular guardianship the physical and natural sciences, their cultivation
and applications, rather than philosophy or architecture or sculpture, or painting
or literature. We shall. do well to recognise this, and not waste our resources
in striving to fight against it.
Large sums of money are expended in this country on the diffusion of some
knowledge of chemistry among all classes of scholars and students; in fact,
scarcely anyone escapes from a smattering, largely undigested if not
Present in- indigestible, either forced on them by regulations or by the allure-
discriminate ment of bribes in the form of prizes, scholarships, or academic
elementary laurels. And if this is not good for scholars or students, it is worse
teaching and for masters or professors. Our professors work ‘ whole time ’ at this
neglect of ‘stall-feeding’ process, and if they happen to be strong men men-
research. tally and physically they may be able when weary with work to
devote any overtime to—what I submit is far the more important
matter for the State—the advancement of science by research. But this pursuit
requires, for its successful prosecution, for resource and initiative to be at their
best, that all the faculties should be in readiness in their fullest strength, free-
dom, and adaptability. How many, alas! are not strong men, and in their praise-
worthy endeavours, notwithstanding, to contribute something to the achievements
of their time succumb as martyrs to their devotion. The truth of this statement, I
fear, is too well known to many of us here. In Germany this strain of elemen-
tary teaching is more recent, and is only now being felt. Professor Emil Fischer
in his address (loc. cit.) says of it : ‘During the last ten years a scheme of prac-
tical education of the masses has developed.’ ‘But this very education of the
masses tends mentally to exhaust the teacher, and to a great extent, certainly to
a higher degree than is desirable or indeed compatible with the creative power
of the investigator, there prevails in modern educational laboratories a con-
dition of overstrained activity.’ And again, ‘In the harassing cares of the day
the teacher too readily loses that peace of mind and broad view of scientific
matters necessary for tackling the larger problems of research.’ Laboratories,
he says, are wanted ‘which should permit of research in absolute tranquillity,
unencumbered by the duties of teaching.’ I have given these quotations from
Professor Fischer’s address as indicating the matured judgment of a highly com-
petent authority, communicated in the presence of the German Emperor on an
historic occasion. His words are words of great weight, and no country which
regards its future welfare can afford to ignore them.
Sir Walter Raleigh (Joc. cit.) says that every university is bound to help the

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B.

poor . . . but that does not mean that a university is doing good if it helps
those who have no special bent for learned pursuits to acquire with heavy labour
and much assistance—just so much as may enable them to pass muster; on the
contrary, it is doing harm. I would like to invite the attention of all who are
seriously interested in the country’s welfare to reconsider the present policy
in the teaching of chemistry; and this applies also to other sciences. For the
advancement of civilisation, for the increased welfare of the race by the
technical applications of our science, it is not the indiscriminate teaching of the
masses and the multiplication of examinations that is wanted, but the training
of the few, of capable investigators. I do not propose necessarily that we should
interfere with, or much less abandon, much of our present elementary teaching,
and I know that elementary, largely technical, training in chemistry is needed
for medicine and engineering; but I do propose that our first endeavour should
be to secure under present conditions in the present college or works laboratories,
or in laboratories to be specially provided, that capable men, of whom we have
many, should be able to devote themselves to research without the worry of
teaching and examining or of providing the ways and means of livelihood. There
is, happily, reason to believe that this vital need is to some extent becoming
known; for there have been several recent instances where a particular inves-
tigator has been afforded the means, financially, of prosecuting his particular
researches in tranquillity. The diversion of endowments to such purposes, instead
of their going to the foundation of additional school or undergraduate scholar-
ships, cannot be too highly commended.

We may learn a lesson which bears on this from that remarkably prolific
period of our science, the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth centuries. It was then no easy matter to pass the precincts of a
chemical laboratory; only the fittest survived the ordeal. At the beginning
of the nineteenth century the traditions of Berthollet and Lavoisier in Paris were
kept alive by Gay-Lussac; in England those of Cavendish and Priestley by
Davy; and Berzelius in Sweden worthily maintained the older school of
Bergmann and Scheele. By a happy fate the interest of Alexander v. Humboldt
was the means of both Liebig and Dumas being admitted to the intimacy of
Gay-Lussac; and in Sweden Wohler was fortunate to gain the confidence of
Berzelius; and in London, Faraday that of Davy. The achievements of these
men—Liebig, Dumas, Wohler, and Faraday—is part of the history of science.
To me it contains a lesson, in point, of great importance. The opportunity offered
them was beset with difficulties. No bribes such as scholars or students expect
to-day were offered them; they knew no examinations, and their available

apparatus and laboratory equipment was of the smallest and crudest description; —

but they were eager students with whom the master was in sympathy, and it is
common knowledge that they completed the foundations of our science. Now I
ask, considering the thousands of students whom we teach and examine to-day,
are we doing as well in the interest of the country as our predecessors a century
ago? Who can confidently answer in the affirmative? No; whatever else is
done, the country needs the provision of men whose untrammelled energy should
be devoted to original chemical research. Even as intellectual discipline the
value of research is of the highest importance. In his address to the British
Association at Winnipeg, Professor Sir J. J. Thomson bears testimony to this.
He says: ‘I have had considerable experience with students beginning research
in experimental physics, and I have always been struck by the quite remarkable
improvement in judgment, independence of thought, and maturity produced by
a year’s research. Research develops qualities that are apt to atrophy when the
student is preparing for examinations, and, quite apart from the addition of new
knowledge to our store, is of the greatest importance as a means of education.’
And the object and ideal is wrong also in our system of technical training.
We aim too much at giving elementary instruction to artizans, which, though
important in itself, can never take the place of the higher education of leaders or
managers of industrial works. This is different in Germany, where, although
the training of artizans is by no means neglected, the chief energy is directed to
the training and teaching of the smaller class of managers. There is, too, in
Germany a far more intimate relation between academic and industrial work,
and the leaders in each often interchange posts. In one respect we have an

’

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. ll

advantage over Germany; it is important that this should be understood. The
higher technical instruction across the Rhine has not been undertaken by the
universities, but is carried out in separate institutions. With us the universities
have gradually undertaken, in addition to the older technical subjects, theology,
medicine, and law, the various branches of engineering and agriculture, and even
commerce. This, it is to be hoped, will be extended so that the highly trained
technologist may have the advantage of the undoubted humanising influence of
the university.

1 have not attempted in this Address any complete survey of chemistry, either
its growth in the past or ifs present condition, but I have endeavoured to give

some account of the sort of thing chemistry is—of its method—and
Conclusion. to maintain three theses: (1) That the logical method by which

chemistry advances is not a simple one, and requires as one essential
element the use of a highly developed imagination. To render this more efficient
1 have advocated special training. (2) Without violating, I hope, the canons
of the proper use of hypothesis, I have proposed, in order to account for certain
isomeric and other phenomena, the conception of solid molecular aggregates,
although I am not able at present to indicate precise methods for its further
investigation. These molecular aggregates are supposed to be formed by the
combination of gaseous molecules just as the latter are formed by the combination
of atoms. (3) As a matter of vital interest to the continued well-being of this
country I have insisted strongly that our educational resources devoted to
chemistry should be directed, in the first place and chiefly, to the highest possible
training of promising students in the prosecution of research, and that the
giving to the many of elementary instruction should be at least a secondary
consideration.

Now I do not wish to dictate how this last proposition could be best carried
into effect. I think we should distinguish three classes of chemists, or technical
chemists, whose domains would more or less overlap. Occasionally there will be
a man, like the late Sir William Perkin, who would combine all three. The
three classes are: first, the pure chemist, devoted to scientific discovery only;
second, the technical chemist, who prepares the discoveries of the pure chemist
for the technologist, and has to determine such questions as economical produc-
tion and, for example, the conversion of colours into dyes; third, the technologist
or works manager. These three classes should be in close relation to one another.
By such a scheme we should probably overcome by education one of our most
serious present difficulties—the ignorance of owners of works of the value of
science.

It is a matter deserving most earnest consideration whether, under the pro-
pitious influence of our own time-spirit, it would be possible to organise research
and develop it without interfering with its essential freedom and initiative, and
this in each of the three classes I have mentioned, either by means of some of
our existing institutions, or by the inauguration here of such an organisation as
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut in Berlin.

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Brifish Association for fhe Rdvancement
of Science.

SECTION C: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

TO THE

GEOLOGICAL SECTION

BY
B. (N:) PEACH; LGD; E.E.8;
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Tue RELATION BETWEEN THE CAMBRIAN FAUNAS or SCOTLAND AND
Nortu AMERICA.

CoNTENTS.

PAGE
I. Introduction : : ‘ : 1
Il. The Cambrian Fauna of Scotland . ; ; 2
Il. The Cambrian Fauna of North America - : 2 ; : 6
IV. Cambrian Paleogeography between North America and North-West Europe 9

Introduction.

Ever since the announcement made by Salter in 1859 that the biological affini-
ties of the fossils found in the Durness Limestone are more closely linked with
American than with European forms, the relation between the older paleozoic
faunas of Scotland and North America has been a subject of special interest to
geologists. The subsequent discovery of the Olenelius fauna in the North-West
Highlands furnished striking confirmation of Salter’s opinion. This intimate
relationship raises questions of prime importance bearing upon the sequence and
distribution of life in Cambrian time in North America and North-West Europe,
on the probable migration of forms trom one lite-province to another, and om
the palzogeographical conditions which doubtless affected these migrations.

On this occasion, when the British Association revisits the border of the
Scottish Highlands, it seems appropriate to refer to some of these problems.
With this object in view I shall try to recapitulate briefly the leading features
of the life history of Cambrian time in Scotland and North America, to indicate
the relation which these life-provinces bear to each other, and, from these data,
to draw some inferences regarding the probable distribution of land and sea
which then obtained in those regions.

The two great rock groups in Scotland that are universally. admitted to be
older that Cambrian time are the Lewisian Gneiss and the Torridon Sandstone.
The Lewisian Gneiss, as mapped by the Geological Survey, consists mainly of
igneous rocks, or of gneisses and schists of igneous origin. But, in addition to
these materials, we find, in the Loch Maree region, schists of sedimentary origin,
comprising siliceous schist, mica-schist, graphite-schist, limestone, chert, and
other sediments. The association of graphite-schist with limestone and chert
suggests that we are here dealing with rocks that were formed at or near the
extreme limit of sedimentation, where the graphite, the limestone, and the chert
were probably accumulated from the remains of plankton. But this assemblage
has been so completely altered into crystalline schists that all traces of original
organic structure in them have been destroyed.

C

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C.

The Torridonian strata were evidently accumulated under desert or con-
tinental conditions, and could therefore furnish little or no evidence bearing upon
the development of marine life. That life existed, however, is clear from the
presence of phosphatic nodules, containing remains of cells and fibres of organic
origin, in the upper division of thé system, arid from the presence of worm
burrows and casts in the Diabaig beds (Lower Torridon).

Geologists are familiar with the fact that the Cambrian faunas all over the
globe present highly specialised types belonging to most of the great groups of
marine invetebrate life. Scotland is no exception to this general rule. For
the fossils prove that their ancestors must have had a long history in pre-
Cambrian time.

The Cambrian Fauna of Scotland.

Beginning with the false-bedded quartzites forming the basal sub-division
of the Cambrian strata in the North-Wést Highlands, we find no traces of
organic remains in them, except at one locality, where worm casts (Scolithus
linearis) weré obtained. In the upper subdivision of the quartzites—the pipe-
rocks—the cylinders of sand are so numerous that the beds have been arranged
in five subzones, based on a definité order of succession of different forms
probably of specific value. One of them, Arenicolites of Salter, may be of
generic importance. Worms of this habit are confined to comparatively shallow
water, and therefore near the shore line. Their occurrence helps to confirm the
belief that the quartzites were laid down o1i an ancient shelving shore line during
a period of gentle subsidence. Their presence also indicates the existence of
plankton, from which they derived nourishment. Besides the relics of these
burrowing annelids, one of the subzones of the pipe-rock has yielded specimens
of Salterella (Serpulites Maccullochi)—a tubicolar annelid, which becomes more
abundant in the overlying fucoid beds, serpulite grit, and basal limestone, where
it is associated with Olenellus and other typical Lower Cambrian forms.

The fucoid beds, which immediately overlie the pipe-rocks, consist chiefly
of shales and brown dolomitic bands, with intercalations of grit locally developed.
This type of sedimentation indicates that the mud line was superimposed on the
shore line by subsidence. With this change of conditions there is a change of
organisms, for though the burrowifig forms (Scolithus) are still to be found in the
sandy layers, the most characteristic types are those occurring along the bedding
planes, known under the name of Pilanolites (Nicholson). | They are very
varied forms, and were probably produced by: many types of errant annelids.
The tubicolar annelids are represented by Salterella, Coleoloides, and Hyolithes
—an organism which perhaps links the worms with the hingeless brachiopods.
This suggestion gains additional support from the researches of Dr. Walcott in
the Middle Cambrian rocks of Canada. It is interesting to note that small
annelids seem to have bored the spines of dead trilobites. Walcott has found
similar borings in the chete of annelids in the Middle Cambrian rocks of
Canada.’

The researches of Dr. Walcott have proved beyond doubt that representatives
of nearly all the divisions of the annelids are entombed in the Middle Cam-
brian rocks of Mount Stephen, in British Columbia. We may therefore reason-
ably infer that the worm casts of Scolithus type found in the North-West High-
lands are due to annelids. He has also shown that worm-like holothurians are to
be found in the same beds.” In this connection it may be observed that some
of the recent holothurians have much the same habit of obtaining nourishment
from the sands and silts containing organie matter. .

Fragments showing the characteristic microscopic structures of the plates
and ossicles of echinoderms have been found in the fucoid beds. These are
probably Cystidean. Hingeless forms of brachiopods also occur, among which
may be mentioned Paterina labradorica and Acrothele subsidua. The type of
Acrothele suggests a genetic descent from such a tubicolar worm as Hyolithes.
Of the gasteropods, only one specimen, belonging to a subgenus of Murchisonia,
has been obtained at one locality in Skye. AHelenia bella, a curved calcareous
tube, open at both ends, doubtfully referred to the Dentalidae by Walcott, is
comparatively plentiful. It oceurs also in the Olenellus zone in Newfoundland.

! Smithsonian Miscell. Collect., vol. 57, No. 5, p. 125, 1911.
a Lid... NOneas noun,

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3

But the organic remains that render the fucoid beds of exceptional interest
and importance are the trilobites, because they clearly define the horizon of
this zone in the Cambrian system and display strong affinities with American
types. They are represented by five species and varieties of Olenellus, very
closely resembling the forms in the Georgian terrane, or Olenellus zone, on the
east and west sides of the North American continent. The genus Olenelloides
has also been recorded from these beds. The crustacea are represented by
phyllocarids, among which we find Aristozoe rotundata, likewise characteristic of
the Olenellus zone of North America.

Next in order comes the serpulite grit, which indicates a recrudescence of
the pipe-rock conditions of deposition, and presents the Scolithus type of
annelid borings. From the diameter of the pipe and the depth of the burrow it
is probable that the worm may have belonged to a different species from any
of those whose casts are to be found in lower horizons. This large variety is
associated with smaller and more irregular worm casts which have often
weathered out and leave the rock honevcombed with hollow casts. The
characteristic form from which the zone takes its name is Salterella (Serpulites
Maccullochii). It occurs abundantly along certain calcareous layers that mark
pauses in the deposition of the sand. This calcareous type culminates at the top
of the zone, where there is a thick, carious, weathering band, crowded with
specimens of Saltere/la. forming a passage bed into the calcareous shales at the
base of the Durness dolomites. At one locality near Loch an Nid, Dundonnell
Forest, Ross-shire, thin shales, intercalated in the serpulite grit, yielded a fine
carapace of Olenellus Lanworthi—a form of frequent occurrence in the under-
lying fucoid beds. Professor Lapworth recorded the finding of Orthoceras and
lineuloid shells in the ton part of this zone at Eireboll.*

Immediately above the serpulite grit in Eireboll and Assynt we find a few
feet of dark calcareous shale, with iron pyrites, probably deposited at the limit
of sedimentation. This layer, which is singularly devoid of organisms. ushers
in the great succession of dolomites and limestones, unwards of 1,500 feet in
thickness—perhaps the most remarkable type of sedimentation among the
Cambrian rocks of the North-West Highlands. The Geological Survey has
divided this calcareous sequence into seven well-marked groups, some of which
have as yet yielded no fossils beyond worm casts. Attention will presently be
directed to the absence of calcareous forms in many of the bands of dolomite and
to the probable cause of their disappearance.

The thin calcareous shale just referred to is followed by dark blue dolomite
limestone, forming the basal portion of the Ghrudhaidh group. It contains
sparsely scattered, well-rounded sand grains, with a bed about three feet thick,
near the bottom. charged with Saltere/la pulchella and S. rugosa. In the over-
lying twenty feet of dolomite the sand grains gradually disappear, and the rock
assumes a mottled character, due to innumerable worm casts of the Planolites
type. Here a second layer, yielding Salterella pulchella and S. rugosa, super-
venes, both forms occurring in the Olenellus zone of North America.

The brief summary of the paleontological evidence which has just been given
clearly shows that the strata ranging from the middle of the pine-rock zone to the
upper Salterella band of the Durness dolomites represent in whole or in part the
Olenellus zone of North America. Owing to the absence of fossils we have no
means of deciding more definitely the base and top of the Lower Cambrian rocks
of the North-West Highlands. All the quartzites lying below the middle of the
pipe-rock, notwithstanding the absence of zonal forms, have been included in
the Lower Cambrian division. This correlation receives some support from the
remarkable discovery of Dr. Walcott, who found primitive trilobites several
thousand feet beneath the beds yielding Olenelius Gilberti, the form closely
allied to the Highland trilobites.

On the other hand, when we pass unwards for a certain distance from the
Salterella bands the evidence is insufficient to establish the stratigraphical
horizon of the beds. For in the overlving strata, comprising the remainder
of the Ghrudhaidh group, the whole of the Eilean Dubh group, and the lower part
of the Sail Mhor group. and consisting of dolomites, limestones. and cherts. with
little or no terrigenous material, the only fossils that can be shown to be due to

* Geol. Mag., vol. x.. new series, p. 126, 1883.
c 2

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C.

organisms are worm casts of the nature of Planolites, although the limestone
and chert may have originated from the débris of the calcareous and siliceous
organisms of the plankton. A noticeable feature of the Ghrudhaidh and Eilean
Dubh groups is the occurrence in them of bands of brecciated dolomite on several
horizons, which do not imply any break in the continuous sequence of deposits.
The total thickness of this portion of the Durness dolomites and limestones,
yielding no fossils beyond worm casts, amounts to 350 feet.

But in the upper part of the Sail Mhor group siliceous and calcareous
organisms of a higher grade make their appearance. Among the former we find
the Rhabdaria of Billings. The calcareous forms are represented by (1) gastero-
pods, including a single specimen of a murchisonid, two species of a pleuroto-
marid (Huconia Ramsayi and E. Etna) of a type occurring in the calciferous
rocks of Newfoundland and Canada; (2) cephalopods, comprising two slightly
bent forms with closely set septa and wide endogastric siphuncles, showing
affinities with those of Zndoceras and Piloceras; (3) arthropods, represented by
the epitome of a large asaphoid trilobite resembling that of Asaphus canalis of
Conrad. This evidence is insufficient to determine the exact horizon of these
beds, but clearly indicates that we are no longer dealing with Lower Cambrian
strata. The cephalopods are like those found in the Ozarkic division of Ulrich
(Upper Cambrian), in North America. According to Schuchert, the cephalopods
with closely set septa are of Cambrian type and older than those of the Beek-
mantown terrane of American geologists. On the other hand, the asaphoid type
of trilobite is suggestive of a somewhat higher horizon.

No fossils have been found in the overlying Sangomore group, about 200 feet
thick, which consists mainly of granular dolomite. with bands of chert, some
being odlitic, together with thin fine-grained limestones near the top.

Above this horizon, at a height of over 800 feet above the top of the Olenedlus
zone, we encounter the great home of the fossils peculiar to the Durness lime-
stone in the Balnakeil and Croisaphuill groups. The former consists mostly of
dark limestones, with nodules of chert, and, with a few alternations, of white
limestone bands. A few thin layers are charged with worm casts. The over-
lying group is more varied, the lower part being composed of dark grey lime-
stones full of worm casts, and with some small chert nodules arranged in lines;
the middle portion, of dark granular and unfossiliferous dolomite; and the upper
part, of massive sheets of fossiliferous limestone full of worm casts. The total
thickness of these two groups in Durness is about 550 feet. ;

These two subdivisions have yielded over twenty genera and about one
hundred species. In Durness sixty-six species have been obtained from the
Balnakeil group alone, fifteen of which have not as yet been found in the over-
lying Croisaphuill group, thus leaving fifty-one species common to both
divisions. The Ben Suardal limestones in Skye, which were mapped by the
Geological Survey as one division, are regarded, on paleontological grounds, as
the equivalents of both these groups. Owing to the number of species common
to both subdivisions, the fauna will be here referred to as a whole.

Both siliceous and calcareous organisms are present in this fauna. Among
the former we find Archewoscyphia (Hinde), described by Billings as Archao-
cyathus, an early Cambrian coral, but shown by Hinde to be a siliceous sponge.
The genus Calathium is represented by four species. Other genera and species
of sponges occur, so that the siliceous nodules, which are very common in both
groups, may be in great part due to them. In this connection it may be men-
tioned that Hinde obtained sponge spicules from some of the nodules. inged
brachiopods have also been collected from these beds and include Nisusia
(Orthosina) festinata, N. grandeva, and Camarella.

But the characteristic feature of the fauna is the assemblage of calcareous
mollusca comprising lamellibranchs, gasteropods, and cephalopods, showing a
wide range of variation, and consequently a long ancestry. The lamellibranchs,
though represented only by two genera, Yuchasma and Kopteria of Billings, with
several intermediate forms, are of extreme interest, as they are only known to
occur elsewhere in Newfoundland and Eastern Canada. The gasteropods, how-
ever, furnish the largest number of species—about 48 per cent. of the whole.
The primitive euomphalids, Maclurea and Ophileta, are most characteristic.

* Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. xlv., p. 125, 1889.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 5

The former genus has a large number of species, many of which are to
be found in the Beekmantown limestone of Newfoundland and Eastern North
America. Only one of the species (./aclurea Peachi) is peculiar to Durness.
Several species of Ophileta are found, some of which likewise occur in the Beek-
mantown limestone. Euomphalus has also been recorded, while several forms
belonging to the nearly allied family of the Turbinide, and placed in Lind-
strom’s genus Oriostoma, are also met with in the Beekmantown timestoue.

Murchisonids and Pleurotomarids number twenty-seven species and show a
very wide range of variation. The chief subgenera of the former are Hormo-
toma and Yctomaria, many species of which occur with remarkable variations.
All the types of variation found in Durness are to be found in North America,
and several of the species are common to both regions. The pleurotomarids
vary in a similar manner, the chief genera being Raphistoma and ELuconia, and
a form resembling Hormotoma, only with a shorter spire. Species belonging
to each of these subgenera are likewise common to both areas, while some are
only known from the North-West Highlands.

The cephalopods are of equal interest. They are also of primitive type
and, at the same time, show a wide range in form. The prominent feature in
the straighter specimens is the great width of the laterally placed siphuncle,
which is generally furnished with endocones and organic deposits. The genus
Piloceras is the most characteristic type and shows this peculiar feature best.
It has only been recorded from Scotland, Newfoundland, Canada, and the
eastern States of North America. The following additional genera are repre-
sented—viz., Hndoceras, chietly by siphuncles in great variety; Actinoceras,
Cyrtoceras, and, doubtfully, Orthoceras. Several forms have been attributed to
Orthoceras, which, on re-examination, have been found to be the siphuncles of
other genera, resembling American types described by Hall and Whitfield.

The whorled nautiloids provisionally classed with the genus J’rocholites of
Conrad are represented by several distinct forms as yet unnamed.

The trilobites are of rare occurrence in these two groups of dolomite and
limestone. They are fragmentary and poorly preserved. This is doubtless one
of the disappointing features connected with this remarkable assemblage of
organic remains, for the presence of a zonal form would have helped to define
the horizon of these beds. Only one species, Bathyurus Nero (Billings) has been
identified, which also occurs in the Beekmantown limestone of Newfoundland.
The other trilobite remains, though poorly preserved, leave a Cambrian facies
characteristic of North America.

In connection with this fauna certain features have been observed which
throw some light on the absence of calcareous organisms from thick zones of
the Durness dolomite and limestone. In my detailed description of the
paleontology of the Cambrian rocks of the North-West Highlands in the
Geological Survey Memoir I stated that ‘in most cases the septa and walls of
chambered shells have been wholly or in part dissolved away, so as to leave
only the more massive structures of the siphuncles, and worm castings are often
found within the chambers where the septa have been preserved. These
features seem to indicate that the accumulation of the calcareous mud in which
the fossils were embedded was so slow that there was time for the solution of
part of an organism before the whole of it was covered up.’* There is good
reason to believe that many organisms wholly disappeared by this process, so
that it is reasonable to conclude that the fossils obtained from the Durness
dolomites cannot be regarded as furnishing a complete life-history of the forms
that originally existed in that sequence of deposits. Attention has already been
called to the fact that beneath the two subdivisions now under consideration
there are groups of dolomite and limestone which so far have yielded no organic
remains beyond worm castings. And even in the important Croisaphuill group,
with its fossiliferous zones, there are thick groups of dolomite which have fur-
nished no calcareous organic remains. Obviously the paleontological record in this
instance is glaringly incomplete, for we have no reason to suppose that the life
of the time flourished in some of the calcareous zones and not in others.

The highest subdivision of the Durness limestone, measuring about 150 feet

* “Geological Structure of the North-West Highlands,’ Geol. Sur. Mem.,
1907, p. 380.

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C.

in thickness (Durine group), has yielded two species of Hormotoma—viz.,
H. graciis and H. gracillima—both of which occur in the two underlying groups.
H. graciis occurs in the Beekmantown, the Chazy, and the Trenton limestones
of America.

Before assigning any stratigraphical horizons to the fauna of the Durness
dolomites, it is desirable, owing to the American facies of the fossils, to recapitu-
late the evidence bearing upon the life of Cambrian time in North America.
But the Cambrian life-history of Scotland would be incomplete without a brief
reference to the recent discovery of fossils along the eastern border of the
Highlands.

In 1911 Dr. Campbell announced in the Geological Magazine that fossils had
been found in the Highland border series north of Stonehaven, and, during this
year, Dr. Jehu made a similar discovery in rocks belonging to this series near
Aberfoyle. Papers on these subjects will be communicated to this section. For
my present purpose it will be sutiicient to indicate the nature of the fossils and
the lithological characters of the rocks containing them.

The Highland border series north of Stonehaven and near Aberfoyle includes
sheared igneous rocks, both lavaform and intrusive, with black shales, cherts, and
jaspers. North of Stonehaven the fossils occur in thin, dark, flinty pyritous
shale, while at Aberfoyle they have been found in shaly films at the edge of the
chert bands. Several years ago radiolaria were detected in the cherts between
Aberfoyle and Loch Lomond. From time to time these Highland border rocks
have been carefully searched for, fossils, but until recently with little succc>«.
owing to the intense movement to which they have been subjected, resulting in
marked flaser structure in all except the most resistant bands.

The fossils consist chiefly of horny, hingeless brachiopods, phyllocarid
crustacea, worm tubes, and the jaws and chete of annelids. The genera of
brachiopods comprise Lingulella, Obolus, Obolella, Acrotreta, and Linarssonia.
The association of these brachiopods with phyllocarid crustaceans resembling
Hymenocaris and Lingulocaris is suggestive of an Upper Cambrian horizon—an
inference which is supported by the absence of graptolites.

In the published Geological Survey maps these Highiand border rocks are
queried as of Lower Silurian age. This correlation was based partly on their
resemblance to the Arenig volcanic rocks and radiolarian cherts of the Southern
Uplands, and partly because, as shown by Mr. Barrow, they are overlain by an
unconformable group of sediments, termed by him the Margie series. The
cherts, the green schists, and the Margie series have shared in a common
system of folding, and are unconformably surmounted by Downtonian strata
near Stonehaven. Though the original correlation may not be strictly correct,
it is probable, in my opinion, that representatives of both the Arenig and Upper
Cambrian formations may occur in the Highland border series, and, further,
that Upper Cambrian strata may yet be found in the Girvan area, as originally
suggested by Professor Lapworth in correspondence with Dr. Horne.

The Cambrian Fauna of North America.

The classification of the Cambrian fauna found in North America is based
on the researches of a band of distinguished paleontologists, comprising among
the older investigators Billings, Hall, and Whitfield, and among modern workers
Walcott, Ulrich, Schuchert, Brainerd, Seely, Ruedemann, Matthew, Clarke, and
Grabau. Prominent among these investigators stands Dr. Walcott, alike for his
original and exhaustive contributions to this branch of inquiry and for his com-
plete mastery of the sequence and distribution of life in Cambrian time in North
America. Indeed, geologists all over the world owe him a deep debt of gratitude
for the services which he has rendered to Cambrian paleontology.

Throughout the greater part of Cambrian time there existed in North
America two distinct life provinces. The eastern one ran along the Atlantic
coast from the north of Newfoundland to a point south of New York, extending
only a short distance inland, with a faunal facies resembling that of North- ,
West Europe, exclusive of the North-West Highlands of Scotland. The western
province lay to the north-west of that just described, and ranged from Northern
Newfoundland, south-westwards to Central North America and the Pacific
Ocean. On the east side of the Rocky Mountains it swept northwards to British

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7

Columbia, perhaps as far as the Arctic Ocean. The remarkable feature of the
life of the western province is its essentially American facies.

Geologists are familiar with the triple classification of the Cambrian system
by means of the trilobites in North America, as in Europe. The Lower Cam-
brian division represents the Olenellus epoch ‘of Walcott, characterised by some
form of Olenellid, or, to use the name now given to the family by that investi-
gator, the Mesonacide. The western life-province contains the true Olenellus
of which O. Thompsoni is the type. The strata yielding this fauna extend over
such a wide area of North America that within this same province we find a
western and an eastern facies. The western facies is found in Nevada and
California, where Olenelius is represented by such specific forms as 0. Gilberts
and O. Freemonti. But it is noteworthy that these forms occur near the top of
the Lower Cambrian series, and are soon followed by Zacaunthoides and Crepice-
phalus, trilobites of middle Cambrian attinities. Towards the lower part of the
sequence of deposits, which there consist mainly of limestone, and extend down-
wards for a distance of over 4,000 feet beneath the beds containing the true
Olenellus, Walcott found specimens of H/olmia Rowei and Nevadia Weekst.
The latter form is regarded by him as the most primitive of all the Mesonacide
yet known. Near the base the limestones have yielded the primitive corals,
Archeocyathus and Hthmophyllum ; and the brachiopods Mickwitzia and T'rema-
tobolus. The other forms found on this horizon belong to the following genera :
(trilobites) Protypus and Jlicrodiscus (brachiopods) Kutorgina, Swantonia,
Nisusia, Billingselia, and (tubicolar annelids) AH yolithellus and Salterella. The
eastern facies of the western life province is best known from the region of
Georgia, in Vermont. It is the home of the type species of Olenellus
{O. Thompson). It is associated with Mesonacis vermontana, which has now
given the name to the whole family, with Liliptocephalus usaphoides, one ot the
earliest known trilobites. of the family, and with other forms such as Bathy-
notus, Holopygia, Protypus, and Microdiscus. The tubicolar worms are repre-
sented by Hyolithellus and ’Salterella, the brachiopods by Nisusia, Swantonia,
Kutorgina cingulata, and Paterina labradorica. There can be no doubt that
the assemblage of organic remains found in this Georgian terrane is merely the
counterpart of that found in the Olenellus zone of the North-West Highlands.

Proceeding now to the eastern lfe-province, we find that the Lower Cam-
brian rocks are characterised by the trilobite genus Callavia, belonging to the
family of the Wesonacide, and bearing a close resemblance both to Holmia and
Nevadia. In Southern Newfoundland two species of Callavia occur, of which
C. Bréggeri is the type. It is accompanied by JMicrodiscus, Hyolithellus,
Paterina labradorica, and Helenia bella. In New Brunswick the Protolenus
fauna, with Protolenus as the characteristic trilobite, probably represents the
upper part of the Olenellus zone. In this connection the recent discovery of the
Protolenus fauna by Mr. Cobbold, in Shropshire, in strata associated with
Callavia, and overlain by beds yielding Paradozides, is of special importance,
as it shows the close relation between the Lower Cambrian fauna of Wales and
that of the Atlantic or eastern province of North America.°

The Middle Cambrian division of the western life-province is characterised
chiefly by the trilobite genus Olenoides; indeed, the western part of it is the
home of Olenoides and the large tailed trilobites. The characteristic genera of
this group to be found in that region are Kootenia, Zacanthoides, Bathyuriscus,
Asaphiscus, Neolenus, Dorypygella, Dorypyge, Damesella, and Ogygopsis.

In this region the Middle Cambrian limestones and shales occurring on
Mount Stephen, in British Columbia, have yielded a magnificent series of trilo-
bites, eurypterids, limuloids, crustacea ranging from congeners of the brine
shrimps to phyllocarid nebalids, annelids belonging to most of the still extant
families, holothurians, medusae, and other organic remains. For the most part
many of these forms are so fragile that only “their tracks remain as indications
of their existence in palwozoic deposits. Not till we reach the Solenhofen slates
in Jurassic time do we find similar favourable conditions for the entombment
and preservation of their highly modified successors. The remarkable evidence
bearing on the evolution of groups of organisms furnished by this assemblage of
fossils from Mount Stephen has been admirably described and illustrated by

* Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. lxvii., p. 296, 1911.

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C.

Walcott in his series of papers published in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous
Collections.

In the New Brunswick portion of the eastern or Atlantic life-province the
strata yielding Paradoxides follow those bearing the Protolenus fauna. Six
species of Paradoxides have been obtained from this horizon, including
P. davidis, together with the following genera: Agnostus, Agranlos, Liostracus,
Conocoryphe, and Ctenicephalus. Schuchert points out that this fauna is
‘closely allied to the Paradoxides faunas of Wales and Sweden, but less so with
that of Bohemia.’

In Southern Newfoundland Walcott showed that the base of the Middle
Cambrian division is marked in Manuel’s Brook by a conglomerate containin
fossils of the lower or Georgian terrane, thus indicating elevation and erosion o
the Lower Cambrian rocks. Higher up the strata yielded Paradozxides davidis
and P. bennett.

Important evidence pointing to the conclusion that the Paradozides fauna of
the eastern or Atlantic province encroached to some extent on the eastern part of
the western lite-province has been obtained by Walcott at St. Albans, Vermont.
But the suggestion has been made by Schuchert that their present position is
there due to north-westerly thrusting.*

it should be borne in mind that in Middle Cambrian time the eastern and
western parts of the western life-province were evidently separated from each
other by a land barrier, owing to crustal movement, which was probably con-
nected with the elevation of the Lower Cambrian rocks in the region where they
were subjected to erosion.

In the upper division of the Cambrian system in North America there is a
marked change in the fauna. Its characteristic features are thus clearly sum-
marised by Schuchert : ‘In a general way it may be said that the Ozarkic period
of Ulrich (Upper Cambrian) begins with the trilobite genus Dikelocephalus
and the irst distinct molluscan fauna. . The trilobites and inarticulate
brachiopods (greatly reduced in species) are still Cambrian in aspect, while the
new faunal feature consists in a rapid evolution, in form and size, of the coiled
gasteropods, and of both straight and coiled cephalopods. The latter are dis-
tinguished from those of subsequent periods by the exceedingly close arrange-
ment of the septa.’®

The distinctive trilobite genus of the Upper Cambrian strata of the western
life-province is Dikelocephalus, where it is associated with an American facies
of fossils. The eastern or Atlantic province is characterised by Olenids,
though Dikelocephalus also occurs, and by typical European forms. In Minne-
sota and Wisconsin, where the strata consists of sandstones, dolomites, and
shales, two species of Dikelocephalus have been obtained, together with other
genera of trilobites such as Agnostus, and Jilenurus; the limuloid Aglaspis; and
the gasteropods, Holopea, Ophileta, and Kaphistoma.

In certain areas this period is characterised by a great succession of cal-
careous deposits, comprising parts of the Shenandoah limestone and Kittatinny
dolomite in New Jersey, portions of the Knox dolomite in Tennessee, and of the
dolomite and limestone in Oklahoma. In some of these localities, at least, the
lower portions of this calcareous series are grouped with the Upper Cambrian
sediments, while the upper parts are classed with Lower Silurian or Ordovician
strata. The researches of American palzontologists have shown that in certain
areas there is a mixed Cambrian and Ordovician fauna in some of the beds, as in
the Tremadoc rocks of Wales. This commingling of faunas is exemplified in the
case of the Beekmantown limestone, which is grouped with the Ordovician
(Lower Silurian) rocks by most American geologists. Ulrich and Schuchert, on
the other hand, regard it as a formation (the Canadic) distinct from the over-
lying Ordovician system.

The type areas of the Beekmantown limestone are Lake Champlain, the
Mingan Islands, and Newfoundland, where the strata consist mainly of a
succession of limestones and dolomites over 1,000 feet thick. The fossils are
chiefly molluscan, comprising lamellibranchs, gasteropods, and cephalopods.
The lamellibranchs are represented, among others, by the genera Huc ,
7 Bull. Geol. Soc. of Amer., vol. xx. (1910), p. 522. * Ibid.

’ Op. cit., p. 524.

a

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

and Hopteria; the gasteropods, by Ophileta, Maclurea, Euomphalus, Holopea,
Hormotoma, Ectomaria, Murchisonia, Lophospira, Euconia, Raphistoma, Helico-
toma; the cephalopods, by Orthoceras, Cyrtoceras, Gomphoceras, Piloceras,
Trocholites. Of the foregoing genera many of the species are common to this
region and the North-West Highlands of Scotland.

The trilobites associated with this fauna comprise the genera, Dikelocephalus,
Bathyurus, Asaphus, Harpes, and Nileus.

In Northern Newfoundland, in zones F to N of Billings, this fauna, with
localised species, is found in great development, in limestones and dolomites
resembling those of Durness. Its upper limit is there clearly defined, for the
limestones and dolomites are overlain by dark shales containing graptolites of
undoubted Arenig age. '

A careful comparison of the faunas of the Durness and Beekmantown lime-
stones shows that the assemblage of fossils in the Balnakiel and Croisaphuill
groups of Durness is practically identical with that in the zones F to N of
Billings. as developed in Newfoundland. These groups must therefore be older
than the Arenig rocks of Wales, and must represent at least the Welsh Tre-
madoc strata, if not part of the Lingula Flags, both of which, according to the
English classification, are grouped with the Cambrian system.

But even in the purely European province of North America, in New Bruns-
wick, where the Beekmantown calcareous fauna is entirely absent, and where
the faunal sequence and type of sedimentation are almost identical with those
of North Wales, the basal Ordovician or Lower Silurian rocks of American
geologists include the Peltura scarabaeoides and the Parabolina spinulosa zones,
which, in Wales, are classed with the Lingula Flags. It is obvious, therefore.
that the boundary-line between the Cambrian and Ordovician (Lower Silurian)
systems is not drawn at the same stratigraphical horizon by American and
British geologists. In fixing the age of the Durness dolomites and limestones
the English classification has been adopted.

The paleontological evidence now adduced regarding the relation of the
Cambrian fauna of the North-West Highlands to that of North America leads
to the following conclusions :—

1. The Lower Cambrian fauna of the North-West Highlands, distinguished
by the genus Olenellus and its associates, is almost identical in character with
that of the Georgian terrane of the western life-province of North America,
and essentially different from the Lower Cambrian fauna of the rest of Europe.

2. No forms characteristic of the Middle Cambrian division, either of Europe
or North America, have as yet been found in the North-West Highlands; but
this division may be represented by the unfossiliferous dolomites and limestones
of the Ghrudhaidh, Eilean Dubh, and the lower Sail Mhor groups.

3. The fossiliferous bands of the Sail Mhor group may be the equivalents of
the lower part of the Upper Cambrian formation.

4. The Balnakeil and Croisaphuill groups of the Durness dolomites and
limestones contain a typical development of the molluscan fauna of the Beek-
mantown limestone, belonging to the western life-province of North America.
As the Beekmantown limestone is succeeded by shales, with Arenig graptolites,
it follows, in accordance with British classification, that these groups must be
of Upper Cambrian age.

5. The highest subdivision of the Durness limestone (Durine) has not yielded
fossils of zonal value, and the members of this group are not overlain in normal
sequence by graptolite-bearing shale or other sediments.

Cambrian Paleogeography between North America and North-West Europe.

In attempting to restore in outline the distribution of land and sea in Cam-
brian time between North America and North-West Europe reference must be
made to various investigators whose researches in paleogeography are more or
less familiar to geologists. Among these may be mentioned Suess, Dana, De
Lapparent, Frech, Walcott, Ulrich, Schuchert, Bailey Willis, Grabau, Hull,
and Jukes Browne. The views now presented seem to me to be reasonable in-
ferences from the paleontological evidence set forth in this address.

In the North-West Highlands there is still a remnant of the old land surface
upon which the Torridonian sediments were laid down. There is conclusive

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C.

evidence that the pre-Torridonian land was one of high relief. As the Tor-
ridonian sediments form part of a continental deposit it may be inferred that
the Archean rocks had a great extension in a north-westerly direction. The
increasing coarseness of the deposits towards the north-west suggests that the land
may have become more elevated in that direction. At any rate, the pile of Tor-~
ridonian sediments points to a subsidence of the region towards the south-east,
and probably to a correlative movement of elevation towards the north-west.

The sparagmite of Scandinavia is an arkose resembling the dominant type
of the Torridon sandstone; is of the same general age, and has evidently been
derived from similar sources in the Scandinavian shield. In eastern North
America coarse sedimentary deposits from part of the newer Algonkian rocks,
which are still to be found rising from underneath the Cambrian strata in the
region of the great lakes. These materials were obtained from the great
Canadian shield, which must have formed a large continental area during their
deposition.

It is reasonable to infer that these isolated relics of old land surfaces were
united in pre-Torridonian time, thus forming a continuous belt from Scandinavia
to North America. During the period which elapsed between the deposition of
the Torridon sandstone and the basement members of the Cambrian system a
geosyncline was established which gave rise to a submarine trough, trending in
an east-north-east and west-south-west direction, both in the British and North
American areas. In the latter region it extends from Newfoundland to
Alabama, its south-eastern limit being defined by the old land surface of Appa-
lachia. The extension of this Appalachian land area in a north-east direction
beyond the limits of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland was postulated by Dana
and other American writers. This geosyncline remained a line of weakness
throughout paleozoic time, both in Britain and North America, which resulted
in the Caledonian system of folding in Britain, and in the Taconic, Appalachian,
and Pennsylvanian systems in North America. Hence it is manifest that the
original shore-lines of this trough are now much nearer each other than they
were in Cambrian time.

The Cambrian rocks of the North-West Highlands were laid down along the
north-west side of this trough during a period of subsidence, for the great
succession of Durness dolomite and limestone, with little or no terrigenous
material, is superimposed on the coarser sediments of that formation. On the
other hand, the Cambrian strata of Wales seem to have been deposited along the
southern limit of this marine depression. The Archean rocks that now con-
stitute the central plateau of France may have formed part.of its southern
boundary. The extension of this land area towards the north-east may have
given rise to the barrier that separated the Baltic life-province from that of
Bohemia, Sardinia, and Spain. In my opinion, this southern land area in
Western Europe was continuous across the Atlantic with Appalachia. For the
life sequence found in the Cambrian rocks of New Brunswick is practically
identical with that of Wales and the Baltic provinces, thus showing that there
must have been continuous intercourse between these areas. Along this shore-
line the migration of forms seems to have been from Europe towards America.
On the other hand, along the northern shore the tide of migration seems to
have advanced from America towards the North-West Highlands. The question
naturally arises, what cause prevented the migration of the forms from one shore
of this trough to the other? American geologists are of opinion that this is
probably due to the existence of land barriers; but, in my opinion, it can be
more satisfactorily accounted for by clear and open sea, aided by currents.

The south-western extremity of the American trough in Lower Cambrian
time opened out into the Mississippian sea, which was connected with the
Pacific Ocean, and stretched northwards towards the Arctic regions. Reference
has already been made to Walcott’s discovery in Nevada of the primitive
trilobite Nevadia Weeksi, from which he derives both branches of the
Mesonacide, one branch linking Nevadia, through Callavia, Holmia, and Wan-
neria, with Paradoxides, the other connecting Nevadia with Olenellus, through
Mesonacis, Plliptocephalus and Padumias. : ; ay

In Nevada the genus Holmia, as already shown, is associated with the primi-
tive type Nevadia. Wanneria is found in Nevada, in Alabama, and in Pennsyl-
vania, thus showing that this genus is common to the Mississippian sea and to

.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. ll

the long trough north-east of Alabama. Mesonacis has been obtained in the
submarine depression at Lake Champlain, at Bonne Bay, Newfoundland, and at
the north side of the Straits of Belle Isle. Hiliptocephalus has been recorded
from the New York State. Olenedlus has been found in Nevada, in Vermont,
and in the North-West Highlands. All the genera now referred to may have
migrated along the north-western shore of this trough.

As regards the distribution of the genus Callavia, this form has been met
with in Maine, in Newfoundland, and in derived pebbles in a conglomerate in
Quebec. Two species have been recorded in Shropshire. These forms probably
moved along the southern shore of this sea from Wales to North America.

Reference has already been made to the fact that, in the interval between
Lower and Middle Cambrian time, in certain areas in North America the Lower
Cambrian rocks were locally elevated and subjected to erosion. During this
interval the southern end of the trough seems to have had no connection with the
Mississippian sea, for in Middle Cambrian time, as already indicated, the
Paradoxides fauna is found in the trough on the east side of North America,
whereas on the west side it is represented by the Olenoides fauna.

In Upper Cambrian time a great transgression of the sea towards the north
supervened. The Dtkelocephalus fauna is found on both sides of America,
thus showing that the previous land barrier had been submerged. While this
genus occurs in Wales and the Baltic provinces, it has not as yet been recorded
from the North-West Highlands, but I quite expect that this discovery may
be made at some future time.

Along the northern side of the American trough clear water conditions pre-
vailed, owing to the northward recession of the shore-line, which led to the
accumulation of a great succession of calcareous deposits, including the Beekman-
town limestone, to which reference has already been made. Schuchert, as
already stated, has pointed out that, in the lower part of the Ozarkic (Upper
Cambrian) system, in Minnesota and Wisconsin, the gasteropod genera, Holopea,
Ophileta, and Raphistoma, are associated with two species of Dikelocephalus.
This molluscan fauna is evidently the precursor of that of the Beekmantown
limestone. It was probably from this central region of America that the cal-
careous fauna of Beekmantown migrated to the submarine trough in the typical
Champlain region, and through Newfoundland to the North-West Highlands
of Scotland.

The section at St. John, New Brunswick, where the Baltic and Welsh types
of the Olenus fauna occurs, shows that the southern shore line of the trough must
then have occupied much the same relative position as in Lower and Middle
Cambrian time. in the same region the strata containing this fauna, with
Peltura scarabeoides, and Dictyonema flabelliforme are overlain by dark shales
with Arenig graptolites. These graptolite-bearing terrigenous deposits eventu-
ally extended across the trough northwards, till, in Newfoundland, they came to
rest on the Beckmantown limestones.

In the Lake Champlain region, in the Chazy limestone, which there imme-
diately succeeds the Beekmantown limestone without the intervention of the
Arenig graptolite shale, there is a survival of the Beekmantown molluscan fauna
with only such slight modifications as to indicate genetic descent. In the
same trough the descendants of this fauna are to be found in the Trenton
limestone.

In this connection’ it is worthy of note that the molluscan fauna and the
corals of the Stinchar and Craighead limestones of Upper Llandeilo age in the
Girvan district of the Southern Uplands, have an American facies, as first
suggested by Nicholson. The appearance of American types in these lime-
stones may be accounted for in the following manner: Attention has already
been called to the divergent types of sedimentation presented by the Upper
Cambrian strata of the North-West Highlands, and of the South-East nigh-
lands, at Stonehaven and Aberfoyle. In the former case there is a continuous
sequence of dolomites and limestones, while in the latter we find a group, com-
prising radiolarian cherts and black shales, associated with pillowy spilitic
lavas and intrusive igneous rocks, indicating conditions of deposition at or near
the limit of sedimentation. But, notwithstanding the different types of sedi-
mentation and the divergent faunas in the two areas, I believe that during the
Upper Cambrian period, and probably for some time thereafter, continuous sea

12 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C.

extended from the North-West Highlands to beyond the Eastern Highland
border. The Upper Cambrian terrigenous sediments which we now find at
Stonehaven and Aberfoyle must have been derived from land to the south. In
Llandeilo time the Arenig and Lower Llandeilo rocks of the Girvan area were
elevated and subjected to extensive denudation. On this highly eroded plat-
form, as first proved by Professor Lapworth, coarse conglomerates, composed
of the underlying materials, were laid down in association with the Stinchar
and Craighead limestones. In my opinion the appearance of the American
forms in these limestones is connected with the movement that produced this
unconformability in the Girvan area. This local elevation was probably asso-
ciated in some form with the great crustal movements that culminated in the
overthrusts of the North-West Highlands and caused the intense folding and
flaser structure of the rocks along the Highland border. By these movements
shore-lines may have been established between the north side of the old Palzozoic
sea and the Girvan area, which permitted the southern migration of the American
forms.

Note.—Since writing the above my attention has been directed to the recent
work of Bassler on ‘ The Early Paleozoic Bryozoa of the Baltic Provinces,’ pub-
lished by the Smithsonian Institution in 1911. In his introduction the author
has shown that the Ordovician (Lower Silurian) and Gothlandian (Upper
Silurian) rocks of the Baltic Provinces contain a large percentage of bryozoan
species, in common with the Black River, Trenton, and Niagara limestones of
the same relative age in Eastern North America. This fact suggests that
during Lower and Upper Silurian time the old lines of migration were still open,
and that the Bryozoa, being of clear-water habit, were able to cross the old
trough from side to side.

Brifish Associafion for fhe Advancement
of Science.

SECTION D: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

TO THE

ZOOLOGICAL SECTION

BY
P. CHALMERS MITCHELL, D.Sc., F.RB.S.,

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION,

Zoological Gardens and the Preservation of Fauna.

In thinking over possible subjects for this Presidential Address, I was strongly
tempted to enter on a discussion of the logical methods and concepts that we
employ in Zoology. The temptation was specially strong to a Scot speaking in
Scotland, that he should devote the hour when the prestige of the presidential
chair secured him attention, to putting his audience right on logic and meta-
physics. But I reflected that Zoology is doing very well, however its logic be
wavering, and that as all lines subtend an equal angle at infinity, it would be of
small moment if I were to postpone my remarks on metaphysics. And so I am to
essay a more modest but a more urgent theme, and ask you to consider the danger
that threatens the surviving land-fauna of this globe. A well-known example
may serve to remind you how swift is the course of destruction. In 1867, when
the British Association last met at Dundee, there were still millions of bison
roaming over the prairies and forests of North America. In that year the
building of the Union Pacific, the first great trans-continental railway, cut the
herd in two. The Southern division, consisting itself of several million indi-
viduals, was wiped out between 1871 and 1874, and the practical destruction of
the Northern herd was completed between 1880 and 1884. At present there are
only two herds of wild bison in existence. In the Yellowstone Park only about
twenty individuals remained in 1911, the greater part of the herd having been
killed by poachers. A larger number, over three hundred, still survive near the
Great Slave Lake, and there are probably nearly two thousand in captivity, in
various Zoological Gardens, private domains and State Parks. It is only by the
deliberate and conscious interference of man that the evil wrought by man has
been arrested.

A second example that I may select is also taken from the continent of North
America, but it is specially notable because it is sometimes urged, as in India,
that migratory birds require no protection. Audubon relates that just a century
ago Passenger Pigeons existed in countless millions, and that for four days
at a time the sky was black with the stream of migration. The final extinction
of this species has taken place since the last meeting of the Association in Dundee.
in 1906 there were actually five single birds living, all of which had been bred
in captivity, and I understand that these last survivors of a prolific species
are now dead, although the birds ranged in countless numbers over a great
continent.

It would be futile to discuss in detail the precise agencies by which the
destruction of animal life is wrought, or the pretexts or excuses for them. The
most potent factors are the perfection of the modern firearm and the enormous

D

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D.

increase in its use by civilised and barbarous man. Sometimes the pretext is
sport, sometimes wanton destructiveness rules. The extermination of beasts-of-
prey, the clearing of soil for stock or crops, the securing of meat, the commercial
pursuit of hides and horns and of furs and feathers, all play their part. Farmers
and settlers on the outskirts of civilisation accuse the natives, and allege that the
problem would be solved were no firearms allowed to any but themselves. Sports-
men accuse other sportsmen, whom they declare to be no real sportsmen, and
every person whose object is not sport. The great museums, in the name of
science, and the rich amateur collectors press forward to secure the last specimens
of moribund species. .

But even apart from such deliberate and conscious agencies, the near presence
of man is inhospitable to wild life. As he spreads over the earth, animals wither
before him, driven from their haunts, deprived of their food, perishing from new
diseases. It is part of a general biological process. From time to time, in the
past history of the world, a species, favoured by some happy kink of structure
or fortunate accident of adaptability, has become dominant. It has increased
greatly in numbers, outrunning its natal bounds, and has radiated in every possible
direction, conquering woodland and prairies, the hills and the plains, transcend-
ing barriers that had seemed impassable, and perhaps itself breaking up into new
local races and varieties. It must be long since such a triumphant progress was
unattended by death and destruction. When the first terrestrial animals crept
out of their marshes into the clean air of the dry land, they had only plants and
the avenging pressure of physical forces to overcome. But when the Amphibians
were beaten by the Reptiles, and when from amongst the Reptiles some insigni-
ficant species acquired the prodigious possibility of transformation to Mammals,
and still more when amongst the Mammals Eutherian succeeded Marsupial, Carni-
vore the Creodont, and Man the Ape, it could have been only after a fatal contest
that the newcomers triumphed. The struggle, we must suppose, was at first most
acute between animals and their nearest inferior allies, as similarity of needs
brings about the keenest competition, but it must afterwards have been extended
against lower and lower occupants of the coveted territory.

The human race has for long been the dominant terrestrial species, and man
has a wider capacity for adaptation to different environments, and an infinitely
greater power of transcending geographical barriers than have been enjoyed by
any other set of animals. For a considerable time many of the more primitive
tribes, especially before the advent of firearms, had settled down into a kind of
natural equilibrium with the local mammalian fauna, but these tribes have been
first driven to a keener competition with the lower animals, and then, in most
parts of the world, have themselves been forced almost or completely out of
existence. The resourceful and aggressive higher races have now reached into
the remotest parts of the earth and have become the exterminators. It must now
be the work of the most intelligent and provident amongst us to arrest this course
of destruction and to preserve what remains,

In Europe, unfortunately, there is little left sufficiently large and important
to excite the imagination. There is the European bison which has been extinct
in Western Europe for many centuries, whilst the last was killed in Kast Prussia
in 1755. There remains a herd of about seven hundred in the forests of
Lithuania, strictly protected by the Tsar, whilst there are truly wild animals, in
considerable numbers, in the Caucasus, small captive herds on the private estates
of the Tsar, the Duke of Pless and Count Potocki, and a few individuals in
various Zoological Gardens. There is the beaver, formerly widespread ih Europe,
now one of the rarest of living mammals, and lingering in minute numbers in the
Rhone, the Danube, in a few Russian rivers and in protected areas in Scandi-
navia. The wolf and the bear have shrunk to the recesses of thick forests and the
remotest mountains, gluttons to the most barren regions of the north. The
chamois survives by favour of game-laws and the vast inaccessible areas to which
it can retreat, but the mouflon of Corsica and Sardinia and the ibex in Spain
are on the verge of extinction. Every little creature, from the otter, wild cat and
marten to the curious desman is disappearing.

India contains the richest, the most varied, and, from many points of view,
the most interesting part of the Asiatic fauna. Notwithstanding the teeming
human population it has supported from time immemorial, the extent of its
area, its dense forests and jungles, its magnificent series of river valleys, moun-

;

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 3

tains, and hills have preserved until recent times a fauna rich in individuals ana
species. The most casual glance at the volumes by sportsmen and naturalists
written forty or fifty years ago reveals the delight and wonder of travel in
India so comparatively recently as the time when the Association last met in
Dundee. Sir H. H. Johnston has borne witness that even. in 1895 a journey
‘through almost any part of India was of absorbing interest to the naturalist.’
All is changed now, and there seems little doubt but that the devastation in the
wonderful mammalian fauna has been wrought chiefly by British military officers
and civilians, partly directly, and partly by their encouragement of the sporting
mstincts of the Mohammedan population and the native regiments, although the
clearing of forests and the draining of marshlands have played an important
contributory part. The tiger has no chance against the modern rifle. The one-
horned rhinoceros has been nearly exterminated in Northern India and Assam.
The magnificent gaur, one of the most splendid of living creatures, has been
almost killed off throughout the limits of its range—Southern India and the
Malay Peninsula. Bears and wolves, wild dogs and leopards are persecuted
remorselessly. Deer and antelope have been reduced to numbers that alarm even
the most thoughtless sportsmen, and wild sheep and goats are being driven to the
utmost limits of their range.

When I speak of the fauna of Africa, I am always being reminded of the huge
and pathless areas of the Dark Continent, and assured that lions and leopards,
elephants and giraffe still exist in countless numbers, nor do I forget the dim
recesses of the tropical forests where creatures still lurk of which we have only
the vaguest rumour. But we know that South Africa, less than fifty years ago,
was a dream that surpassed the imagination of the most ardent hunter. And we
know what it is now. It is traversed by railways, it has been rolled over by the
devastations of war: The game that once covered the land in unnumbered millions
is now either extinct, like the quagga and the black wildebeeste, or its scanty
remnant lingers in a few reserves and on a few farms. The sportsman and the
hunter have been driven to other parts of the Continent, and I have no confidence
in the future of the African fauna. The Mountains of the Moon are within range
of a long vacation holiday. Civilisation is eating into the land from every side.
All the great European countries are developing their African possessions. There
are exploring expeditions, punitive expeditions, shooting and collecting expedi-
tions. Railways are being pushed inland, water-routes opened up. The land is
being patrolled and policed and taxed, and the wild animals are suffering. Let
us go back for a moment to the Transvaal and consider what has happened since
the Rand was opened, neglecting the reserves. Lions are nearly extinct. The
hyzna has been trapped and shot and poisoned out of existence. The eland is
extinct. The giraffe is extinct. The elephant is extinct. The rhinoceros is
extinct. The buffalo is extinct. The bontebok, the red hartebeeste, the moun-
tain zebra, the oribi, and the grysbok are so rare as to be practically extinct.
And the same fate may at any time overtake the rest of Africa. The white man
has learned to live in the tropics; he is mastering tropical diseases; he has need
ot the vegetable and mineral wealth that lie awaiting him, and although there
is yet time to save the African fauna, it is in imminent peril.

When we turn to Australia with its fauna of unique zoological interest, we
come to a more advanced case of the same disease. In 1909 Mr. G. C. Short-
ridge, a very skilled collector, working for the British Museum, published in the
‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London’ the results of an investigation
he had carried out on the fauna of Western Australia south of the tropics, during
the years 1904-1907. He gave a map showing the present and comparatively
recent distribution for each of the species of Marsupials and Monotremes indi-
genous to that locality. West Australia as yet has been very much less affected
by civilisation than Queensland, New South Wales or Victoria, and yet in practi-
cally every case there was found evidence of an enormous recent restriction of
the range of the species. Marsupials and Monotremes are, as you know, rather
stupid animals, with small powers of adaptation to new conditions, and they
are in the very gravest danger of complete extinction. In the island of Tasmania,
the thylacine, or marsupial wolf, and the Tasmanian devil have unfortunately
incurred the just hostility of the stock raiser and poultry farmer, and the date
of their final extermination is approaching at a pace that must be reckoned by
months rather than by years.

DQ

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D.

The development of the continent of North America has been one of the
wonders of the history of the world, and we on this side of the Atlantic almost
hold our breath as we try to realise the material wealth and splendour and the
ardent intellectual and social progress that have turned the United States into an
imperial nation. But we know what has happened to the American bison. We
know the danger that threatens the pronghorn, one of the most isolated and
interesting of living creatures, the Virginian deer, the mule-deer, and the bighorn
sheep. Even in the wide recesses of Canada, the bighorn, the caribou, the elk,
the wapiti, the white mountain goat, and the bears are being rapidly driven back
by advancing civilisation. In South America less immediate danger seems to
threaten the jaguar and maned wolf, the tapirs and ant-eaters and sloths, but the
energy of the rejuvenated Latin races points to a huge encroachment of civilisa-
tion on wild nature at no distant date.

You will understand that I am giving examples and not a catalogue even of
threatened terrestrial mammals. I have said nothing of the aquatic carnivores,
nothing of birds, or of reptiles, or of batrachians and fishes. And to us who are
zoologists, the vast destruction of invertebrate life, the sweeping out, as forests
are cleared and the soil tilled, of innumerable species that are not even named or
described, is a real calamity. I do not wish to appeal to sentiment. Man is
worth many sparrows; he is worth all the animal population of the globe, and if
there were not room for both, the animals must go. I will pass no judgment on
those who find the keenest pleasure of life in gratifying the primeval instinct of
sport. I will admit that there is no better destiny for the lovely plumes of a rare
bird than to enhance the beauty of a beautiful woman. [ will accept the plea of
those who prefer a well-established trinomial to a moribund species. But I do
not admit the right of the present generation to careless indifference or to wanton
destruction. Each generation is the guardian of the existing resources of the
world ; it has come into a great inheritance, but onlysas a trustee. We are learn-
ing to preserve the relics of early civilisations, and the rude remains of man’s
primitive arts and crafts. Every civilised nation spends great sums on painting
and sculpture, on libraries and museums. Living animals are of older lineage,
more perfect craftsmanship and greater beauty than any of the creations of man.
And although we value the work of our forefathers, we do not doubt but that the
generations yet unborn will produce their own artists and writers, who may
equal or surpass the artists and writers of the past. But there is no resurrection
or recovery of an extinct species, and it is not merely that here and there one
species out of many is threatened, but that whole genera, families and orders
are in danger.

Now let me turn to what is being done and what has been done for the
preservation of fauna. I must begin by saying, and this was one of the principal
reasons for selecting the subject of my Address, that we who are professional
zoologists, systematists, anatomists, embryologists, and students of general bio-
logical problems, in this country at least, have not taken a sufficiently active part
in the preservation of the realm of nature that provides the reason for our exist-
ence. “The first and most practical step of world-wide importance was taken
by a former President of the British Association, the late Lord Salisbury, one
of the few in the long roll of English statesmen whose mind was attuned to
science. In 1899 he arranged for a convention of the Great Powers interested in
Africa to consider the preservation of what were curiously described as the ‘ Wild
Animals, Birds and Fish’ of that continent. The convention, which did most
important pioneer work, included amongst its members another President cf this
Association, Sir Ray Lankester, whom we hold in high honour in this Section
as the living zoologist who has taken the widest interest in every branch of
zoology. But it was confined in its scope to creatures of economic or of sporting
value. And from that time on the central authorities of the Great Powers and
the local Administrators, particularly in the case of tropical possessions, seem to
have been influenced in the framing of their rules and regulations chiefly by the
idea of preserving valuable game animals. Defining the number of each kind
of game that can be killed, charging comparatively high sums for shooting-per-
mits, and the establishment of temporary or permanent reserved tracts in which
the game may recuperate, have been the principal methods selected. On these
lines, narrow although they are, much valuable work has been done, and the parts
of the world where unrestricted shooting is still possible are rapidly being limited.

“—*

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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 5

I may take the proposed new Game Act of our Indian Empire, which has recently
been explained, and to a certain extent criticised, in the ‘Proceedings of the
Zoological Society of London,’ by Mr. E. P. Stebbing, an enlightened sportsman-
naturalist, as an example of the efforts that are being made in this direction,
and of their limitations.

The Act is to apply to all India, but much initiative is left to Local Govern-
ments as to the definition of the important words ‘ game’ and ‘large animal.’
The Act, however, declares what the words are to mean in the absence of such
local definitions, and it is a fair assumption that local interpretations will not
depart widely from the lead given by the central Authority. Game is to include
the following in their wild state: Pigeons, sandgrouse, peafowl, jungle-fowl,
pheasants, partridges, quail, spurfowl, florican and their congeners ; geese, ducks
and their congeners; woodcock and snipe. So much for Birds. Mammals
include hares and ‘large animals’ defined as ‘all kinds of rhinoceros, buffalo,
bison, oxen; all kinds of sheep, goats, antelopes and their congeners; all kinds
of gazelle and deer.’

The Act does not affect the pursuit, capture, or killing of game by non-com-
missioned officers or soldiers on whose behalf regulations have been made, or of
any animal for which a reward may be claimed from Government, of any large
animal in self-defence, or of any large animal by a cultivator or his servants, whose
crops it is injuring. Nor does it affect anything done under licence for possessing
arms and ammunition to protect crops, or for destroying dangerous animals, under
the Indian Arms Act. Then follow prohibitory provisions all of which refer to the
killing or to the sale or possession of game or fish, and provisions as to licences
for sportsmen, the sums to be paid for which are merely nominal, but which carry
restrictions as to the number of head that may be killed. I need not enter upon
detailed criticism as to the vagueness of this Act from the zoological point of
view, or as to the very large loopholes which its provisions leave to civil and
military sportsmen; these have been excellently set forth by Mr. Stebbing, who
has full knowledge of the special conditions which exist in India. What I desire
to point out is that it conceives of animals as game rather than as animals, and
that it does not even contemplate the possibility of the protection of birds-of-prey
and beasts-of-prey, and still less of the enormous numbers of species of animals
that have no sporting or economic value.

Mr. Stebbing’s article also gives a list of the very large number of reserved
areas in India, which are described as ‘Game Sanctuaries.’ His explanation of
them is as follows : ‘ With a view to affording a certain protection to animals of
this kind (the elephant, rhinoceros, ruminants, &c.) and of giving a rest to
species which have been heavily thinned in a district by indiscriminate shooting
in the past, or by anthrax, drought, &c., the idea of the Game Sanctuary was
introduced into India (and into other parts of the world) and has been accepted in
many parts of the country. The sanctuary consists of a block of country, either
of forest or of grassland, &c., depending on the nature of the animal to which
sanctuary is required to be given; the area has rough boundaries such as roads,
fire lines, nullahs, &c., assigned to it, and no shooting of any kind is allowed in
it, if it is a sanctuary pure and simple; or the shooting of carnivora may be per-
mitted, or of these latter and of everything else save certain specified animals.’

Mr. Stebbing goes on to say that sanctuaries may be formed in two ways. The
area may be automatically closed and reopened for certain definite periods of
years, or be closed until the head of game has become satisfactory, the shoot-
ing on the area being then regulated, and no further closing taking place, save for
exceptional circumstances. The number of such sanctuary blocks, both in British
India and in the Native States, will cause surprise and pleasure to most readers,
and it cannot be doubted but that they will have a large effect on the preservation
of wild life. The point, however, that I wish to make is that in the minds of
those who have framed the Game Act, and of those who have caused the making
of the sanctuaries—as indeed in the minds of: their most competent critics—the
dominant idea has been the husbanding of game animals, the securing for the
future of sport for sportsmen. I do not forget that there is individual protection
for certain animals; no elephant, except a rogue elephant, may be shot in India,
and there are excellent regulations regarding birds with plumage of economic
value. The fact remains that India, a country which still contains a considerable
remnant of one of the richest faunas of the world, and which also is probably

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D.

more efficiently under the autocratic control of a highly educated body of per-
manent officials, central and local, than any other country in the world, has no
provision for the protection of its fauna simply as animals.

The conditions in Africa are very different from those in India. The land is
portioned out amongst many Powers. The settled population is much less dense
and the hold of the white settler and the white ruler is much less complete. The
possibility of effective control of native hunters and of European travellers and
sportsmen is much smaller, and as there are fewer sources of revenue, the tempta-
tion to exploit the game for the immediate development of the struggling
colonies is much greater. Still, the lesson of the extinction of the South African
fauna is being taken to heart. I have had the opportunity of going through the
regulations made for the shooting of wild animals in Africa by this country, by
our autonomic colonies, by France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Belgium, and,
with the limitation that they are directed almost solely towards the protection
of animals that can be regarded as game, they afford great promise for the future.
But this limitation is still stamped upon them, and even so enthusiastic a
naturalist as Major Stevenson-Hamilton, the Warden of the Transvaal Gevern-
ment Game Reserves, who has advocated the substitution of the camera for the
rifle, appears to be of the opinion that the platform of the convention of 1900 is
sufficient. It included the sparing of females and immature animals, the estab-
lishment of close seasons and game sanctuaries, the absolute protection of rare
species, restrictions on the export for trading purposes of skins, horns and tusks,
and the prohibition of pits, snares and game traps. Certainly the rulers of Africa
are seeing to the establishment of game reserves. As for British Africa, there are
two in Somaliland, two in the Sudan, two in Uganda and two in British Hast
Africa (with separate reserves for eland, rhinoceros and hippopotamus), two
in Nyasaland, three in the Transvaal, seven in Rhodesia, several in Natal and
in Cape Colony, and at least four in Nigeria. These are now administered by
competent officials, who in addition are usually the executive officers of the game
laws outside the reserved territory. Here again, however, the preservation of
game animals and of other animals of economic value, and of a few named species
is the fundamental idea. In 1909 I had the honour of being a member of a
deputation to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, arranged by the Society
for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire, one of the most active
and successful bodies engaged in arousing public opinion on the subject. Among
the questions on which we were approaching Lord Crewe was that of changes in
the locality of reserves. Sometimes it had happened that for the convenience of
settlers or because of railway extension, or for some other reason, proposals were
made to open or clear the whole or part of a reserve. When I suggested that the
substitution of one piece of ground for another, even of equivalent area, might
be satisfactory from the point of view of the presérvation of large animals, but was
not satisfactory from the zoological point of view, that in fact pieces of primeval
land and primeval forest contained many small animals of different kinds which
would be exterminated once and for all when the land was brought under cultiva-
tion, the point was obviously new not only to the Colonial Secretary, who very
courteously noted it, but to my colleagues.

This brings me to the general conclusion to which I wish to direct your atten-
tion and for which I hope to engage your sympathy. We may safely leave the
preservation of game animals, or rare species if these are well known and interest-
ing, and of animals of economic value, to the awakened responsibility and the
practical sense of the Governing Powers, stimulated as these are by the enthusiasm
of special Societies. Game laws, reserves where game may recuperate, close
seasons, occasional prohibition and the real supervision of licence holders are
all doing their work effectively. But there remains something else to do, some-
thing which I think should interest zoologists particularly, and on which we
should lead opinion. There exist in all the great continents large tracts
almost empty of resident population, which still contain vegetation almost
undisturbed by the ravages of man, and which still harbour a multitude
of small animals, and could afford space for the larger and ketter-known animals.
These tracts have not yet been brought under cultivation, and are rarely traversed
except by the sportsman, the explorer and the prospector. On these there should
be established, in all the characteristic faunistic areas, reservations which should
not be merely temporary recuperating grounds for harassed game, but absolute

a
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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. rf

sanctuaries. Under no condition should they be open to the sportsman. No gun
should be fired, no animal slaughtered or captured save by the direct authority of
the wardens of the sanctuaries, and for the direct advantage of the denizens of the
sanctuaries, for the removal of noxious individuals, the controlling of species that
were increasing beyond reason, the extirpation of diseased or unhealthy animals.
The obvious examples are not the game reserves of the Old World, but the
National Parks of the New World and of Australasia. In the United States, for
instance, there are now the Yellowstone National Park with over two million
acres, the Yosemite in California with nearly a million acres, the Grand Cafon
Game Preserve with two million acres, the Mount Olympus National Monu-
ment in Washington with over half a million acres, and the Superior Game and
Forest Preserve with nearly a million acres, as well as a number of smaller
reserves for special purposes, and a chain of coastal areas all round the shores
for the preservation of birds. In Canada, in Alberta, there are the Rocky Moun-
tains Park, the Yoho Park, Glacier Park, and Jasper Park, together extending to
over nine million acres, whilst in British Columbia there are smaller sanctuaries.
These, so far as laws can make them, are inalienable and inviolable sanctuaries
for wild animals. We ought to have similar sanctuaries in every country of the
world, national parks secured for all time against all the changes and chances
of the nations by international agreement. In the older and more settled coun-
tries the areas selected unfortunately must be determined by various considera-
tions, of which faunistic value cannot be the most important. But certainly in
Africa, and in large parts of Asia, it would still be possible that they should be
selected in the first place for their faunistic value. The scheme for them should
be drawn up by an international commission of experts in the geographical dis-
tribution of animals, and the winter and summer haunts of migratory birds
should be taken into consideration. It is for zoologists to lead the way, by laying
down what is required to preserve for all time the most representative and most
complete series of surviving species without any reference to the extrinsic value
of the animals. And it then will be the duty of the nations, jointly and severally,
to arrange that the requirements laid down by the experts shall be complied with.

And now I come to the last side of my subject, that of Zoological Gardens,
with which I have been specially connected in the last ten years. My friend
M. Gustave Loisel, in his recently issued monumental ‘ Histoire des Ménageries’
has shown that in the oldest civilisations of which we have record, thousands of
years before the Christian Era, wild animals were kept in captivity. He is in-
clined to trace the origin of the custom to a kind of totemism. Amongst the
ancient Egyptians, for instance, besides the bull and the serpent, baboons, hippo-
potami, cats, lions, wolves, ichneumons, shrews, wild goats and wild sheep,
and of lower-animals, crocodiles, various fishes and beetles were held sacred in
different towns. These animals were protected, and even the involuntary killing
of any of them was punished by the death of the slayer, but besides this general
protection, the priests selected individuals which they recognised by infallible
signs as being the divine animals, and tamed, guarded and fed in the
sacred buildings, whilst the revenues derived from certain tracts of land were set
apart for their support. The Egyptians were also famous hunters and kept and
tamed various wild animals, including cheetahs, striped hyenas, leopards, and
even lions which they used in stalking their prey. The tame lions were sometimes
clipped, as in ancient Assyria, and used both in the chase and in war. The
rich Egyptians of Memphis had large parks in which they kept not only the
domestic animals we now know, but troops of gazelles, antelopes, and cranes
which were certainly tame and were herded by keepers with wands. So also in
China at least fifteen centuries before our era, wild animals were captured in the
far north by the orders of the Emperor and were kept in the Royal Parks. A few
centuries later the Emperor Wen-Wang established a zoological collection between
Pekin and Nankin, his design being partly educational, as it was called the Park
of Intelligence. In the valley of the Euphrates, centuries before the time of
Moses, there were lists of sacred animals, and records of the keeping in captivity
of apes, elephants, rhinoceroses, camels and dromedaries, gazelles end antelopes,
and it may well be that the legend of the Garden of Eden is a memory of the
Royal Menagerie of some ancient king. The Greeks, whose richest men had none
of the wealth of the Egyptians or of the princes of the East, do not appear to
have kept many wild animals, but the magnates of imperial Rome captured large

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D.

numbers of leopards, lions, bears, elephants, antelopes, giraffes, camels, rhino-
ceroses and hippotami, and ostriches and crocodiles, and kept them in cap-
tivity, partly for use in the arena, and partly as a display of the pomp and power
of wealth. In later times royal persons and territorial nobles frequently kept
menageries of wild animals, aviaries and aquaria, but all of these have long since
vanished.

Thus, although the taste for keeping wild animals in captivity dates from the
remotest antiquity, all the modern collections are of comparatively recent origin,
the oldest being the Imperial Menagerie of the palace of Schénbrunn, Vienna,
which was founded about 1752, whilst some of the most important are only a few
years old. These existing collections are of two kinds. A few are the private
property of wealthy landowners, and their public importance is due partly to the
opportunity they have afforded for experiments in acclimatisation on an extensive
scale, and still more to the refuge they have given to the relics of decaying species.
The European bison is one of the best-known cases of such preservation, but a
still more extraordinary instance is that of Pére David’s deer, a curious and
isolated type which was known only in captivity in the Imperial Parks of China.
The last examples in China were killed in the Boxer war, and the species would
be absolutely extinct but for the small herd maintained by the Duke of Bedford
at Woburn Abbey. In 1909 this herd consisted of only twenty-eight individuals ;
it now numbers sixty-seven. The second and best-known types of collections of
living animals are in the public Zoological Gardens and Parks maintained by
Societies, private companies, States and municipalities. There are now more than
a hundred of these in existence, of which twenty-eight are in the United States,
twenty in the German Empire, five in England, one in Ireland, and none in
Scotland. But perhaps I may be allowed to say how much I hope that the efforts
of the Zoological Society of Scotland will be successful, and that before many
months are over there will be a Zoological Park in the capital of Scotland. There
is no reason of situation or of climate which can be urged against it. The smoke
and fog of London are much more baleful to animals than the east winds of
Edinburgh. The Gardens of North Germany and the excellent institution at
Copenhagen have to endure winters much more severe than those of lowland
Scotland, whilst the arctic winter and tropical summer of New York form a
peculiarly unfortunate combination, and none the less the Bronx Park at New
York is one of the most delightful menageries in existence. The Zoological
Society of Scotland will have the great advantage of beginning where other
institutions have left off; it will be able to profit by the experience and avoid
the mistakes of others. The Zoological Society of Londen would welcome the
establishment of a Menagerie in Scotland, for scientific and practical reasons.
As I am speaking in Scotland, I may mention two of the practical reasons. The
first is that in Great Britain we labour under a serfous disadvantage as compared
with Germany with regard to the importation of rare animals. When a dealer
in the tropics has rare animals to dispose of, he must send them to the best
market, for dealing in wild animals is a risky branch of commerce. If he send
them to this country, there are very few possible buyers, and it often happens
that he is unable to find a purchaser. If he send them to Germany, one or other
of the twenty Gardens is almost certain to absorb them, and failing Germany,
Belgium and Holland are near at hand. Were there twenty prosperous Zoo-
logical Gardens in Great Britain, they could be better stocked, at cheaper rates,
than those we have now. The second practical reason is that it is a great advan-
tage to menageries to have easy opportunities of lending and exchanging ahimals ;
for it often happens that as a result of successful breeding or of gifts on the one
hand, or of deaths on the other, a particular institution is overstocked with one
species or deficient in another.

One of the ideas strongly in the minds of those who founded the earlier of
modern Zoological Gardens was the introduction and acclimatisation of exotic
animals that might have an economic value. It is curious how completely this
idea has been abandoned and how infertile it has proved. The living world would
seem to offer an almost unlimited range of creatures which might be turned to
the profit of man and as domesticated animals supply some of his wants. And
yet I do not know of any important addition to domesticated animals since the
remotest antiquity. A few birds for the coverts, fancy water-fowl for ponds
and lakes, and brightly plumaged birds for cages or for aviaries have been intro-

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

duced, chiefly through zoological societies, but we must seek other reasons for
their existence than these exiguous gains.

Menageries are useful in the first place as educational institutions, in the
widest sense of the word. Every new generation should have an opportunity of
seeing the wonder and variety of animated nature, and of learning something
that they cannot acquire from books or pictures or lectures about the chief types
of wild animals. For that reason Zoological Gardens should be associated in
some form with elementary and secondary education. We in London admit the
children from elementary schools on five mornings in the week at the nominal
charge of a penny for each child, and in co-operation with the Educational Com-
mittee of the London County Council, we conduct courses of lectures and demon-
strations for the teachers who will afterwards bring their children to visit the
Gardens.

Menageries provide one of the best schools for students of art, for nowhere
else than amongst living animals are to be found such strange fantasies of colour,
such play of light on contour and surface, such intricate and beautiful harmonies
of function and structure. To encourage art the London Society allows students
of recognised schools of drawing and painting, modelling and designing, to use
the Gardens at nominal rates.

Menageries provide a rich material for the anatomist, histologist, physiologist,
parasitologist and pathologist. It is surprising to note how many of the animals
used by Lamarck and Cuvier, Johannes Miiller and Wiedersheim, Owen and
Huxley were obtained from Zoological Gardens. At all the more important
gardens increasing use is being made of the material for the older purposes of
anatomical research and for the newer purposes of pathology and physiology.

There remains the fundamental reason for the existence of Menageries, that
they are collections of living animals and therefore an essential material for the
study of zoology. Systematic zoology, comparative anatomy, and even morphology,
the latter the most fascinating of all the attempts of the human intellect to re-
create nature within the categories of the human mind, have their reason and their
justification in the existence of living animals under conditions in which we can
observe them. And this leads me to a remark which ought to be a truism but
which, unfortunately, is still far from being a truism. The essential difference
between a zoological museum and a menagerie is that in the latter the animals
are alive. The former takes its value from its completeness, from the number
of rare species of which it has examples, and from the extent to which its collec-
tions are properly classified and arranged. The value of a menagerie is not its
zoological completeness, not the number of rare animals that at any moment it
may contain, not even the extent to which it is duly labelled and systematically
arranged, but the success with which it displays its inhabitants as living
creatures under conditions in which they can exercise at least some of their vital
activities.

The old ideal of a long series of dens or cages in which representatives of
kindred species could mope opposite their labels is surely but slowly disappearing.
It is a museum arrangement, and not an arrangement for living animals. The
old ideal by which the energy and the funds of a Menagerie were devoted in
the first place to obtaining species ‘ new to the collection’ or ‘new to science’
is surely but slowly disappearing. It is the instinct of a collector, the craving of
a systematist, but is,misplaced in those who have the charge of living animals.
Certainly we like to have many species, to have rare species, and even to have new
species represented in our Menageries. But what we are learning to like most
of all is to have the examples of the species we possess, whether these be new or
old, housed in such a way that they can live long, and live happily, and live under
conditions in which their natural habits, instincts, movements, and routine of
life can be studied by the naturalist and enjoyed by the lover of animals.

Slowly the new conditions are creeping in, most slowly in the older institu-
tions hampered by lack of space, cumbered with old and costly buildings, oppres-
sed by the habits of long years and the traditions established by men who none
the less are justly famous in the history of zoological science. Space, open air,
scrupulous attention to hygiene and diet, the provision of some attempt at natural
environment are receiving attention that they have never received before. You
will see the signs of the change in Washington and New York, in London and
Berlin, in Antwerp and Rotterdam, and in all the Gardens of Germany. It was

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D.

begun simultaneously, or at least independently, in many places and under the
inspiration of many men. It is, I think, part of a general process in which
civilised man is replacing the old hard curiosity about nature by an attempt at
sympathetic comprehension. We no longer think of ourselves as alien from the
rest of nature, using our lordship over it for our own advantage; we recognise
ourselves as part of nature, and by acknowledging our kinship we are on the
suvest road to an intelligent mastery. But I must mention one name, that of
Carl Hagenbeck of Hamburg, to be held in high honour by all zoologists and
naturalists, although he was not the pioneer, for the open-air treatment and
rational display of wild. animals in captivity were being begun in many parts
of the world while the Thier-Park at Stellingen was still a suburban waste. He
has brought a reckless enthusiasm, a vast practical knowledge and a sympathetic
imagination to bear on the treatment of living animals, and it would be equally
ungenerous and foolish to fail to recognise the widespread and beneficent influence
of his example. ;

However we improve the older menageries and however numerous and well-
arranged the new menageries may be, they must always fall short of the con-
ditions of nature, and here I find another reason for the making of zoological
sanctuaries throughout the world. If these be devised for the preservation of
animals, not merely for the recuperation of game, if they be kept sacred from
gun or rifle, they will become the real Zoological Gardens of the future, in which
our children and our children’s children will have the opportunity of studying
wild animals under natural conditions. I myself have so great a belief in the
capacity of wild animals for learning to have confidence in man, or rather for
losing the fear of him that they have been forced to acquire, that I think that
man, innocent of the intent to kill, will be able to penetrate fearlessly into the
sanctuaries, with camera and notebook and field-glass. In any event all that
the guardians of the future will have to do will be to reverse the conditions of
our existing menageries and to provide secure enclosures for the visitors instead
of for the animals.

I must end as I began this Address by pleading the urgency of the questions
I have been submitting to you as an excuse for diverting your attention to a
branch of zoology which is alien from the ordinary avocations of most zoologists,
but which none the less is entitled to their fullest support. Again let me say to
you that I do not wish to appeal to sentiment; I am of the old school, and,
believing that animals are subject and inferior to man, I set no limits to human
usufruct of the animal kingdom. But we are zoologists here, and zoology is the
science of the living thing. We must use all avenues to knowledge of life,
studying the range of form in systematic museums, form itself in laboratories,
and the living animal in sanctuaries and menageries. And we must keep all
avenues to knowledge open for our successors, as we cannot guess what questions

they may have to put to nature.

7

British Association for the Hdvancement of
Science.

SECTION E: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

TO THE

GEOGRAPHICAL SECTION

BY
CoLtoneL Sir C. M. WATSON, K.C.M.G., C.B., M.A., R.E.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Tue last occasion upon which the City of Dundee extended its hospitality to
the members of the British Association was in 1867, forty-five years ago, and at
that meeting the President of the Geographical Section was Sir Samuel Baker,
who had then recently returned from his explorations on the Upper Nile, for
which he had been awarded the Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographical
Society, and which were of the greatest importance as regards that then little-
known river.

In the Address which he gave to Section E, Sir Samuel Baker naturally
referred at considerable length to the geography of the Sudan, and to the ques-
tion of the sources of the Nile, which had been discovered a few years pre-
viously by Captain Speke and Captain Grant, when they visited the great lake,
named by them the Victoria Nyanza, out of which flows the main branch of the
river, the fertiliser of Egypt, which, after a course of more than 3,500 miles,
pours its waters into the Mediterranean. He also spoke of the second great
lake, the Albert Nyanza, which he had himself discovered, after a long and very
arduous journey, though, perhaps naturally, he did not dwell so much on what
he had himself accomplished, as another speaker might have done. The words
he spoke are well worth calling to remembrance, and, on reading them over,
one is struck by the fact that hardly anything was then known of the country
through which he travelled, but that, thanks to him and his predecessors, Speke
and Grant, the first steps were taken which led to half-a-century of steady
progress in geographical knowledge, until now the basin of the Upper Nile
is fairly well known and fairly well mapped.

To-day I propose to take up the tale where Sir Samuel Baker had to stop, and
to give a short résumé of the story of the Sudan since those days, more especially
from the geographical point of view; but it will be necessary briefly to allude to
its history also, for, in this case, as in all others, history and geography are
closely united, and it is difficult to understand one without knowing something
of the other.

There is a considerable amount of uncertainty in the minds of some people
as to what the Sudan is, an uncertainty not without reason, as the word has an
ethnological rather than a geographical meaning. The complete word, Balad-es-
Sudan, is an Arabic expression for the country.of the black people, and there-
fore includes, theoretically, all those parts of Africa which are inhabited by
negro or negroid races. There has, however, been such a mingling of different
races that it would be difficult to say to what part of the great continent the word
Sudan should properly be applied. But, of recent years, changing from its
original ethnological meaning, it has come to be regarded as the name of a more
limited area; and perhaps the simplest definition is that it includes all the

1)

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E.

country watered by the Nile and its tributaries, as far north as the twentieth
degree of latitude, and excluding the Sahara, and the basins of Lake Chad and
the Congo on the west, and the districts watered -by the river systems which
terminate in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean on the east. Such a definition does
not, of course, altogether agree with the existing political divisions, as it includes
the eastern part of Abyssinia, Uganda, and part of the Congo State territory ;
but these divisions are in no sense geographical, whereas the basin of the Nile
is a well-defined region which contains the greater portion of what may be
regarded as the real Sudan.

There is one point as regards the geography of the Sudan which is remark-
able and perhaps unique. In former times it was to a certain extent known,
and, in the maps of Ptolemy, and of the Middle Ages, the great lakes, the
ranges of mountains, and the rivers flowing from them, are indicated in a
distinct, if not very accurate manner. But, owing to various causes, this
geographical knowledge was completely lost, and the natural features dis-
appeared from the maps. Look, for example, at Keith Johnston’s Atlas, pub-
lished in 1843, and you will see that there are no lakes shown, while the Nile
to the south of 10° North latitude is indicated as an insignificant stream. The
Sudan had relapsed into the position of a terra incognita, just as it had been in
the days of Herodotus, and Ptolemy and the other ancient geographers were
regarded as victims of their imaginations.

The revival of the knowledge of geography of the Sudan may be said to
commence with the travels of James Bruce, who visited Abyssinia in 1770,
explored Lake Tsana, and found what he believed to be the true source of the
Nile in the River Abai, which ran into the lake from the south. He examined
the place where the Blue Nile flowed out of Lake Tsana, but was not able to
follow its course through the western mountains of Abyssinia, and rejoined it at
Sennaar, about 220 miles above the junction with the White Nile. Travelling
along the south bank of the Blue Nile, he crossed it at the ferry of El Efun, and
then went on to Halfaya, north of the site of the present town of Khartum,
which at that time did not exist. Of the White Nile he says: ‘ At half-past
eight, about four miles further, we came to the village Wad Hogali. The river
Abiad, which is larger than the Nile, joins it there. Still the Nile preserves
the name of Bahr-el-Azrek, or the Blue River, which it got at Sennaar. The
Abiad is a very deep river; it runs dead, and with little inclination: because,
rising in latitudes where there are continual rains, it therefore suffers not the
decrease the Nile does by the six months’ dry weather.’~ This is all he says of
the White Nile, and he does not seem even to have taken the trouble to look at -
it, as he reports the point of junction of the two rivers as four miles north of
Halfaya, whereas it is to the south of that place. He was so convinced that
the Blue River was the one and only Nile that he regarded the investigation of
the White Nile as unimportant, and shows it on his map as a comparatively
insignificant river. Bruce’s action in this matter is a warning to explorers not
to neglect to examine something that does not fit in with their preconceived ideas.

At the time of Bruce’s visit the origin of the White Nile seems to have been
unknown to the inhabitants of the kingdom of Sennaar, a kingdom which had
been established in 1504 by the Fung dynasty, which had taken possession of
what had been the Christian kingdom of Alwah. Soba, the capital of Alwah,
was abandoned, and a new town built at Sennaar, which was made the seat of
government. The Fungs were partly of Arab and partly of negro descent,
and their kingdom extended east of the Blue Nile to the foot of the Abyssinian
Mountains, and westward as far as the White Nile, beyond which were the
independent kingdoms of Kordofan and Darfur. At that time there appears
to have been little or no traffic on the White Nile, and the marshes of the tenth
degree, inhabited by the powerful Shilluk tribes, formed an impenetrable
barrier to the south.

But, although after Bruce’s expedition to Lake 'l'sana the majority of people
seem to have accepted the Blue River as the true Nile, there were some wider-
minded people who felt that there was a secret hidden behind the marsh barrier.
One of these was a certain Mr, W. G. Browne, who made an interesting journey
to Darfur in 1793, and who records in the account of his travels that he had the
conviction that the river, of which Bruce had discovered the source, was not
the true Nile, and that he considered it a matter of great importance that the

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3

course of the more western river, i.e. the White Nile, should be investigated,
as he could not believe that its source was only two hundred leagues south of
Sennaar.

Starting from Egypt, Browne travelled with a merchant’s caravan from
Assiut, by way of the oases of Khargeh and Selima, to El Fasher, in Darfur.
Here he remained for three years, but was not able to do much in the way of
exploration, as he was thwarted by the king and people, and was not allowed
to go to Sennaar or to explore the White Nile. He collected, however, from the
accounts given him by the natives, a good set of itineraries in Darfur and
Kordofan, the first, so far as | know, compiled for the Sudan. But his efforts
to obtain information as to the source of the White Nile were not successful,
and all he was able to learn was that ten days’ journey south of a place called
Abu Telfan, the Bahr-el-Abiad had its source in forty rivers, which came
from the hills of Kumr. It seems probable that these numerous rivers were
those that form the head waters of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and that the people of
Darfur knew as little about the Bahr-el-Gebel, as the southern part of the White
Nile is called, as the people of Sennaar.

But although Browne was not able himself to solve the mystery, his name
should not be forgotten, as being one of the first in modern times to realise the
fact that the White Nile was the longer of the two rivers. His views, how-
ever, seem to have met with no support, and Bruce was supposed to have settled
the question of the sources of the Nile. The great lakes, shown by Ptolemy and
the medieval geographers, were, as I have already mentioned, erased from the
map, and the White Nile was left in peace.

During the visit of Browne to Darfur the kingdom of Sennaar had fallen
upon evil times, as an insurrection, which had commenced during the reign of
Bady, ended with the death of King Adlan in 1789, when the Fung dynasty
came to an end, and all authority fell into the hands of the tribal chiefs, who
made and removed the kings of Sennaar at their pleasure. The internecine
wars continued up to the time of the arrival of the Egyptians in the Sudan,
and greatly facilitated the advance of the latter.

This advance of the Egyptians was due to the policy of Mahomed Ali Pasha,
the Turkish Governor of Egypt, who had greatly increased his power by a
successful campaign in Arabia in 1812-18, when he succeeded in capturing Mecca
and Medina, and made himself master of the country. He then turned his atten-
tion to the Sudan, and decided to take advantage of the local troubles and to
add Sennaar and Kordofan to the Egyptian dominions. In 1820 he sent an
army up the Nile, under his son Ismail, who took possession of Dongola and the
country adjacent to the river, as far as the junction of the Blue and White Niles,
and, after seizing Sennaar, marched up the Blue Nile to Fazokl, on the
Abyssinian frontier. Kordofan was also occupied, and the capital of the new
Egyptian province was placed at Khartum, the point where the two Niles met,
which took the place of the old capital of Sennaar: but no attempt was made to
take possession of the country along the White Nile to more than about one
hundred miles south of Khartum. So little was that river known beyond this
that when Linant Pasha succeeded in sailing up the river as far as the Island
of Aba he was supposed to have arrived at the furthest point reached by a
European since the first century.

No further advance was made for a few years, but, in 1838, Mahomed Ali
decided to try to open up the White Nile, and an expedition under Major
Selim, of the Egyptian Army, succeeded in making its way through the marsh
district, and in reaching a point about 6° 30’ North latitude on the Bahr-el-
Gebel, while another expedition in 1842 got as far as Gondokoro. It was, thus
proved that the marshes were not impenetrable, and trading stations began to
be opened up, both on the Bahr-el-Gebel and the Bahr-el-Ghazal. On the former
river, however, the traders could not at first proceed further than Gondokoro, as
the rapids, which commenced a few miles south of that place, made navigation
by sailing vessels impracticable, so the merchants had to establish their depots
at Gondokoro and depend upon the natives bringing ivory from the south. To
these natives the opening of the river proved a great evil, as the legitimate
traders were soon followed by slave-hunters, who carried thousands into cap-
tivity, while killing many others. By the ill-will thus created the difficulty ot
exploration was increased. In the end, the source of the White Nile was dis-

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E.

covered not from the north, but from the south, when Captain Speke, who, in
company with Captain Burton, was exploring Central Africa from the east coast,
heard of a great lake lying to the north, and succeeded in reaching the south end
of the Victoria Nyanza in 1858. Convinced that he had found the long-desired
source of the Nile, he started on another expedition, accompanied by Captain
Grant, in 1860, and, after marching round the Victoria Lake, reached Gondokoro
in 1863. Here he met Sir Samuel Baker, who had started from Khartum in
1862, in the hope of discovering the Nile sources. The information given by
Speke and Grant showed that they had forestalled him; but he continued his
journey, and in 1864 succeeded in reaching the Albert Nyanza, the second great
lake from which the White Nile derives its water.

Thus, at length, after a lapse of many centuries, the truth of the statements
made by Ptolemy and other ancient geographers was justified, and the lakes
shown by them were restored to the map of Africa, while the White Nile was
proved to be the real Nile, and the Blue Nile was relegated to the position ot
being the most important tributary.

During the period of the travels of Speke and Baker the slave trade had been
rapidly increasing, and the traders had practically taken possession of the
country, and made themselves independent of the Egyptian authorities in
Khartum. These slave traders cared nothing for geography, and had matters
remained as they were at that time, it is probable that a State hostile to
Europeans would have been established, and all chance of further exploration
would have been lost. |

But in 1869 the Khedive Ismail, who had succeeded as ruler of Egypt in 1863,
and had obtained largely increased powers from the Sultan, decided to restore
his authority on the White Nile, and appointed Sir Samuel Baker as Governor
of the country south of Gondokoro, with instructions to establish Egyptian rale
as far as he could to the south of that point. But nature fought against Baker,
and the difficulty of sailing up the White Nile had been enormously increased
by the formation of the sudd, that strange vegetable barrier which at times
completely closes the river channel, and he did not reach Gondokoro until two
years had elapsed from the time of his departure from Khartum. There he
hoisted the Egyptian flag, and then proceeded to occupy the country to the
south. But he was not successful, as the force at his disposal was quite in-
sufficient, and, though he established a few stations on the road from Gondokoro
to Foweira, on the Upper Nile, little effective had been done when he re-
turned to Gondokoro in April 1873. Neither was he able to do much in the way
of geographical research, and, greatly to his regret, was unable to revisit the lake
which he had discovered on his first journey.

In 1874 Colonel Gordon was appointed to succeed Baker, and, leaving Khar-
tum in March, reached Gondokoro in twenty-four days, the sudd, fortunately
for him, having been cut through by the Egyptian officials only a month before
his arrival in the Sudan. “Gordon ruled the equatorial provinces until
October 1876, and during that time did much to tranquillise the country, as he
had a remarkable influence over the natives. He moved the headquarters of the
government from Gondokoro to Lado, and established a chain of posts along the
Nile to Duflé, and thence to Nyamyongo, in Uganda, about eighty miles below
the Ripon Falls. He also placed two steamers and two sailing-boats on the
Albert Lake to facilitate communication. Gordon devoted much attention to the
geography of the district, and prepared a map of the White Nile from Khartum
to Urondogani, superior to any that had preceded it. This map included a plan
of the Albert N Yyanza, based on surveys made by Gessi and Mason, both of whom
circumnavigated the lake. Mason reported the existence of the river, now
called the Semliki, entering the lake from the south, but was unable to enter it,
as the water was too shallow for his vessel.

Soon after his arrival at Gondokoro Gordon fully realised the difficulty of
keeping up communication with Egypt by the Nile, and requested the Khedive
to send an expedition to Formosa Bay, about a hundred miles north of Mombasa,
on the east coast of Africa, with the view of opening up a road towards the Nile.
The route he thought of was a little north of that now followed by the Uganda
railway ; but at the time he made the proposal the country was entirely unknown,
and the difficulties would have been much greater than he anticipated. The
idea, however, came to nothing, first, because the expedition was sent to the

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5

River Juba, on the border of Somaliland, which was much too far to the north,
and, secondly, because it was ordered away by the British Government, which
considered that it was encroaching on the territories of the Sultan of Zanzibar.

At the time that Gordon was establishing Egyptian authority in the equatorial
provinces the Khedive’s dominions were being extended by the conquest of
Darfur, and the occupation of the province of Harrar, with its port at Zeila, in
the Gulf of Aden. An excellent reconnaissance of Kordofan was carried out by
Colonel Prout, of the United States Survey Department, in 1875, and a recon-
naissance of Darfur was made by Colonel Purdy, another American in the
Egyptian service, so that considerable additions were made at this period to the
geographical knowledge of the Sudan.

But soon afterwards there was a serious setback to the Khedive Ismail’s
projects of conquest. Having acquired Massowah, Tajurra, and Zeila, on the Red
Sea, he sent an expedition into Abyssinia in 1875, which was cut to pieces at
Gundet, on the road to Adua, and another larger force sent in the following year
was utterly defeated by the Abyssinians and had to retreat, with great loss, to
Massowah. Some surveys were made by the American officers on the staff of
the Egyptian Army, but these expeditions did but little for geography, and their
fate was the precursor of the destruction of Egyptian power in the Sudan.

Colonel Gordon returned to Egypt in December 1876, and early in the follow-
ing year was appointed Governor-General of the whole Sudan, a post he held for
nearly three years, years of incessant labour, during which, much to his regret,
he was able to do little for geography: as, though he travelled many thousands
of miles through his vast territories, his whole time was occupied with questions
of administration. He was wonderfully successful in his dealings with tie
inhabitants, and had he been left alone for a few years, the history of the Sudan
would have been different; but he was constantly urged to send money to Cairo,
money which he could not obtain without following the example of his pre-
decessors and oppressing the inhabitants. This he would not do, and resigned
in August 1879, when he was succeeded by an Egyptian Pasha, who revived the
old bad customs of the country. His appointment led to the result that might
have been anticipated, and in 1881 the revolt led by Mahomed Achmed, the
Mahdi, broke out, and the Egyptians were driven out of the Sudan. Then the
country was completely closed to Europeans, and nothing further could be done
in the way of geographical discovery until the defeat of the rebels at Omdurman
in 1898. Now, fortunately, peace is restored, a peace which, it may be hoped,
will be a lasting one.

To geographers, of course, the existing state of affairs is very satisfactory,
as it will undoubtedly lead to an increase in our knowledge of the Sudan
and its resources. That knowledge is still very limited, much more so than
many people are aware, and there are vast regions which still stand in need of
careful examination. Maps, especially small scale maps, are misleading, and
convey the impression that more is known than is really known. Take, for
example, the case of the Blue Nile, one of the most important tributaries of the
great river. Of this, the head waters, Lake Tsana, first carefully examined by
James Bruce, are fairly well known, and a good reconnaissance of this lake was
made by Mr. C. Dupuis, of the Egyptian Irrigation Department, in 1903, a copy
of whose interesting report is attached to the valuable Report on the Basin of
the Nile, made by Sir W. Garstin in 1904.

The course of the Blue Nile from Famaka on the Abyssinian frontier to Khar-
tum is also fairly well known, although not yet accurately surveyed. But of the
river between Lake Tsana and Famaka, and of its course through the mountains
of Abyssinia, our knowledge is most elementary, and it is doubtful whether the
line as marked upon maps is correct. Here is a chance for a resolute explorer
to distinguish himself by making a really good reconnaissance of this part of the
river, and following it carefully from Lake Tsana to Famaka. But it would
probably be rather an arduous task, and there would be many difficulties,
natural and human, to overcome.

The question of the Blue Nile is only one of the many geographical problems
to be solved in the Sudan. The upper waters of other tributaries, such as the
Atbara, the Rahad, the Dinder, and the Sobat, and the mountains from which
they flow, are also little known, and will require years of exploration, while
great areas of the level country of the Nile basin remain unvisited and unsur-

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E.

veyed. This can be well realised by anyone reading Sir W. Garstin’s excellent
report already mentioned, in which he gives an admirable summary of the
hydrography, and deals with the important question as to the manner in which
the water of the different tributaries of the Nile can best be utilised for improv-
ing the agricultural capacity both of the Sudan and of Egypt. Among other
projects with this object he proposes the cutting of an entirely new channel of
more than two hundred miles in length, so as to allow the waters of the Bahr-el-
Gebel to leave the existing channel at Bor, eighty miles north of Gondokoro, and
to rejoin the Nile near the mouth of the Sobat below the sudd district; but, as
he justly points out, the country through which this new channel would pass is
practically unknown, as the whole of the area lying between the Bahr-el-Gebel,
the Bahr-ez-Zaraf, and the Sobat is a terra incognita,

Sir W. Garstin points out that there is a great loss of water from the Bahr-
el-Gebel between Gondokoro and Bor, for which he cannot account, and this is
another point requiring to be investigated. Reading his remarks upon this
subject reminds me of the time when I was assisting in General Gordon’s survey
of the Nile, when on this part of the river, at a point about fifty miles north of
Gondokoro, I noticed a considerable branch leaving the Bahr-el-Gebel, and going
apparently in a north-easterly direction. The native pilot told me that it was
reported by the inhabitants to join the Sobat. It was impossible to investigate
the truth of this statement, which, at the time, seemed rather doubtful, but it
is interesting to note that a high authority like Sir W. Garstin records that the
Nile loses a considerable volume .of water near this place. .

Whether the proposal of Sir W. Garstin to make this great canal will ever be
carried out is doubtful; for my own part, I am inclined to think that, having
regard to the amount of work to be done in the Sudan, it would be better to
leave the Bahr-el-Gebel alone for the present. The cost of a canal such as that
suggested would be very large, and if funds were available it would be better to
spend them on a railway from the Sobat southwards. Sooner or later the rail-
way, which now runs some distance south of Khartum to. the point where it
crosses the White Nile into Kordofan, will be extended, and in process of time
will reach the Sobat. Meanwhile it might be worth while to select a point on the
Sobat suitable for a bridge, and to make that point the northern terminus of a
line of railway, leading southwards to Gondokoro, and later, on to Uganda.
Communication between Khartum and this terminus would, for the present, be
kept up by the White Nile, which, with the exception of one or two places, is
navigable for the whole year.

Looking at the question of the Sudan from the geographical point of view,
there has been a wonderful increase of knowledge since the last meeting of the
British Association in Dundee: but, on the other hand, there is a larger amount
of work yet to be done before the whole of the vast area will have been satisfac-
torily surveyed, and it must be remembered that the Sudan Government has
claims of greater importance at present than that of carrying out a complete
trigonometrical survey. But exploration will no doubt be carried on year by
year, and the blank spaces on the map will gradually be filled up. Meanwhile
we must wish Godspeed to the British officers in the Sudan, who are carrying
out a great work of civilisation, and, at the same time, adding to the geographical
knowledge of the world.

Leaving the Sudan, I would like to allude to a very important geographical
undertaking which has made considerable progress during the past’ year! This
is the production of the international Map of the World on the scale of z554550-
a project which has been under the consideration of the leading geographers of
the important countries for more than twenty years, since it was first proposed
at the International Geographical Congress held at Berne in 1891. The question
was discussed at succeeding Geographical Congresses, but did not take definite
shape until the meeting held at Geneva in 1908, when a series of resolutions
dealing with the subject were drawn up by a Committee composed of dis-
tinguished men of many nations, which was appointed to formulate rules for the
production of the maps, so as to ensure that they should be prepared upon a
uniform system.

These resolutions were approved at a general meeting of the Geneva Con-
gress, and were forwarded by the Swiss Government to the British Government
for consideration, whereupon the latter issued invitations to the Governments of

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7

Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, Spain, and the United
States of North America, asking them to nominate delegates to act as the
members of an International Committee to meet in London and debate the
question. This Committee assembled at the Foreign Office in November 1909,
and Colonel S. C. N. Grant, C.M.G., then Director-General of the British
Ordnance Survey, was appointed President. The proceedings were opened by the
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Charles Hardinge, G.C.M.G.,
now Lord Hardinge, who, in his address, referred to the progress that had
already been made with regard to the International Map, and expressed the
hope, on behalf of the British Government, that the great undertaking might
be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

The main business before the Committee was to settle on the mode of execu-
tion of the map, especially as regards the size of the sheets, so as to ensure that
adjacent sheets, published by different countries, should fit together; and also
to settle upon the symbols, printing, and conventional signs to be used, in order
that these should be uniform throughout. A series of resolutions, embodying
the decisions arrived at concerning these various points, was approved and drawn
up in English, French, and German, the first of these languages being taken as
the authoritative text. As the map was to embrace the whole surface of the
globe, the method of projection to be adopted was, of course, a very important
consideration, and, after due deliberation, it was decided that a modified poly-
conic projection, with the meridians shown as straight lines, and with each
sheet plotted independently on its central meridian, would prove the most satis-
factory.

The surface of the sphere was divided into zones, each containing four degrees
of latitude, commencing at the equator, and extending to 88° North, and 88°
South latitude. There were thus twenty-four zones on each side of the equator,
and these were distinguished by the letters A to V north, and A to V south.
This fixed the height of each sheet. For the width of the sheets, the surface of
the sphere was divided into sixty segments, each containing six degrees of
longitude, and numbered consecutively from one to sixty, commencing at longi-
tude 180°. This arrangement made each sheet contain six degrees of longitude
by four degrees of latitude; but, as the width of the sheets diminished as they
approached the poles, it was decided that. beyond 60° North, or 60° South, two
or more sheets could be combined. Each sheet could thus be given a clear
identification number defining its position on the surface of the globe, without it
being necessary to mention the country included in it, or the latitude and longi-
tude. For example, the sheet containing the central part of England is called
North, N. 30.

In order to ensure that the execution of all the maps should be identical, a
scheme of lettering and of conventional topographical signs was drawn up and
attached to the resolutions; and it was decided that a scale of kilometres should
be shown on each sheet, and also a scale of the national measure of length of
the country concerned. As regards the representations of altitude it was
arranged that contours should be shown at vertical intervals of a hundred metres,
or at smaller intervals in the case of very flat, and larger in the case of steep
ground, the height being measured from mean sea-level, as determined in the
case of each country.: while the levels of the surface of the country were to be
indicated by a scale of colour tints, the colours being green from 0 to 300
metres, brown from 300 to 2,500 metres, and pnurple above 2,500 metres. In the
same manner the depths of the ocean and of large lakes were to be indicated by
varying tints of blue, so as to show intervals of 100 metres. In order to ensure
uniformity in the scale of colours to be used, a copy of it, as approved by the
Committee, was included in the plate of topographical symbols.

The whole scheme was thoroughly well worked out, and great credit is due to
the members of the International Committee for the manner in which they
carried out their difficult task. Since the meeting of the Committee in 1909 the
preparation of the sheets, in accordance with the principles decided upon, has
been taken in hand in several countries, and a number of these have been issued,
which give a good idea of what this great map, the largest ever contemplated,
will be like. These sheets deserve to be carefully studied, and will doubtless
be the subject of considerable criticism, as there are several points which seem
worthy of examination.

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E.

In the first place, it is for consideration whether it would not have been better
if the colour scheme for representing differences of altitude had been omitted,
as it is doubtful whether the advantage of the result gained is commensurate
with the increased cost of printing the colours. And one naturally asks for what
purpose is the map intended. Is it for the use of skilled geographers, of whom
there are a comparatively small number in each country, or is it for the instruc-
tion of ordinary people? If it is for the latter, it is to be feared that the colour
scheme will give rise to erroneous impressions. Compare, for example, Sheet
North, M 31, of France, with Sheet South, H 34, of part of South Africa. In
the former, as the greater part of the country shown is less than 300 metres above
the sea, the general colour of the sheet is green, while in the latter, as nearly the
whole of the country included has an altitude of more than 300 metres, the map
is for the most part brown. This to the less educated man will probably convey
the idea that, while France is a fertile country, South Africa is a desert. The
fact, too, that the darker tint of green represents the lower level and the lighter
the higher, while, in the case of the brown, the lighter represents the lower and
the darker the higher, and, in the case of the purple, the relative strength of the
tints is again reversed, is rather confusing.

There is another point as regards the colour scheme which might be noticed.
that is, that it is not the same on different sheets. For example, the scale of
tints adopted in Sheet North, O 30 (Scotland), North, M 31 (France), and
North, K 35 (Turkey), do not correspond. In the Scotch map the brown colour
commences at an altitude of 200 metres, in the French at 300 metres, and in the
Turkish at 400 metres. There may be some reason for this, but it appears not
to be in accord with the resolutions of the Committee. Another reason for
omitting the colour scheme for altitudes is that it might be better to keep colour
work for other purposes, such as indicating political divisions, as there can be
little doubt that so good a map as this, when completed, will be largely used for
many purposes. It might be better that on a map of this small scale only the
horizontal features, such as coast lines, river courses, railways, roads, and the
position of towns should be shown, while to represent height graphically tends
to obscure the former.

Another criticism I would venture to make is that the resolutions of the
Committee appear to have been drawn up on the supposition that the whole
world has been accurately surveyed, and no attempt seems to have been made
to distinguish between those regions of which the maps are based on triangula-
tion, such as England and parts of Europe, and the countries of which complete
surveys have not yet been made. As the construction of the map proceeds and
sheets are prepared of parts of the world our knowledge of which is imperfect,
this want will become more pressing, but it is noticeable even with regard to the
sheets already published. It is one of the evils of cartography that where any-
thing is shown on a carefully engraved map it comes to be regarded as true, and,
if it afterwards turns out to be erroneous, it is not easy to get it altered.

The scale of the map, jg2555,appears to have been wisely chosen, as it is
sufficiently large to give an adequate amount of detail, while, at the same time,
the sheets will not be unduly numerous. Of course, for an international map a
cadastral scale was essential, although for national maps a scale based upon the
national system of measures is more convenient, as, for example, in the United
Kingdom, where the scales of one inch and six inches to the mile are better. than
scales of zgAs55 and 55355 would have been. They are more suited for the
majority ot individuals, and an ordinary foot-rule can be used for measuring
distances, instead of having to take them off with a pair of dividers from the
printed scale on the map.

Looked at from the general point of view, there can be no doubt that the
International Map is a most important and valuable undertaking. It is satisfac-
tory that such a leading part in the matter has been taken by the British officers
of the Royal Engineers and by the Royal Geographical Society.

In speaking of this map I have referred to the advisability, if not the neces-
sity, of distinguishing between what is accurately and what is inaccurately
known, and this brings me to another matter of considerable interest, the pre-
paration of maps based upon the observations and information collected by
explorers in unknown or little known countries. To these explorers, some of
whom have not been trained in geographical science, a large amount of detail

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

shown upon modern maps is due, and it is only a small proportion of the land sur-
face of the globe that has, up to the present, been surveyed in a scientific manner.

It is therefore of the greatest importance that the best value possible should
be obtained from the work done by explorers, and this in the past has not
always been sufficiently attended to, though during the last few years it is better
understood. The people who stop at home in comfortable ease do not sufficiently
realise the difficulties under which the conscientious traveller works and gathers
together information about the country he passes through. Formerly, he
generally had to work out his own observations and compile his own maps, but
now conditions in this respect have greatly improved, and when he brings home
his observations, notes, and sketches he can hand them over to some body, such
as the Royal Geographical Society, by whom they will be put in shape in a better
manner than he could do it for himself. One has heard of an explorer in a little-
known country sitting up all night after a hard day’s work, working out his
astronomical observations, and trying to put his rough surveys into shape. He
would have done better to have gone to sleep and prepared himself by a good
vest for the next day’s journey. In fact, it would be better if an explorer never
looked at the figures of an observation after he had recorded them, or read over
the notes of his past work, confining himself to recording what he has actually
seen day by day as accurately as circumstances permitted, and carefully dis-
eating what he really saw from what he thought he had seen, or what he had

eard.

It would be easy to adduce instances of the errors which have arisen from
the neglect of such precautions. Perhaps one of the best known is that I have
already alluded to, when James Bruce, a careful explorer, because he had made
up his mind that the Blue Nile was the real Nile, passed the White Nile without
taking the trouble to examine it, and recorded it as being a comparatively
insignificant river. Then, there was the case of Sir Samuel Baker, who, having
reached the shores of the Albert Nyanza with great difficulty, relied too much
on what he was told by the natives, and showed it on his map as extending many
miles to the south of the equator. But great responsibility rests also upon those
who have the task of compiling a map from the notes of an explorer, and the
greatest care has to be taken to show only what is really known, and not what is
uncertain. Geographers, whether in the field or in the drawing office, should
always hold up before themselves a standard of accuracy higher than it is always
easy to live up to.

Geography under its more ancient name of geometry is, of course, the mother
of all sciences, although at the present time geometry has got a more narrow
meaning, and is perhaps regarded by some as independent of geography, although
really only a branch of it. The study of the earth upon which they lived was
to the ancient nations the most important of all studies, and it is interesting to
trace how astronomy, mathematics, geology, and ethnology are all so interspersed
with geography that it is difficult to separate them. It is satisfactory to note
how from the very first the British Association has always recognised the great
importance of geography, since the first meeting of the Association at Oxford in
1832, when Sir Roderick Murchison, so well known to fame, acted as President
of the Geographical and Geological Section. These two sciences remained united
in the same section until the meeting at Edinburgh in 1850, when Sir R. Murchi-
son was again the President. But, at the next meeting at Ipswich in 1851, they
were separated, and while Geology remained as the subject of Section C,
Geography, on account of its great importance, was made the subject of Section
E, and the science of ethnology was united with it. Sir R. Murchison was the
first President of the new Geographical Section, and was afterwards President
no fewer than six times of Section E, showing the great importance attached
by him to the study of the science of Geography. May I express the hope that
the Presidents of the Section will endeavour in future to follow, however humbly,
in the footsteps of that leader of science.

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of Science.

SECTION F: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICAL SECTION

Sm HENRY H. CUNYNGHAME, K.C.B.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

ALTHOUGH the theories of Auguste Comte as to the progress of the sciences are
in many respects open to question, yet he made two contributions of especial
value to our ideas on that subject. In the first place, he was one of the earliest
writers who maintained that the social and, political sciences are subject to laws
just as exact, though more complicated, as the laws which govern the physical
sciences; and, in the next place, he formulated the celebrated principle of the
three phases of thought. According to this view all sciences commence with a*
theological stage, they pass through a metaphysical stage, and end by becoming
positive.

In a primitive state of civilisation man attributes all phenomena to the
exercise of volition; in a more advanced stage of thought he endeavours to
attribute them to ‘virtues’ or ‘agencies.’ The third stage is reached when he
ceases to speculate, and uses general principles rather as modes of classifying
phenomena than of explaining them. An example may be taken from theories
regarding the nature of fire. At first, fire both celestial and terrestrial wherever
it occurred was believed to be due to the direct action of a god. Under Aristotle
and the Greeks the phenomena of heat, burning, and dryness were attributed
to a principle, one of the characteristics of which was a tendency to fly up to
the circle of the stars. But in modern times, owing to the labours of the
chemists and physicists, it has been explained as a violent motion of molecules.
Of its ultimate character we are still ignorant, but the study of heat has passed
into a positive stage, in which great progress has been made in classifying its
properties and extending our knowledge of them.

The history of ontology is an example of a study which for centuries was in
the theological stage, but which emerged from that condition and entered the
metapnysical stage chiefly through the labours of the schoolmen. From their
time onwards it steadily evolved along the lines laid down by the realists on
the one hand, and the conceptualists on the other, until an attempt at a union
of their systems was made by Hegel. But even Hegelism is only metaphysical.
We know nothing of what he means by his absolute, which might be the god of
Averrhoes or Spinoza on the one hand, or the matter of La Mettrie on the other.
The philosophy of the absolute is mere metaphysics.

Positive philosophy or science is at best a classification of phenomena; of
ultimate causes we can know nothing. Our knowledge, as is finely said by Byron,
is but an exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance;
though immense progress in knowledge of phenomena is made by the transaction.

One of the signs that a science has passed into the positive stage is that
it has been subjected to the laws of mathematics. Mechanics, physics,
chemistry, and electricity have long since been treated mathematically.

F

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F,

Biology has only recently begun to receive mathematical treatment.
Politics, economic sciences, sociology, anthropology, and tianguage have,
however, hitherto firmly resisted attempts to bring them under mathematical
guidance. In some cases attempts have been made, as, for example, when
that great mathematician Professor Sylvester endeavoured to formulate a
mathematical poetry. Unfortunately he put his theories into practice, but the
mathematical poems which he composed were not such as to encourage the
adoption of his methods. The above sciences have, indeed, passed out of the
theological stage. We no. longer ascribe political maxims to the direct com-
mands of God, nor social phenomena to direct Divine interposition. But all the
social sciences are for the most part still in the metaphysical stage. The
doctrine of the divine right of kings has only disappeared in order to be re-
placed by the doctrine of the divine right of majorities. Yet from a positive
point of view neither of these stands on a footing much firmer than that of: the
other. The ‘duty of obedience to authority’ and the ‘right of resistance’ are
in the same condition. The ‘right to work,’ ‘the right to live,’ *the right to a
living wage,’ ‘the right to the vote’ are all metaphysical propositions assumed
as axiomatic by various energetic writers and speakers, and which are usually
advanced with a dogmatism proportioned to the uncertainty of their foundation.
Yet on what basis do they rest? One might with equal cogency declare for
‘the right of the stronger to destroy the weaker,’ ‘the duty to improve the race
by permitting and encouraging the forcible elimination of the unfit.’ Or again,
we might arcue that animals have a right to be protected against attempts made
upon their life or property. and to be considered in any scheme for the pro-
motion of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. ‘This problem is said
to have perplexed Bentham in his later years. For by a negation of the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul it was difficult for him to see why they
were not to be put on a par with man. Or, again, take Proudhon’s aphorism :
‘Everyone has a right to that which he has made. Who made the land ?—God.
then, provrietor, begone.’ Even if the major premiss were granted, it is easy to
see that the proprietor might logically refuse to give up the land till God came
Himself to ask for it, and decline to surrender it to one who had no more
share in making it than the person actually in possession. Another example
is the metaphysical aphorism that every right involves a corresponding duty,
so that if T have a right to do a thing it is the duty of others concerned in the
action to let me do it. This axiom seems at first sight to have a certain amount
of plausibility. But does it follow, from the fact that I have a right to kill
my ducks, that it is their dutv to come and be killed? Nor in this case does
the reason addressed to the ducks by the girl in the nursery rhyme appear likely
to be very convincing to them. Thus also the right to individual property, the
right to an equality ‘of enjoyment, the right to ‘an equality of opportunity, the
right of an individual to be considered as an end in himself, the duty of an
individual to be considered only as part of an organised society, are al] meta-
physical assumptions having no firm positive basis. Equally baseless is the
axiom that wherever the State enjoins a duty, as on a parent to educate his
children, the State ought to pay for it. Or that a local authority contributing
funds to an object has a right in every case to interfere with their administration.
Yet these are mere chance specimens of the political dogmas that have for years
been flying about, and which emphasise the undoubted fact that politics and
social science have not yet entered the positive stage of thought.

In what stage is political economy? It appears still the battle-ground of
opposite schools. Some there are who tell us that it has ‘gone to Saturn.’
But this only raises the question what is meant by going to Saturn? Ts it meant
that the so-called laws of economics are not laws at all, and that the whole
pretended science is built on false foundations? Or is it meant that those
engaged in the practical politics of the country have resolved to legislate in
defiance of the laws of economics, and to settle the problems of free trade
and protection, the taxation of fixed and movable property, and the regulation
of aoe, as though these problems were not subjected to any natural laws
at all?

The latter position would, of course, be particularly dangerous if it turned
out that there were laws, and that those laws were being ignored. For example,

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 3

there is a school of biologists who contend that acquired characteristics are
never inherited, and that therefore all education and improvement of environ-
ment can only be useful inasmuch as they promote the generation of the best
types—-but that, unscientifically used, these and other means of improvement
may, by promoting the survival of the most unfit, only damage humanity. The
truth or falsehood of this statement is no concern of this Section of the Asso-
ciation; only one may be permitted the remark that, if it is really a law
applicable to the human race, and if it is ignored, it seems most probable that
the law will remain here on earth, and that it is not the law, but the race that
ignores it, which will go to Saturn. Or, to take an example more directly con-
nected with Political Economy, it is alleged by the students of that science
that there are certain laws which regulate wages. ‘hey are not altogether in
agreement upon the laws, still less upon the mode of expressing them, or upon
the modifications which are necessary to make them true. ‘his is only natural
in a science that is only just entering upon a positive stage. But 1 suppose
most economists would agree that (provided suitable meanings are given to the
words) * Wages in a free market depend upon the demand and supply of labour.’

A Legislature, wishing to remedy social inequalities and evils, might resolve
to render the market no longer free—to impose a minimum wage, or to put a tax
upon wages, or in other ways to regulate them by statute. And _ legislation
might go so far as to render wages wholly dependent on scales fixed by
authority or by custom. Or, again, a powerful combination, either of em-
ployers or of workmen, might unite to fix rates of wages and render it impossible
in practice for any other rates to be paid. Systems established by these means
might be wise or foolish, beneficial or injurious. But could it be said that
the authors of them had succeeded in sending political economy to Saturn?
Certainly not. -They might have rendered inapplicable that chapter of Political
Ecgnomy which deals with price as fixed by exchange in a free market, but only
to bring the case under the next chapter, entitled ‘Price as fixed under con-
ditions of monopoly.’ The Political Economy would be there surely enough,
with its laws, and with their consequences for those who ignore its teachings.

1 am not, mind, arguing against such attempts. Man is a social animal, not
merely an individual unit, and it may be wise and desirable that certain of his
dealings should be regulated by conditions depending on legal regulations
rather than on the free play of demand and supply. I only point out that if
political action be taken in the field of economics such action will, whether
the authors of it wish it or not, be governed by the laws of economics, and
those who purpose such action must consider what effect it will have on the
flow and investment of capital, the demand for commodities, and, in fact, duly
take into account the whole problem. For, if they do not, it is not the laws
of supply and demand that will go to Saturn. Again, before settling a scheme
of taxation we ought to study the cases in which a tax levied on one class falls
on another, as, for instance, a tax intended to be paid by landlords, which
really falls upon their tenants; of taxes levied on tenants which fall on their
landlords; of taxes levied on producers that can be shown ultimately to fall on
consumers, and of taxes levied upon commodities that can be shown to fall on
the workmen by whom they are produced. For a tax often resembles an
arrow shot into the air; though apparently aimed in a definite direction it may
fall one knows not: where, obedient to the laws of the incidence of taxation,
just as an arrow in its flight is subject to the inflexible laws of air resistance,
friction, and gravity. Or, again, when we prohibit work of children or young
persons, to whom such work is detrimental, we must consider not only one side
of the question; but we must also take into account the loss that may ensue
in wages, and the consequences to the nutrition of the family, and also indirectly
to the growth of population.

In fact, in all these and similar cases, unless we possess the power of
making the sun and moon stand still in their courses, we must have regard to the
operation of natural laws, from which we can no more escape than we can from
the air in which we breathe.

I may perhaps pass by the criticisms or even attacks on Political Economy by
those whose schemes of action appear to contravene its principles. It has been
called a ‘dismal science.’ But to a bankrupt, arithmetic is a dismal science,

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F.

while to a successful trader it may be a source of daily satisfaction. Sciences
cannot be dismal or wicked; it is only men that can be joyful or desponding, or
good or bad. ;

Having thus endeavoured to the best of my ability to protest against the
idea that Economics is not a science, but a mere collection of copybook
aphorisms that may be used at random like quack medicines, I should like, with
your leave, to endeavour to establish its claim to come among the exact sciences
by the surest test that can be applied—namely, its capability of being demon-
strated by means of geometry and mathematics.

I know here that I touch on delicate ground. I fear that there are many
to whom the very name of geometry is repellent. The cause of this generally
is that in their youth mathematics was presented to them in a totally indiges-
tible form. It was like a vegetable diet is to a cat—the intestine was
unfitted to assimilate it. I would, however, ask such persons, if any of them
be here, to exercise their sense of fairness). How many boys who are totally
incapable of comprehending any poetic idea are subjected to a steady course
of English poetry in the Board Schools, and of Latin poetry in the public
schools. The process is painful, but it is believed to do them good. Seeing
then that I am, so to speak, in the pulpit for a short time, I will ask those
who dislike mathematical reasonings patiently to listen in their turn while I
try to expound the doctrines of supply and demand in a geometrical form—
a form familiar, I have no doubt, to many of my audience, but very useful to
illustrate my present theme; a form first designed by Cournot, but subsequently
developed by other workers.

I will commence by saying that for the comprehension of this method no
previous acquaintance with mathematics or geometry is necessary. One can

work straight from first principles, and this mode of considering the problem
has been so helpful to many persons that I believe it will find favour in the
eyes even of opponents. Moreover, in so far as it is correct, it certainly helps
to prove the proposition with which I started, that economics may claim to have
entered upon the positive stage.

Everyone in this room is no doubt acquainted with the machine known as a
barograph or registering barometer. There is one on the table. It is con-
structed as follows: A vertical cylinder covered with white paper revolves
once in a week. A light arm is hinged on to a series of hollow elastic circular
chambers, from which the air has been pumped out. As the pressure'of the
atmosphere varies, the air chambers dilate and contract, carrying the arm with
them. The arm carries a pen which marks with a dot on the paper the height
of the barometer at any time. As the paper moves the dot is drawn out into
a line, which gives a continuous record of barometric variations. This diagram
is a picture of one of the records.

Now, a little consideration will show what a useful diagram we have here.
If we were to attempt to give the information contained in it in words we
should have to say something like this. On Monday at 0 a.m. the barometer
stood at 28.8 inches; during the morning of Monday it rose until about 2 P.M.,
when it remained stationary for three hours. It again steadily rose in the
evening, until at midnight it stood at 29.9 inches (fig. 1). On Tuesday it still
continued to rise till midday, when it again experienced a fall, &e., &c. Or, if

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5

the same results were put into arithmetical form, we should have quite a column
of figures. ;

But this diagram shows us the height of the barometer at any time, and
all its fluctuations. Its life history for the week and the law of its variations
are obvious at a glance, in a way which no words could convey to us. So great
are the advantages of this method that barographs are printed in many of the
newspapers.

But the use of such curves is not confined to the registration of atmospheric
pressure or temperature. They may be used for all purposes. Thus, for

AUN

1870 1910
Fie. 2.

example, we might have a curve indicating the variation in successive years of
the number of marriages per head of the population.

Line 1 (fig. 2) shows the proportion of marriages to population from 1870 to
1910. The advantages of this synoptic view are obvious. But they become
more obvious still when we add other curves. For instance, line 4 shows the
price of wheat in various years, line 3 the price of coal, line 2 the average of
money wages, and line 1 the number of marriages per head of the population. A
simple inspection shows that these curves rise and fall sympathetically, and
proves beyond doubt that the facts they represent are causally connected.

How eloquently this diagram represents on a space that in a printed book
may be three inches square, a series of relations which would take three or four
pages to describe even imperfectly in words. And would any description in
words enable us to follow the changes like this diagram? The diagram, in fact,

Y| Money

1@) M x
High a:

plays the part that maps play in geography and when duly appreciated becomes
as valuable as maps of countries.

We may use similar diagrams in the exposition of economic facts. It was,
however, reserved for Cournot to show that the use of curves might go further
still. Not only might they be used to display statistical facts, but they might
also be used to solve problems. I will endeavour to illustrate this very in-
genious and interesting development.

it is a well-known fact that in certain departments of industry the cost of
making an article increases in proportion to the number produced. The growth
of corn is a familiar example of this principle. The principle depends on two

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F.

facts: (1) that corn can be grown in some places with a less expenditure of
capital and labour than in others; and (2) that the quantity of the more
favourable land is limited. Whence it follows that growers will first have
recourse to the most fertile land; afterwards to that which is less fertile.
If we were acquainted exactly with the economics of corn-growing we could
represent this state of things in any country at any given time by a curve like a
barograph.

Along the line OX (fig. 3), instead of the progressive days of the week, we
should mark off successive quantities of corn, and the vertical height of the curve
above any given quantity would represent the price per quarter of production

Y, Money

=
WD, oa

O x
Fic. 4.

of that part which was produced at greatest expense. Thus, the cost of pro-
duction of the first and most easily grown quarter would be, say 18s., of the next
18s. 1d., and so on. And it would be evident that the total cost of the whole
of the wheat grown would be obtained by adding all these prices together,
that is to say, by the area of the curve OMBA; for an area is but the sum
of all its constituent parallel lines, just as the total of a bill for goods is an
addition of all its items.

Let us now dismiss this corn-growing graph from our minds and turn to
another side of the question. Let us consider the various prices which con-
sumers would give for various quantities of corn if they could get these and no
more. I do not mean the market prices of the quantities, but what might be
called the famine prices, which they would give rather than not have the corn.
If we draw a corn-consumers’ graph it will obviously be a descending curve,
for the more they can get the less they will value successive portions. In fact,

5 §

O M x
Fia. 5.

if the supply of corn were unlimited the surplus would be used first to feed
animals, then to consume as fuel, then as manure, and at last have to be
destroyed as a nuisance.

The curve would be of the form shown in fig. 4.

The contemplation of these curves of corn will no doubt suggest the ques-
tion whether if we had them both we could tell what the market price would be.
For it seems obvious that if we know all the conditions, both of demand and
supply, we ought to be able to foretell the market price. This is the case
and ean be easily done. All that is necessary is to superpose the curves, as is
done in fig. 5.

We then see at once that PM must represent the market price of corn per

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7

quarter at a given epoch, and OM the quantity produced in a standard time.
For if more than OM were grown it could only be sold at a loss; if less the grow-
ing of corn would produce an abnormal profit, which would soon cause an expan-
sion, so as to bring the quantity grown and sold up to the maximum that could
be profitably produced.

These diagrams have therefore done more than present a state of facts;
they have solved a problem, just as could be done by a pair of algebraic
equations.

Moreover, other illustrations can be derived from fig. 5. By drawing the
series of lines shown in fig. 6 meanings can be given to various parts of the

b

O Mm 4
Breas.

diagram. The area NPMO represents the total price paid for the corn; the
area APMO represents the total cost of growing; the area APN, which is
the difference between them, represents the surplus profit obtained from the use
of the better lands, or, in other words, rent; the area BPMO represents the
total enjoyment the consumer derives from the corn, expressed in terms of
money; and since NPMO is the price he pays for it, BNP is the surplus
enjoyment he gets by obtaining corn for less than he would have given for it
had there been a famine.

Let us go a little further. Suppose that a tax were laid on corn, and that all
corn grown in a country were subject to an excise duty like that now levied on
the manufacture of spirits. Suppose the duty were 5s. a quarter, and to simplify

O M M %

the problem suppose no corn came in from the outside. Then the curve APS
(fig. 7) would be pushed upwards all along its length by 5s., and assume a
position A’P’S’. And notice that the price would rise not by 5s., but by some
amount rather less than 5s. For M’P’—MP must always be less than the upward
movement of the curve APS. Again, the rent would be decreased, for the area
N’P’A’ is less than NPA. The amount grown would decrease from OM to
OM’. The proceeds of the tax would be OM’ times five shillings, and the
consumers surplus of enjoyment would have considerably diminished. This
is all obvious enough if you look at the.curves. But I want to ask whether,

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F.

without a curve, you could have got all that so quickly by logical cogitation ?
I agree it could have been done by hard thought, but what a help the diagram
has been in thinking it out. It is like drawing a genealogical tree when you are
thinking out some complex problems of family relationship. A simple inspection
of the figure also shows that an ad valorem tax on rent would not increase price
or diminish production.

Again, what is a monopoly? A monopoly is simply a power of stopping
production at a point short of that which it would reach under conditions of
free production, sale and distribution. You can stop production by means of
statutes regulating quantities produced, or by combinations to limit production, or
to limit the supply of labour produced, or by statutes regulating the employment
of capital, or by statutes fixing minima of wages, or in various other ways. If you
exercise the power, then the state of things shown in fig. 8 comes into play. The
quantity produced is reduced to OM’. The price rises from PM to P/M’, the
surplus producers’ profit (including rent) rises from ANP to AQP’N’. So that
profits, interest, and wages increase, but the consumers’ surplus. enjoyment goes
down from NPB to N’P’B. The limitation of output plays a far larger part
in the regulation of prices than is commonly supposed. ‘Those who are engaged
in the manipulation of the meat trade, and the bread trade, and the petroleum

industry, the supply of machinery or other articles, do not usually advertise
the means they have taken to limit supply, nor do trade unions publicly descant
upon the means they adopt to limit the labour of adults or apprentices. It is
no part of our business here to discuss the necessity or the legitimate limits of
such limitations. All that I am here to do is to show how useful diagrams are
in explaining their effects. :

The monopoly controller seeks, of course, to make the area AQP’N’ a
maximum, arranging his price just in the way a milliner would do who had to
cut the biggest square she could out of a remnant of cloth. How much reduc-
tion of output and increase of price will the market bear’ is the question that
all monopolists present to themselves.

I could go on with these curves through a great variety of questions. They
become especially interesting where applied to show the effects of tariffs upon
export and import trade, but I must forbear.

My principal object has not been to introduce to the notice of the audience a
subject already known to many of them, but rather to use it as an illdstration
of the truth that national economics is subject to laws—laws which, though
complicated, are as exact and unfailing as the laws of physics, chemistry, or
engineering, and which, if neglected by political engineers, will as certainly
bring the State to ruin as the miscalculation of a mechanical engineer in design-
ing a boiler, or of a civil engineer in designing a bridge. Whence, then, instead
of consigning economics to Saturn, let us study it, not in a metaphysical or
Aristotelian manner, using question-begging epithets, or, on the other hand, in
the manner of some moderns, as for example Ruskin, by replacing reason by
sentiment; but let us approach it in the spirit of positive science.

Brifish Associafion for fhe Advancement of
Sctence.

SECTION G: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

ENGINEERING SECTION

Proressor ARCHIBALD BARR, D.Sc,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

One of the great engineers of the past, Leonardo da Vinci, prefaced a collection
of observations on various themes, including the Mechanical Arts, with the
remark : ‘Seeing that I cannot choose any subject of great utility or pleasure,
because my predecessors have already taken as their own all useful and neces-
sary themes, I will do like one who, because of his poverty, is the last to arrive
at the fair, and not being able otherwise to provide himself, chooses all the things
that others have already looked over and not taken, but refused as being of little
value. With these despised and rejected wares—the leavings of many buyers—I
will load my modest pack and therewith take my course.’ These words describe,
with some approach to exactitude, the position in which I find myself, and may
form a fitting introduction to an Address that will be discursive rather than
systematic, and perhaps more critical than constructive.

It may be less true to-day, than it was four hundred years ago, to say that all
important matters concerning the existing state of the mechanical arts have been
dealt with in spoken or written addresses. Each year there might be found
sufficient subject-matter for a general survey of the ground that has been covered
or a sketch of what lies before us. But each important advance is nowadays
recorded as soon as it is made, and I do not feel that I have any special call
to assume the role of the historian, nor can I claim any right to don the mantle
of the prophet.

A President of this Section, who is not disposed to deal with the general
aspects of the progress being made in the department of science allotted to us,
can usually find a large enough subject for his address within the limits of that
part of our wide field with which his own work has been more particularly
identified, and it might be expected that I would devote my address to a dis-
cussion of the conclusions at which I have arrived during thirty-six years of
practice and experience in the teaching of mechanical science. But so much has
heen said of late on the training of engineers, and so many divergent and even
irreconcilable opinions have been expressed regarding the lines such training
should follow, that I feel sure I shall be relieving the apprehensions of some of
my audience if I begin by stating that I do not propose to inflict upon you a
discourse on that threadbare theme. There are limits to the endurance even of
those who practise a profession well calculated to inculcate the virtues of patience
and forbearance.

When we have as President of the Section one who has broken new paths in
the exploration of the territory assigned to us, or to whose labours the fruitful-
ness of some corner of the domain may be chiefly attributed, we would hardly
be disposed to tolerate the omission from his Address of an account of his own

Ga

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G.

special work, in investigation or in practice, and the developments to which it is
leading. But while, no doubt, every worker is the chief authority on something
or other, the plot he cultivates may be so restricted in area, and its products may
bulk so little in the general harvest, as to form no suitable topic to engage the
attention of his fellow-workers on such an occasion as this.

When an engineer leaves practice in the great, and takes to the devising and
production of what are usually referred to specifically as ‘ scientific instruments ’”
(though all machines and mechanical appliances may properly be classed as such),
his colleagues in the profession may be disposed to look upon the change as a
degeneration of species. Naturally I am not disposed to accept such a verdict.
Remembering the careers of those who did most in the founding of the various
branches of present-day practice, I am quite prepared to accept as applicable
another phase borrowed from the language of the biologist, and to let it be called
a ‘reversion to a more primitive type.’ But instead of dealing with the narrow
branch of applied science with which my own practice is chiefly connected,
I prefer to utilise the short time at my disposal to make some observations upon
a larger and more general theme. The thesis which I propose to uphold may not
fall very obviously within the scope of the original aims of the British Associa-
tion, but it has, at least, an intimate beafing on the work of those who are con-
cerned with the applications of mechanical science.

Tredgold’s oft-quoted definition of engineering as ‘the art of directing the
great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man’ may well
be taken, and often has been taken, as a text upon which to hang a discourse on
the importance of the profession to which many of us belong, the leading part it
has played in the process of civilisation, and the dependence of the world to-day
on its activities. But the words suggest failures as well as achievements, and
responsibilities no less than privileges. The definition suggests that the engineer
not only fails in his vocation if he does not accomplish something for the use and
convenience of man, but further, that he acts contrary to the spirit of his pro-
fession if he directs the sources of power in Nature to the unuse’ or incon-
venience of man; and surely we must understand by ‘man’ not the engineer’s
immediate client but mankind in general. The works of the engineer are to
be used by some people; they have to be endured by all.

Taking the highest view of our calling—and surely we do not hold that ours
is in any sense a sordid or selfish vocation—the engineer fails in the fulfilment
of his duty in so far as his works are detrimental to the health, or destructive
to the property of the community, or in so far as they are unnecessarily offensive
to any of the senses of those who are compelled te live with them. There has
been too great a neglect of such considerations. The medical practitioner is held
to be negligent of his duty if he acts solely in the-immediate interests of his
patient, and does not take due precaution to guard against the spread of disease
or the offence of the community by the exhibition of unsightly forms. We
should take as high a view of our responsibilities.

In his Presidential Address to the Association last year, Sir Wm, Ramsay
said that the question for the engineer has come to be not ‘can it be done?’
but ‘will it pay to do it?’ The answer to this question, in respect to any
particular proposal, depends on the width of view we take in answering two pre-
liminary questions: whose interests are we to consider? and, what do we mean
by paying? Of course, there are limits that must be set in answering each of
these; my present contention is that these limits are usually much too narrowly
drawn. A road surveyor may save a few pence or shillings to his county council
by leaving a piece of newly metalled road unrolled—because the clock strikes the
hour for retiring—and may thereby cause expense, amounting to pounds, it may
be to hundreds of pounds, through damage to motor-cars or the laming of horses
(not to speak of loss of life or limb), to the users of the road, who are, after all,
the clientéle he is there to serve. Does it pay? The authorities of a city will
spend large sums on the adornment of the streets with stately and ornate
buildings, and on the purchase of works of art—and rightly so, though com-
paratively few of the citizens can appreciate or even give themselves the chance

' We have no word to denote very clearly the negative of use, as the term is
here applied; wnuse may serve for the present.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3

of appreciating them—while they will tolerate or even be directly responsible for
the running on these same streets of quite unnecessarily ugly and noisy tramcars,
and congratulate themselves on the drawing of a paltry income from the display
of hideous advertisements that are constantly before the eyes of the whole com-
munity. Does it pay thus to separate «esthetic from utilitarian demands and
interests ?

It is too much to assume that engineers could meet all the reasonable demands
of their immediate clients without producing, at least temporarily, secondary
effects that may be of inconvenience to some members of the community. Bacon,
indeed, said that ‘ The introduction of new Inventions seemeth to be the very
chief of all human actions. Inventions make all men happy without either
Injury or Damage to any one single Person,’ but Bacon was a philosopher, and
dealt with ideals rather than with hard facts, and in his times inventors had
not yet begun to dominate all the elements of our physical environment. Had
he lived to-day beside one of our country roads he might have had something to
say, in another key, regarding motor-cars and dust; or had his lot been cast in
the proximity of a great centre of industry he might have modified his conviction
of the universality of the benefits conferred by the inventor. He might even
have been disposed to agree with a literary man of to-day who is reported as
asserting that ‘The universal and blatant intrusion of Science into our lives
has resulted in a total disappearance of repose.’ Isolated and unqualified state-
ments such as those I have quoted are like proverbs—you can always find two
that are directly opposed. The truth lies about midway between these extremes,
or rather there are aspects of the facts in regard to which one is an approach
to the truth, and aspects in which the other has some justification. Our aim
should be to make Bacon’s dictum have more of truth and Mr. Stephen Cole-
ridge’s assertion have less foundation in fact. And the outlook seems to me to
be a very hopeful one, though to be able to take an altogether favourable view
of the tendencies of the present time, one must be an optimist of the true
order— One who can scent the harvest while the snow is on the ground.’

When we examine into the immediate causes of the injuries and inconveniences
that result from our activities we find that they are due in all, or almost all,
eases to failures rather than to successes. The more completely the engineer
achieves the primary end of his work the less is the damage or injury that can
be laid to his charge. If it can be shown that this is a very general law, as IL
think it can be, we may look forward to the elimination, as a direct result of
progress in the mechanical arts, of the nuisances and inconveniences for which,
in some measure at least, we must accept responsibility. And not only so, but
the converse will be equally true—the more we keep in view the removal or
avoidance of anything that can cause offence, the more rapidly we shall advance
in the attainment of the primary ends at which we aim. Consider, by way of
example, the nuisance to which I have referred, and of which we hear so much—
the raising of dust by motor-cars. I shall not discuss the debated question as to
how far the motor-car produces dust, or only distributes it, nor shall I deal in
detail with the possible remedies. We hope to have a paper on the subject at
this meeting from one of our leading authorities. For my present purpose it
suffices to point out that it is no part of the function of a road surface to fritter
itself down into dust under traffic of any kind. ‘ The ideal road would be one that
would not wear at all, and the nearer we approach this ideal of a permanent
road surface, the less will be the inconvenience caused, not only to those respon-
sible for the upkeep of the road, but to the general public. And conversely, the
more attention we give to the devising of a dustless road the more rapid will be
our advance towards the provision of one best suited for all the purposes which a
road is intended to serve. We had dusty roads before the motor-car came into
being, but the demand that is being forced upon the engineer to eliminate this
nuisance is leading to an improvement of our roads for all users. The inventors
of the automobile will yet merit the thanks even of those who, bemoaning the
blatant intrusion of science into our lives, may discard the railway train and the
motor-car and take to the stage-coach of their grandfathers with a view to the
recovery of some of the lost repose.

Again, the combustion of fuel does little harm to anyone; it is the imper-
fection of the combustion that is the main cause, almost the sole cause, of
injury to health, to property, and to the amenity of populous centres. Of course

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G.

one knows that smokeless combustion is not necessarily, nor always, the most
economical, but that is only because we have not yet learned how to use fuel in
anything like a perfect manner. But all the tendencies at the present time are
towards improvement, and the more attention we pay to the elimination of the
smoke nuisance the more rapid will be our progress in the economical use of one
of the most valuable of our inheritances. It is therefore clearly the duty oi
every engineer who has to do with power or heat production—for the credit of
his profession and even in the interests of his immediate clients—to consider the
use and convenience of all who can be affected by the work for which he is
responsible. The time is not far distant when the direct burning of bituminous
coal in open grates will be looked upon as not only a source of serious harm but
as a culpably wasteful practice. Great progress has been made in processes for
the partial distillation of coal by which a free burning and quite smokeless fuel
is prepared and valuable by-products (so-called) are conserved. If all engineers
concerned with the design and application of plants in which coal is used had a
due sense of their responsibilities to the community, progress would have been,
and would to-day be, much more rapid; and economies would be effected that
would, in themselves, amply justify the application of more scientific methods of
utilising the constituents of a very complex material, which we are too apt to
look upon as merely a convenient source of heat—plentiful enough and cheap
enough, as yet, to be used in a most wasteful manner. It will not be to the
credit of our profession if it should require restrictive legislation not only to
prevent a gross interference with the health and comfort of. the community and
the amenities of our centres of industry or of population, but to efiect economies
in the utilisation of the chief of the sources of power which it is our function to
direct to the best advantage of all concerned.

In other directions also we see that progress towards economy is leading to
a reduction, and possibly to the entire elimination, of all the nuisances associated
with the older methods of power and heat production. The great improvements
that have recently been made in producer plants and gas engines have rendered
out of date, as regards economy, at least the smaller sizes of steam plants which
are so fruitful a source of injury and inconvenience to the community; and we
now have engines of the Diesel, and the so-called semi-Diesel, types that can
utilise natural oils, and oils obtained in the distillation or partial distillation of
coal, not only with an efficiency hitherto unattained in heat-engines, but * without
injury or damage to any one single person ’—except possibly the maker ot
inferior* plants.

Present indications point to the coming of a time, in the near future, when
the power and heat required for industrial and domestic purposes will be dis-
tributed electrically, in a perfectly inoffensive manner, from large central
stations; and even at these stations there will be no pollution of the atmosphere
that could give the most sensitive of critics any just grounds of complaint
against the intrusion of science into our lives. In his Presidential Address to
the Institution of Electrical Engineers in November 1910, Mr. Ferranti dealt
in a most masterly way with this, which is undoubtedly the greatest of the
many schemes at present before the engineering profession. ‘That address reads
like a chapter from a Romance of Utopia, but unlike most of the forecasts that
have been presented to us of ideal conditions in a world of the future, the system
which Mr. Ferranti sketches out, and advocates with so much knowledge and con.
vincing argument, does not depend for its reasonableness on the postulation of a
perfected humanity. It would not only provide vastly improved conditions of
life for the community as a whole, but it would satisfy the more selfish aims of
the users of power and the makers of machinery, by increasing the economy of
production and stimulating the demand for mechanical appliances. No doubt
there may be some who will hold that to commend any worthy scheme, to those
who might carry it out, by an appeal to their selfish interests is an altogether
immoral kind of argument. I do not think so. Advancement of the race through
* My typist in transcribing a rather illegible draft of this passage substituted
for the adjective I have here used the less restrained, but perhaps equally
appropriate one, ‘infernal,’ but I noticed this in time to amend the emenda-
tion. I ‘had no intention to speak so candidly of any of the works of members of
my own profession.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 5

benefits to the individual is, at least, not inconsistent with nature’s method of
securing progress. However much we may desire to develop a purely altruistic
spirit in men of all classes we must meantime make the best of human nature as
it is, and recognise that the rapidity of our progress toward better conditions of
life will be in proportion to the advantages that each advance can promise to
those who would be immediately concerned in its realisation.

It is just a hundred years since passengers were first carried on the Clyde in
a mechanically propelled ship, and to-day—when they are not too completely
obscured by smoke—we can see the successors of the ‘Comet’ plying on that
river with power plants of greatly superior overall efficiency but showing little
advance in regard to the combustion of the fuel. Had the emission of smoke
from river craft been prohibited years ago, there is little doubt that engineers
would have let few days pass without arriving at some solution of the problem
of inoffensive power production, and the demand for economy would have looked
after itself. How much better it would be were engineers to take the wider
view of their duties and responsibilities to which I have referred, and realise
that they are acting contrary to the true spirit of their profession when they
produce appliances that pollute the atmosphere for miles around to the hurt and
inconvenience of those whose ‘use’ they are intended to serve. But this year a
ship has left the Clyde that we hope may be the forerunner of a new race which
will attain a higher efficiency that any of the direct descendants of the ‘ Comet,’
and that will ply their trade without inconvenience to man or beast, who can
claim some right to be permitted to enjoy an unpolluted atmosphere and the
measure of sunshine which Nature—sparingly enough in those regions—intended
to provide.

But there are injuries which we may inflict upon the community other than
those to health and physical comfort. Every one, even the least cultured, has
some sense of the beautiful and the comely, and is affected by the aspects of his
environment more than he himself can realise. The engineer, then, whose works
needlessly offend even the most fastidious taste is acting contrary to the spirit of
his profession, at its best. There has been far too great a disregard of esthetic
considerations in the everyday work of the engineer-—we usually take a too
exclusively utilitarian view of our calling. We should not be prepared to accept,
as referring to the arts we practise at their best, the distinction drawn by a
philosophical writer between ‘the mechanical arts which can be efficiently
exercised by mere trained habit, rote, or calculation,’ and ‘the fine arts which
have to be exercised by a higher order of powers.’* And I think it can be
shown that a greater regard for artistic merit in our designs would not neces-
sarily lead to extravagance, but, in many cases, would conduce to economy and
efficiency. It is at least true—and much less than the whole truth—that greater
artistic merit than is commonly found in our works could be attained with no
sacrifice of structural fitness, or of suitability for the purposes they are designed
to serve.

There was a time when engineers made desperate attempts to secure artistic
effects by the embellishment (?) of their productions with features which they
believed to be ornamental. Fortunately the standard of taste has risen above
and beyond this practice in the case of most members of our profession and most
of our clients. We are all familiar with illustrations of philosophical instru-
ments, and other mechanical contrivances, of the early times, that vied in
lavishness of adornment—though not in artistic merit—with those wonderful
astronomical appliances that were carried—as trophies of war!—from Pekin to
Sans Souci. Many of us can remember a time when the practice had not
altogether disappeared, even in the design of steam engines, lathes, and other
products of the mechanical engineer’s workshop. I well remember in my appren-
ticeship days, the building of a beam engine that was a triumph of ingenuity
in the misapplication of decorative features. In place of the mildly ornamented
pillars and entablature of Watt’s design, there was provided, for the support of
the journals of the beam, a pair of A frames constructed in the form of
elaborately moulded Gothic arches flanked by lesser arches on each side, while
the beam itself, and many other parts, were plentifully provided with even less

> Enc. Brit., eleventh edition, article ‘ Art.’

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C.

appropriate embellishments borrowed from the art of the stone-mason. It is
some consolation to remember that the clients for whom the engine was built
were not of this country, and that the design itself was not a product ot the
workshop that was favoured with the contract to produce this amazing piece of
cast-iron architecture. We have all seen wrought-iron bridges the inattractive
features of which were concealed by cast-iron masks—in the form of panelling,
or of sham pillars and arches with no visible means of support—that not only
have no connection with the structural scheme, but suggest types of construction
that could not, by any possibility, meet the requirements. Structures of this
kind remind one of the pudding which the White Knight (with good reason
when we remember the characteristics of his genius) considered the cleverest
of his many inventions. It began, he explained, with blotting-paper, and when
Alice ventured to express the opinion that that would not be very nice, he
assured her that though it might not be very nice alone she had no idea what a
difference it made mixing it with other things—such as gunpowder and Sealing-
wax,

There are, and must always be, wide differences of opinion regarding what is
good or bad in matters of taste, but we may go so far in generalisation as to say
that we can admire the association of elements we know to be incongruous only
in compositions that are intended to be humorous. ‘ All human excellence has
its basis in reason and propriety; and the mind, to be interested to any
efficient purpose, must neither be distracted nor confused.’* But to be able to
judge of the propriety or reasonableness of any composition we must have some
knowledge of the essential qualities and relationships of its component parts, and
excellence cannot depend upon an appeal to ignorance. We can quite imagine
that the White Kmght’s pudding would appeal as an admirable and most
ingenious concoction to one who lacked a knowledge of the dietetic value of
blotting-paper and was willing to take for granted the excellence of gunpowder
as a spice and of sealing-wax as a flavouring. No artist would be bold enough to
include a polar bear or a walrus in the composition of a picture of the African
desert, nor be prepared to consider as a legitimate exercise of the artistic
imagination the depicting an Arab and his camel wending their weary way across
the Arctic snows. He would recognise the incongruity, and might even realise
that it is only a lack of imagination or of true inventive power that could lead
anyone to resort to such measures for the securing of a desired colour scheme.
These are lengths to which even artists will not go in the arrangement of
elements in a composition. But an artist will secure a colour scheme at which
he aims by the introduction into his landscape of a rainbow in an impossible
position, or of impossible form or dimensions, or with colours arranged according
to his own fancy, though in this there is a much more essential unreasonableness.
A polar bear might be transported to the desert, and an Arab might conceivably
find his way to the regions of snow and ice, but a rainbow cannot wander from
the place assigned to it by Nature, nor can it have other than the ordained form
or dimensions or sequence of colours. No artist would paint a figure holding a
candle and make the light fall on the side of the face remote from the source ;
but he will, and usually does, paint the moon illuminated on the side remote
from the sun. Why? Simply because he has not before his mind the essential
absurdity of the scheme, if indeed he knows why the moon shines, Artists who
deal with nature in any of its aspects, may be commended to ‘mark, learn, and
inwardly digest’ Whistler’s definition of their calling: ‘ Nature contains the
elements in colour and form of all pictures . . . but the artist is born to
pick and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be
beautiful.’ Whether or not we are to understand that Whistler intended to
include an accurate knowledge of physical facts and phenomena in what he calls
science, he cannot have meant anything less than sense.

So in regard to the arts of construction, we may say that Mechanical Science
provides the elements of all structures, and the craftsman—he he called
engineer or architect—is born to pick and choose, and group with science, these
elements, that the result may be useful—-and not devoid of grace,

The only valid excuse for such departures from the fit and rational in painting

* Mr. Duppa’s ‘ Life of Michelangelo.’

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7

or in structural design, as those which I have instanced, is ignorance on the part
of the designer of the nature of the elements he employs, or a lack of skill to
devise a possible or reasonable arrangement of details that will secure the general
effect he desires.

Tt may almost savour of sacrilege to quote, in this connection, from the writ-
ings of that ‘ Wild, wilful, fancy’s child’ the story of whose eight short years of
life and literary work Dr. John Brown has given in his charming ‘ Pet Marjorie’
—a record of perhaps the shortest human life that has formed the subject of a
biography. But the lines are too pertinent to my purpose to be withheld, and
the frankness of the confessions they contain, of a childlike limitation of artistic
power, may be commended to those who practise either the fine arts or the arts
of construction, and feel compelled to ‘trust to their imagination for their facts,’
or to resort to the association of incompatible details for lack of knowledge, or
of ability to attain their ends by more reasonable means.

Marjorie writes of the death of James IT. :—

‘He was killed by a common splinter,
Quite in the middle of the Winter ;
Perhaps it was not at that time,
But I could find no other rhyme !’

‘Quite in the middle of the winter,’ describes August 3, 1460 a.D., with no wider
licence than we find assumed in the works of more experienced, if less candid,
artists and craftsmen. Again in her sonnet to a monkey—written, we must
remember, when she was six or seven years of age—she acknowledges the com-
pelling power of an artistic aim :-—

‘ His nose’s cast is of the Roman :
He is a very pretty woman.
IT could not get a rhyme for Roman
So was obliged to call him woman.’

It may seem that I have wandered widely from my text : those who found
discourses on texts usually do! But there is, or ought to be, a closer connection
than is usually recognised between the work of the engineer and that of those
to whom we usually restrict the title of artist. There was no great gulf fixed
between the fine arts and the utilitarian arts in earlier times. Some at least .
of those to whom we owe the greatest advances in the fine arts were eminent
also in the arts of construction. We may claim such men as Michelangelo,
Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci as masters in the arts of construction as wel]
as in those with which their names are usually associated. The separation of the
beautiful and the useful is quite a modern vice. But much that I have ventured
to say in the digression—if such it be—is applicable, with little or no alteration
of terms, to the work of our own profession. The architect or engineer who,
for the sake of effect, fills the space between the flanges of a beam or girder with
slabs of stone, or cast-iron pillars and arches, that could not fulfil the function
of a web, exhibits just the same lack of skill as Pet Marjorie owns up to—
shall I say?—like a man. Such practices have no ‘ basis in reason and propriety,’
and the employment of such ‘decorative features’ is certainly not a ‘ grouping
of elements with science.’ It is said that ‘The highest art is to conceal art’ ;
the lowest in matters pertaining to our profession is to conceal ill-devised con-
struction with false and senseless masks. But what I have said has, I think,
a sufficiently obvious bearing on the mechanical arts—I need not further point
the moral.

There is an old maxim to the effect that ‘the designer should ornament his
construction and not construct his ornament.’ This is an admirable rule so far
as it goes, but it should be subordinated to a higher rule, that he should orna-
ment his structure only if he lacks the skill to make it beautiful in itself. A
structure of any kind that is intended to serve a useful end should have the
beauty of appropriateness for the purpose it is to serve. It should tell the truth,
and nothing but the truth, and if its character be such that it can be permitted
to tell the whole truth, so much the better. It should be beautiful in the sense
in which we commonly use the term with respect to a machine—we call a
mechanical device beautiful only if it strikes us as accomplishing the end for

/

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G.

which it is designed in the simplest and most direct way. Our works—like the
highest creations in nature—should be beautiful and not beautified. ‘ Beautified ’
should be considered a vile phrase when applied to a work of construction, no
less than when used to characterise a fair Ophelia. Artists accept the human
form, at its best, as the highest embodiment of grace and beauty, but there is
not a curve in the figure that is not the contour of some structural detail that
is there for a definite purpose. The practice of resorting to extraneous adorn-
ments to minimise crudities of structural scheme had its rise—if I mistake not—
in the comparatively recent times when culture and taste were at their lowest.
It is specially characteristic not only of earlier times, but of the earlier stages
of the design of any particular product. It has already disappeared in some
cases and will continue to disappear from the practice of the arts of construction
as skill and taste develop. I have already alluded to the abandonment of
ornament in the design of machines, and I think there can be no one, with any
sense of the fit and pleasing, who does not approve this change in practice.
The stage coach and horses of former times -were lavishly decorated—the
carriage of to- day is more graceful and pleasing in virtue of the simple elegance
of its lines. In the best domestic architecture of to- day we see the same ten-
dency to trust for effect, more and more, to an artistic grouping of the lines
and masses of essential parts and the cradual abandonment of purely decorative
features, without and within. There was a time when the hulls and riggings and
sails of ships were lavishly ornamented; now even the figurehead—the last
remnant of barbaric tast ared ; and do we not find in a full-rigged
ship of to-day (or wenend ty estes one should say) a grace and dignity that
no extranecus embellishments would enhance? From the racing yacht the
designer has been forced, by the demand for efficiency, to cast off every weight
and the adornments that so beset the craft of earlier times, with the result
that there is left only a beautifully modelled hull, plain masts, and broad sweeps
of canvas, and we can hardly imagine any more beautiful or graceful product
of the constructive arts. These examples will serve to illustrate the contention
that the attainment of the highest efficiency brings with it the greatest artistic
raerit. But in the development of the yacht of to-day, through many stages,
the designer has been forced, from time to time, to strive to combine grace with
efficiency. Selection on the part of clients must have eliminated ungraceful
forms when more beautiful ones could be found, and therefore the advance has
been rapid. J think I may appeal to this illustration to support the further
contention that advance in efficiency may be helped and not hindered by keeping
in view an cesthetic as well as a utilitarian aim. Further illustrations will occur
to anyone who has studied the development of design of structures or machines.

It is a matter of constant remark, and with justice, that steel bridges, as a
class, are much less pleasing to the eye than those of stone. The reasons for
the contrast in artistic merit are not far to seek. The building of stone bridges
is an ancient art, and survival of the fittest, and selection—even with little
creative skill on the part of the designers—would have led to the development of
‘vnes having, of necessity, at least the elegance of fitness. But further, this art
has come down through the times to which I have referred when artistic and
utilitarian aims had not yet been divorced, in the practice of the crafts; and
further still, the practice of building in stone has been in the hands of architects,
as well as of engineers, and architects are expected to be artists, and are trained
as such. On the other hand, construction in steel isa very modern art, and it
has been in the hands of engineers who usually neglect, if they do not despise,
the study of the fine arts. But why have architects, with their artistic training,
not succeeded in producing structures in steel as admirably as those they design
in stone? Partly, no doubt, because they are hampered by tradition. They
have not yet fully realised the difference in spirit that must characterise fit
designs in the newer and the older materials. No one can be an artist in any
material, the possibilities and limitations of which he has not fully mastered.
Again—if a common engineer may venture the criticism—the architect, as a rule,
has not sufficiently mastered the science of construction, and has been too much
addicted to taking the easy course of adopting a decorated treatment instead of
striving to secure elegance of structural scheme as such; and decoration, at least
on anything like traditional lines, is wholly incompatible with the best possi-
bilities of steel as a structural material. Progress is being made in the art of

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

designing efficient and graceful structures in metal, but the best results can only
be attained by a designer who has a thorough scientific and technical knowledge
of the properties of steel and the processes of its manipulation, on the one hand,
and cultured artistic sense and capacity on the other. These should not be con-
sidered as appropriate equipments for separate professions.

There are many, however, who have a rooted conviction that structures
in steel can never be so beautiful as those in stone. This I believe to be alto-
gether wrong. It arises partly from the crudity of design that characterises most
of the steel structures that have yet been erected, and partly from preconceived
notions as to what is fitting in proportions and massiveness. We can quite
imagine that a native of the Congo region whose notions of the proportions suit-
able and comely for a quadruped were founded on his familiarity with the
hippopotamus would, at first sight, consider the racehorse sadly lacking in sub-
stance and solidity, but, in time, he might come to recognise some measure of
gracefulness in a creature that has been developed to meet requirements that
hitherto he had not fully considered.

Mr. Wells has said in his ‘New Utopia, ‘the world still does not dream
of the things that will be done with thought and steel when the engineer is
sufficiently educated to be an artist, and the artistic intelligence has been
quickened to the accomplishment of an engineer.” But we need not postpone,
till the advent of a complete Utopia, the full realisation of our duty to practise
our profession as far as in us lies, with due regard for the material interests and
the xsthetic susceptibilities of all who can be affected by the works for which
we are responsible. ©

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Bsrifish Association for fhe Advancement
of Science.

SECTION H: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

ANTHROPOLOGICAL SECTION

Proressor G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., Ca.M., F.RB.S.,

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

In a recent address Lord Morley referred to ‘ evolution’ as ‘ the most overworked
word in all the language of the day’; nevertheless, he was constrained to admit
that, even when discussing such a theme as history and modern politics, ‘we
cannot do without it.’ But to us in this Section, concerned as we are with the
problems of man’s nature and the gradual emergence of human structure,
customs, and institutions, the facts of evolution form the very fabric the threads
of which we are endeavouring to disentangle; and in such studies ideas of evolu-
tion find more obvious expression than most of us can detect in modern politics.
In such circumstances we are peculiarly liable to the risk of ‘ overworking’ not
only the word evolution, but also the application of the idea of evolution to the
material of our investigations.

My predecessor in the office of President of this Section last year uttered a
protest against the tendency, to which British anthropologists of the present
generation seem to be peculiarly prone, to read evolutionary ideas into many events
in Man’s history and the spread of his knowledge and culture in which careful
investigation can detect no indubitable trace of any such influences having been
at work.

I need offer no apology for repeating and emphasising some of the points
brought forward in Dr. Rivers’ deeply instructive Address; for his lucid and
convincing account of the circumstances that had compelled him to change his
attitude toward the main problems of the history of human society in Melanesia
first brought home to me the fact, which I had not clearly realised until then,
that in my own experience, working in a very different domain of anthropology
on the opposite side of the world, I had passed through phases precisely analogous
to those described so graphically by Dr. Rivers. He told us that in his first
attempts to trace out ‘ the evolution of custom and institution’ he started from
the assumption that ‘where similarities are found in different parts of the
world they are due to independent origin and development, which in turn is
ascribed to the fundamental similarity of the workings of the human mind all
over the world, so that, given similar conditions, similar customs and institutions
will come into existence and develop on the same lines.” But as he became more
familiar with the materials of his research he found that such an attitude would
not admit of an adequate explanation of the facts, and he was forced to confess
that he ‘ had ignored considerations arising from racial mixture and the blending
of cultures.’

I recall these statements to your recollection now, not merely for the purpose
of emphasising the far-reaching significance of an Address which is certain to be
looked back upon as one of the most distinctive and influential utterances from
this presidential chair; nor yet with the object of telling you how, in the course

H

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

of my investigations upon the history of the people in the Nile Valley,’ I also
started out to search for evidences of evolution, but gradually came to realise
that the facts of racial admixture and the blending of cultures were far more
obtrusive and significant. My intention is rather to investigate the domain of
anthropology in which unequivocal evolutionary factors have played, and are
playing, a definite réle; I refer to the study of Man’s genealogy and the forces
that determined the precise line of development his ancestors pursued and ulti-
mately fashioned man himself.

I suppose it is inevitable im these days that one trained in biological ways of
thought should approach the problems of anthropology with the idea of evolution
as his guiding principle; but the conviction must be reached sooner or later, by
everyone who conscientiously, and with an open mind, seeks to answer most of
the questions relating to Man’s history and achievements—certainly the chapters
in that history which come within the scope of the last sixty centuries—that
evolution yields a surprisingly small contribution to the solution of the difficul-
ties which present themselves. Most of the factors that call for investigation
concerning the history of Man and his works are unquestionably the direct effects
of migrations and the intermingling of races and cultures.

But I would not have you misunderstand my meaning. The current of evolu-
tion is running at least as strongly and moving mankind onward no less quickly
than it did when it brought his ancestors to human rank; it is as potent as ever
to alter his structure, even though the way in which ‘ selection ’ has been modified
has deflected the stream. Those who imagine that the strength and influence of
evolutionary forces have waned forget the enormous length of time it has taken
to fashion the human body. It has been amply sufficient for slowly developing
changes. such as are taking place at present, to have transformed an Ape into
human form. Environment, however it may act. whether directly or indirectly.
is still helping to shape the human form, and is affecting the development of
Man’s customs and achievements at least as powerfully as, if not more so than,
ever before. The effects of selection—not only what Darwin understood by the
term ‘sexual’ selection, but also what we have learned to call ‘organic’ and
‘social’ selection—are certainly emphasized by the heightened powers of dis-
crimination which the intelligence and the fashions of civilised Man create. We
have every reason for believing, therefore, that the forces of evolution are still
operating with undiminished vigour: but all the evidence that I have to bring
before you goes to show that such forces act as a rule very slowly and impercep-
tibly. and need vast spans of time for the production of their effects. In studying
Man’s past history we find no clear evidence. or even suggestion, of any such
sudden jumps or ‘ mutations’ as students of other branches of biology are calling
to their aid to solve their difficulties, as a sort of magic carpet to convey them
across awkward chasms in their evolutionary route.

The Necro was quite as definitely negroid when we first meet with his sixty-
centuries-old remains as he is now : the narrow-headed brunet of small stature,
who has dwelt around the shores of the Mediterranean since the dawn of history.
was almost, if not quite, as definitely differentiated from the round-headed
Armenoid of Western Asia at the end of the Stone Age as are their modern
representatives ; and all the millennia of exposure of their scattered descendants
to vastly different climates and conditions of life have produced amazingly little
effect upon their physical characteristics. Further evidence may perhaps lend
some measure of confirmation to the contention of Professor Boas,’ that the
uprooting of European people and their transference to America leads to an
immediate effect upon the physical characters of such of their progeny as may
happen to be born in the new environment; but while not denying the possibility
that such an influence may be exerted, no anthropologist, however strongly he
may be inclined to accent evidence in support of such a contention, can seriously
take Professor Boas’s data or the inferences he draws from them at his valua-
tion. Professor Boas would have us believe that the forces of environment
which produce little or no effect upon the growing child (of aliens in New York).
who happened to be born in Europe immediately before his parents emigrated,

1 ©The Ancient Egyptians,’ 1911.

2 “Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants,’ United States
Government Reports, 1910, 1911.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3

can, nevertheless, so influence the germ plasm of his parents that their American-
bern progeny will be instantaneously modified. I know that it is easy to find
parallels trom biology, and especially from botany, to justify such an influence
on the germ-plasm in the case of sudden changes of temperature, climate, soil,
and other conditions of life; but until Professor Boas has dealt more exhaustively
than he has, even in his second report, with the possibility of racial admixture
as the obvious explanation of his statistics, and excluded it definitely, anthro-
pologists must continue to view his data and the inferences from them with the
most profound suspicion.

I tor one am quite prepared, if not to admit, at any rate to recognise the
possibility that a new environment might produce immediate changes in the
physical characteristics of the human body. The multiplicity of internal secre-
tions that recent research in physiology has shown to influence the growth of
the various tissues of the body, and the immediate effects of a slight increase or
diminution in the activity of the glands providing such secretions, which may
perhaps be caused by new dietetic, climatic, or other conditions, are quite sut-
ficient to suggest that the observer must keep his mind open impartially to view
new observations concerning the immediate effect of a new environment on
individuals, such as might conceivably afford a handle for the forces of natural
selections to seize hold of and produce changes in the progeny of the altered
parents; but there is a vast difference between admitting the possibility and
recognising the proof of such an hypothesis; and I am still entirely sceptical ot
Professor Boas’s so-called proofs. One is certainly not the more disposed to
accept such hypotheses when the attempt is made to bolster them up with a tissue
of statements intended to minimise or even deny those physical, mental, and
moral distinctions between different races of mankind,* the results of many
millennia of years of differentiation, the reality of which is substantiated by the
whole history of the world and the experience of those who have watched the
intercourse of the various peoples.

Difference of race implies a real and deep-rooted distinction in physical,
mental, and moral qualities ; and the contrasts in the achievements of the various
peoples cannot be explained away by lack of opportunities, in face of the patent
fact that among the most backward races of the present day are some that first
came into contact with, or even were the founders of, civilisation, and were most
favourably placed for acquiring culture and material supremacy.

It is not, however, with such contentious matters as the precise mode of
operation of evolution at the present day that I propose to deal; nor yet with
the discussion of when and how the races of mankind became specialised and
differentiated the one from the other. It is the much older story of the origin
of Man himself and the first glimmerings of human characteristics amidst even
the remotest of his ancestors to which I invite you to give some consideration
to-day.

In a recently published book * the statement is made that ‘the uncertainties
as to Man’s pedigree and antiquity are still great, and it is undeniably difficult
to discover the factors in his emergence and ascent.’ There is undoubtedly the
widest divergence of opinion as to the precise pedigree ; nevertheless, there seems
to me to be ample evidence now available to justify us sketching the genealogy
of Man and confidently drawing up his pedigree as far back as Eocene times—a
matter of a million’ years or so—with at least as much certainty of detail and
completeness as in the case of any other recent mammal; and if all the factors in
his emergence are not yet known, there is one unquestionable, tangible factor
that we can seize hold of and examine—the steady and uniform development of
the brain along a well-defined course throughout the Primates right up to Man—
which must give us the fundamental reason for ‘Man’s emergence and ascent,’
whatever other factors may contribute toward that consummation.

We have this advantage over most of.our predecessors in approaching the
consideration of the problems of the gradual emergence of human traits from the
uncouth simian features of our ancestors, that the main contention, the fact of
the ‘ Descent of Man,’ is now generally admitted; and it is no part of our task
to discuss more or less irrelevant side issues, born of prejudice, superstition, and

* <The Mind of Primitive Man,’ 1911.
* J. A. Thomson and P. Geddes, ‘ Evolution,’ 1912, p. 102.

H2

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

ignorance. Moreover, we are able to command a vast army of newly discovered
facts and attack the difficulties at issue in ways that were not open to those who
went before us.

In these circumstances it seems to me that I may perform a useful service
by setting forth the views which my studies—both of the facts of Nature and
ot the writings of contemporary biologists—have led me to adopt concerning
Man’s genealogy, from the remote period when his ancestral line branched off
from those of the other mammalian orders, and to make the attempt to appreciate
the nature of the factors that determined each upward step in his march toward
the supreme position among intelligent beings.

In spite of all the precise knowledge, not only of the structure and functions,
but even of the ‘ blood relationships,’ using that term in its literal as well as its
metaphorical sense, of the Apes and Men, it is surprising that there should be so
little agreement among leading authorities as to the precise line of Man’s
ancestry. Biologists do not seem to be exempt from that spirit of unrest which
is abroad at the present time ; and there seems to be a strange reluctance to admit
the obvious. Some zoologists try to persuade us that Man is not nearly related
to the Old-World Apes, and seek for closer affinities with the New-World Apes,
or even the Lemurs; others, again, exclude the Lemurs altogether from the Order
Primates, or, on the other hand, would eliminate the Platyrrhine Monkeys from
Man’s genealogy; yet others claim a diphyletic origin for Man from the Apes. I
do not propose to enter into the discussion of these problems * here, but rather,
taking tor granted the genealogical line which I, in agreement with many zoolo-
gists, believe to be a close approximation to the real line of descent,® attempt to
tind an explanation of how each of the more significant advances was brought
about in the course of Man’s evolution.

This theme, in one form or another, has often formed the subject of presi-
dential addresses before this Section. The last time the Association met in
Scotland the late Professor Cunningham, whose death since then we all so deeply
deplore, presided over this Section, and dealt with’ certain highly technical
aspects of the subject in his own characteristically lucid manner. But though
only eleven years have elapsed since then, the additions to our knowledge of
comparative anatomy, especially that relating to the brain, have been so great
and so fundamental that we can regard the problems discussed by him from a
very different and, I think, more intimate and instructive point of view.

We no longer look, as he did, to that small patch of cortex in the left cerebral
hemisphere, which has long been supposed to be the storehouse of the motor
memories of articulate speech, as being the likeliest region to supply the key to
the secret of Man’s mental pre-eminence. Since Pierre Marie* expressed his
disbelief in any such so-called motor speech ceritre, many physiologists and
physicians have become sceptical as to the ability of the left inferior frontal
convolution to control the mere muscular movements that produce speech. But
even if we grant the basal contention upon which Professor Cunningham’s argu-
ment was founded (as I think we are justified in doing, in spite of the writings
of Marie and his followers), we cannot be said to explain the evolution of the
modern steamship when we describe the steering-wheel which directs its course.

Speech is a manifestation of the intelligence that depends upon the activity
and co-operation of most parts of a large and highly organised cerebral cortex,
acting as a whole; and what we have to discover is not so much how a particular
series of groups of muscles bring about the mere motor acts of phonation and
articulation, but what is the nature of the living mechanism which enables the
mind to appreciate the multiplicity of sounds and other sensations, and to record
such sensation-factors so that they may be recalled in memory and brought into
relation as percepts with other sensation-factors in conscious experience, and
made use of as guides to the realisation of the nature of causes and effects in the

° A critical examination of some of these views will be found in Prof. Sollas’
Presidential Address to the Geological Society of London, February 1910.

* The simian stages of this genealogy are admirably expressed in a diagram
made by Prof. Arthur Keith for his Hunterian lectures ‘On Certain Phases in
the Evolution of Man,’ Brit. Med, Journ., April 6, 1912, p. 788.

’ Brit. Assoc. Report, 1901, p. 776.

* *L’Aphasie,’ Semaine Médicale, 1906, p. 241.

.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5

events taking place around the individual : it is the evolution of the cortex which
makes possible this wide association of sounds and ideas, and this learning by
experience that is important, rather than the mere instrument which regulates
the emission of sounds that we learn to associate each with its appropriate idea.
Charles Darwin recognised this fact quite definitely, and expressed it with his
nsual directness,? when he said, ‘It is not the mere articulation which is our
distinguishing character, for parrots and other birds possess this power. Nor
is it the mere capacity of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas; for it is
certain that some parrots which have been taught to speak connect unerringly
words with things and persons with events. The lower animals differ from Man
solely in his almost infinitely larger power of associating together the most
diversified sounds and ideas; and this obviously depends on the high develop-
ment of his mental powers.’

What I propose to attempt is to put into serial order those vertebrates which
we have reason to believe are the nearest relatives to Man’s ancestors now avail-
able for examination, and to determine what outstanding changes in the struc-
ture of the cerebral hemispheres have taken place at each upward step that may
help to explain the gradual acquirement of the distinctively human mental
faculties, which, by immeasurably increasing the power of adaptation to varying
circumstances and modifying the process of sexual selection, have made Man
what he is at present.

A numerous band of zoologists and psychologists have collected a large mass
of accurate information relating to the behaviour and intelligence of animals,
with which Darwin, Huxley, Tylor, and many recent writers have familiarised
students of anthropology. It is not my intention to attempt to summarise or
deal directly with these problems of comparative psychology.

But there has been accumulating during the last few years, thanks largely
to the efforts of Oskar and Cécile Vogt, Karl Brodmann, and many others,’® the
material which will eventually enable us to correlate these differences in habits
and behaviour in different mammals with structural differences in their brains;
and in this Address I propose to discuss with you what light such investigations
can throw upon the problems of Man’s origin and the evolution of the instrument
of his intelligence. If in my attempts to interpret the significance of the pro-
gressive modifications, which we can demonstrate in the brains of the series of
mammals I have selected, I shall give utterance to the crudest psychological
conceptions, you must not credit this entirely to my ignorance of the teachings
of psychology, but partly to the fact that so far we have been able only dimly
to realise the nature of the processes that are taking place in the cerebral cortex ;
and it is safer to use the crudest forms of expression, so as not to delude you
into the belief, which more precise terms might suggest, that our knowledge had
yet attained to any degree of completeness or exactitude.

We know something of the differences in behaviour of a series of Primates
and of the variations in their responses to electrical stimulation of their brains.
How far can these differences be correlated with structural distinctions in their
brains? And how far can such information be used to explain the evolution of
our own brain, which supplies to each of us the only real knowledge of conscious-
ness we possess? These are the questions that we are striving to answer.

The class Mammalia, to which Man belongs, is distinguished from all other
vertebrates by the size and high development of the brain, and by the fact that,
to a much greater degree than in any other class, a progressive increase in the size
of the brain, and more especially of the cerebral cortex. becomes imperative in
each successive epoch if its possessor is to maintain itself in free and open com-
petition with its fellows. It was the advance in brain structure in far greater
measure than anything else that determined the evolution of mammals;?! and it

* ©The Descent of Man,’ p. 130 in the 1901 reprint.

™ C. and O. Vogt, ‘Zur Kenntnis der elektrisch erregbaren Hirnrinden-
Gebiete bei den Saugetieren,’ Journ. f. Psych. u. Neur., Bd. VIII., 1907, p. 280.
K. Brodmann, ‘ Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Grosshirnrinde,’ Leipzig,
1909.

11 Tn opening the discussion on the ‘ Origin of Mammals’ at the meetings of
Section D, last year, I developed this argument (rit, Assoc, Reports, 1911,

p. 424).
H 2

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

has been wholly responsible for their dominant position, their world-wide distri-
bution, and the plasticity which has manifested itself in the marvellous variety
of adaptations to every mode of life which the mammals have undergone.

If we search for the new feature in the brain which has made possible all
their achievements it will be found in a cortical area to which eleven years ago
I gave the name ‘ neopallium.’ *”

In the lowlier vertebrates each of the avenues of the senses leads to a speci
part of the brain, and although there are free communications between the
regions allotted to the olfactory, visual, auditory, tactile, and other senses, there
is no instrument for the adequate blending of impressions reaching the brain
through these different portals, or for the storing of impressions, so as to awaken
in consciousness the different properties of an object which appeals to several
different senses. The lowlier vertebrates do not see, hear, or feel an object
in the sense that we associate with these terms. A _ biologically adequate
stimulus, such, for example, as a splash in a pond to a frog, or the croaking
of its fellows, will call forth an appropriate response; but an excitation such
as would not normally come within the range of experience of the creature,
however intense it may be, such as a loud noise from a gong, will leave it quite
indifferent, because it lacks any mechanism to enable it to compare the novel
stimulation either with former impressions or with its immediate effect upon other
sense organs, and to judge it in the light of such standards of comparison.

This must not be confused with the complex reflexes found in all vertebrates,
where a response, or a whole train of complicated acts, is excited only by a series
of stimuli entering the nervous system through various avenues of the senses,
and elaborating in the central nervous system what Professor Sherrington would
call a ‘common path’ to the nuclei of the motor nerves that excite the muscles
to produce the appropriate response.

Now it must be evident that unless there is some mechanism (a) for storing
impressions so that they may be revived—i.e., recalled in associative memory
at some later time, and (4) for blending in consciousness the sensory impulses
entering the sensorium by different portals, there can be no learning by experi-
ence. A fish that has swallowed a fly on a hook and got rid of the latter will
repeat the process immediately, presumably because there is no intimate associa-
tion in the brain between the receptor of the visual impression of the fly in the
mid-brain and the receptor of the painful impression of the hook in the hind-
brain; and therefore nothing to inhibit the normal response of the animal to the
adequate biological stimulus provided by the visual image of the fly, whenever
it occurs again.

Some faint glimmering of an elementary kind of judgment makes its appear-
ance in reptiles, in which the tactile paths have made their way into the hitherto
almost exclusively olfactory cerebral hemispheres, and established some definite
representation for the sense of touch in this dominant part of the brain.’* The
snake which smells out some food-material, and then tests it by feeling it with
its tongue, is checking by means of one sensory perception the information gained
through another sense : it thus displays the germ of the power of contrasting the
impressions and the memories of sensations reaching the brain by two distinct
avenues of sense, from which eventually the power of instituting deliberate
conscious judgments is developed.

It is able to do so (and this is the important point for us to remember in this
discussion) in virtue of the fact, which can be demonstrated by the comparative
study of the structure of the brain, that both the senses of smell and touch are
able not only to pour their impressions into contiguous and intimately associated
areas of the cerebral cortex, but also because they are represented there by a mass
of material serving as a storehouse for the impressions of these senses, which can
be revived in memory.

But such potentialities can be said to become first definitely established for

«The Natural Subdivision of the Cerebral Hemisphere,’ Journ. Anat. and
Phys., vol. xxxv., 1901, p. 431.

'*® Arris and Gale Lectures on the Evolution of the Brain, Lancet, January
15, 1910, p. 153.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. + 4

all the senses in mammals. The neopallium of the mammal “ provides a receptive
organ for impressions of all the senses—touch, vision, and hearing, as well as
taste and smell, among the rest—which enables the effects of all such perceptions
to manifest themselves unified in consciousness, and to become recorded in some
way so that they can be revived again, each discrete sensory impression or the
one idea excited by all of them, in associative memory. Moreover, it is the
instrument by means of which all these perceptions, past and present, can be
freely blended in consciousness, so that the animal is able to appreciate all the
properties of any object, to whatever sense they may appeal, and can benefit by
past experience, and so be educated.

In spite of the opinion of Prof. C. J. Herrick,’ I maintain that the neo-
pallium is a feature distinctive of the mammalian brain, and that it represents
in itself the unity of the apparatus concerned with psychical phenomena, the
sensorium commune, which Aristotle postulated as the counterpart of the unity
of consciousness.’* [I am well aware that psychologists may consider this the
rankest heresy, to judge from the writings of my friend Dr. William Mc-
Dougall *’ ; but the anatomical evidence is quite definite and unequivocal that in
the neopallium of the lowlier Mammalia we have a ‘ unitary organ the physical
processes of which might be regarded as corresponding to the unity of conscious-
ness." Moreover, it fulfils Aristotle’s claim for his sensorium commune of possess-
ing * especially the perceptual functions that are common to the several senses.’

' Nothing that happens in this area in the course of its enormous expansion and
differentiation in the higher mammals materially affects this fundamental purpose
of the neopallium, which continues to remain a unifying organ that acts as a
whole, though each part is favourably placed to receive and transmit to the rest its
special quota to the sum-total of what we may call the materials of conscious life.

Thus the area in which the tract from the eyes ends in the neopallium
naturally becomes the mechanism for visual perception, but it also serves as a
means of union between visual and other perceptual parts of the cortex; for if
the eyes are destroyed, the visual area does not wholly atrophy; or again, in the
intact individual the visual impression of an apple is capable of awakening
memories of perceptions of its ‘feel,’ its weight, its smell and its taste, all of
which were originally acquired by impressions made upon the receptive area of
each of the senses concerned.

The consciousness which resides, so to speak, in this neopallium, and is fed
by the continual stream of sensory impressions pouring into it and awakening
memories of past sensations, can express itself directly in the behaviour of the
animal through the intermediation of a part of the neopallium itself, the so-called
motor area, which is not only kept in intimate relation with the muscles, tendons,
and skin by sensory impressions, but controls the voluntary responses of the
muscles of the opposite side of the body.

The possession of this higher type of brain enormously widened the scope for
the conscious and intelligent adaptation of the animal to varying surroundings;
a sensory impression once received no longer remained only half an experience,
which left no lasting impression behind it to influence behaviour in the future,
or at most a perception uninfluenced by those simultaneously received by other
sense organs, and thus incapable of being checked, so to speak; and in the exer-
cise of this newly acquired power of choice the way was opened for adaptations
to varying environments entailing manifold structural modifications, in which the
enhanced plasticity of the new type of animal found expression.

Nature tried innumerable experiments with the new type of brain almost as
soon as the humble Therapsid-like mammal felt the impetus of its new-found

* T am omitting all reference to birds, in which a new formation makes its
appearance in the cerebral hemisphere and performs functions in a sense analo-
gous to those of the neopallium in mammals, It is, however, a specialisation
incapable of great extension, just as the structure and functions of a bird are so
highly specialised for flight as to lose the high degree of plasticity of the primi-
tive mammal.

** <The Morphology of the Forebrain in Amphibia and Reptilia,’ Journ.
Comp. Neur. and Psych., October 1910, p. 439.

© See op. cit., Journ. Anat. and Phys., vol. xxxv., p. 453.

“Body and Mind,’ 1911, p. 286,

H4

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

power of adaptation, and from its South African home began to wander through-
out the world. In turn the Prototherian and Metatherian types of brain were
tried before the more adaptable scheme of the Eutherian brain was evolved.

‘The group of lowly Insectivora, including such creatures as Moles, Hedge-
hogs, and Shrews, persists to the present time to reveal the nature of the earliest
Eutherian brain.

The Insectivora have been able to persist in competition with more advanced
mammals by reason of their small size, and the development of manifold varieties
of protective specialisations and the adoption of habits to ensure their safety.
In their spread throughout the world they eventually came to occupy practically
the whole earth, with the remarkable exception of the Australasian and, except
for a short time, South American regions, where their predecessors, the Meta-
theria, found a haven of refuge, which saved them from the extinction that would
inevitably have been their fate if they had had to struggle for existence in
competition with the more nimble-witted Eutheria, endowed with a superior
type of brain.**

Among the Insectivora there is one group—perhaps worthy of ordinal dis-
tinction, the Menotyphla of Haeckel—which is of peculiar interest to the student
of Primate and human genealogies.

This group includes the Oriental Tree-Shrews and the African Jumping-
Shrews. The latter (Macroscelidide), living in the original South African home
of the Mammalia, present extraordinarily primitive features, linking them by
close bonds of affinity to the Marsupials. The Tree-Shrews (Tupaiide), however,
which range from India to Java, while presenting very definite evidence of
- kinship to their humble African cousins, also display in the structure of their
bodies positive evidence of relationship to the stem of the aristocratic Primate
phylum.

I need not discuss the evidence for these views, because it has recently been
summarised most excellently by Dr. W. K. Gregory ** of New York.

It will suffice to point out that, quite apart from the striking similarities
produced by identical habits and habitats, there are many structural identities,
not directly associated with such habits, which can be interpreted only as evi-
dences of affinity.

These Tree-Shrews are small squirrel-like animals which feed on ‘insects and
fruit, which they usually seek in trees, but also occasionally-on the ground. When
feeding they often sit on their haunches, holding the food, after the manner of
squirrels, in their forepaws.’** They are of ‘lively disposition and great
agility.’ These vivacious, large-brained, little insectivores, linked by manifold
bonds of relationship to some of the lowliest and most primitive mammals,
present in the structure of their skull, teeth, and limbs undoubted evidence of
a kinship, remote though none the less sure, with their compatriots the Malay-
sian Lemurs; and it is singularly fortunate for us in this inquiry that side by
side there should have been preserved from the remote Eocene times, and possibly
earlier still, these insectivores, which had almost become Primates, and a little
primitive lemuroid, the Spectral Tarsier, which had only just assumed the
characters of the Primate stock, when Nature fixed their types and preserved
them throughout the ages, with relatively slight change, for us to study at the
present day.

Thus we are able to investigate the influence of an arboreal mode of life in
stimulating the progressive development of a primitive mammal, and \to appre-
ciate precisely what changes were necessary to convert the lively, agile Ptilocer-
cus-like ancestor of the Primates into a real Primate.

In the forerunners of the Mammalia the cerebral hemisphere was _pre-
dominantly olfactory in function; and even when the true mammal emerged,
and all the other senses received due representation in the neopallium, the
animal’s behaviour was still influenced to a much greater extent by smell impres-
sions than by those of the other senses.

This was due not only to the fact that the sense of smell had already installed

‘* Vide Arris and Gale Lectures, op. cit., supra.

19 © The Orders of Mammals,’ Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. xxvii., 1910,
p. 321.

20 Flower and Lydekker, ‘Mammals, Living and Extinct,’ 1891, p. 618,

21 W. K. Gregory, op. cit., p. 269, and pp, 279, 280.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

its instruments in, and taken firm possession of, the cerebral hemisphere, long
before the advent in this dominant part of the brain of any adequate represen-
tation of the other senses, but also, and chiefly, because to a small land-grubbing
animal the guidance of smell impressions, whether in the search for food or as
a means of recognition of friends or enemies, was much more serviceable than
all the other senses. Thus the small creature’s mental life was lived essentially
in an atmosphere of odours, and every object in the outside world was judged
primarily and predominantly by its smell; the senses of touch, vision, and
hearing were merely auxiliary to the compelling influence of smell.

Once such a creature left the solid earth and took to an aquatic or an arboreal
life all this was changed, for away from the ground the guidance of the olfactory
sense lost much of its usefulness; and, in the case of aquatic mammals, the
whole smell apparatus atrophied, and in some cases vanished. We need not
stop to consider the aquatic mammal, because a life in the water calls for such
marked specialisation of structure that such creatures disappear from the race
for mammalian supremacy. But the case is very different with arboreal mammals.
Life amidst the branches limits the usefulness of olfactory organs, but it is
favourable to the high development of vision, touch, and hearing. Moreover,
it demands an agility and quickness of movement that necessitates an efficient
motor cortex to control and co-ordinate such actions as an arboreal mode of life
demands (and secures, by the survival only of those so fitted), and also a well-
developed muscular sensibility to enable such acts to be carried out with pre-
cision and quickness. Im the struggle for existence, therefore, all arboreal
mammals, such as the Tree-Shrews, suffer a marked diminution of their olfactory
apparatus, and develop a considerable neopallium, in which relatively large
areas are given up to visual, tactile, acoustic, kinesthetic and motor functions,
as well as to the purpose of providing a mechanism for mutually blending in
consciousness the effects of the impressions pouring in through the avenues of
these senses.

Thus a more equable balance of the representation of the senses is brought
about in the large brain of the arboreal animal; and its mode of life encourages
and makes indispensable the acquisition of agility. Moreover, these modifications
do not interfere with the primitive characters of limb and body. These small
arboreal creatures were thus free to develop their brains and maintain all the
plasticity of a generalised structure, which eventually enabled them to go far. in
the process of adaptation to almost any circumstances that presented themselves.

Towards the close of the Cretaceous period some small arboreal Shrew-like
creature took another step in advance, which was fraught with the most far-
reaching consequences ; for it marked the birth of the Primates and the definite
branching off from the other mammals of the line of man’s ancestry.

A noteworthy further reduction in the size of the olfactory parts of the brain,
such as is seen in that of Jarsius,** quite emancipated the creature from the
dominating influence of olfactory impressions, the sway of which was already
shaken, but not quite overcome, when its Tupaioid ancestor took to an arboreal
life. This change was associated with an enormous development of the visual
cortex in the neopallium, which not only increased in extent so as far to exceed
that of Tupaia, but also became more highly specialised in structure. Thus,
in the primitive Primate, vision entirely usurped the controlling place once
occupied by smell; but the significance of this change is not to ‘be measured
merely as the substitution of one sense for another. The visual area of cortex
is part of the neopallium, and when its importance thus became enhanced the
whole of the neopallium felt the influence of the changed conditions. The sense
of touch also shared in the effects, for tactile impressions and the related kin-
w#sthetic sensibility, the importance of which to an agile tree-living animal is
obvious, assist vision in the conscious appreciation of the nature and the various
properties of the things seen and in learning to perform agile actions which are
guided by vision.

An arboreal life also added to the importance of the sense of hearing; and
the cortical representation of this sense exhibits a noteworthy increase in the

*2 “On the Morphology of the Brain in the Mammalia, with Special Reference
to that of the Lemurs, Recent and Extinct,’ Jans. Linn. Soc. Lond., second
series ; Zoology, vol. viii., Part 10, February 1903. :

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

Primates, the significance of which it would be difficult to exaggerate in the
later stages, when the simian are giving place to the distinctively human charac-
teristics.

The high specialisation of the sense of sight awakened in the creature the
curiosity to examine the objects around it with closer minuteness, and supplied
guidance to the hands in executing more precise and more skilled movements
than the Tree-Shrew attempts. Such habits not only tended to develop the
motor cortex itself, trained the tactile and kinesthetic senses, and linked up
their cortical areas in bonds of more intimate associations with the visual cortex,
but they stimulated the process of specialisation within or alongside the motor
cortex of a mechanism for regulating the action of that cortex itseli—an organ ot
attention which co-ordinated the activities of the whole neopallium so as the
more efficiently to regulate the various centres controlling the muscles of the
whole body. In this way not only is the guidance of all the senses secured,
but the way is opened for all the muscles of the body to act harmoniously so as
to permit the concentration of their action for the performance at one moment
of some delicate and finely adjusted movement.

In some such way as this there was evolved from the motor area itself, in the
form of an outgrowth placed at first immediately in front of it, a formation,
which attains much larger dimensions and a more pronounced specialisation of
structure in the Primates than in any other order; it is the germ of that great
prefrontal area of the human brain which is said to be ‘ concerned with attention
and the general orderly co-ordination of psychic processes,’** and as such is, in
far greater measure than any other part of the brain, deserving of being regarded
as the seat of the higher mental faculties and the crowning glory and distinction
of the human fabric.

But the high development of certain other parts of the cortex was necessary
to minister to these high functions of the prefrontal cortex and to supply the
materials, if the term can be applied to anything so immaterial as perceptions
and memories, upon which its own activities are expended. For before an animal
like Jarsius could attempt to concentrate its attention upon the performance of
some delicately skilled action, its large and highly specialised visual, tactile, and
motor areas must have had impressed upon them countless numbers of records
of things seen and felt and of memories of the experience acquired in perform-
ing innumerable simpler acts.

Whether the exceedingly primitive Varsius-like Primates, of which I have
been speaking, originated in the extreme south-west of Asia, where its modern
representative now lives, or in North America, it is not possible to say with
certainty ; but the fact that the Eocene beds of North America contain remains
of both the Tarsius-like Anaptomorphus and Tupaia-like Insectivores ** seems
to suggest that North America may have been the original home of the Primate
phylum, and the centre from which, quite early in Eocene times, there radiated
to South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa the ancestors not only of the
Tarsier itself, but of the Lemurs also, as well as specialised varieties of lemu-
roids, such as Adapis, which may perhaps be related to the progenitors of the
Lemurs. What remained of the original undifferentiated Primate stock in North
America became transformed into primitive monkeys of Platyrrhine type, from
which in turn sprang not only the later New World apes, but also the Catar-
rhine or Old World apes, which were undoubtedly derived from primitive
Platyrrhines, possibly after their migration into the Old World in Oligocene
times, or perhaps even earlier. \

In the present state of our knowledge it is not possible to give the precise
history of the wanderings of the early Primates. For not only are there vast
ages of time in which we lose sight of them altogether, but in addition we are
still far from an agreement as to the intercontinental land bridges along which
our simian ancestors must have travelled in their wanderings. How great are
the discrepancies between the conclusions reached by leading authorities on this
subject is revealed only too clearly in the recent monographs by Professor

* J. S. Bolton, ‘The Functions of the Frontal Lobes,’ Brain, 1903.
“ H. F. Osborn, ‘The Age of Mammals,’ 1910, p. 155.

2
2

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 11

Osborn ** and Dr. Scharff,*° and in the opinions of other writers which they set
forth in these two books.

The extremely primitive and Metatheroid characters of the Jumping Shrews
mark them out as the nearest approach to the original Eutherian mammal now
living; and it is probable that South Africa, their present habitat, was not only
the original home of mammals, but also the place where the Eutherian mammals
were evolved. In Upper Cretaceous times there was a direct land bridge *’
from this South African home of the Jumping Shrews to the Southern Asiatic
habitat of their Primate-like kinsmen, the Tree-Shrews; and also another broad
tract linking Eastern Asia to North America. So that there is no difficulty in
realising how the Anaptomorphid Lemuroids or their immediate ancestors reached
North acing

It is now generally admitted that Z'arsius is not only the most primitive
Prosimian now living, but that it is much more intimately related to the monkeys
than the true Lemurs are. The fact that the earliest known fossil Primate, the
Early Eocene Anuptomorphus of North America, so nearly resembles J'arsius
further strengthens this view, and convinces us that in the Anaptomorphide we
have the real progenitors of the Apes and Man.

Now, in the middle of the Eocene period these Lemuroids, and in fact all
trace of the Primates, disappear from North America; and for the rest of the
Eocene and Oligocene periods neither the Tarsioids nor true monkeys, according
to some leading authorities, can be traced, until, in the Miocene, Platyrrhine
Apes suddenly make their appearance in Patagonia, and Catarrhine and Anthro-
poid Apes in’ Europe. Even if we side with those who disagree with Professor
W. Bb. Scott’s opinion that the earliest monkeys in South America belong to the
Miocene Age, and look upon them as Oligocene or Late Eocene, ** there still
remain a great many lacune in the fabric of our story.

We are not concerned here with the problem of how J'arsius and the Lemurs
came to the Old World. It may have been the case that the original habitat
of the Tarsioids ranged from North America to South-eastern Europe, and
that the Tupaioid Insectivores, whose past and present representatives were
distributed much in the same way, shared a similar fate. The Lemurs also
may have sprung from some Protarsioid form and spread into Asia; or, seeing
that their earliest allies** are found in the Middle and Late Eocene beds of
Europe, it is not impossible that they may have made their way from North
America into Europe by means of Scharff’s hypothetical Atlantis,*® which
according to him linked Mexico and the Antilles to Europe.

But this is a problem that does not concern us in this inquiry. For the
Lemurs, even in the Eocene, had left the path that leads to the Apes; and,
however interesting Jarsius itself may be, once its Eocene progenitors gave
birth to true monkeys we become interested in them, and not in the wanderings
of the unmodified Lemuroids themselves.

As the facts of Comparative Anatomy point quite definitely to a kinship
between the more primitive Platyrrhine monkeys of South America and the
Catarrhines of the Old World, and also suggest that the latter must have passed
through a Platyrrhine stage in the course of their evolution, we must first
consider the nature of the wanderings that such kinships involve.

In the Lower and Middle Eocene of North America we find primitive
Tarsioids, then in the Miocene [or late Eocene] in South America true Platyr-
rhines occur, and in the European Miocene Catarrhine and Anthropoid Apes.
What working hypothesis can be framed to fill in the extensive lacune in this
story? Paleontology tells us little more than this of the evolution of the Apes.
Hence we must fall back upon the teaching of Comparative Anatomy.

The appearance in the Egyptian Fayoum as early as the Oligocene, accord-
ing to Schlosser,** of monkeys presenting primitive traits suggestive of the

25 H. F. Osborn, ‘ The Age of Mammals,’ New York, 1910.

26 R. F. Scharff, ‘ Distribution and Origin of Life in America,’ London, 1911.
27 See Dr. Ortmann’s map in Scharff, op. cit., facing p. 292.

78 Dr. von Ihering, quoted by Scharff. op. cit., p. 393.

2* Adapis and the Tarsius-like Necrolemur.

°° Op. cit., see Map 14, facing p. 280.

31 Max Schlosser, Zool. Anzeiger, March 1, 1910, p. 500.

12 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

New World Platyrrhines, in association with others that seem to suggest a very
early Anthropoid, the Propliopithecus Haeckelii (Schlosser), is a most suggestive
discovery. It accords, however, with the scheme of Primate evolution and
migrations which is based upon the other evidence at our disposal; so that some
such hypothesis as I shall now sketch naturally shapes itself in our minds.

As the Tarsioids entirely disappeared from North America by the Middle
Eocene and are not known to occur anywhere else in the world, either in past or
present times, except as the Spectral Tarsier of the South-eastern corner of Asia,
we must assume that some Tarsioids took refuge in Asia, which they reached,
if they were not there before, by Scharff’s hypothetical trans-Pacific land bridge
in the Early Eocene, before their brethren disappeared from North America.

But it seems probable that some of the Tarsioids that lived in North America
in Early Eocene times became transformed from Prosimie into true monkeys of
a very primitive Platyrrhine type, distinguished, among other things, from their
Lemuroid ancestors by a much higher development of the power of skilled move-
ment, of which tangible evidence is forthcoming in the considerably larger and
more highly specialised motor area of their modern descendants.**

The true monkey seizes its food with its hands, and not with its jaws, as the
Lemur does.

A noteworthy increase occurred also in the visual cortex, and especially in
those outlying parts of it which do not receive impressions directly from the
optic tracts, but presumably are concerned with the storing of visual memories
and associating them with tactile and acoustic impressions.

There is a corresponding, and perhaps relatively greater, change in the
auditory centres.

Although the fossil beds of America have not yet yielded up the intermediate
stages in these transformations, we have in the Middle Eocene Notharctids, those
curiously half-formed Platyrrhines, and others of their contemporaries,** some
evidence of the experiments Nature was performing in the process of creating
Apes. And if it be objected that it is mere conjecture to say that the Tarsioids
which went southwards in America were transformed into Platyrrhine monkeys
by the time they reached Patagonia, it must be remembered that the vast
continent which formed the link between California and Patagonia in those days,
if we follow Scharff,** is now submerged, with all its relics of the birth and
early history of the Apes. It is highly probable that some of the primitive Platyr-
rhines which were thus evolved spread from America into the Old World. Those
that remained in the former continent spread south, leaving North America
entirely without Primates; and in the relative seclusion of the South American
forests they retained much of their primitive structure, but some of them sacri-
ficed part of the advantage, from the point of view of mental evolution, gained
when they took the upward step from the Prosimian to the Simian status, by
devoting the special skill they had acquired to developing the prehensile powers
of their tails, rather than concentrating such potentialities in the more serviceable
culture of their hands.

Their brethren who crossed into the Old World took the higher course, and
eventually achieved the greater distinction, when they became especially expert
in performing the most delicate movements with their hands.

Which of two land bridges, trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic, available in the
Early Tertiary Age from Central America to Asia and Europe respectively,*°
the primitive monkeys traversed there is no definite evidence to indicate. For,
while most writers assume that they went directly from North Ametica to
Western Asia, it must be borne in mind that the earliest remains of monkeys in
the Old World occur in Egypt and Europe; and thus it is not altogether im-
probable that the Platyrrhine ancestors of the Catarrhines set out on their
journey to the Old World by the trans-Atlantic route, and perhaps underwent
the earlier stages of their further development in North Africa, For in the

°2 C. and O. Vogt, op. cit., p. 394.

*° H. F. Osborn, ‘The Age of Mammals,’ p. 161; also Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat.
Hist., Vol. xvi., 1902; Workman, Amer. Journ. Sci., vol. xv., 1903; and Max
Weber, ‘ Saugetiére,’ 1904, p. 763.

** Scharff, op. cit., fig. 14.

** Scharff, op. cit., fig. 14.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 13

Fayoum monkeys, described by Schlosser as belonging to the Oligocene Age,
there is a strange association of Platyrrhine and Catarrhine traits.

In their new environment these primitive Catarrhines felt the impetus of
their newly-acquired faculties; and an army of variously specialised Apes set out
to invade the rest of the warmer regions of the Old World. In the course of
these differentiations some of the Catarrhines fell away in some respects from
the high standard their ancestors had attained; the Baboons, for example, took
to quadrupedal progression, and thereby sacrificed all chance of further advance
in the Anthropoid direction. But in Early Oligocene times certain of the
Catarrhines probably developed still further the powers of walking erect, which
their remote Tarsioid ancestor possessed in some measure, and became modified
in structure so as to be able to walk upright upon their hind limbs, and use their
hands and arms for other purposes. Thus, one group of Catarrhines became
transformed into Anthropoid Apes very soon after the evolution of the first
monkey of the Old World.

The assumption of the erect attitude is not the simple matter that most
anthropologists suppose it to be : it is not a question merely of learning to balance
the body on the hinder extremities: but, as Professor Keith has well shown,*®
it entailed profound structural changes for the fixation of the contents of the
body so that the organs would not fall, and also the loss of the tail, so that the
tail muscles could be turned to other uses as visceral supports; moreover, the
freeing of the arms, which in a pronigrade animal, as Dr. Wood Jones has shown,
are fixed supports for the muscles of respiration, interfered with this function
of the extrathoracic muscles, and made the diaphragm the chief respiratory
muscle. Thus was effected the most far-reaching changes in the mode of
breathing. Such fundamental modifications of the structure and functions of
the body must have been fashioned when the primitive Catarrhine was far more
plastic than any of the modern Old World Apes we are familiar with; and I
should not have been at all surprised, even without any knowledge of Schlosser’s
Oligocene Propliopithecus, to find that an erect Anthropoid Ape had already
emerged from the Proto-Catarrhine stock soon after the close of the Eocene
period.

In the modern Gibbon, which is a true Anthropoid, Nature has preserved
for us with relatively only slight changes the type of the original ancestor of
the phylum common to Man and the giant Apes.

The additional freedom which the degree of erectness of the Gibbon affords
to the arms gave an immense impetus to the development of more highly skilled
movement and a phenomenal agility; and such potentialities are the expression
of still further stages of growth and elaboration of the brain. In all probability
it is not strictly accurate to speak of the freeing of the arms as supplying the
stimulus to the brain by permitting the acquisition of more highly skilled move-
ments, expressed in a higher state of cultivation and growth of the motor cortex.
There can be no question that the primary stimulus to the fuller use of the arms
as organs, not of mere progression, but of prehension and the more skilled acts
came from the steady growth and specialisation of the brain itself; but the con-
sequences of the acquisition of this skill were the freeing of the arms and the
possibility of still further cultivation of the powers of the hands, which no
doubt reacted so as to call for yet further growth and specialisation of the brain.
Thus, there was a reciprocal influence of brain and the erect attitude, both help-
ing to achieve the result which various writers are too apt to attribute exclusively
to one factor only.

That this explanation is the correct one is shown by the gradual increase in
the size of the motor area, the degree of specialisation of the movements that
become possible, and especially in the progressive expansion of the prefrontal
area found at each step, when we compare Lemurs with Platyrrhines, the latter
with Catarrhines, and these, in turn, with Anthropoids.*’

This is especially seen in the increase in'the control of the independent move-
ments of the fingers. Such actions are very poorly developed in Lemurs, a little

°° Keith, Hunterian Lectures on Certain Phases in the Evolution of Man,
Brit. Med. Journ., April 6, 1912, p. 788. .

*7 C. and O. Vogt, op. cit., pp. 392, 393, and 394; also Brodmann, op. cit.,
supra.

14 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

better in the New World Apes; but they became well developed in the Old
World Apes, and very highly skilled and controlled in all the Anthropoid Apes.
It was this gradual increase in skill of hand and arm which made it advantageous
for the ancestors of the Gibbon to adopt, more definitely than T'arsius had done,
the erect attitude and for their structure to become ‘ set’ to make the best use o
such skill.

But, marked as are the changes that can be detected in the behaviour of the
erect Gibbon, in the increased size and specialisation of its motor and prefrontal
areas, of which the latter is an expression of an improved control over the func-
tions of the cortex as a whole, there is a significant increase in the size of the
area which intervenes between the visual, tactile, and auditory centres. The
growth and increased functional value of this parietal area, which from its
position is obviously the place for storing the records of the complex states of
consciousness, blended of visual, tactile, and auditory sensations, lie at the root
of all the other changes in the brain; and the perfecting of the mechanism for
supplying consciousness with these more perfect materials of experience, explains
the increased ability to perform more highly skilled movements which, in turn,
led to the adoption of the erect attitude, and thus freed the hands for the work
they had for the first time become skilled to perform.

So far in this address I have been attempting to sketch certain outstanding
features of Man’s ancestry with the object of offering some explanation of the
factors which made possible the emergence of such a creature as Man. We have
seen that the adoption of an arboreal life by some small Insectivore-like creature,
shortly before the dawn of the Tertiary period, and its subsequent cultivation
of the sense of vision until it became a highly specialised Anaptomorphid, enabled
Man’s remotest Primate ancestor to escape from the domination of the sense of
smell as the guiding influence of its life, and to cultivate its other senses, so as
immensely to widen the sensory avenues by which the outside world could affect
its conscious activities. The arboreal life, which demanded great activity and
agility, led to the special cultivation of skilled movements of the limbs, and
such an acquirement was clearly facilitated in this group by the perfection of
visual control, without which finely adjusted actions of the hands and feet
could not easily be learned. The acquisition of such skill in movement necessi-
tated the increased perfection of the tactile and other sensory areas of the brain,
so as the more nicely to control the adjustments and correlations of muscles
essential for any precise action. Thus, we have a chain of linked influences that
follow on the specialisation of the visual apparatus in the brain of our primitive
arboreal ancestor—the perfecting of touch and the acquirement of skill in
action. The heightened acuity of vision and the expansion of the cortical area
for storing visual impressions, together with the growing importance of touch,
and in a less measure, perhaps, of hearing, immensely widened the psychical
content of the life of the Eocene Tarsioid in comparison with that of its con-
temporaries; but there is yet another factor which its mode of life called into
play which was fraught with the most far-reaching possibilities in the creation
of Man. The co-ordination of large groups of muscles for the purpose of per-
forming some precise action, which must be controlled during the stage of learn-
ing by tactile, kinesthetic and visual impressions and memories—the fruits of
experience—necessitated the formation of some cortical apparatus which would
control and harmonise the activities of the various centres, regulating the
muscular actions, and bringing the total sum of consciousness at any one moment
to bear upon the performance of a given act. Out of such a necessity as this
there sprang in the early ancestor of Man—and, though in much less degree, in
certain other phyla also—an outgrowth of the motor cortex, which became the
mechanism for attention and the orderly regulation of the psychical processes.

Thus, at the very dawn of the Tertiary period there were developed the
germs of all the psychical greatness which, in the million or so of years that have
followed, culminated in the human mind.

But the early Primate stem attained this distinctive position of relative
isolation, not merely by the development of its own members, but also by the
rapid and divergent specialisation of other mammalian groups. The enhanced
plasticity conferred upon mammals by the development of a neopallial cortex,
which enabled them to exercise to an immeasurably greater degree than any of
their predecessors had enjoyed, what we may without inaccuracy term intelligent

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 15

choice, found immediate expression in a bewildering variety of specialisations of
structure adapted to different modes of life. Some mammals became fleet of
foot, and developed limbs specially adapted to enhance their powers of rapid
movement. They attained an early pre-eminence, and were able to grow to
large dimensions in the slow-moving world at the dawn of the age of mammals.
Others developed limbs specially adapted for swift attack and habits of stealth,
successfully to prey upon their defenceless relatives. Others took to the water
or the air, and acquired the modifications in structure and manners of life
necessary to accommodate themselves to their new environments.

Most of these groups attained the immediate success that often follows upon
early specialisation: but they also paid the inevitable penalty. They became
definitely committed to one particular kind of life; and in so doing they had
sacrificed their primitive simplicity and plasticity of structure, and in great
measure their adaptability to new conditions. The retention of primitive
characters, which so many writers upon biological subjects, and especially upon
anthropology, assume to be a sign of degradation, is not really an indication of
lowliness. We should rather look upon specialisation of limbs and the narrowing
of the manner of living to one particular groove as confessions of. weakness, the
renunciation of the wider life for one that is sharply circumscribed. It may be
asked why all these other non-Primate mammals, leading an active life, many of
them in open competition with their fellows, did not develop brains as highly
organised as those of the Primates. The Ungulates and Carnivores, which most
people who put such queries have in mind when they do so, develop large brains,
although they are relatively very small in comparison with those of Primates ot
similar size. There are many reasons for this. Such creatures, even at the
present day, always remain more or less under the influence of the sense of smell ;
and even though the visual, auditory, and tactile senses become well represented
in the neopallium, these are secondary and relatively late modifications which.
have produced much less effect than the earlier usurpation of the dominant
position by vision exerted in the Primates. Nevertheless, visual and auditory
centres and the interposed parietal area become well developed, especially in
Carnivora like the Dog, Cat, Bear, and Seal—an anatomical fact, which explains
their high degree of educability. But the growth of other cortical areas is
subject to inevitable limitations in these creatures. The specialisation of limbs,
and this is peculiarly the case in Ungulates, to perform only a very limited
range of more or less automatic movements, does away with all possibility of
developing further either an area to preside over skilled movements or a control-
ling prefrontal ‘area of attention,’ the usefulness of which is restricted by the
impossibility of performing many acts that call for such guidance. Further
progress along these lines was barred for all time by early specialisation of
structure of the limbs; and hence these creatures lack one of the chief means
which has led the Primate to the position of mental supremacy.

The Primates at first were a small and humble folk, who led a quite
unobtrusive and safe life in the branches of trees, taking small part in the fierce
competition for size and supremacy that was being waged upon the earth
beneath them by their Carnivorous, Ungulate, and other brethren. But all the
time they were cultivating that equable development of all their senses and
limbs, and that special development of the more intellectually useful faculties of
the mind which, in the long run, were to make them the progenitors of the
dominant mammal—the mammal who was to obtain the supremacy over all others,
while still retaining much of the primitive structure of limb that his competitors
had sacrificed. It is important, then, to keep in mind that the retention of
primitive characters is often to be looked upon as a token that their possessor
has not been compelled to turn aside from the straight path and adopt protec-
tive specialisations, but has been able to preserve some of his primitiveness and
the plasticity associated with it, precisely because he has not succumbed or
fallen away in the struggle for supremacy. It is the wider triumph of the
individual who specialises late, after benefiting by the all round of experience of
early life, over him who in youth becomes tied to one narrow calling.

The Primates found in the branches of trees the asylum and protection neces-
sary for the cultivation of brain and limbs during the period of their obscurity
as an insignificant tribe; but when they became powerful enough to hold their own
and wax great, both in size and power, they had maintained sufficient of their

16 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

primitive characters, and the plasticity that goes with them, to be able gradually
to give up the arboreal mode of living and to re-establish themselves once more
as dwellers on the solid earth, competent to hold their own against all comers.

This principle extends not only to the Primate phylum itself, but to its
Cifferent branches, and especially to Man.

I should be inclined to look upon the Orang, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla.
not as ancestral forms of Man; but as the more unenterprising members of
Man’s family, who were not able to maintain the high level of cerebral develop-
ment of the feeble-bodied human, but saved themselves from extinction by the
acquisition of great strength and a certain degree of specialisation of structure.
The feebler Man was able to overcome his enemies and maintain himself in the
struggle for existence by his nimbleness of wit and his superior adaptability to
varying circumstances.

In many respects Man retains more of the primitive characteristics, for
example, in his hands, than his nearest Simian relatives; and in the supreme race
of mankind many traits, such as abundance of hair, persist to suggest pithecoid
affinities, which have been lost by the more specialised Negro and other races.
Those anthropologists who use the retention of primitive features in the Nordic
European as an argument to exalt the Negro to equality with him are neglecting
the clear teaching of Comparative Anatomy, that the persistence of primitive
traits is often a sign of strength rather than of weakness. This factor runs
through the history of the whole animal kingdom.** Man is the ultimate product
of that line of ancestry which was never compelled to turn aside and adopt
protective specialisations either of structure or mode of life, which would be
fatal to its plasticity and power of further development.

Having now examined the nature of the factors that have made a Primate
from an Insectivore and have transformed a Tarsioid Prosimian into an Ape, let
us turn next to consider how Man himself was fashioned.

It is this aspect of the problem of the origin of Man which has always
excited chief interest and has been the subject of much speculation, as the
addresses of my predecessors in this presidency bear ample witness.

These discussions usually resolve themselves into the consideration of such
questions as whether it was the growth of the brain, the acquisition of the power
of speech, or the assumption of the erect attitude that came first and made the
Ape into a human being. The case for the erect attitude was ably put before the
Association in the address delivered to this Section by Dr. Munro in 1893. He
argued that the liberation of the hands and the cultivation of their skill lay at
the root of Man’s mental supremacy. In Professor Sollas’ address to the
Geological Society, to which I have had occasion to refer before in this address,
the same view seems to be favoured, for we find the statement that ‘ the first
change which started the Ape on the path towards Man was probably the assump-
tion of the erect attitude.’ But this expression of opinion follows immediately
upon what Professor Sollas calls a ‘confession of faith’ stated in these terms :
‘My belief that the really fundamental change, underlying all the rest, was the
increasing growth of the intellectual powers, and this I regard as an ultimate
fact as difficult of explanation as any other ultimate fact, such as the origin of
variations or even of life itself. But, having made this admission, I shall not
introduce it into any of the following speculations, which will be more in
accordance with the prevailing philosophy of the day.’*" But if the increasing
growth of the intellectual powers underlies all the rest, why depose this factor in
favour of the influence of the erect attitude merely out of deference to fashion ?
Moreover, if the nature of the intellect is ‘an ultimate fact as difficult of explana-
tion as any other fact,’ it does not imply that we must give up all hope of under-
standing some at least of the factors that explain the increasing growth of the
intellectual powers or the obvious physical manifestations of growth and special-
isation in the cerebral cortex, which unquestionably make such increase of in-
tellectual powers possible.

If the erect attitude is to explain all, why did not the Gibbon become a Man
in Miocene times? The whole of my argument has aimed at demonstratin
that the steady growth and specialisation of the brain has been the fundamenta

°® Elliot Smith, ‘The Brain in the Edentata,’ 7'rans. Linn, Soc., 1899.
*" Proc. Geol, Soc., May 1910, p. 1, xxxii.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 17

factor in leading Man's ancestors step by step right upward from the lowly
Insectivore status, nay, further, through every earlier phase in the evolution of
mammals—for Man’s brain represents the consummation of precisely those factors
which throughout the vertebrata have brought their possessors to the crest of
the wave of progress. The external conditions of life have supplied the
stimulus to this cerebral growth, as well as the sieve to strain off those individuals
who do not adequately respond to the stimulus, and thus become ‘ unfit’ to
survive. But such advances as the assumption of the erect attitude are brought
about simply because the brain has made skilled movements of the hands
possible : yet once such a stage has been attained the very act of liberating the
hands for the performance of more delicate movements opens the way for a
further advance in brain development to make the most of the more favourable
conditions and the greater potentialities of the hands.

I have already referred to the common fallacy of supposing that the erect
attitude is Man’s distinctive prerogative, and of regarding the assumption of
that position and mode of progression as the determining factor in the evolution
of Man. It is a fact beyond dispute that the divergent specialisation of the
human limbs, one pair for progression, and the other for prehension and the
more delicately adjusted skilled actions, has played a very large part in prepar-
ing the way for the emergence of the distinctively human characteristics; but
it would be a fatal mistake unduly to magnify the influence of these develop-
ments. The most primitive living Primate, the Spectral Tarsier, frequently
assumes the erect attitude, and uses its hands for prehension rather than pro-
gression in many of its acts, and many other Lemurs, such as the Indrisine of
Madagascar, can and do walk erect.

In the remote Oligocene, a Catarrhine Ape, nearly akin to the ancestors of
the Indian Sacred Monkey, Semnopithecus, became definitely specialised in struc-
ture in adaptation for the assumption of the erect attitude; and this type of
early Anthropoid has persisted with relatively slight modifications in the Gibbon
of the present day. But if the earliest Gibbons were already able to walk up-
right, how is it, one might ask, that they did not begin to use their hands,
thus freed from the work of progression on the earth, for skilled work, and at
once before men? The obvious reason is that the brain had not yet attained a
sufficiently high stage of development to suggest appropriate occupation for these
competent hands to do, to the exclusion of their function in climbing: those
areas of the neopallium, upon the integrity and normal functioning of which
consciousness relies for its experience, based upon the memories of visual,
auditory, tactile, and all other kinds of sensations, as well as of the recollection
of what effects follow upon certain lines of aetion—the cortical areas which, as
we know by processes of inference and exclusion, must be responsible for some
such functions as these—are still small and insignificant in the Gibbon in com-
parison with those of the human brain; and in the first Gibbon-like Anthropoid
ancestor of Man they were no doubt equally in their infancy. If one considers,
for instance, what a vast number of memories not only of sensations and rela-
tions between sensation factors, but also of conscious experience of the nature
and results of innumerable acts, must be acquired before an animal can learn to
anticipate what will happen as the direct effect of some action, before it can
venture, for example, upon even so simple a purposive act as chipping a flint to
produce a cutting edge, it must be evident that a vast neopallial storehouse for
recording, and, so to speak, classifying, such experiences must be provided
before the animal can begin to make the simplest inferences, compounded as these
are of thousands of experiences, to make the conception of such an act possible.

The Ape is tied down absolutely to his experience, and has only a very limited
ability to anticipate the results even of relatively simple actions, because so large
a proportion of his neopallium is under the direct influence of the senses, directly
or indirectly, i.c., is concerned with the memories of mere sensations.

Psychologists tell us that ‘so long as animals were absorbed in direct responses
to the demands of their environment, their mental complexes were of a direct,
primitive type, and stimulations issued into direct motor channels with relatively
little possibility of ideational organisation.’ But ‘as soon as a type of response
developed which was indirect there was a complete change in the general mode
of bodily and conscious organisation.’*” This distinction between the behaviour

*° ©. H. Judd, ‘ Psychology, General Introduction,’ 1907; p. 253,

18 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

of Man and other mammals is obviously correlated with the great expansion of
the temporo-parietal area, which is the fundamental distinctive feature of the
human brain.

In other Primates, even in the Anthropoid Apes, there is relatively only a
small area intervening between the great visual, tactile, and auditory territories,
and the fringing bands intimately associated with them, so that practically the
whole of this part of the brain is under the direct influence of sensations that
are constantly pouring in to keep the animal ‘ absorbed in direct responses to the
demands of its environment’ ; but the part of the temporo-parietal area which is
not under such direct influences undergoes a steady increase in size as we ascend
the Primate series, until in the Anthropoid Apes the three sensory territories are
definitely being pushed asunder, the visual to the occipital pole, the auditory to
the temporal region, and the sensory to the central. The time eventually
arrives when a sufficiently large area is formed where the functions of correlation
of sensory images can go on undisturbed by the new stream of incoming impres-
sions, and provide the physical mechanism for storing up records of the conse-
auences of actions excited by the frontal areas, which must be the materials out
of which the anticipation of what the result of any given action must be com-
pounded.

It may seem wildly speculative to speak in this manner of the way in which
these great temporo-parietal and frontal areas perform their functions, when
we are so profoundly ignorant of the precise nature of their working. But they
present the outstanding features of contrast in the brains of Men and Anthro-
poid Apes: we know that these two areas show a progressive and unbroken
increase in size in the series of Primates, with which we can associate the grow-
ing power of skill in manipulation, of intelligent action, and the faculty of learn-
ing to perform most complex movements; and the records of clinical medicine
and psychiatry have given us some faint glimmerings of the way in which they
perform their functions in Man.

Thus there seems to be some justification for framing a definite working
hypothesis to cover the factors that are known to us. ‘The temporo-parietal area
is the storehouse for the memories of the states of consciousness compounded of
visual, auditory, and tactile sensations, and its progressive growth and specialisa-
tion is the measure of the efficiency with which it performs these functions.
The central area is the storehouse for the memories of actions and the feelings
associated with them. The prefrontal area is concerned with attention and the
orderly control of the psychical activities of the whole cortex; and its great
expansion and high differentiation in Man may be taken to mean, among other
things, that it correlates the actions of the central and temporo-parietal areas,
and supplies the mechanism for recording the experience of the casual relation-
ship between the states of consciousness, causes, and effects, with which the
central and the temporo-parictal areas respectively are more immediately con-
cerned.

I am aware that this is a rather clumsy and crude attempt at psychological
analysis; but the idea [ am striving to express is this: that the Gibbon and the
other Anthropoid Apes are ‘strictly bound down to experience’ and have not
learned ‘to anticipate to any extent what is going to happen,’ because the parts
of the brain, temporo-parietal and prefrontal areas, which provide the
mechanisms for correlating causes and effects and making such experience avail-
able to regulate conduct, are still small and relatively undifferentiated. ‘They
are not yet sufficiently large to be removed far from the great sensory avenues
along which a constant stream of traffic is surging and overflowing into these
areas, compelling the latter to attune their activities to the immediate demands
of the animal’s environment.

And so the Gibbon, not yet mentally endowed to anticipate the consequences
of its acts and to do any great variety of useful things with its hands, developed
its arms in size and cunning, and became the most expert gymnast the world
has known. Nor, again, when Man’s nearer relatives, the Chimpanzee and the
Gorilla, branched off from his ancestral line, were they any the more able to use
their arms for the highest skilled work: but they developed great strength,
which enabled them to hold their own upon the ground and wax in size when
pitted in competition with the animals of their African forest home. In these
specialisations of their limbs they lost something of the mechanisms that were

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 19

essential to Man, which his ancestors retained when- those of the giant Anthro-
poids chose the lesser part of relying upon their strength rather than their
intelligence. b

From the study of the brain in a series of Apes the fact emerges that in this
progression there is taking place in the cerebral cortex a gradual extension and
development of certain areas, which eventually made it possible for the Ape that
achieved most in this way to make a fuller use of its erect attitude and employ
its liberated hands and arms for a higher purpose than the rest of its tribe.

Even in the lowliest Catarrhine Apes the cortical area which is set apart
directly to receive visual impressions is as large and as highly developed as it ever
will be; and perhaps we may assume, though our evidence is not yet so satis-
factory, that the tactile and acoustic areas are not very much inferior, so far as
the mere perception of touch and hearing is concerned, to those of Man. But
in the series of Primates we can detect fringes of cortex surrounding, perhaps
growing out from, these great sensory areas, and others linking these fringing
bands the one to the other, which show a progressive increase in size and
complexity of structure, as we proceed from Prosimian to Platyrrhine, Platyr-
rhine to Catarrhine Ape, and through the series Gibbon, Chimpanzee, and
Gorilla.

The progressive increase in size of these areas presumably connotes the growth
and perfecting of the apparatus for recording sensory impressions and the com-
plex states of consciousness which are awakened by the blending of various
impressions, visual, acoustic, tactile, and the rest, and the memories of similar
or contrasted forms of consciousness that the individual may have experienced in
the past.

In-Sir Edward Tylor’s classical book on ‘ Anthropology’ there is an admir-
able illustration of this in his comparison of the action of children and monkeys
scrambling for nuts. ‘ Knowing a nut by sight, or having an idea of a nut, means
that there are grouped together in the child’s mind memories of a number of past
sensations, which have so become connected by experience that a particular form
and colour, feel and weight, lead to the expectation of a particular flavour.
Of what here takes place in the child’s mind we can judge, though by no means
clearly, from what we know about our own thoughts and what others have told
us about theirs. What takes place in the monkeys’ minds we can only guess
by watching their actions, but these are so like the human as to be most readily
explained by considering their brain-work also to be like the human, though less
clear and perfect.’

In Man there is relatively an enormous increase in the extent and degree of
differentiation of the (temporo-parietal) region of the cerebral cortex which we
must associate with this particular category of function. Presumably this
implies not only that there is provided in the human brain a much more exten-
sive cortical area in which the records of experience can become imprinted, but
also that this larger territory will be free from the disturbance of the constant
traffic upon the main great sensory avenues, such as is inevitable in brains in
which the temporo-parietal area is little more than a narrow strip sandwiched in
between the great sensory areas, and liable to be flooded and overwhelmed by
the sensory impressions streaming into the cortex through them. In the Apes.
even the most highly endowed Anthropoids, the conduct of the animal is attuned
to the sensory impressions of the moment (modified in some degree only by the
experience of the past), because the cerebral cortex is so flooded with impressions
from the outside world.

But the time comes in the gradual development of the brain along the lines
we see exemplified in the series of Apes, when those cortical areas not imme-
diately concerned with the reception of sensory impressions become so large and
so stored with the fruits of experience that they come to exercise an influence
upon conduct more potent than that of direct sensory stimulation. Undisturbed
by the stream of impressions constantly pouring into the sensorium they provide
a mechanism for recording to an almost unlimited extent not only the mere
visual, tactile, and other qualities of objects, and the states of consciousness
each awakens, but also the recollection of acts and their consequences, so that
Man is endowed with such a wealth of experience of the consequences of certain
lines of action that he is able to foresee the results of his behaviour and modify
it accordingly.

20 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

In comparison with the Apes, Man has an enormously enhanced faculty of
profiting by experience, and of controlling the impulse to respond to every
sensory stimulus in his environment by recalling the consequences of such
responses on previous occasions. We may correlate these contrasts in behaviour
with the striking differences in the cerebral cortex. In the Ape the activity of
the greater part of the neopallium is to a large extent controlled by impressions
streaming into its various parts from one or other of the sense organs or other
sensitive structures in the body. In the course of evolution of the human brain
there is added to this cortex of Man’s Simian progenitor a mass of tissue, roughly,
about five hundred cubic centimetres, bigger than the whole of the Gorilla’s
brain; and as the sensory areas of the human brain are practically equal to
those of the Gorilla, all this enormous increase goes to swell the dimensions
of those parts of the cortex which do not receive sensory impressions directly.
These neopallial areas are at least six times as large in the human brain as they
are in the Gorilla’s. ‘To put these facts into a slightly different form, in the
Simian brain the sensory areas predominate, and the behaviour of the animal is
to be looked upon as the response to the immediate sensory impressions of the
moment : in the human brain the great association areas have grown far beyond
the dimensions of the sensory areas, and experience, the effects of education,
and knowledge assume the dominant role in influencing conduct.

In the series of Primates it is found that the size of the cortical area con-
trolling skilled movements increases as we ascend the scale, and the variety,
complexity, and skilled nature of the movements become markedly increased.
The extent to which the Anthropoid Apes can be trained to remember and per-
form the most complex actions must be familiar to everyone who has visited
the modern ‘ music-hall’ or travelling menagerie.

Thus it happens when the brain reaches the stage in its evolution to impel its
possessor to attempt complex purposive acts directed toward the accomplishment
of some intelligent aim, the hand and arm are not only ready and free from
the duty of progression, but they already have attained in great measure the
skill and the cunning to perform what the intelligent will requires of them.

What more favourable conditions could be imagined than these for the forces
of natural selection to seize hold of, to fix and establish more definitely the erect
attitude, to make the hand a more delicate and exact instrument capable of per-
forming infinitely more complex and varied skilled actions, to make the leg a
more efficient support, and thereby simultaneously to give still more freedom to
the all-important hand, while the growing brain is all the time becoming more
richly endowed with the potentialities of the conscious memory, reciprocally
stimulating and being stimulated by the motor centres, which, by directing the
performance of new manceuvres, add to the storehouse of consciousness new
elements of experience of cause and effect ?

The erect attitude, infinitely more ancient than Man himself, is not the real
cause of man’s emergence from the Simian stage; but it is one of the factors made
use of by the expanding brain as a prop to still further extend its growing
dominion, and by fixing and establishing in a more decided way this erectness it
liberates the hand to become the chief instrument of Man’s further progress.

In learning to execute movements of a degree of delicacy and precision to
which no Ape could ever attain, and which the primitive Ape-man could only
attempt once his arm was completely emancipated from the necessity of being
an instrument of progression, that cortical area which seemed to serve \for the
phenomena of attention became enhanced in importance. Hence the prefrontal
region, where the activities of the cortex as a whole are, as it were, focussed
and regulated, began to grow until eventually it became the most distinctive
characteristic of the human brain, gradually filling out the front of the cranium
and producing the distinctively human forehead. In the diminutive prefrontal
area of Pithecanthropus,"' and, to a less marked degree, Neanderthal man,**, we
see illustrations of lower human types, bearing the impress of their lowly state
in receding foreheads and great brow-ridges. However large the brain may be

| Bug. Dubois, ‘Remarks upon the [Drain-cast of Pithecanthropus,’ Proc.
Fourth Internat. Cong. Zool., August 1898, published Camb., 1899, p. 81.

“2 Boule and Anthony, ‘ L’encéphale de |homme fossile de la Chapelle-aux-
Saints, LZ’ Anthropologie, tome xxil., No. 2, 1911, p. 50,

ware

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 31

in Homo primigenius, his small prefrontal region, if we accept Boule and
anthony s statements, 1s sutlicient evidence of his lowly stage of intelligence and
reason tor his failure in the competition with the rest of mankind.

Once the Simian ancestor of lan began to anticipate the consequences of his
acts and put this knowledge and the growing appreciation of the powers of his
hands to useful purpose, for using weapons, or even making them, the erect
attitude would become a regular habit, so as to emancipate the hands entirely
for their new duties. The realisation of his ability to defend himself upon the
ground, once he had learned the use of sticks and stones as implements, would
naturally have led the intelligent Ape to forsake the narrow life of the forest
and roam at large in search of more abundant and attractive food and variety of
scene. Like most creatures who live in the open, the adoption of social habits is
one of the surest means of protection; for the eyes and ears of each individual
thus become the servants of the whole community, giving warning of danger, and
thus adding to the safety of the herd. The development of the legs then
became a necessary condition of survival: for warnings of danger to animals
living in the open are useless without tieetness of foot to escape or skill of arm to
ward off the threatened danger. ‘l‘hus we have come to realise the steps by
which a growing brain makes it possible and desirable for the most intelligent
of the Apes to forsake the purely arboreal life and seek a wider sphere of activity
upon the earth: they emerged from their original forest home, and in troops
invaded the open country, led on no doubt by the search for a more plentitul
supply or a more appetising variety of food. Such an existence, demanding an
ever-increasing skill to use implements of defence and to specialise the arms in
using. them, and at the same time tleeter limbs, better adapted for progression on
the earth, would rapidly tramsform the limbs and specialise them each for its
separate functions.

Thus it easy to conceive how it came to happen, once the evolution of the
brain made it possible for the Ape to appreciate its ability to perform, and
anticipate the results of skilled actions, that he at once began to avail himself
of the larger life that was opened before him. He already possessed the skill to
use his hands, and this became emphasised with their added usefulness and value
to their possessor, the more eflicient brain, and increased delicacy of the hands
themselves, once they ceased to be mere prehensile instruments. And the
emancipation of the hands from progression threw the whole responsibility upon
the legs, which became more efficient for their purpose as supports once they lost
their prehensile powers and became elongated and specialised for rapia pro-
gression. Thus the erect attitude became stereotyped and fixed and the limbs
specialised, and these upright Simians emerged from their ancestral forests in
societies, armed with sticks and stones, and with the rudiments of all the powers
that eventually enabled them to conquer the world. The greater exposure to
danger which these more adventurous spirits encountered once they emerged in
the open, and the constant struggles these first semi-human creatures must have
had in encounters with definite enemies, no less than with the forces of Nature,
provided the factors which rapidly weeded out those unfitted for the new con-
ditions, and by natural selection made real Men of the survivors.

The growth in intelligence and in the powers of discrimination no doubt led
to the dawning of a definite zsthetic sense, which, operating through sexual
selection, brought about a gradual refinement of the features, added grace to the
general build of the body, and demolished the greater part of its hairy covering.
It also intensified the sexual distinctions, especially by developing in the female
localised deposits of fatty tissue, not found in the Apes, which produced pro-
found alterations in the general form of the body.

To one who considers what precisely it means to fix the attention and attempt
the performance of some delicately adjusted and precise action it must be evident
that one hand only can be usefully employed in executing the consciously skilled
part in any given movement. The other hand, like the rest of the muscles of the
whole body, can be only auxiliary to it, assisting, under the influence of atten-
tion, either passively or actively, in steadying the body or helping the dominant
hand. Moreover, it is clear that if one hand is constantly employed for doing
the more skilled work, it will learn to perform it more precisely and more success-
fully than either would if both were trained, in spite of what ambidextral
enthusiasts may say. Hence it happened that when Nature was fashioning Man

22 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.

the forces of natural selection made one hand more apt to perform skilled move-
ments than the other. Why precisely it was the rignt hand that was chosen in
the majority of mankind we do not know, thougn scores of anatomists and
others are ready with explanations. But probably some slight mechanical
advantage in the circumstances of the limb, or perhaps even some factor affect-
ing the motor area of the left side of the brain that controls its movements, may
have inclined the balance in favour of the right arm; and the forces of heredity
have continued to perpetuate a tendency long ago imprinted in Man’s structure
when first he became human.

The fact that a certain proportion of mankind is left-handed, and that such
a tendency is transmitted to some only of the descendants of a left-handed
person, might perhaps suggest that one half of mankind was originally left-
nanded and the other right-handed, and that the former condition was recessive
in the Mendelian sense, or that some infinitesimal advantage may have accrued to
the right-handed part of the original community, which in time of stress spared
them in preference to left-handed individuais; but the whole problem of why
right-handedness should be rauch more common than left-handedness is still quite
obscure. ‘The superiority of one hand is as old as mankind, and is one of the
factors incidental to the evolution of Man. .

lt is easily comprehensible why one hand should become more expert than
the other, as I have attempted to show; and the fact remains that it is the right
hand, controlled by the left cerebral hemisphere, which is specially favoured in
this respect. This heightened educability of the (left) motor centre (for the
right hand) has an important influence upon the adjoining areas of the left motor
cortex. Wnen the Ape-Man attained a sutlicient degree of intelligence to wish
to communicate with his fellows other than by mere instinctive emotional cries
and grimaces, such as all social groups of animals employ, the more cunning
right hand would naturaily play an important part in such gestures and signs;
and, although the muscles of both sides of the face would be called into action
in such movements of the features as were intended to convey information to
another (and not merely to express the personal feelings of the individual), such
bilateral movements would certainly be controlled by the left side of the brain,
because it was already more highly educated.

Up to this stage the means of communication with other individuals was
practically confined to signs and gestures, controlled by the left brain of the
signaller and appreciated by the visual apparatus of the receiver: and no doubt
a special bond was established between the visual areas, in which the memories
of such signs and their meanings were recorded, and the area in which the
memories of the particular movements of arms and face were stored: and as
the latter were controlled in the left hemisphere, the bond between the visuo-
psychic and arm-head motor centres would be specially intimate in the left
cerebral hemisphere.

The increased control acquired by the left motor centres (over the right hand
and both sides of the face) also extended to the left centres that regulate the
muscles of the tongue, palate, and larynx; and the skill that the primitive
Ape-Man had acquired to perform delicately adjusted actions with the right hand
and face naturally became extended to include these other muscles, the move.
ments of which are regulated by the adjoining cortical area, and are also used
to aid in expressing the ideas conveyed by the movements of the hand and face.
‘hen he learned to make a much greater variety of sounds than he has inherited
from his Gorilla-like and Gibbon-like ancestors. To the memories of the sounds
of other animals and of the noises that occur in Nature, which had already
become stored up in the sensorium of Apes, the primitive Ape-Man added a
collection of records of the expressive sounds deliberately emitted by his fellows ;
and in course of time the consciousness of these sounds was recorded, along with
the memories of his gestures and grimaces, associating each with some meaning,
which became a new way of communicating with his fellows.

The perfection of the cortical mechanism for appreciating sounds and
detecting a very wide range of qualities is associated in the human brain with
a remarkable growth and differentiation of the auditory area of the cortex.*
As intercommunication between members of a social group became a matter of

** Brodmann, op. cit., p. 144,

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 23

vital importance to the individuals composing it, this acuity in recognising
sounds of different pitch, tone, and timbre, and in detecting their precise
emotional significance, would grow pari passu with the acquisition of speech.

From the time the early Primate ancestor of Man took to an arboreal mode
of life, the sense of hearing has always been keen and especially well-represented,
though not to the degree that vision is, in the neopallium; but this normal
acuity of the Primate hearing became enormously heightened, or rather, attuned
to perceive a much greater variety of sounds, when it came to be the chief means
of communication between Men.

It must be quite evident that the first essential condition of speech must be
the evolution of an area (usually in the left brain) in which there can be added
to the vast collection of visual, auditory, tactile, and other complex states of
consciousness already stored in it, not only the memories of the visual impres-
sions of gestures and their meanings, but also of sounds and their associated
ideas—that is, the state of consciousness which each particular sound awakens,
through being linked up in memory with the auditory sensation; and the second
essential must be a motor cortex sufficiently skilled to produce similar gestures,
grimaces, and sounds. But just as a child must learn the meaning of words
long before he attempts to reproduce the sounds himself, so in the dawn of human
existence the Ape-Man educated his acoustic cortex to associate definite meanings
with the sounds that occurred in Nature around him, and no doubt learned to
imitate them before he began to invent new sounds to express new meanings,
or to imitate those emitted by his fellow-Men. If it was the precocious high
development of the sense of sight that started the Primates on their career, the
high development of the cortical mechanism for discriminating sounds played
a great part in making Man from an Ape. I think that most anthropologists who
approach the study of speech from the physical or biological side have concen-
trated too much attention upon the supposed motor centres, and not enough on
the great temporo-parietal areas, upon the education of which the faculty of
speech, as Pierre Marie is rightly insisting, so largely depends. In other words,
our Simian ancestor must have had something to say before he attempted to find
means of expressing it.

I do not propose to discuss the tremendous impetus that the invention of
speech must have given to human .progress and intellectual development, in
enabling the knowledge acquired by each individual to become the property of
the community and be handed on to future generations, as well as by supplying
in words the very symbols and the indispensable elements of the higher mental
processes. This theme has been frequently discussed by many great thinkers :
it has been expounded by several of my predecessors in this chair, and its influence
pictured much more graphically and eloquently than I am capable of doing. For
as Huxley has well said: Man ‘alone possesses the marvellous endowment of
intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence,
he has slowly accumulated and organised the experience which is almost wholly
lost with the cessation of life in other animals; so that now he stands raised upon
it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and trans-
figured from his grosser nature by reflecting here and there a ray from the infinite
source of truth.’ 44

We are apt to forget the immensity of the heritage that has come down to us
from former generations of Men, until we begin dimly to realise that for the
vast maiority of mankind almost the sum-total of their mental activities consists
of imitation or acquiring and using the common stock of knowledge. For this
accumulation of knowledge and its transmission to our generation we are almost
wholly indebted to the use of speech. In our forgetfulness of these facts we
marvel at the apparent dulness of early Man in being content to use the most
roughly chipped flints for many thousands of years before he learned to polish
them, and eventually to employ materials better suited for the manufacture of
implements and weapons. But is the more highly cultured and civilised popula-
tion of our own day so much more fertile of ideas? Is it not the fact that no
really new idea ever enters the mind of the vast majority of mankind, and even
much that seems new is really compounded of the knowledge gained by others?
When we consider how slowly and laboriously primitive Man acquired new ideas,

“* Quoted by Sollas, op. cit., p. 1xxxvii.

24 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H,

and how such ideas—even those which seem childishly simple and obvious to us—
were treasured as priceless possessions and handed on from tribe to tribe, what
becomes of the current theories of independent evolution of.customs and culture?
What room is there for hypotheses of ‘similar workings of the human mind
leading to the development of similar inventions’? Really original ideas were
far too rare in the youth, and in fact also in the full flush of adult age, of man-
kind, for us seriously to consider the possibility that merely similar circumstances
would tend to call forth similar ideas? This brings us back to the place from
which we started. The very essence of intelligence is the uncertainty of the
response it gives to ‘similar circumstances’; the blind forces of environment
working in two organisms may lead to similar results, but who can predict the
final issue when intelligence interferes ?

The modern problems of anthropology that we have to solve, those which
relate to Man and his inventions since the time of his world-wide distribution
and differentiation into distinct races, are not so much questions of independent
evolution, but rather those concerning the migrations, the intermixtures and the
hlendings of different races and cultures. The hypothesis of the ‘ fundamental
similarity of the working of the human mind’ is no more potent to explain the
identity of customs in widely different parts of the world, the distribution of
megalithic monuments, or the first appearance of metals in America, than it is to
destroy our belief that one man, and one only, originally conceived the idea of
the mechanical use to which steam could be applied, or that the electric battery
was not independently evolved in each of the countries where it is now in use.

In these discursive remarks I have attempted to deal with old problems in
the light of newly-acquired evidence; to emphasise the undoubted fact that the
evolution of the Primates and the emergence of the distinctively human type of
intelligence are to be explained primarily by a steady growth and specialisation
of certain parts of the brain; that such a development could have occurred only
in the Mammalia. because they are the only plastic class of animals with a true
organ of intelligence; that an arboreal mode of life started Man’s ancestors on
the way to pre-eminence, for it gave them the agility, and the specialisation of
the higher parts of the brain incidental to such a life gave them the seeing eye.
and in course of time also the understanding ear; and that all the rest followed
in the train of this high development of vision working on a brain which con-
trolled ever-increasinsly agile limbs.

If I have made these general principies clear, however clumsily set forth,
and with whatever crudities of psvchological scatement they may be marred, I
shall feel that I have not laboured in vain.

British Association for the Hdvancement of
Science.

SECTION I: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

TO THE

eri olOLOGICAL SECTION

BY
LEONARD HILL, M.B., F.R.S.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Last year the distinguished President of this Section raised us to the contem-
plation of the workings of the soul. I ask you to accompany me in the con-
sideration of nothing higher than a stuffy room. Everyone thinks that he
suffers in an ill-ventilated room owing to some change in the chemical quality
of the air, be it want of oxygen, or excess of carbon dioxide, the addition of
some exhaled organic poison, or the destruction of some subtle property by
passage of the air over steam-coils, or other heating or conducting apparatus.
We hear of ‘ devitalised’ or ‘dead’ air, and of ‘tinned’ or ‘ potted’ air of the
battleship. The good effects of open-air treatment, sea and mountain air, are
no less generally ascribed to the chemical purity of the air. In reality the
health-giving properties are those of temperature, light, movement, and relative
moisture of the surrounding atmosphere, and leaving on one side those gross
chemical impurities which arise in mines and in some manufacturing processes,
and the question of bacterial infection, the alterations in chemical composition
of the air in buildings where people crowd together and suffer from the effects
of ill-ventilation have nothing to do with the causation of these effects.

Satisfied with the maintenance of a specious standard of chemical purity, the
public has acquiesced in the elevation of sky-scrapers and the sinking of cavernous
places of business. Many have thus become cave-dwellers, confined for most of
their waking and sleeping hours in windless places, artificially lit, monotonously
warmed. The sun is cut off by the shadow of tall buildings and by smoke—the
sun, the energiser of the world, the giver of all things which bring joy to the
heart of man, the fitting object of worship of our forefathers.

The ventilating and heating engineer hitherto has followed a great illusion in
thinking that the main objects to be attained in our dwellings and places of
business are chemical’ purity of the air and a uniform draughtless summer tem-
perature.

Life is the reaction of the living substance to the ceaseless play of the
environment. Biotic energy arises from the transformation of those other
forms of energy—heat, light, sound, &c.—which beat upon the transformer—the
living substance (B. Moore). Thus, when all the avenues of sense are closed, the
central nervous system is no longer aroused and consciousness lapses. Laura
Bridgeman, paralysed in almost all her ayenues of sense, fell asleep whenever her
remaining eye was closed. The patient who lost one labyrinth by disease and,
to escape unendurable vertigo, had the other removed by operation, was quite
unable to guide his movements or realise his position in the dark. Rising from
bed one night, he collapsed on the tloor and remained there helpless till succour
arrived.

A sense organ is not stimulated unless there is a change of rate in the trans-

[

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I.

ference of energy; and this to be effectual must occur in most cases with con-
siderable quickness. If a weak agent is to stimulate, its application must be
abrupt (Sherrington). Thus the slow changes of barometric pressure on the
body-surface originate no skin sensations, though such changes of pressure if
applied suddenly, are much above the threshold value for touch. A touch excited
by constant mechanical pressure of slight intensity fades quickly below the
threshold of sensation. Thus the almost unbearable discomfort which a child
feels on putting on for the first time a ‘natural’ wool vest fades away, and is no
longer noticed with continual wear. Thomas 4 Beckett soon must have become
oblivious to his hair-shirt, and even to its harbingers. It is not the wind which
God tempers to the shorn lamb, but the skin of the lamb to the wind. The
inflow of sensations keeps us active and alive and all the organs working in their
appointed functions. The cutaneous sensations are of the highest importance.
The salt and sand of wind-driven sea air particularly act on the skin and through
it braces the whole body. The changing play of wind, of light, cold, and
warmth stimulate the activity and health of mind and body. Monotony of
sedentary occupation and of an overwarm still atmosphere endured for long
working hours destroys vigour and happiness and brings about the atrophy of
disuse. We hear a great deal of the degeneration of the race brought about by
city life, but observation shows us that a drayman, navvy, or policeman can live
in London, or other big city, strong and vigorous, and no less so than in the
country. The brain-worker, too, can keep himself perfectly fit if his hours of
sedentary employment are not too long and he balances these by open-air
exercise. The horses stabled, worked, and fed in London are as fine as any in
the world; they do not live in windless rooms heated by radiators.

The hardy men of the North were evolved to stand the vagaries of climate—
cold and warmth—a starved or full belly have been their changing lot. The
full belly and the warm sun have expanded them in lazy comfort; the cold and
the starvation have braced them to action. Modern civilisation has withdrawn
many of us from the struggle with the rigours of Nature; we seek for and
mostly obtain the comfort of a full belly and expand all the time in the warm
atmosphere afforded us by clothes, wind-protected dwellings, and artificial heat—
particnlarly so in the winter, when the health of the business man deteriorates.
Cold is not comfortable, neither is hunger, therefore we are led to ascribe many
of our ills to exposure to cold, and seek to make ourselves strong by what is
termed good living. I maintain that the bracing effect of cold is of supreme
importance to health and happiness, that we become soft and flabby and less
resistant to the attacks of infecting bacteria in the winter not because of the cold
but because of our excessive precautions to preserve ourselves from cold; that
the prime cause of ‘cold’ or ‘chill’ is not reall¥ exposure to cold but to the
over-heated and confined air of rooms, factories, and meeting-places. Seven
hundred and eleven survivors were saved from the Titanic after hours of
exposure to cold. Many were insufficiently clad and others wet to the skin.
Only one died after reaching the Carpathia, and he three hours after being
picked up. Those who died perished from actual cooling of the body. Exposure
to cold did not cause in the survivors the diseases commonly attributed to cold.

Conditions of city and factory life diminish the physical and nervous energy,
and reduce many from the vigerous health and perfectness of bodilv functions
which a wild animal possesses to a more secure, but poorer and far less happy.
form of existence. ‘The ill chosen diet. the monotony and sedentary ‘nature of
daily work, the windless uniformity of atmosphere, above all, the neglect of
vigorous muscular exercise in the open air and exposure to the winds and light
of heaven—all these, together with the difficulties in the way of living a normal
sexual life, go to make the pale, undeveloped, neurotic, and joyless citizen.
Nurture in unnatural surroundings, not Nature’s birth-mark, moulds the criminal
and the wastrel. The environment of childhood and youth is at fault rather
than the stock: the children who are taken away and trained to be sailors, those
sent to agricultural pursuits in the Colonies. those who become soldiers, may
develop a physique and bodily health and vigour in striking contrast to their
brothers who become clerks, shop assistants, and compositors,.

Too much stress cannot be put on the importance of muscular exercise in
regard to health, beauty, and happiness. Each muscle fills with blood as it

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 3

relaxes, and expels this blood on past the venous valves durine contraction.
Each muscle tocether with the venous valves forms a pump to the cirenlatory
system. It is the function of the heart to deliver the blood to the canillaries,
and the function of the muscles—visceral, respiratory, and skeletal—to bring it
back to the heart. The circulation is contrived for a restless mobile animal;
everv vessel is arranged so that muscular movement furthers the flow of blood.

The pressure of the blood in the veins and arteries under the influence of
gravity varies with every change of posture. The respiratory pump, too, has a
profound influence on the circulation. Active exercise. such as is taken in a
game of football, entails endless changes of posture, varying compressive actions
—one with another struggline in the rouch and tumble of the game—forcible con-
tractions and relaxations of the mnscles, and a vastlv increased pulmonarv
ventilation: at the same time the heart’s action is accelerated and angmented
and the arterial sunply controlled by the vaso-motor system. The influence of
eravity. which tends to cause the fluids of the bodv to sink into the lower parts.
is counteracted : the liver is rhythmically squeezed like a snonge by the vowerful
respiratory movements, which not only pump the blood through the abdominal
viscera but thoronghly massage these organs, and kneading these with the
omentnm clean the neritoneal cavitv and prevent constipation. At the same
time the surplus food metabolic products, such as sugar and fat, stored in the
liver. are consumed in the production of energy, and the organs swept with a
ranid stream of blood contsining other nroducts of muscular metabolism
which are necessarv to the inter-relation of chemical action. The output of
enerov is increased very greatly; a resting man may expend two thousand
Calories per diem: one bicycling hard for most of the day expended eight
thonsand Calories. of which onlv four thousand was covered by the food eaten.

Such figures show how fat is taken off from the body by exercise. for the
other four thousand Calories comes from the consumption of surplus food pro-
ducts stored in the tissues. While resting a man breathes some 7 litres of air,
and uses 300 c.c. of oxygen per minute, against 140 litres and 3000 c.c. while
doing very hard labour. The call of the muscles for oxygen through such waste
nroducts as lactic acid impels the formation of red corpuscles and hemoglobin.
The products of muscular metabolism in other ways not yet fully defined
modify the metabolism of the whole body.

Exposure to cold, cold baths, and cold winds has a like effect, accelerating
the heart and increasing the heat production, the activity of the muscles. the
output of energy, the pulmonary ventilation, and intake of oxygen and food.
In contrast with the soft pot-bellied, over-fed city man the hard. wirv fisher-
man trained to endurance has no superfluity of fat or tissue fluid. His blood
volume has a high relative value in proportion to the mass of his body. His
superficial veins are confined between a taut skin and muscles, hard as in a race-
horse trained to perfection. Thus the adequacy of the cutaneous circulation and
loss of heat by radiation rather than by sweating is assured. His fat is of a
higher melting-point, hardened by exposure to cold. In him less blood is
derived to other parts such as adipose tissue, skin, and viscera. He uses up
the oxygen in the arterial blood more completely and with greater efficiency: for
the outnut of each unit of energv his heart has to circulate much less blood
(Kreogh): his blood is sent in full volume by the well-balanced activity of his
vaso-motor system to the moving parts. Owing to the perfect co-ordination
of his muscles, trained to the work, and the efficient action of his skin and
entaneous circulation—the radiator of the body—he performs the work with
far greater economy and less fatigue. The untrained man may obtain 12
per cent. of his energy output as work, against 30 per cent. or perhaps even
50 per cent. obtained by the trained athlete. Hence the failure and risk
suffered by the city man who rushes straight from his office to climb the Alps.
On the other hand, the energetic man of business or brain worker is kept by his
work in a state of nervous tension. He considers alternative lines of action, but
scarcely moves. He may be intensely excited, but the natural muscular response
does not follow. His heart is accelerated and his blood pressure raised, but
neither muscular movements and accompanying changes of posture, nor the
1espiratory pump materially aid the cizculation, The activity of his brain

1 2

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I.

demands a rapid flow of blood, and his heart has to do the circulatory work, as
he sits still or stands at his desk, against the influence of gravity. Hence a
high blood pressure is maintained for long periods at a time by vaso-constriction
of the arteries in the lower parts of the body and increased action of the heart;
hence, perhaps, arise those degenerative changes in the circulatory system which
affect some men tireless in their mental activity. We know that the bench-
worker, who stands on one leg for long hours a day, may suffer from degenera-
tion and varicosity of the veins in that leg. Long continued high arterial
pressure, with systolic and diastolic pressures approximately the same, entails
a stretched arterial wall, and this must impede the circulation in the vaso
vasorum, the flow of tissue lymph in, and nutrition of, the wall. Since his
sedentary occupation reduces the metabolism and heat production of his body
very greatly, the business man requires a warmer atmosphere to work in. If
the atmosphere is too warm it reduces his metabolism and pulmonary ventilation
still further; thus he works in a vicious circle. Exhausting work causes the
consumption of certain active principles, for example, adrenalin, and the
reparation of those must be from the food. To acquire certain of the rarer
principles expended in the manifestation of nervous energy more food may have
to be eaten by the sedentary worker than can be digested and metabolised. His
digestive organs lack the kneading and massage, the rapid circulation and oxida-
tion of foodstuffs which is given by muscular exercise. Hence arise the diges-
tive and metabolic ailments so common to brain workers.

Mr. Robert Milne informs me that of the thousands of children which have
passed through Barnardo’s Homes—there are 9,000 in the homes at any one time—
not one after entering the institution and passing under its regimen and the care of
his father, Dr. Milne, has developed appendicitis. Daily exercise and play, ade-
quate rest, a regular simple diet have ensured their immunity from this infection.
It pays to keep a horse healthy and efficient ; it no less pays to keep men healthy.
I recently investigated the case of clerks employed in a great place of business,
whose working hours are from 9 to 6 on three days, and 7 to 9 on the other three
days of each week, and, working such overtime, they make 1/. to 2/. a week;
these clerks worked in a confined space—forty to fifty of them in 8,200 cubic feet,
lit with thirty electric lamps, cramped for room, and overheated in warm
summer days. It is not with the chemical purity of the air of such an office that
fault is to be found, for fans and large openings ensured this sufficiently. These
clerks suffered from their long hours of monetonous and sedentary occupation,
and from the artificial light, and the windless, overwarm and moist atmosphere.
Many a girl cashier has worked from 8 to 8.30, and on Saturdays from 8 to 10,
and then has had to balance her books and leave perhaps after midnight on
Sunday morning. Her office is away in the background—confined, windless,
artificially lit. The Shops Act has given a little relief from these hours. What,
I ask, is the use of the State spending a million a year on sanatoria and tuber-
culin dispensaries, when those very conditions of work continue which lessen the
immunity. and increase the infection of the workers?

The jute industry in this town of Dundee is carried out almost wholly by
female and boy labour. ‘The average wages for women are below 12s. in eight
processes, and above 12s., but under 18s., for the remaining five processes.’
The infant mortality has been over 170 per 1,000. The Social Union of Dundee
reported in 1905 that of 885 children born to 240 working mothers po fewer
than 520, or 59 per cent., died—and almost all of them were under five years of
age. The life of these mothers was divided between the jute factory and the
one-roomed tenement. Looking such conditions squarely in the face, I say it
would be more humane for the State to legalise the exposure of every other new-
born infant on the hillside rather than allow children to be slowly done to death.
The conditions, as given in the Report, contravene those rights of motherhood
which the meanest wild animal can claim.

Isolation hospitals, sputum-pots, and anti-spitting regulations will not stamp
out tuberculosis. Such means are like shutting the door of the stable when
the horse has escaped. .Fligge has shown that tubercle bacilli are spread by
the droplets of saliva which are carried out as an invisible spray when we speak,
sing, cough, sneeze. Sputum-pots cannot control this. The saliva of cases of
phthisis may teem with the bacilli. The tuberculin reaction tests carried out

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 5

by Hamburger and Monti in Vienna show that 94 per cent. of all children aged
eleven to fourteen have been infected with tubercle. In most the infection is
a mere temporary indisposition. I believe that the conditions of exhausting
work, and amusement in confined and overheated atmospheres, together with
ill-regulated feeding, determine largely whether the infection, which almost
none can escape, become serious or not. Karl Prearson suggests that the
death statistics afford no proof of the utility of sanatoria or tuberculin dis-
pensaries, for during the very years in which such treatment has been in vogue,
the fall in the mortality from tuberculosis has become less relatively to the fall in
general mortality. He opines that the race is gradually becoming immune to
tubercle, and hence the declination in the mortality curve is becoming flattened out
—that Nature is paramount as the determinant of tuberculosis, not nurture. From
a statistical inquiry into the incidence of tuberculosis in husband and wife and
parent and child Pearson concludes that exposure to infection as in married
couples is of little importance, while inborn immunity or diathesis is a chief
determinant. Admitting the value of his critical inquiries and the importance
of diathesis, I would point out that in the last few years the rush and excitement
of modern city life has increased, together with the confinement of-workers to
sedentary occupations in artificially lit, warm, windless atmospheres. The same
conditions pertain to places of amusement, eating-houses, tube railways, &c.

Central heating, gas-radiators, and other contrivances are now displacing
the old open fire and chimney. This change greatly improves the economical con-
sumption of coal and the light and cleanliness of the atmosphere. But in so far
as it promotes monotonous, windless, warm atmospheres, it is wholly against the
health and vigour of the nation. The open fire and wide chimney ensure
ventilation, the indrawing of cold outside air, streaky air—restless currents at
different temperatures, which strike the sensory nerves in the skin and prevent
monotony and weariness of spirit. By the old open fires we were heated with
radiant heat. The air in the rooms was drawn in cool and varied in temperature.
The radiator and hot-air system give us a deadly uniformly heated air—the very
conditions we find most unsupportable on a close summer’s day.

In Labrador and Newfoundland, Dr. Wakefield tells me, the mortality of
the fisherfolk from tuberculosis is very heavy. It is generally acknowledged
to be four per 1,000 of the population per annum, against 1°52 for England
and Wales. Some of the Labrador doctors talk of seven and even eight per
1,000 in certain districts. The general death-rate is a low one. The fisher-
men fish off shore, work for many hours a day in the fishing season, and live
with their families on shore in one-roomed shanties. These shanties are built of
wood, the crannies are ‘ stogged’ with moss, and the windows nailed up, so that
ventilation is very imperfect. They are heated by stoves and kept at a very
high temperature, e.g., S0° F. Outside in the winter the temperature may be
30 degrees below freezing. The women stay inside the shanties almost all their
time, and the tuberculosis rate is somewhat higher in them. The main food is
white bread, tea stewed in the pot till black, fish occasionally, a little margarine
and molasses. The fish is boiled and the water thrown away. Game has become
scarce in recent years; old, dark-coloured flour—spoken of with disfavour—has
been replaced by white flour. In consequence of this diet beri-beri has become
rife to a most serious extent, and the hospitals are full of cases. Martin Flack
and I have found by’our feeding experiments that rats, mice, and pigeons cannot
be maintained on white bread and water, but can live on wholemeal, or on white
bread in which we incorporate an extract of the sharps and bran in sufficient
amount. Recent work has shown the vital importance of certain active principles
present in the outer layers of wheat, rice, &c., and in milk, meat, &c., which are
destroyed by heating to 120° C. A diet of white bread or polished rice and
tinned food sterilised by heat is the cause of beri-beri. The metabolism is
endangered by the artificial methods of treating foods now in vogue. As to
the prevalency of tuberculosis in Labrador, we have to consider the inter-
marriage, the bad diet, the over-rigorous work of the fishermen, the over-
heating of, and infection in the shanties. Dr. Wakefield has slept with
four other travellers in a shanty with father, mother, and ten children. In
some there is scarce room on the floor to lie down. The shanties are heated

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L

with a stove on which pots boil all the time; water ruus down the windows. ‘I'he
patients are ignorant, and spit everywhere, on bed, Noor, anu Wallis. in toe
scaools the heat and smell is most Marked tu one Coming im Irom the outsiae air.
in one school 5U cubic feet per child is the allowance ot space. ‘lhe children are
eating all day long, ana are kept in close hot confinement. ‘ihey sutier very
badly trom decay uf the teeth. Whole ramilies are swept om with tuberculosis,
and the child who leaves home early may escape, while tue rest of a tamuly dies.
Here, then, we have people living in tne wildest and least populated ot lands
with the purest atmosphere sutterimg from ali those ul-results which are found
in the worst city slums—tuberculosis, beri-berl, and decayed teeta.

‘Lhe bad diet probably impels the people to conserve their body heat and live in
the over-warm, confined atmosphere, Just as our pigeons led on white bread sit,
with their teathers out, huddled togetuer to keep eacn other warm.

fhe metabolism, circulation, respiration, and expansion of the lung are all
reduced. ‘I'he warm, moist atmospnere lessens the evaporation from the respira-
tory tract, and theretore the tramsudation of tissue lympn and activity o1 Wwe
ciated epithelium. ‘Lhe unexpanded parts of tne lung are not swept wiva bloou.
fuverything tavours a lodgment of the bacilli, and lessens the deieuces on which
immunity depends. ln tne moutn, too, the immune properties of the saliva are
neutralised by the continual presence or 1ood, and the temperature ot the moutn
is kept at a nigher level, which favours bacterial growth. Lieutenant Siem in-
torms me that recently in Northern norway there has been the same notabie
increase in tuberculosis. ‘Ihe old cottage ureplaces with wide chinmeys have
been replaced with American stoves. in olden uays most of the heat went up the
coimney, and the people were warmed by radiant neat. low the room 1s heatea
vo a unllorm moist heat. ‘Lhe Norwegians nail up the windows and never open
them during the winter. At Loioten, the great fishing centre, motor-boats
nave replaced the ola open sailing and vow boats. ‘he caoin in the motor-boau
is very confined, covered in with watertight deck, heated py the engime, crowded
with a dozen workers. When in harbour the fishermen used to occupy ill-httea
shanties, through which the wind blew freely; now, to save rent, they sleep 1n
vne motor-boat cabins.

Here, again, we wave massive infection, and the reduction of the defensive
mechanisms by the influence of the warm, moist atmosphere.

‘the Norwegian fishermen feed on brown bread, boiled isn, salt mutton, mar-
garine, and drink, when in money, beer and schnapps ; there is no gross deficiency
1a diet, as in Labrador, and beri-beri does not attack them. ‘lhey return home
to their villages and longshore fisning when the season 1s over. ‘Lhe one new
condition which is common to the two districts is confinement in stove-heated,
windless atmospheres. In old days the men were crowded together, but in open
boats or in draughty shanties, and had nothing but little cooking-stoves.

ihe conditions of great cities tend to confine the worker in tne oftice all day,
and to the heated atmosphere of club, cinema show, or music-hall in the evening.
ine height of houses prevents the town dweller from being blown upon by tne
wind, and, missing the exhilarating stimulus ot the cool, moving air, he repels
the dull uniformity of existence by tobacco and by alconol, or by indulgence im
tood, e.g., sweets, which are everywhere to his hand, and by the nervous excite-
ment ot business and amusement. He works, he eats, and is amused in warm,
windless atmospheres, and sutters from a teeble circulation, a shallow respitation,
a disordered digestion, and a slow rate of metabolism,

Many ot the employments of modern days are detestable in their long hours
of confinement and monotony. Men go up and down in a lift all day, and girls
in the bloom of youth are set down in tobacco stalls in underground stations,
and their health and beauty there fade while even the blow-flies are tree to bask
in the sun. In factories the operatives feed machines, or reproduce the same
small piece of an article day atter day. ‘lhere is no art, or change no pleasure
in contrivance and accomplishment. ‘lhe miner, the fisherman, even the sewer-
man, tace difticulties, changing risks, and are developed as men of character
and strength. Contrast the sailor with the steward on a steamer, the drayman
outside with the clerk inside who checks the goods delivered at some city office,
tbe butcher and the tailor, the seamstress and the market woman, and one sees
the enormous difference which a confined occupation makes, Jonotonous seden-

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7

tary employment makes for unhappiness because the. inherited functional needs
of the numan body are neglected, and education—when the outside field of
interest is narrowed—<intensifies the sensitivity to the bodily conditions. The
sensations arising within the body—proprioceptive sensations—come to have too
large a share in consciousness in comparison with exteroceptive. In place of
considering the lilies how they grow, or musing on the beauty and motions of
the heavenly bodies, the sedentary worker in the smoke-befouled atmosphere,
with the limited activity and horizon of an office and a disturbed digestion, tends
to become confined to the inward consideration of his own viscera and their
motions.

Many of the educated daughters of the well-to-do are no less confined at
home ; they are the flotsam and jetsam cast up from the tide in which all others
struggle for existence—their lives are no less monotonous than the sweated semp-
stress or clerk. They become filled with ‘ vapours’ and some seek excitement
not in the cannon’s mouth but in breaking windows, playing with fire, and
hunger strikes. The dull monotony of idle social functions, shopping and amuse-
ment no less than that of sedentary work and an asexual life, impels to a
simulated struggle—a theatrical performance, the parts of which are studied from
the historical romances of revolution. Each man, woman, and child in the world
must find the wherewithal for living, food, raiment, warmth, and housing, or
must die or get some other to find it for him. It seems to me as if the world is
conducted as if ten men were on an island—a microcosm—and five sought for the
necessaries of life, hunted for food, built shelters and fires, made clothes of
skins, while the other five strung necklaces of shells, made loin-cloths of butterfly
wings, gambled with knuckle-bones, drew comic pictures in the sand, or carved
out of clay frightening demons, and so beguiled from the first five the larger
share of their wealth. In this land of factories, while the many are confined to
mean streets and wretched houses, possessing no sufficiency of baths and clean
clothing, and are ill-fed, they work all day long, not to fashion for themselves
better houses and clothing, but to make those unnecessaries such as ‘ the fluff’
of women’s apparel, and a thousand trifles which relieve the monotony of the idle
and bemuse their own minds.

The discovery of radium and its disintegration as a source of energy has
enabled the physicist to extend Lord Kelvin’s estimate of the world’s age from
some thirty to a thousand million years. Arthur Keith does not hesitate to give
a million of these years to man’s evolution. Karl Pearson speaks of hundreda
of thousands of years. The form of the human skull, the brain capacity of man,
his skill as evidenced by stone implements and cave drawings of animals in
action, was the same tens of thousands of years ago as now. For ages primitive
man lived as a wild animal in tropical climes, discovered how to make fire,
clothe himself in skins, build shelters, and so enable himself to wander over the
temperate and arctic zones. Finally, in the last few score of years, he has made
houses draughtless with glass windows, fitted them with stoves and radiators,
and every kind of device to protect himself from cold, while he occupies himself
in the sedentary pursuits and amusements of a city life. How much better, to
those who know the boundless horizon of life, to be a frontiers-man and enjoy
the struggle, with body hardened, perfectly fit, attuned to Nature, than to be
a cashier condemned to the occupation of a sunless, windless pay-box. The
city child, however; nurtured and educated in confinement, knows not the large-
ness and wonders of Nature, is used to the streets with their ceaseless move-
ment and romantic play of artificial light after dark, and does not need the
commiseration of the country mouse any more than the beetle who lives in the
dark and animated burrows of his heap. But while outdoor work disciplines the
body of the countryman into health, the town man needs the conscious attention
and acquired educated control of his life to give him any full measure of health
and happiness. '

Experimental evidence is strongly in favour of my argument that the chemical
purity of the air is of no importance. Analyses show that the oxygen in the
worst-ventilated school-room, chapel, or theatre is never lessened by more than
1 per cent. of an atmosphere ; the ventilation through chink and cranny, chimney,
door, and window, and the porous brick wall, suffices to prevent a greater diminu-
tion. So long as there is present a partial pressure of oxygen sufficient to change

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I.

the hemoglobin of the venous blood into oxyhemoglobin there can arise no lack
of oxygen.

At sea-level the pressure of oxygen in the pulmonary alveolar air is about
100 mm. Hg. Exposed to only half this pressure the hemoglobin is more than
80 per cent. saturated with oxygen.

In noted health-resorts of the Swiss mountains the barometer stands -at
such a height that the concentration of oxygen is far less than in the more
ventilated room. On the high plateau of the Andes there are great cities : Potosi
with a hundred thousand inhabitants is at 4,165 metres, and the partial pressure
of oxygen there is about 13 per cent. of an atmosphere in place of 71 per cent.
at sea-level; railways and mines have been worked up to altitudes of 14,000 to
15,000 feet. At Potosi girls dance half the night, and toreadors display their
skill in the ring. On the slopes of the Himalayas shepherds take their flocks
to altitudes of 18,000 feet. No disturbance is felt by the inhabitants or those
who reach these great altitudes slowly and by easy stages. The only disability
to a normal man is diminished power for severe exertion, but a greater risk arises
from want of oxygen to cases of heart disease, pneumonia, and in chloroform
anesthesia at these high altitudes. The newcomer who is carried by the railway
in a few hours to the top of Pike’s Peak or the Andes may suffer severely from
mountain sickness, especially on exertion, and the cause of this is want of oxygen.
Acclimatisation is brought about in a few days’ time. The pulmonary ventilation
increases, the bronchial tubes dilate, the circulation becomes more rapid. The
increased pulmonary ventilation lowers the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in
the blood and pulmonary air, and this contributes to the maintenance of an
adequate partial pressure of oxygen. Haldane and Douglas say that the percen-
tage of red corpuscles and total quantity of the hemoglobin increases, and main-
tain that the oxygen is actively secreted by the lung into the blood, but the C
method by which their determinations have been made has not met with
unqualified acceptance. If waste products, which arise from oxygen want, alter
the combining power of hemoglobin, this alteration may not persist in shed
blood; for these products may disappear when the blood is exposed to air.
Owing to the combining power of hemoglobin the respiratory exchange and
metabolism of an animal within wide limits is independent of the partial pressure
of oxygen. On the other hand, the process of combustion is dependent not on
the pressure but on the percentage of oxygen. Thus the aeroplanist may become
seized with altitude sickness from oxygen want, while his gas engine continues
to carry him to loftier heights.

The partial pressure of oxygen in a mine at a depth of 3,000 feet is consider-
ably higher than at sea-level, and if the percentage is reduced to 17, while the
firing of fire-damp and coal dust is impossible, there need be in the alveolar air
of the lungs no lower pressure of oxygen than at sea-level. Thus the simplest
method of preventing explosions in coal mines is that proposed by J. Harger,
viz., to ventilate them with air containing 17 per cent. of oxygen.’ There is little
doubt that all the great mine-explosions have been caused by the enforcement
of a high degree of chemical purity of the air. In the old days when ventilation
was bad there were no great dust explosions. Mr. W. H. Chambers, general
manager of the Cadeby mine, where the recent disastrous explosion occurred,
with the authority of his great and long practical experience of fiery mines,
told me that the spontaneous combustion of coal and the danger of explosion can
be wholly met by adequate diminution in ventilation. The fires can bé choked
out while the miners can still breathe and work. The Coal Mines Regulation
Act enforces that a place shall not be in a fit state for working or passing therein,
if the air contains either less than 19 per cent. of oxygen, or more than 14 per
cent. of carbon dioxide. A mine liable to spontaneous combustion of coal may be
exempted from this regulation by order of the Secretary of State.

The regulations impel the provision of such a ventilation current that the
percentage of oxygen is sufficient for the spread of dust explosions along the
intake airways, with the disastrous results so frequently recorded. If the mine
were ventilated with air containing 17 per cent, of oxygen in sufficient volume
to keep the miners cool and fresh, not only would explosions be prevented but
the mines could be safely worked and illuminated with electricity, and miners’

* Trans. Inst. of Mining Engineers, 1912.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

nystagmus prevented, for this is due to the dim light of the safety lamp. The
problem possibly may be solved by purifying and cooling the return air, and
mixing and circulating this with a sufficiency of fresh air.

Owing to the fact that the percentage of CO, is the usual test of ventilation
and that only a very few parts per 10,000 in excess of fresh air are permitted by
the English Factory Acts, it is generally supposed that CO, is a poison and that
any considerable excess has a deleterious effect on the human body. No sup-
position could be further from the truth.

The percentage of CO, in the worst ventilated room does not rise above
OS per cent., or at the outside 1 per cent. It-is impossible that any excess
of CO, should enter into our bodies when we breathe such air, for whatever the
percentage of CO, in the atmosphere may be, that in the pulmonary air is kept
constant at about 5 to 6 per cent. of an atmosphere—by the action of the
respiratory centre. It is the concentration of CO, which rules the respiratory
centre, and to such purpose as to keep the concentration both in the lungs and in
the blood uniform (Haldane); the only result from breathing air containing
0°5 to 1 per cent. of CO, is an inappreciable increase in the ventilation of the
lungs. The very same thing happens when we take gentle exercise and produce
more CO, in our bodies.

At each breath we rebreathe into our lungs the air in the nose and large air-
tubes (the dead-space air), and about one-third of the air which is breathed in
by a man at rest in dead-space air. Thus, no man breathes in pure outside air
into his lungs. When a child goes to sleep with its head partly buried under the
bed-clothes, and in a cradle confined by curtains, he rebreathes the expired air
to a still greater extent, and so with all animals that snuggle together for
warmth’s sake. Not only the new-born babe sleeping against its mother’s
breast, but pigs-in a sty, young rabbits, rats, and mice clustered together in
their nests, young chicks under the brooding hen, all alike breathe a far higher
percentage than that allowed by the Factory Acts.

To rebreathe one’s own breath is a natural and inevitable performance, and to
breathe some of the air exhaled by another is the common lot of men who, like
animals, have to crowd together and husband their heat in fighting the
inclemency of the weather.

In the Albion Brewery we analysed on three different days the air of the
room where the CO, generated in the vats is compressed and bottled as liquid
carbonic acid. We found from 0°14 to 0°93 per cent. of CO, in the atmosphere
of that room. The men who were filling the cylinders and turning the taps on
and off to allow escape of air must often breathe more than this. The men
engaged in this occupation worked twelve-hour shifts, having their meals in the
room. Some had followed the same employment for eighteen years, and with-
out detriment to their health. It is only when the higher concentrations of CO,
are breathed, such as 3 to 4 per cent. of an atmosphere, that the respiration is
increased, so that it is noticeable to the resting individual; but percentages over
1 per cent. diminish the power to do muscular work, for the excess of CO, pro-
duced by the work adds its effect to that of the excess in the air, and the
difficulty of co-ordinating the breathing to the work in hand is increased.

Haldane and Priestley found that with a pressure of 2 per cent. of an
atmosphere of CO, in the inspired air the pulmonary ventilation of a man at rest
was increased 50 per cent., with 3 per cent. about 100 per cent., with 4 per cent.
about 200 per cent., with 5 per cent. about 300 per cent., and with 6 per cent.
about 500 per cent. With the last, panting is severe, while with 3 per cent. it is
unnoticed until muscular work is done, when the panting is increased 100 per
cent. more than usual. With more than 6 per cent. the distress is very great,
and headache, flushing, and sweating occur.

Divers who work in diving dress and men who work in compressed air caissons
constantly do heavy and continuous labour.in concentrations of CO, higher than
1 per cent. of an atmosphere, and so long as the CO, is kept below 2 to 3 per
cent. they are capable of carrying out efficient work. In the case of workers in
compressed air it is important to bear in mind that the effect of the CO, on the
breathing depends on the partial pressure and not on the percentage of this gas in
the air breathed.

By a series of observations made on rats confined in cages fitted with small,

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I.

ill-ventilated sleeping-chambers, we have found that the temperature and
humidity of the air—not the percentage of carbon dioxide or oxygen—deter-
mines whether the animals stay inside the sleeping-room or come outside. When
the air is cold, they like to stay inside, even when the carbon dioxide rises to
4 to 5 per cent. of an atmosphere. When the sleeping-chamber is made too hot
and moist they come outside.

The sanitarian says it is necessary to keep the CO, below 0°01 per cent., so
that the organic poisons may not collect to a harmful extent. The evil smell of
crowded rooms is accepted as unequivocal evidence of the existence of such.
He pays much attention to this and little or none to the heat and moisture of
the air. The smell arises from the secretions of the skin, soiled clothes, &c.
The smell is only sensed by and excites disgust in one who comes to it from the
outside air. He who is inside and helps to make the ‘ fugg’ is both wholly
unaware of, and unaffected by it. Flugge points out, with justice, that while
we naturally avoid any smell that excites disgust and puts us off our appetite, yet
the offensive quality of the smell does not prove its poisonous nature. For the
smell of the trade or food of one man may be horrible and loathsome to another
not used to such.

The sight of a slaughterer and the smell of dead meat may be loathly to the
sensitive poet, but the slaughterer is none the less healthy. The clang and jar
of an enginéer’s workshop may be unendurable to a highly strung artist or
author, but the artificers miss the stoppage of the noisy clatter. The stench of
glue-works, fried-fish shops, soap and bone-manure works, middens, sewers,
become as nothing to those engaged in such, and the lives of the workers are in
no wise shortened by the stench they endure. ‘The nose ceases to respond to the
uniformity of the impulse, and the stench clearly does not betoken in any of
these cases the existence of a chemical organic poison. On descending into a
sewer, after the first ten minutes the nose ceases to smell the stench; the air
therein is usually found to be far freer from bacteria than the air in a school-
room or tenement.

If we turn to foodstuffs we recognise that the smell of alcohol and of Stilton or
Camembert cheese is horrible to a child, while the smell of putrid fish—the meal of
the Siberian native—excites no less disgust in an epicure, who welcomes the cheese.
Among the hardiest and healthiest of men are the North Sea fishermen, who
sleep in the cabins of trawlers reeking with fish and oil, and for the sake of
warmth shut themselves up until the lamp may go out from want of oxygen.
The stench of such surroundings may effectually put the sensitive, untrained
brain worker off his appetite, but the robust health of the fisherman proves that
this effect is nervous in origin, and not due to a chemical organic poison in the air.

Ventilation cannot get rid of the source of a smell, while it may easily dis-
tribute the evil smell through a house. As Pettenkofer says, if there is a dung-
heap in a room, it must be removed. It is no good trying to blow away the
smell.

Fliigge and his school bring convincing evidence to show that a stuffy
atmosphere is stuffy owing to heat stagnation, and that the smell has nothing
to do with the origin of the discomfort felt by those who endure it. The
inhabitants of reeking hovels in the country do not suffer from chronic ill-
health, unless want of nourishment, open-air exercise, or sleep come into play.
Town workers who take no exercise in the fresh air are pale, anemic, listless.
Sheltered by houses they are far less exposed to winds, and live day and night
in a warm, confined atmosphere.

The widespread belief in the presence of organic poisons in the expired air is
mainly based on the statements of Brown Sequard and D’Arsenval, statements
wholly unsubstantiated by the most trustworthy workers in Europe and America,
These statements have done very great mischief to the cause of hygiene, for they
led ventilating engineers and the public to seek after chemical purity, and
neglect the attainment of adequate coolness and movement of the air. It was
stated that the condensation water obtained from expired air is poisonous when
injected into animals. The evidence on which this statement is based is not only
not worthy of credence but is absurd, e.g., condensation water has been
injected into a mouse in a quantity equivalent to injecting 5 kilogrammes into a
man weighing 60 kilogrammes. No proper controls were carried out. It is

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. ll

recognised now that any distilled water contaminated by bacterial products may
nave a toxic effect. biack ana L have for fourteen weeks kept guinea-pigs anu
rats comfined together in a box and poorly ventilated, so that they breathed air
containing 0°5 to 1°0 per cent. of UO,. ne guinea-pigs proved wholly free from
anaphylactic shock on injecting rats’ serum. Therefore they were not sensitised
by breathing the exhalea breath of the rats for many weeks, and we are certain
that no foreign protein substance is absorbed in this way. It has been proved by
others, and by us, that animals so confined do well so long as they are well fed
and their cages kept clean, light, cool, and dry. It is wholly untrue that they
are poisoned by breathing each other's breath. The only danger arises from
droplet contagion in cases of infective disease.

‘Yo study the relative effect of the temperature and chemical purity of the
atmosphere [ constructed a small experimental chamber of wood fitted with large
glass observation windows and rendered air-tight.

On one side of the chamber were fixed two small electric heaters, and a tin
containing water was placed on these in order to saturate the air with water
vapour. On another side of the chamber was placed a large radiator through
which cold water could be circulated when required, so as to cool the chamber.
In the roof were fixed three electric fans, one big and two small, by means‘ ot
which the air of the chamber could be stirred. ‘lhe chamber held approximately
3 cm. of air. In one class of experiments we shut within the chamber seven or
eight students for about half an hour, and observed the effect of the confined
atmosphere upon them. We kept them until the CO, reached 3 to 4 per cent.,
and the oxygen had fallen to 17 to 16 per cent. ‘The wet-bulb temperature
rose meanwhile to about 80” to 85° F., and the dry buib a degree or two higher.
The students went in chatting and laughing, but by-and-by, as the temperature
rose, they ceased to talk and their faces became flushed and moist. To relieve
the monotony of the experiment we have watched them trying to light a cigarette,
and, puzzled by their matches going out, borrowing others, only im vain. ‘They
had not sensed the diminution of oxygen, which fell below 17 per cent. Their
breathing was deepened by the high percentage of CO,, but no headache occurred
in any ot them from the short exposure. ‘heir discomfort was relieved to an
astonishing extent by putting on the electric fans placed in the roof. Whilst the
air was kept stirred the students were not affected by the oppressive atmosphere.
They begged for the fans to be put on when they were cut off. The same old
stale air containing 3 to 4 per cent. CO, and 16 to 17 per cent. O, was whirled,
but the movement of the air gave reliet, because the air was 80° to 85° F. (wet
bulb), while the air enmeshed in their clothes in contact with their skin was
98° to 99° F., wet bulb. If we outside breathed through a tube the air in the
chamber we felt none of the discomfort which was being experienced by those
shut up inside. Similarly, if one of those in the chamber breathed through a
tube the pure air outside he was not relieved.

R. A. Rowlands and H. B. Walker carried out a large number of observations
in the chamber, each acting as subject in turn.

They recorded the effect on the respiratory ventilation and on the pulse rate
both when resting and when working. The work consisted in pulling a 20-kilo.
weight about 1 metre high by means of a pulley and rope.

in some of the experiments the exhaled carbonic acid was absorbed, and in
others carbonic acid was put into the chamber. The subjects inside could not
tell when the gas was introduced, not even if the percentage were suddenly
raised by 2. The introduction of this amount of the gas made no sensible diifer-
ence to them, but increased their pulmonary ventilation.

In every one of the experiments they suffered from the heat, and the putting
on of the fans gave great relief, and in particular diminished the pulse rate
during and after the working periods. The relief became much greater when
cold water was circulated through the radiator and the temperature of the
chamber lowered 10° F.

The subjects wore only a vest, pants, and shoes in most of these experiments.
When they wore their ordinary clothing the effect on the frequency of the pulse
was more marked and the discomfort from heat and moisture much greater.

I have made observations on men dressed in the Fleuss rescue apparatus for

12 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I.

use in mines, and exposed in a chamber to 120° F. dry dulb and 95° F. wet bulb.
The skin temperature rises to the rectal temperature and the pulse is greatly
accelerated—e.g., to 150—and there arises danger of heat stroke. The conditions
are greatly relieved by interposing on the inspiratory tube of the apparatus a
cooler filled with carbonic-acid snow. The cool inspired air lowers the frequency
of the heart and makes it possible for the men to do some work at 95° F. wet
bulb, and to endure this temperature for two hours.

The observations made by Pembrey and Collis on the weaving-mill opera-
tives at Darwen show that the skin of the face may be 4° to 13° F. higher in the
mill when the wet bulb is 71° F. than at home when the wet-bulb temperature is
about 55° F. The tendency of the warm, humid atmosphere of the mil! is to
establish a more uniform temperature of the body as a whole (surface and deep
temperatures) and to throw a tax upon the power of accommodation as indicated
by the rapid pulse and low blood-pressure. :

The mill-workers are wet with the steam blown into the sheds, their clothes
and bodies are moist, and the long hours of exposure to such uncomfortable
conditions are most deleterious to physical vigour and happiness. The opera-
tives asked that they might be allowed to work without steam-injectors and with
diminished ventilation, so that the mill rooms became saturated with moisture
evaporated from the bodies of the operatives. The old regulations, while for-
bidding more than 6 parts in 10,000 CO,, put no limit to the wet-bulb tempera-
ture, and this often became excessive on hot summer days. The operatives were
quite right. Less ventilation and a lower wet bulb is far better than ample
ventilation and a high wet bulb. The permissible limit of CO, has now been
raised to 11 parts in 10,000, and the wet-bulb temperature is to be controlled
within reasonable limits.

The efficiency of workers in mills, mines, tunnels, stoke-holes, &c., is vastly
increased by the provision of a sufficient draught of cool and relatively dry air,
so as to prevent over-taxing of the heat-regulating mechanism. Mr. F. Green
informs me that by means of forced draught the stoke-hole of an Orient steamer
is rendered the coolest place when the ship is in the tropics.

The electric fan has vastly improved the conditions of the worker in the
tropics. I would suggest that each clerk should have a fan just as much as a
lamp on his desk. It will pay the employer to supply fans.

In the modern battleship men are confined very largely to places artificially
lit and ventilated by air driven in by fans through ventilating-shafts. The heat
and moisture derived from the bodies of the men, from the engines, from cooking-
ranges, &c., lead to a high degree of relative moisture, and thus all parts of the
ironwork inside are coated with granulated cork to hold the condensed moisture
and prevent dripping. 2

The air smells with the manifold smells of oil, cooking, human bodies, &c.,
and the fresh air driven in by fans through the metal conduits takes up the smell
of these, and is spoken of by the officers with disparagement as ‘tinned’ or
‘potted’ air. This air is heated when required by being made to pass over
radiators. Many of the officers’ cabins and offices for clerks, typewriters, &c.,
in the centre of a battleship, have no portholes, and are only lit and ventilated by
artificial means. The steel nature of the structure prevents the diffusion of air
which takes place so freely through the brick walls of a house. The men in their
sleeping quarters are very closely confined, and as the openings of the air-con-
duits are placed in the roof between the hammocks, thé men next to such bpenings
receive a cold draught and are likely to shut the openings. To sleep in a warm
moist ‘fugg’ would not much matter if the men were actively engaged for
many hours of the day on deck and there exposed to the open air and the rigours
of sea and weather. In the modern warship most of the crew work for many
hours under deck, and some of the men may scarcely come on deck for weeks or
even months. Considering the conditions which pertain, it seems to be of the
utmost importance that all the men in a battleship should be inspected at short
intervals by the medical officers so that cases of tuberculosis may be weeded out
in their incipiency. The men of every rating should do deck drill for some part
of every day. In the Norwegian navy every man, cooks and all, must do gym-
nastic drill on deck once a day. In the case of our navy, with voluntary service,
the men should welcome this in their own interest.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 13

In a destroyer visited by me twelve men occupied quarters containing about
1,700 cubic feet of air. There was a stove with iron pipe for chimney, from
which fumes of combustion must leak when in use, and a fan which would not
work. When the men are shut down the moisture is such that boots, &c., go
mouldy, and the water dips off the structure. The cooling effect of the sea-water
washing over the steel shell of the boat is beneficial in keeping down the
temperature in these confined and_ ill-ventilated quarters. On _ the
maneuvring platform in the engine-room the wet-bulb temperature reaches
a very high degree owing to the slight escape of steam round the turbines.
Commander Domvile was kind enough to send me the wet and dry bulb tempera-
tures taken there on a number of days. The wet bulb was found to be never
below 80° F., sometimes reached 95° and even 98° F. It is impossible for officers
to work at these temperatures without straining the heat-regulating mechanism
of the body and diminishing their health and working capacity. If such wet-bulb
temperatures are unavoidable, means should be provided, such as fans, which
would alleviate the discomfort and fatigue caused thereby. A supply of com-
pressed air fitted with a nozzle might be arranged and used occasionally to douche
the body with cool air. I have tried this plan and found it very effectual, and
can recommend the compressed-air bath as the substitute for a bracing cold wind.

The suitability of the clothing is of the greatest importance, not only to the
comfort but to the efficiency of man as a working machine, e.g., power of soldiers
to march. On a still day the body is confined by the clothes as if by a chamber
of stagnant air, for the air is enclosed in the meshes of the clothes and the layer
in contact with the skin becomes heated to body temperature and saturated with
moisture.

The observations of Pembrey show that himself and four soldiers, marching
in drill order on a moderately warm day, lost more water and retained more
water in their clothes than on another similar day when they worked with no
jacket on. The average figures were loss of moisture 1,600, against 1,200 grms.,
and water retained in clothes 254, against 109 grms. With no jacket the pulse
was, on the average, increased 28 against 41 in drill order, and rectal tempera-
ture 1° against 1°°5 F. The taking off of the jacket or throwing open of the
jacket and vest very greatly increase the physiological economy of a march. It
is absurd that on a hot summer day Boy Scouts should march with a coloured scarf
knotted round their necks. Nothing should be worn for ornament or smartness
which increases the difficulty of keeping down the body temperature. The power
to march and the efficiency of an army depend on prevention of heart stagnation
and avoidance of fatigue of the heart.

I conclude, then, that all the efforts of the heating and ventilating engineer
should be directed towards cooling the air in crowded places and cooling the bodies
of the people by setting the air in motion by means of fans. In a crowded room
the air confined between the bodies and clothes of the people is almost warmed up
to body temperature and saturated with moisture, so that cooling of the body by
radiation, convection and evaporation becomes reduced toa minimum. The strain
on the heat-regulating mechanism tells on the heart. The pulse is accelerated, the
blood is sent im increased volume to the skin, and circulates there in far greater
volume, while less goes through the viscera and brain. As the surface tempera-
ture rises, the cutaneous vessels dilate, the veins become filled, the arteries may
become small in volume, and the blood-pressure low, the heart is fatigued by the
extra work thrown upon it. The influence of the heat stagnation is shown by
the great acceleration of the pulse when work is done and the slower rate at which
the pulse returns to its former rate on resting.

The increased percentage of carbonic acid and diminution of oxygen which has
been found to exist in badly ventilated churches, schools, theatres, barracks, is
such that it can have no effect upon the incidence of respiratory disease and higher
death-rate, which statistical evidence has shown to exist among persons living in
crowded and unventilated rooms. The coriditions of temperature, moisture, and
windless atmosphere in such places primarily diminishes the heat loss, and
secondarily the heat production, i.e.. the activity of the occupants, together with
total volume of air breathed, oxygen taken in and food eaten. The whole
metabolism of the body is thus run at a lower plane, and the nervous system and
tone of the body is unstimulated by the monotonous, warm, and motionless air.
If hard work has to be done it is done under conditions of strain. The number

14 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I.

of pathogenic organisms is increased in such places, and these two conditions run
together—diminished immunity and increased mass influence of infecting
bacteria.

The volume of blood passing through, and of water vapour evaporated from,
the respiratory mucous membrane must have a great influence on the mechanisms
which protect this tract from bacterial infection. While too wet an atmosphere
lessens evaporation, a hot dry atmosphere dries un the mucous membrane.
As the immunising powers depend on the passage of blood plasma into the tissue
spaces, it is clear that a proper degree of moisture is important. The temperature.
too. must have a great influence on the scavenger activity of the ciliated
epithelium and leucocytes in the mucous membrane of the nose.

In the warm moist atmosphere of a crowded place the infection from spray,
sneezed, coughed, or spoken out. is enormous. On passing out from such an
atmosphere into cold moist air the respiratory mucous membrane of the. nose is
suddenly chilled, the blood-vessels constricted, and the defensive mechanism
of cilia and leucocyte checked. Hence the prevalence of coids in the winter.
In the summer the infection is far less. We are far more exposed to moving air.
and the sudden transition from a warm to a cold atmosphere does not occur. We
helieve that infection is largely determined by (1) the mass influence of the in-
fectine agent; (2) the shallow breathing and diminished evaporation from. and
flow of tissue lymph through, the respiratory tract, in warm, moist confined air.
Colds are not caught by exposure to cold per se, as is shown by the experience
of Arctic explorers, sailors, shipwrecked passengers, &c.

We have very great inherent nowers of withstanding exposure to cold. The
bodily mechanisms become trained and set to maintain the body heat by habitual
exposure to open-air life. The risk lies in overheating our dwellings and over-
clothing our bodies, so that the mechanisms engaged in resisting infection become
enfeebled, and no longer able to meet the sudden transition from the warm atmo-
svhere of our rooms to the chill outside air of winter. The dark and gloomy
days of winter confine us within doors. and, by reducing our activity and
exposure to open air, depress the metabolism; the influence of smoke and fog,
sloom of house and streets. cavernous places of business and dark dwellings,
intensify the depression. The immunity to a cold after an infection lasts hut a
short while, and when children return, after the summer holidays, to school and
damp chill autumn days, infection runs around. The history of hosnital gangrene
and its abolition by the aseptic methods of Lister—likewise the history of insect-
borne disease—show the great importance of cleanliness in crowded and much
occupied rooms. The essentials required of anv good system of ventilation are
then (1) movement, coolness, proner degree of relative moisture of the air; (2) re-
Anction of the mass influence of pathogenic bactéria. The chemical purity of
the air is of very minor importance, and will be adequately insured by attend-
ance to the essentials.

As the prevention of spray (saliva) infection by ventilation is impossible in
crowded places, it behoves us to maintain our immunity at a high level. We may
seek to diminish the spray output of those infected with colds by teaching them
to cough, sneeze, and talk with a handkerchief held in front of the mouth, or to
stav at home until the acute stage is past.

Tn all these matters nurture is of the greatest importance, as well as Nature.
A man is born with physical and mental capacities small or great, with inherited
characteristics. with more or less immunity to certain diseases, with a tendency
to longevitv of life or the onnosite, but his comfort and happiness in life, the
small or full development of his physical and mental capacities, his immunity and
his longevity of life, are undoubtedly determined to a vast extent bv nurture.

By nurture—use the word in its widest sense to include all the defensive
methods of sanitary science—plague, yellow fever, malaria, sleeping-sickness.
cholera, hospital gangrene, &c., can be prevented by eliminating the infectine
cause: smallpox and typhoid by this means, and also by vaccination; and most of
the other ills which flesh is supposed to be heir to can be kept from troubling by
approximating to the rules of life which a wild animal has to follow in the matter
of a simple, and often spare diet, hard exercise, and exposure to the open air.

There is nothing more fallacious than the supposition commonly held that
over-feeding and over-coddling indoors promotes health. The two together

jae

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 15

derange the natural functions of the body. He who seeks to save his life will
lose it.

The body of a new-born babe is a glorious and perfect machine, the heritage
of millious of years of evolution.

‘Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come.

Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy.’

The ill-conditioned body, anemic complexion and undersized muscles, or the
fat and gross habit, the decay of the teeth, the disordered digestion, the nervous
irritability and unhappiness are the result of ‘ Nurture “—not Nature.

In institutions children may be disciplined to vigorous health. After leaving
school they are set adrift to face monotonous work in confined places, amusement
in music-halls and cinema shows in place of manly exercise in the open air,

injudicious diet, alcohol, and tobacco—everything which the trainer of an athlete
would repel.

‘And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.’

srifish Association for the Rdvancement
of Sctence.

SECTION K: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

TO THE

BOTANICAL SECTION

BY
ProFessoR FREDERICK KEEBLE, Sc.D.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Ir is with more than the normal trepidation natural to presidents that I, who
have worked on the border-lines of several biological sciences, undertake the task
of addressing the members of this Section. As well might a rogue and snapper-
up of unconsidered trifles recite his doggerel songs before a bench of learned
magistrates.

Therefore, although I have studied from their works the ways of presidents,
and although I shall strive to keep to the path which they have mostly trod, yet
should I stray I plead with Autolycus that—

“When I wander here and there,
I then do most go right.’

The addresses which I have consulted show me two alternative models.

I may take all knowledge for my province and discourse on the progress of our
science as a whole. This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein. Or as a lover of a®
department of the science and more condoling, I may confine my Address to a
special branch of Botany. Each method has its merits and its drawbacks, and
the one is corrective of the other.

The departmental method depicts the tree of knowledge in sympodial sym-
metry. The branch which the president of one year holds out for our inspection
is seen arising from an erstwhile dormant lateral bud far back from the growing
point of the branch exhibited by his predecessor. Under the magic of the presi-
dential hands the new branch grows as grows the enchanted mango. Like the lean
kine it eats up the fat kine, and by the end of the Address it dominates all other
branches.

The general method shows the tree in other guise. As an artist is wont to
paint a tree, so the historian draws it on monopodial lines, with branches standing
in due subservience to the leader and in strict co-ordination with one another.
Together these methods tell the truth, which is that the tree of knowledge grows,
like many another broad-leaved tree, by a mixed process of monopodial sequences
following upon sympodial developments.

What is to the specialist, and indeed for a space is, the luxuriant predominance
of his branch appears in historical perspective but as a new lateral for the exten-
sion of all the sub-lateral shoots of science.

Such a new basis for the further growth of all the branches of Botany is
provided by the lusty shoot of Mendelism, and after weighing the alternatives,
and with the reserves announced already, I propose to try to show that this recent
outgrowth of the tree of knowledge is destined not to mar its symmetry, but
rather to aid the growth of the whole crown. This, my chief task, should have

K

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K.

been my first care had not an event occurred since the last meeting of this Asso-
ciation which compels me, in common with all botanists, to divert thought from
its preoccupation and to look back along the route which our science has travelled
during the last few decades.

That event, I need not say, was the death of Sir Joseph Hooker, a former
president of this Association and twice president of this Section. The most
venerable and distinguished of British botanists, Sir Joseph Hooker was well-
nigh the last survivor of that band of Victorian naturalists who helped to lay
the foundations of biology and to disseminate broadcast the knowledge which
they made. The story of the labours of that group of naturalists—Lyell, Darwin,
the Hookers, Wallace, Huxley, Galton, and others scarcely less distinguished—
has been told so often that there is no need to retell it now. Nor need I recount
the work of Hooker. His discoveries are known and require no re-enumeration.
They are incorporated with the common fund of knowledge. British botanists
will determine, doubtless, to consecrate a special occasion to the commemoration
of Hooker’s services to science and to the perpetuation of his memory. My duty
it is to express, on behalf of native botanists and of our guests who honour us
with their presence, our sense of loss in the death of Sir Joseph Hooker and our
admiring recognition of his achievements.

And with the example of that long life devoted until its latest hour to the
pursuit of science I would fain address myself forthwith to my special task ; but
despite my will I find my thoughts enchained in the contemplation of the life and
times of Hooker. Systematist, explorer, critic, writer, administrator, Sir Joseph
was first and last a botanist. The versatile Hooker was a specialist.

Thus I find myself turned again to the thoughts which vexed my mind at the
outset of this Address, urged now to ask outright whether the specialisation of our
times has the quality which distinguished that of Hooker and his contemporaries.

This is the uneasy phantom that has been haunting me and luring me to the
ramparts when I should be wooing my chosen theme. It haunts me, refusing
to be laid. Reason fails to exorcise that ghost. Its uneasy presence lingers
near me even though I conjure it with specious arguments; urging that these
days are days of specialisation @ outrance: that nowadays both in the art
and practice part of life we live by the intensive cultivation of small-holdings ;
that the fields of science are parcelled out in small allotments. Were I—a simple
officer—the sole subject of this visitation I should attribute it to fantasy, and
with Horatio cry ‘ Tush!’ but beside this poor Bernardo, Marcellus, officer and
scholar, has likewise seen it ‘in the same figure like the King that’s dead,’ and
who may refuse to entertain a ghost presenting this—the highest of credentials?

Therefore I offer it again my arguments, insisting that at least among our
elders we have specialists as versatile as any of the Victorians. The ghost is not
impressed. Instead, it rises to a fuller height, and lays its incorporeal finger
on the row of volumes which line the shelves above my head. My obsequious
eve follows the direction, and beholds Lyell’s ‘ Principles,’ Darwin’s ‘ Voyage,’
Hooker’s ‘ Journal,’ Huxley’s ‘Essays,’ Wallace’s ‘Island Life,’ Galton’s
‘ Natural Inheritance,’ and the other classics from his clients’ pens. With the
dawn of my comprehension the spectre vanishes, and I am alone, but not in peace.
The message left with me appears to translate as follows: The present
generation has become expert in intensive cultivation of scientific knowledge,
but it has forgotten how to market its produce. In the preoccupation of
specialisation it neglects the art of expression. It sinks the artist in the' artizan.
Keach specialist exchanges ‘ separates ’"—hateful term—with other specialists, but
few among us are on speaking terms with the cultured general public curious to
know what science is achieving.

The translation into common English of our scientific works is done, like
that of foreign classics, too much by hacks and amateurs, and too little by
skilled hands. The present generation lets its modesty wrong it; for the science
of our day is no less full—nay, many times more full—of interest and wonder
than that of fifty years ago.

Still worse : to fail to cultivate the art of expression is to blunt the power
of thinking, for the adage ‘clear thinking means clear writing’ stands though
the subject and object be transposed.

Such is the nature of the charge which my visitant left with me; and thougk

"PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3

as it must have known, my rough translation fails to convey the sober grace of
the original, I think that I shall not be alone in pleading guilty to that charge.

Nor perhaps will my fellow-specialists resent an attempt to trace the origin
of our lack of literary grace. This defect is in part inevitable and in part
remediable. Inevitable because of the increasingly engrossing nature of scientific
investigation, because of the relatively small natural gift of expression which
nature has vouchsafed to the English race, and because, as science becomes more
complex, its followers think more and more in symbols, and those who think in
symbols are apt to write in shorthand. The defect is remediable because it is
traceable in some measure to the training to which we submit our youth. That
training neglects too much the literary side of education.

As it seems to me, there is a fundamental error in our mode of training men
of science. The error consists in this: that students who come to English
Universities are treated in intellectual matters not as youths but as men of
mature minds. The professorial potter takes the clay as he finds it, and, no
matter what its state. fires it forthwith, and lo! in course of time it is converted
into earthenware. Were the assumption on which he acts well-founded, the
method micht be justified. If our undergraduates were. as we assume they are,
well found in general culture, trained already in scientific method, familiar with
the language of our fathers. and apt also to read and speak and write some other
tongue. then let us take them straightway and bake them in the oven of
specialisation.

But I at all events have never met those students, and. outside the ranks of
genius—which training toucheth not—I believe they do not exist. The error,
as I conceive it, lies in our failure to anply, in drafting schemes of training, the
biological law that as society grows older its young men grow younger. Under-
gradnates call themselves men. not solely from a sense of nride, but also in
obedience to tradition. Centuries ago they went up to the University as men
of fifteen or sixteen: now they go up as youths of eighteen or nineteen. With
respect to moral discipline we are not unforgetful of their youth, but with
respect to intellectual education we treat them as though thev were grown up.
Even the saving second snbiect has, I am told, been discarded from the final
honours course. Let me give an example in illustration of our methods. It is
found that a student in his second or third year knows no German, and we
advise him to learn it. But in what a way, with our tacit approval, does he set
about the task! So that he may tear the meaning from a scientific text as
John Ridd clutched the arm of Carver Doone and tore the muscle out of it as
the string comes out of an orange! :

This barbarism we nermit. because we know that it is no barbarism but
expediency for a trained workman to take up any tool he needs and to use it as
he wills. In the elegant language of modern literature ‘and what he thought
he most reauired he went and took the same as we.’

Yet, unless we hold that mental training is a scholastic fiction and that the
teachers’ sole business is to supply carefully selected and copious provender for
the stuffing of students like Surrey fowls, it must be our care to encourage
general as well as special culture in our students.

A further criticism which I have to make upon our University methods will
seem to some far-fetched. We are prone to forget that the twin gifts of youth
are enthusiasm and idleness. The former we encourage, but the latter. falling
within the category of morals, we visit with our displeasure. There is, however
an idleness which is not laziness, but a resting period of the organism tirea
with the trouble of growing up. I could wish that our English Universities
understood intellectual liberty as well as German Universities understand it.
We are art to mind our sheep too much, and to overrate the virtue of docility.

I would plead for more breadth and less snecial knowledge, for more licensed
freedom, a lesser uniformity, a wider search for gifts, and a slighter regard
for specialist attainments. It is never too late for a well-trained mind to
master a new subiect. but he who neglects the substance of education for the
shadow of mere knowledge robs himself of half the pleasure of his work and
of every chance of greatness.

In attempting thus to diagnose a complaint which some may think is non-
existent I have laid myself open to attack at every point; yet I have a flickering

K 2

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K.

hope that I may be dealt with after the manner prayed for by a youthful
examinee whose paper, which I read, contained the appeal: ‘Mr. Examiner,
please temper justice with mercy, for I am so young in mind.’ This hope I
base upon the facts that modern science has at least taught tolerance, and that
I have ever found my botanist colleagues conspicuous for this virtue. They
understand that even the most minor among prophets prefers the stake to
silence, and their good humour acquiesces in the interchange of ré/es whereby
the Peatenckal which should be his is borne by them in listening to his wrathful
words.

Anticipation of toleration so undeserved leads me to regret almost that I ever
introduced that ghost at all. For now that it has served my purpose I am free
to admit that I might have laid it long ago by other and tu-quoque arts.

I, too, might have pointed to those shelves, and at the sight of Mendel’s work
it would have vanished with a blush. For with all their gracious gifts the
Victorians whose just praises I have sung failed to discover that Mendel was alive
among them, and showing a way to solve the problems over which they themselves
were puzzling.

The merit of the discovery of the greatness of Mendel’s work belongs to our
generation, and those of us who had no share in it have at least the right to
applaud the discoverers and to score the discovery to our side.

So I may conclude the contrast of Victorian with modern naturalists with the
reflection: theirs, the higher meed of culture; ours, perhaps, the greater
perspicacity.

If, as I am prepared to maintain, the greatest gift which an experimental
science may receive is that of a new, serviceable, general method, then to no
man are biologists more indebted than to Mendel, for such a method he gave
to our science. If, further, this claim can be established, I am absolved from
the task of answering the critics of Mendelian doctrine.

Who does not recollect the answer which John Hunter gave to someone—
Jenner, perhaps—who wrote to that great experimenter expressing doubt of the
validity of an hypothesis? ‘Don’t think—try,’ was Hunter’s fine response.

If it were my purpose to discourse on Mendelian doctrine it would be my duty
to carry on that work-—like the early builders of that doctrine—with sword in
one hand and trowel in the other, and to try in emulation of the pioneers to take
an equal joy in using either implement. But my work concerns the method and
facts accomplished by its use, and, as I understand philosophy, the writ of
criticism does not run in the domain of accomplished fact. A homely illustra-
tion will serve to define my attitude. Here is a new knife, and there an old loaf,
the crust of which has turned the edge of other implements. If with this knife
I cut that loaf, it is idle to tell me that my knife is blunt. One form of
criticism, and one only, is valid in such circumstances, and that is the constructive
criticism of offering a better instrument. If I want bread, and Mendel’s knife
can give it to me, I shall go on cutting, indifferent to the stones of destructive
criticism. .

My business, therefore, is to meet criticism not by dialectics, but by confront-
ing it with the facts accomplished by this method and by showing that its use
opens new pathways on the borders of the unknown.

Now, if we scrutinise the method of Mendelian research, we may see that there
can be no criticism of it.

Give a chemist a complex mixture of many compounds to describe : How does
he proceed? The chemist sorts out the ingredients, and submits them severally
to analysis. Such, also, is the method of the Mendelian analyst. Give him that
complex mixture which is called an individual, and he sorts out the ingredients
and submits them to analysis. Ask him how two complex mixtures behave when
they are bred together, and he re-defines the question in such terms that it ceases
to be enigmatical, and becomes susceptible of solution by experiment.

I am not concerned to claim for the Mendelian method the exclusive possession
of these virtues. All I claim is that for the work of making a physiological
analysis of individuals, and of thereby establishing a physiological classification
of plants and animals, the Mendelian method has proved its value. It effects the
service by a simultaneous analysis of germ and soma.

Let it be conceded at the outset that this analysis is made not by direct

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5

but by indirect methods. For so long as the physical nature of living substance
remains unknown we can scarcely hope to resolve an individual into its physical
components. All that can be done is to make comparative analyses of indi-
viduals and to discover how their several components differ from one another.

For our present purpose we may represent the individual by an equation :—

Individual=x+c;

where ¢ represents the sum of a long series of characters of the individual and
x an imaginary or real individual groundwork left after all the Mendelian
characters—the sum of which is c—have been removed by analysis from the
individual. The Mendelian method is concerned directly with the resolution of
¢ into its components. Indirectly it is concerned also with x; for by the pursuit
of the method the full value of ¢ may be determined, and hence that of « may be
inferred. This concession made, it is permissible to concentrate our attention on
the term c.

Thus the business of the Mendelian is to resolve the complex of characters
which is possessed by an individual into its constituent unit characters. As a
consequence of this experimental analysis Mendelism is enabled to restate the
problem of the behaviour in inheritance of two individuals in these terms :—

The complex of characteristics which distinguishes an individual is the expres-
sion of the sum of a long series of characters. As the individual arises from
germ cells so each character arises from a germ within the germ cells. Such
germs of characters are called factors. When two germ cells unite to form an
incipient individual or zygote they bring together the similar factors of a given
character—one factor from the one germ cell and the other from the other. As
the zygote forms the mature individual, so the paired factors give rise to a
character of the individual.

The body characters are the flowers of the factorial seeds implanted in the
germ cells.

Some characters are simple and derive from one pair of factors only; others
are of an ascending order of complexity and may be traced to the co-operative
agency of two, or more than two, pairs of factors. In the case of a complex
character the determining factors may be unlike one another or they may be
alike. Thus two pairs of different factors are required to produce the character
of colour in certain flowers; on the other hand, it is at least probable that certain
characters are the outcome of repeated doses of the same factorial stimulant.
Further, the individual is a dual thing—a double-barrelled gun. Each barrel is
loaded with the factorial charge supplied by one of the two gametes by whose
union its duality is constituted. Conversely and consequently a gamete or germ
cell is, in comparison with the individual, of single and not of dual nature. It has
one barrel only, and therefore can carry or give effect to one, and only one, of the
two factorial charges with which the individual was supplied at the time of its
formation.

Our image of the double-barrelled gun serves also to illustrate the several
states in which an individual may find itself with respect to its charge of factors
of any given simple body character.

Both barrels of the gun may be loaded. An individual in like state possesses
two factorial charges and produces gametes all of which are alike in the posses-
sion of one of these.factors. Therefore, such an individual when self-fertilised,
or mated with its like, produces gametes which are all alike in this respect, and
these gametes, fusing in pairs, give rise to individuals which all possess the char-
acter in question. Such individuals are homozygous, they breed true to the
character.

Neither barrel may be loaded; and an individual in like state is also
homozygous. It breeds true to the absence of the character. If a gamete
of the former individual meet with one from the latter individual, the resulting
zygote is in like case with that of a double-barrelled gun of which one chamber
only is loaded. The zygote is heterozygous for the character. Unlike the
homozygotes, which breed true, the heterozygous individual does not breed true
to the character in question.

By the application of the foregoing propositions and a little arithmetic, it
may be predicted that the offspring of the heterozygote fall into three groups—

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K.

one homozygous for the character, and another heterozygous, and a third
homozygous tor the absence of the character—and that, further, these types of
individuals occur in the proportion of 1:2:1. Needless to say, the prediction
is susceptible of verification by experimental breeding from the heterozygote.
These are Mendelian commonplaces with which I should have hesitated to
occupy our time were it not for the fact that I desire to emphasise the epoch-
making nature of Mendel’s method. The magic wrought by genius is potent
because it is simple. The rules of Mendelian method are simple. If it be urged
that I have broken my promise and strayed from method to doctrine I would ask
which of the simple propositions I have stated may be demurred to by any student
of biology?

The supreme importance of Mendel’s contribution to science consists in this :
that instead of mixing anything with anything ‘in the gruel thick and slab’ of a
witches’ cauldron, he has taught us to cast the horoscope of Fate by the
method of genetical analysis of individual characters. Thus the first part of the
Mendelian restatement of the old problem of Heredity reads: Investigate
one by one the modes of inheritance of the several characters of an individual.
Choose for this purpose organisms which are as far as possible alike in all
respects except for the character under investigation. Carry the experiment to
its conclusion, even to the third or fourth generation. If uncertain results are
obtained, ascertain before discarding the method whether the uncertainty may
not be due to the interference of other characters not to be suspected a@ priori
of exercising an influence upon the expression of the character under investigation.

Who, for example, would suspect a morphological character like thickness
of stem of exercising an influence on the time of flowering of a plant? Yet
such is the case with the pea (Piswm sativum), and there is evidence that when
this disturbing influence is removed inheritance of time of flowering follows
Mendelian rules.

The second part of the restatement of the problem of genetics may be expressed
as follows: Only by the use of individuais of proved constitution with respect
to a given character may the effect of external conditions on organisms be deter-
mined. The study of variation must be preceded by Mendelian analysis and
synthesis. Let me illustrate this theme by an example.

The species Primula sinensis, the Chinese primrose, has given rise to many
distinct varieties. Among these varieties are some with white flowers and
others with magenta, blue, red, or other coloured flowers. Each of these
varieties may be obtained of florists in a pure strain—that is to say, in a strain
which breeds true to flower-character. For our immediate purpose we will group
these varieties into white and coloured forms.

It has been shown, however, that this apparently natural mode of grouping
is inadequate to give a correct idea of the genetic constitutions of these races.
It would seem self-evident that the white races differ from the coloured races
by the lack of flower-pigment; yet Mendelian analysis demonstrates that there
are more. subtle differences between the different races. These differences
become apparent when true-breeding white and coloured plants are crossed with
one another; for it is then discovered that two types of white-flowered plants
exist, and it is only by their fruits—their offspring—that ye may know them.
Thus if certain white-flowered races are chosen for the experiment, the result
of crossing white and colour is a coloured F, generation. If certain other white
races are used and mated with the coloured form the offspring of the tross all
bear white flowers. The different genetical behaviours of these heterozygous first
generations give the clue to the difference between the two forms of white used
as parents. In the former case—that in which the first (F,) generation consists
of coloured offspring—the second (F,) generation, raised by self-fertilising F,
individuals or by crossing them with one another, consists of coloured : white in
the proportion of 3: 1.

Whence we conclude that the white used in this experiment owes its
character of whiteness to lack of the pigment-producing factor which is present
in the coloured parent race. This conclusion is confirmed by the genetical
behaviour of the whites of the F, generation. Such extracted whites breed true
to flower-character—that is, give rise to white-flowered offspring only. | White-
flowered races which behave in this manner are termed recessive whites.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7

In the second case—that in which the F, generation consists of white-flowered
offspring—the F, generation, from selted or intercrossed F, plants, consists of
three white: one coloured. The coloured offspring breed true. Of the three
whites one breeds true to whiteness and the other two give rise, like the white F,

generation, to three white: one colour. White races which thus impose their
whiteness on the offspring of their union with a coloured race are known as
dominant whites. Mendelians account for the genetical behaviour of

dominant whites by assuming that they carry the character for colour and also
a character for colour-inhibition. This hypothesis is amply justified by genetical
results. Nevertheless it is an hypothesis which is novel to biology. It pro-
pounds a series of questions to the physiologist and biochemist, and in so doing
exemplifies the fruitfulmess of Mendelism. We shall see immediately whether the
biochemist is able to take up this Mendelian challenge and what answer he can
give to it.

7 “At present, however, we are concerned to show by an example the necessity
of prefacing the study of variation by Mendelian analysis. It was stated just
now that the cross, dominant white by colour, results in a white F,. That
statement requires amplification. Grown under normal conditions the
F, individuals bear pure white flowers; but if grown in somewhat higher tempera-
tures the flowers develop a distinct though pale flush of colour. It is easy to
show that the factor for colour is unaftected by the changed conditions, for
the flushed F, individuals yield offspring of the same kind and in the same
proportions as those produced by white F, plants.

it is fairly evident that the flushing 1s produced by the destructive action
of heat on the inhibitor. In pre-Mendelian times this response to temperature
would -have been added without more ado as yet another ornament to dress the
window of that old curiosity shop which is stocked with miscellaneous and
heterogeneous articles all ticketed with the label ‘ variation.’

But in the light of Mendelism we may see in this effect of temperature the
result of the casting-vote of circumstance on a heterozygous constitution. We
may recall instances—as, for example, those provided by the well-known experi-
ments on the effects of high temperatures on insect larve—which seem to show
that environmental agencies may single out not only characters but also factors
for attack. Thus we may begin to cohere in series the hitherto sundered and
scattered phenomena of variation.

It is not yet possible to say how much of variation is to be put down to
the interplay of characters, or, rather, to the differential effects of external
conditions on characters which tend to balance one another; but this at least
may be said—that the old and worn controversy on acquired characters was
so much waste of words, because the problem purporting to be discussed had
never been defined. Like the half of human quarrels, it was a quarrel akout
words.

It is stated in the books that the formation of peloric (regular) flowers may
be induced by uniform illumination. Was the material used in the research
homozygous or heterozygous? Does uniform illumination just prevent the
unpaired factor from inducing normal growth? If so, what is the effect on the
homozygous normal? These are examples of questions which suggest themselves
at every turn, and they will abide the answer of experiment. The time is
approaching when it will be possible to test the validity of the hypothesis on
which the super-hypothesis of natural selection rests apparently secure from
verification or disproof.

That hypothesis maintains that everything is in a state of flux; that variation
occurs at all times and affects all parts. This may be true of multiple mongrels;
of organisms which are heterozygous for many characters. On the other hand,
nothing is more surprising than the stability of forms which are pure-bred for
a fair number of characters, and it is at-all events a suggestion not to be
rejected summarily that plants pure bred for a considerable number of characters
' may exhibit a constancy and stability not usually associated with our ideas of
living things.

In any case, it is open to the biologist to provide himself with suitable
material wherewith to study the range and scope of variation and to investigate
the conditions under which the organism discards old characters and regresses

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K.

or acquires new ones and progresses. It is open to the Mendelian breeder to
standardise creation.

Thus in fulfilling the first part of its task—that of defining the pure-bred—
the Mendelian method has provided the material for the tulfilment cf the
second part—namely, the investigation of the conditions which make for the
stability and instability of the organism. I think the time has come when
this latter task might be undertaken on a large scale and with good prospects
of success.

So far I have played the part of one of those street-corner watchers of the
skies who offer a telescope for the inspection of the heavens. I have now to take |
a turn myself, and by means of the binoculars of Mendelism and Physiology
survey not the celestial bodies, but certain new features of a small and narrow
terrestrial field which this instrument brings within our ken. My survey has
reference to the phenomena of the pigmentation of plants, and is confined to
those presented by the anthocyan or sap pigments to which the colours of many
flowers are due.

Until recently knowledge of the processes of pigmentation advanced along
two main and independent lines. One line of advance—that followed with such
brilliant success by Bateson and the Cambridge school, as well as by other
students of genetics—has led to a wealth of exact knowledge with respect to
the factors and characters which determine coloration. The other line of
advance, pursued with no less brilliant results by Chodat and Bach and by
Palladin and his associates, has resulted in a great increase of our understanding
of the biochemistry of pigmentation.

The merit of being the first to combine the genetical with the biochemical
method belongs to Miss Wheldale, to whom, moreover, we owe a good working
hypothesis of the nature of the processes involved in pigment-formation. The
work of Palladin and of Chodat and Bach is so well known that I need not
review it in any detail. To Palladin we owe in large measure the conception
that respiration consists in a sequence of enzyme-like actions, the later of which
result in oxidations and are ascribed to oxydases. To the same observer we
owe also the suggestion that chromogens play a part in the oxidations set up
by oxydases and that these colourless chromogens may undergo either alternate
oxidation and reduction and so take a continuous part in oxydase action, or
undergo permanent oxidation and so constitute the pigments of the plant.

Chodat and Bach have given us a serviceable conception of the nature of
oxydases. According to the Chodat-Bach hypothesis oxydases are of dual
nature; the complete oxydase consisting of two parts—a peroxydase and an
organic peroxide. An oxydase reacts with oxidisable reagents, such as guaiacum,
to produce a characteristically coloured product. Hence these reagents may be
termed oxydase-reagents. Peroxydases react with oxydase reagents only if
there be added, as a substitute for the organic peroxide of the complete oxydase,
a source of active oxygen in the form of hydrogen peroxide. Both oxydases
and peroxydases occur in the cells of plants, and may be identified in extracts
therefrom.

The work of Gortner on the pigments of insects adds confirmation to the
view that pigments are the product of the action of oxydase on chromogens.
Thus he has shown that the black or brown melanin of the integuments of
insects is produced by the action of an oxydase, tyrosinase, on some such product
of protein-hydrolysis as tyrosin. ; \

Miss Wheldale’s studies have led her to formulate the hypothesis that the
anthocyan pigments of plants are the outcome of a series of chemical changes
of the following order: Glucosides hydrolysed by emulsin yield chromogens
which, acted on by oxydases, give rise to anthocyan pigments. The difficulty
in the way of further advance lay in the unsatisfactory nature of the methods
for identifying oxydases derived from plant tissues. Hence when we turned
our attention to this subject Dr. E. F. Armstrong and I made it our first
task to search for means whereby we should be able not only to identify,
but also to locate, oxydases and peroxydases in plant-tissues. Clarke had
tested already numerous oxydase-reagents and found that certain among
them are adapted for microchemical use. As the result of a considerable
number of trials of known reagents we have found that a-naphthol and benzi-

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

dine are each adapted admirably for the purpose of locating oxydases. By
means of these reagents we have been able to map out the distribution of
oxydase and peroxydase in the flowers and other parts of various plants, and
although the work is laborious and the technique as yet imperfect, the results
afford strong confirmation of the current hypothesis of the mode of formation
of anthocyan pigments. This confirmation, however, was rendered possible only
by reason of the fact that we worked with races of plants bred on Mendelian
lines, and hence of known genetic constitutions.

Our method of investigation is briefly as follows. The oxydase-reagent is
used in weak alcoholic solution, the part of the plant to be tested is incubated
in the solution for a suitable time, and if no oxydase action takes place—that
is, if no characteristic coloration of the tissues occurs—the material is tested
for peroxydase by the addition of hydrogen peroxide. The method may be
employed for intact corollas or petals or for sections of plant-tissues.

Tt is important to mention that the first result of immersing a sap-pigmented
tissue in either reagent is the decolorisation of the tissue. For example, a
corolla of a coloured-flowered race of Primula sinensis loses its colour com-
pletely after being immersed for an hour or two in either reagent. The
decolorised corolla, which in the case of P. sinensis remains colourless, is treated
with hydrogen peroxide, with the result that a well-marked peroxydase reaction
is obtained. The reaction is confined to the non-chlorophyllous parts of the
corolla, and does not occur, except in the epidermal hairs, in the region of the
yellow or green eye, the tissues of which contain chlorophyll. Indeed, there is
good reason to believe that chlorophyll inhibits oxydase action.

By. treating similar flowers with each of our two reagents we find that
the actions of a-naphthol and benzidine are, in a considerable measure, supple-
mentary one of the other. Thus the lilac-blue a-naphthol reaction is confined
or almost confined to the veins of the corolla, the brown benzidine reaction
is exhibited by the superficial (epidermal) cells and also by the veins. In order
to emphasise the facts of distribution we speak of the peroxydases of
P. sinensis as epidermal peroxydase and bundle oxydase. The former occurs in
the epidermis and in the epidermal hairs, the latter in the bundle sheath which
accompanies the veins. ;

Similarly, if sections of a stem of P. sinensis be investigated they are found
to contain a superficial peroxydase and a deep-seated peroxydase. As the
result of remarking the peroxydases, not of any unknown variety taken at hazard,
but of the several varieties characterised by constant differences of depth and
extent of pigmentation, we have been able to show that the distribution of
peroxydase in any one race coincides broadly with the distribution of pigment
in the most pigmented races. In other words, in P. sinensis the peroxydase
framework for pigmentation occurs throughout the species, and the building
of the several colour varieties is determined by the activity of the factor for
chromogen production. If we conceive of this factor as administered in a series
of doses we can form a fair picture of the mode of evolution of the series of
varieties characterised by increasing or decreasing amount of pigmentation of
their vegetative parts.

On turning to investigate the peroxydases in white-flowered races cf
P. smensis, we shall’expect to find from analogy with the peroxydases of the
stem that these agents of pigment-formation are not lacking from the corollas
of recessive whites. The application of our reagents shows that this expecta-
tion is correct, and that those white-flowered races which lack the factor for
colour contain epidermal and bundle peroxydase. Hence we conclude that
the absence of colour from recessive white flowers is due not to the absence
of peroxydase, but to absence of chromogen. This conclusion is in conformity
with that arrived at previously by Mendelian methods; for, as we have noted
already, these methods demonstrate that anthocyan pigmentation of the flower
of P. sinensis depends on the presence of*one factor only, and that the absence
of pigmentation which is characteristic of recessive whites is due to the absence
of that single colour-factor.

The result of our investigation of the peroxydases of dominant white
flowers is, on the other hand, quite different from that given by recessive
whites. When corollas of dominant white races are treated with a-naphthol

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K.

or benzidine and subsequently with hydrogen peroxide, they show no sign of
peroxydase neither in epidermis nor in bundles. Hence such flowers either lack
peroxydase or else they contain a substance which inhibits peroxydase from
exercising its oxidizing action on our oxydase-indicators.

That oxydases may be inhibited in vitro has been demonstrated already
by Gortner, who has shown that the addition of certain phenolic compounds—
orcin, resorcin, etc., prevents tyrosinase from exercising its characteristic action
upon tyrosin.

Assuming that an inhibitor of peroxydase occurs in dominant white flowers,
jit may be supposed to: act either by destroying peroxydase or by setting up
conditions under which the activity of peroxydase is arrested. Assuming further
that the inhibitor acts in the latter way, it follows that if means of destroying
or removing the inhibitor be discovered and employed. the peroxydase released
from the inhibitory grip should be free to effect the oxidation of our reagents.

This train of reasoning gave us a point of departure for experiment.
Starting from this point Dr. Armstrong and I have found in hydrogen cyanide a
means of removing peroxydase-inhibition. Thus if dominant white flowers are
immersed in a 0.4 per cent. solution of hydrogen cyanide for twenty-four hours,
washed, and treated with either of our reagents together with hydrogen peroxide,
pronounced peroxydase reactions are obtained, both in the epidermal and bundle
tissues of the corolla. Carbon dioxide in aqueous solution produces a like, albeit
a less pronounced effect.

Now, it so happened that we had at our disposal a race of Primulas, the
flowers of which lend themselves peculiarly well to the purpose of confirming
these observations. The race in question is characterised by blue flowers with
fairly symmetrically placed paired white patches on each petal. We have
reason to believe from the known ancestry of this race that these white patches
are vroduced by a localised inhibitor.

Corollas of these flowers treated with a-naphthol or benzidine become quite
colourless. When, however. hydrogen peroxide is added the natural pattern
is restored. The parts originally blue are stained lilac-blue or brown according
to the reagent used, and the inhibitory patches stand out as in the intact
flower as white areas on the coloured ground.

If instead of submitting the particoloured flowers directly to the oxydase
reagent, they are treated first with hydrogen cyanide, and then treated with
the reagent and subsequently with hydrogen peroxide, the inhibition located
in the white areas is found to have been removed, and the peroxydase reaction
is produced over blue and white areas alike.

Hence the Mendelian hypothesis of the inhibitory nature of dominant whites
is confirmed by biochemical methods. Moreover, these methods demonstrate that
the inhibitor acts not by destroying but by preventing the action of oxydase upon
the chromogen.

There are many other aspects presented by the phenomena of oxydase distri-
bution in P. sinensis and other plants which we have investigated. Some T
may enumerate, but lack of time must be my excuse for not dealing fully with
any of them.

The close proximity in the flower of the superficial and deep oxydases sug-
gests that the latter may co-operate with the former in producing flower-
pigments. This possibility entails the hypothesis of a translocation of oxydase
from the region in which it is secreted to that in which it acts, and there are
not a few facts which are in favour of this view; for example, the lines of deen
cclour which occur along the veins of many flowers, the frequency with which
the walls of cells appear to contain oxydase, the occurrence of oxydase
in the mesophyll cells which adjoin the bundle sheath, and the evidence pro-
vided by the mutual influence of stock and scion in grafted plants and in graft
hybrids. Though these and other subjects must be passed over, I cannot resist
giving what appears to me to be the most elegant mode of demonstrating the
relation between oxydases and piementation which we have as yet observed.
The plant which has served for this purpose is the Sweet William (Dianthus
barbatus), and any of the old-fashioned races of this plant common in cottage
sardens suffices, mrovided that it be an ever-sporting race. Such a race is
known by the fact that it bears, on one and the same head, flowers of different

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. ll

colours. The race which we have used is very sporting, a single plant bearing
in one inflorescence deep magenta, pale magenta, white with limited rose flush,
and all but pure white flowers.

lf a petal of each of these flowers be treated with the benzidine reagent,
it is found that the extent and amount of the oxydase reaction, as measured by
the distribution and depth of brown coloration indicative of oxydase, coincide
precisely with the extent and amount of pigmentation. The full-coloured petal
gives a uniform deep brown reaction, the light magenta a uniform but paler
reaction, the petal with a limited rosy flush gives a slight reaction, limited to
the pigmented area, and the all-but-white petal gives none but the slightest
reaction, and that only in the part of the petal which contained traces of pigment.
Thus—unless the results are due to a partial inhibition which has eluded our
attempts at demonstration—it would seem established that the ever-sportinz
habit is due to differences in the amount of oxydase in the diversely coloured
flowers.

The Sweet William is also noteworthy in that it contains white races, some
of which give an oxydase reaction in their petals and some of which give no
oxydase reaction. Breeding experiments now in progress will decide whether
or no these white races, like those of Sweet Peas investigated by Bateson
and Punnett, mated together yield coloured progeny. If so the factors for
colour, long wandering yet not lost, which meet again in reversionary coloured
crossbreeds, may prove to be a chromogen factor and an oxydase factor.

Finally a brief reference must be made to our observations on the periodic
fluctuation of oxydase in plants. Various observers have noticed that plant
tissues give the peroxydase reaction much more generally than the oxydase
reaction. The observations now to be described indicate that this is due to
the greater stability of peroxydase as compared with the organic peroxide.

Under certain circumstances a tissue which gives only the peroxydase
reaction may exhibit the direct oxydase reaction. Moreover, the extent of the
peroxydase reaction, as*judged by the depth of coloration of the reagent,
varies in similar plants at different times.

Enquiry into the meaning of these fluctuations led us to the discovery that
the nature and amount of oxydase contained in a plant tissue varies in an
orderly manner according to external conditions.

Among the conditions which determine this fluctuation are light and darkness.
Plants subjected to normal illumination possess less oxydase than those which
are kept in darkness. After one or two days’ exposure to darkness plants of
P. sinensis contain more peroxydase than sister plants kept under normal con-
ditions of illumination. Moreover, after such an exposure to darkness tissues
which under normal conditions give only peroxydase-reactions yield distinct
oxydase-reactions.

Whether these phenomena are general among plants we are not yet in a
position to say; but repeated experiment enables us to vouch for them in the
case of P. sinensis. Should the results of similar investigations with other
plants show that this diurnal variation of the oxydase-content of plant tissues
is of general occurrence, we may perhaps discover therein the means whereby
many of the phenomena of periodicity exhibited by plants are maintained
and regulated. We know that the light and darkness of the day and night
set up rhythms in the plant; for example, that the leaves of various plants
assume nocturnal and diurnal positions. We know further that the rhythm
thus established may be maintained for a certain time under uniform conditions
of illumination. This is the case with the Sensitive plant and many another.

Animals also exhibit a like periodicity. Thus some years ago Dr. Gamble and
I showed that certain shrimp-like animals, Hippolyte varians, roll up their
hrilliant chromatophores at night and assume a sky-blue colour. When daylight
comes they put on their daytime dress by spreading out the pigment of their
chromatophores in far-reaching superficial networks. Kept in the dark these
animals retain for many days this periodic habit, and when the hour of night
arrives, although they have no light to tell it by, they lay aside their daily
garb and put on the uniform of night. So also the plant-animal Convoluta
roscoffensis, which lives on the seashore, orders its behaviour by the sun and
moon. It lies on the sand till the waves of the making tide are upon it, and

12 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K.

then descends to security and darkness. When the tide recedes it rises to the
light. Even the uncongenial surroundings of a tea-cup and a laboratory fail
to break this habit; for in these surroundings its uprisings and down-lyings
keep time with the tides.

To one who has scrutinised with perplexed mind these mysteries of biology
the speculation may be permitted that light and darkness may work these
wonders through the control of chemical agents such as oxydases. But though
it be legitimate to make a speculation of this kind it is idle to hunt the
unknown to the death without the lethal weapon of experiment, and so I leave
it for the present unpursued, and with it my Address. We have it on the
authority of a poet and philosopher that to the traveller on a lonely road each
bush becomes a bear, and I am not oblivious of the fact that oxydases have
obtruded themselves with a certain obstinacy in the course of my Address.
Nevertheless, obsession has its uses and significance, for it is the after-effect of
enthusiasm; and though I have dealt, perhaps at undue length, with special
problems and with suggestions, I venture to think that © have made out
my case for the opportuneness of an entente cordiale between Physiology and
Mendelism.

dsritish Association for the Ndvancement
of Science.

SECTION L: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE SECTION

Proressor JOHN ADAMS, M.A., B.Sc., LL.D.,

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

An Objective Standard in EHducation.

Or those who deny to Education a place among the sciences the name is legion,
for they are many. The mere classification as a science is not perhaps of much
consequence, but it is useful for the student of Education to examine the popular
view, and see how far it is justified. ‘The following statement, the words of a
former occupant of this chair, will be generally accepted as representing the
prevailing opinion :—

“If we take science to mean, as commonly understood, organised knowledge,
and if we are to test the claim of any body of facts and principles to be regarded
as Science by the ability to predict, which the knowledge of these facts and prin-
ciples confers, can we say that there exists an organised and orderly arrangement

_ot educational truth, or that we can logically, by any causative sequence, connect
training and character either in the individual or in the nation? . . . It is very
doubtful whether we can say that educational science is yet sufficiently advanced
to satisfy these tests.’

First with regard to organised knowledge, there is certainly a great mass of
matter available in the subject of Education. It is true that there is nothing
easier than to show that this matter is not at present well organised. It is only
too easy to find examples of contradictions among those who make a study of
Education and venture to write or speak on the subject. We are told that there
is hardly any important statement made by a writer on Education that cannot
be met by a direct contradiction in the works of some other educational writer.
It has to be admitted that writers on Education in the past have been strangely
opinionative and dogmatic in view of the very complex and delicate problems
they have had to handle. Too frequently they assumed a simplicity in their
subject-matter that was certainly not there. Even the massive common-sense of
Dr. Johnson was not able to keep him from regarding Education as a study that
had reached its limits long before his time. But between those who regard
Education as too simple to need any further examination, and those who treat it
as so complex as to defy human analysis, there are those who take the view that
Education is a science like any other, though they admit that there may be room
for wide difference of opinion regarding the stage of development it has reached.

At the present moment it is becoming increasingly evident that educational
theory is consolidating : it can now be claimed that there exists a great body of
educational doctrine that is of general acceptation. It goes without saying that
there are many and deep differences among the various schools of educational
writers. But if we compare any two schools we shall find that the points of
agreement far outnumber the points of difference. This was true even in the

L

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L.

older times of naif theory, but is making itself very evident in these latter days.
«Anyone who has occasion to read all the books on the theory of Education as they
appear, is impressed in spite of himself by the large body of doctrine that is
common to them all. It is not that the books lack originality : each writer has
his new point of view or his new interpretation of certain phenomena; yet each
either baldly states or tacitly takes for granted a great body of truth that is held
to be generally accepted. This body of recognised truth is gradually increasing
as the result of collective thinking and the corrections involved in active criti-
cism. Already critics are beginning to find fault with any writer who produces
a book—not avowedly a text-book—that professes to deal with the whole range
of Education. He is reminded that what is now wanted is a special development
along certain definite lines. The general principles of Education are held to be
established and accepted.

In confirmation of what has been said, it may be added that within the past
year or two have appeared no fewer than five separate treatises each bearing the
same title : ‘The Principles of Education.’ These books are mainly for the use
of students, and contain what are regarded as the accepted results of educational
investigation up to the present date. ‘Their authors obviously recognise the
existence of a certain body of truths on which all are agreed. In some of the
professions it is customary to speak familiarly of ‘the books,’ meaning the
standard works to which appeal is constantly being made. If among teachers we
have not yet reached this stage, we are obviously far on the way towards it. The
books are there, but the profession needs some time yet before, in its own
deliberate way, it recognises their importance. By and by it will realise the fact
that it has at its disposal material that will enable it to prophesy and thus fulfil
the second condition imposed upon all who lay claim to scientific knowledge. It
is true that in the past there was littie diffidence about prophesying : it was the
fulfilment that gave trouble. Wolfgang Ratke supplies if not the first at any rate
the most dramatic application of a control test in the working of educational
prophecy. He went to prison because the people of his time did not make allow-
ance for the insufficiency of the body of knowledge on which he based his predic-
tions. There was indeed nothing scientific about the procedure of Ratke. He
was at the empirical stage, and could not rise above it. His modern fellows have
not quite got beyond the empirical, but they are on their way.

No claim is here made that Education has yet justified her demand to be
recognised as a fully developed science ; but it may be fairly maintained that she
has at least entered upon the stage of scientific method : she is seeking to free
herself from mere empiricism. In such a struggle there are at least two possible
lines of action.

The first requires some ingenuity, but is natural and pleasant. It consists
in superimposing principles upon the facts of the case. ‘lhe educational theorist
invents or assumes certain broad general principles, then proceeds to fit in all the
observed facts, and often shows great skill in the process. This method is of
very general application. Sometimes it is worked consciously and deliberately,
as in the case of Socrates’ doctrine of Reminiscence. Here we have the whole
scheme of teaching simplified by this superimposed generalisation. Quite fre-
quently, however, the broad underlying principles are not brought to clear
consciousness, and are, in fact, sometimes contradictory to each other. Examples
may be found in Rousseau, For our present purpose this tendency towards what
may be called rational pedagogy is best illustrated in the system of Education
elaborated by Herbart. Though the metaphysical basis on which he builds is
generally regarded as false, it was deliberately adopted by him, and if it is once
zranted to him all the rest of his system must be admitted to be built up on
strictly scientific principles. It is true that while logically Herbart’s pedagogy
was built upon his psychology, in point of fact his pedagogical thinking preceded
and dominated his psychological theory. While Pestalozzi sought to psychologise
Education, Herbart may be said rather to have educationalised psychology. In
any case he supplies us with a system that challenges recognition as scientific,
whether the claim be admitted or not.

The other method by which a study may seek to escape from mere empiricism
is by dealing with observed results so as to reach the underlying principles. In
this method, instead of setting up principles and making the facts square with
them, we examine the phenomena and seek to discover the underlying principles.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. Bs

Obviously this at once introduces the experimental method, since no satisfactory
progress can be made by mere passive observation. This is the stage we have
now reached in educational theory. We are passing from an appeal to experience
to an appeal to experiment. Naturally educational method has always had to
stand or fall by its results, but in estimating results there has too frequently
been a confusion between cause and effect. So soon as a conscientious analysis
of educational problems is attempted there comes the need of experiment. Certain
questions have arisen demanding a definite answer, and the answers supplied must
stand the test of practical application. Education is, in fact, called upon to
prophesy, and to stand or fall by the results. Now the method of experiment
is really a system of tentative prophecy, under rigidly determined conditions.,
We acquire skill in prophesying by a process of trial and error. We become
prophets by prophesying. From all the knowledge at our disposal we calculate
that a certain process will give a certain result. We apply the process, and then
it the result is not what we expected we examine all the conditions, seek out the
cause of our error, and proceed to another tentative prophecy. By and by we
acquire the power of prophesying with confidence within certain recognised limits,
and within those limits we may claim to proceed scientifically.

But in the evaluating of results that is necessary in this process of training
in prophecy there is need for some recognised standard. Unless this condition
be fulfilled there can be no general agreement among investigators. Accordingly
the first step in raising a study to the scientific level is the establishment of such
a standard. In the study of Education in the past—and it must be admitted that
the same is true to a large extent at the present—the standard adopted was in
most cases a subjective one. There is a tendency to have everything determined
by individual opinion. Certain educational processes are gone through; certain
results follow in the lives of the educands. The causal relations involved are
arranged by the individual observer to suit his own views. According to some
the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton; according to others
the battle of Colenso was lost there. We have need of some standard that is
independent of private opinion.

Obviously the whole question of the relativity of knowledge is here involved.
The educator is too apt to apply to his own case the Protagorean view, and main-
tain that ‘man is the measure of all things; of things that are, that they are,
and of things that are not, that they are not.’ Into this antique problem we
need not here enter. There is a sense in which the epigram of Protagoras may
be justified. Without doubt, for his own practical purposes, the individual is
the measure of his universe of experience. But so far as his universe has to do
with the universes of others, the individual needs some common standard, some-
thing outside of himself, something that others besides himself recognise—in
short, an objective standard.

The matter may be illustrated by what took place in the development of
certain of the sciences. The secondary qualities involved in the Lockian episte-
mology—such things as colours, tastes, smells, sounds—lend themselves to a
subjective standard; but so long as we confine ourselves to a standard of this
kind we cannot be said to treat such matters scientifically. The individual is
the sole judge of how a particular sound or colour strikes him, and against his
decision there is no appeal. But it seems as if we could not have a science of
sounds or of colours based on this individual judgment. Each observer would
rely upon his own sensations and would interpret them in his own way. For-
tunately in the study of physics it was discovered that certain of the conditions
of sensation are constant. When we get a knowledge of wave-lengths, and the
laws of refraction and reflection, we have passed from the merely subjective
sphere, we have an outside standard, we can compare, abstract, and analyse
independently of the individual. ‘ C natural’ has a definite meaning to science,
even if there were not a single ear that could hear the sound. It is true that,
in the ultimate resort, we cannot eliminate the individual observer. He is too
important in ordinary life, and a great deal of the work of science is done after
all at his address. How red strikes an observer is as important to a scientist
as is the exact wave-length that is necessary to produce red. The relation
between a certain wave-length and a certain sensation is complicated by the
individual peculiarities of the sense organs of the individual concerned. In certain
respects the science of optics is self-contained, and has a definite objective

L 2

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L.

standard. In certain other respects it depends for its data on individual experi-
ences, and has to content itself with a subjective standard. No doubt it can call
in the aid of Physiology, a science that has an objective standard of its own, and
in this way eliminate a certain amount of subjectivity. But in the last resort
there is a corner of the field in which no objective standard can be obtained.

It is true that in pure mathematics we appear to get into a region where the
subjective may be practically excluded altogether, but even here the science of
space and time is limited by the fact that it can deal with its data only from the
point of view of human limitations. And there are certain borderline studies
that are mathematical in their essence, yet have a direct reference to our bodily
organs. Linear Perspective, for example, is usually regarded as a science,
indeed as an exact science. Yet when we look into the matter we find that Linear
Perspective is nothing more than a conventionalised method of treating, in an
exact way, the results of individual experience. The whole science is really an
objective standard by which the ordinary processes of vision may be compared,
analysed, and classified. Perspective tells us what we ought to see. It is not
independent of our sense functions, it is only a mode in which the variable
subjective is reduced to uniformity by the application of the objective standard.
Indeed, in the teaching of art there sometimes arises a curious conflict between
the subjective element and the objective. Students who have studied Perspec-
tive before they are called upon to draw real objects set before them, are very
apt to draw according to the rules they have learned, instead of observing what
is actually before them and reproducing that as it appears to their senses. In
other words, they set up the objective standard as paramount. So markedly
is this the case that sometimes the study of Perspective is forbidden till famili-
arity with model drawing has been attained. When a teacher urges a pupil to
draw what he sees, and not merely what he knows from the rules of Perspective
he ought to see, we have an appeal to the subjective standard. The teacher is
turning from the science of Perspective to the art of Drawing.

This illustration is of particular advantage to us in our present work, because
it not only exhibits the subjective standard working alongside of the objective,
but it introduces the idea of an exact science in relation to our human organs.
Astronomy is an exact science, and yet the problem of the ‘ personal equation”
shows that even here the subjective must be taken into account. The ‘ personal
equation ’ is, in fact, nothing but the elimination by quantitative methods of the
disturbing subjective elements. It is by similar methods that we must seek to
establish an objective standard in Education. ‘The difficulty in this subject is
very great. Astronomy and Physics touch the subjective only at what may be
called the point of application, the point at which they are brought into contact
with human life. Their subject-matter is external, and lends itself to objective
treatment. In Education the subject-matter is human nature, which is so com-
plex and involves such volatile elements that it is almost impossible to reduce
its working to fixed laws. The same difficulty obviously applies in Psychology.
Itself a comparatively new subject, Psychology has great difficulty in getting
recognition as a science. For this there are two main reasons. ‘l’o begin with,
Psychology began life as a branch of philosophy, and scientific men regard with
suspicion anything that comes from that quarter. Besides, there was the less
reason to make room for the new subject since it had already a settled place in the
hierarchy of studies. The second reason is that which interests us here—the
difficulty of establishing an objective standard. The descriptive generalities
of Dugald Stewart and ‘Thomas Brown had to give way to something based upon
laws that are generally accepted. The line of least resistance in seeking for an
objective standard in Psychology is to fall back upon a physiological basis. It is
generally admitted that nerve action can Ke referred to an objective standard,
and by correlating psychic and bodily phenomena psychologists are able to get a
series of recognised principles on the physical side that may be easily interpreted
in terms of spirit. Psycho-physics has at least a plausible claim to rank among
the sciences, and the unbridged gulf between mind and matter is conveniently
ignored. As a matter of fact such a generalisation as the Fechner-Weber law
ranks parallel with the laws of Linear Perspective—that is, it is a law that states
in an unjustifiably exact way what ordinarily takes place in the individual ex-
perience, While rejecting the materialistic alliance, Herbart, as a psychologist,
deliberately set up a mechanical system of ideas as forces, and in this way estab-

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5

lished at once an objective standard by means of which all mental process may be
understood and manipulated. So scientific is his system that he claims that the
interaction of the ideas may be calculated in certain cases by a simple applica-
tion of the rule of three. With Herbart, Psychology has certainly been raised
to the rank of a science; but unfortunately it has to be admitted that his objec-
tive standard has been illegitimately assumed.

Just as Psychology utilises Physiology in its effort to gain a standing as a
science, so Education is inclined to use Psychology. Frequently we hear Psycho-
‘logy described as a science, while Education is relegated to a place among the
arts. It is natural, therefore, for the educator who wishes to claim rank in
science to appropriate the scientific status of his auxiliary science. As a matter
of fact Education has captured Psychology. This is only ane of many cases in
which a profession has taken possession of an abstract study, and in this way
enabled the abstract study to make real progress. ‘lheology as a study has gained
greatly by the fact that it is a compulsory subject for those who are preparing
tor a great profession. Astronomy owes a great deal to the support it has re-
ceived from its practical value to navigators. Physiology would not be what it
is to-day had it not become an essential subject in the preparation for the practice
of medicine. Physiologists sometimes complain that their subject is hampered
by its professors having to waste time in teaching mere medical students; it is
well to remember, however, that but for the demands of the medical profession
Physiology would have been left to the few private investigators who might be
able at their own cost to carry on under adverse conditions the work that is now
being done in thousands of well-equipped laboratories. In the same way it is
greatly to the advantage of Psychology that it has become an essential part of
the professional training of teachers. The subject is now receiving an amount
of attention that it would never have had but for the support of its connection
with the profession of teaching. But after all a teacher is not a mere psycholo-
gist : Education is more than applied Psychology. If Kducation is to rank as
a science it cannot be in virtue of its use of another study that itself has an
insecure foothold among the sciences. It must establish for itself an objective
standard.

Mere quantitative manipulation of the elements of a study, if only carried
out on a sufficiently large scale, has a tendency to evolve an objective standard,
apart from any deliberate search for such a standard. We may gather something
from an examination of a standard of this kind that, unexpected and unsought,
evolved itself in the ordinary course of educational administration. What Binet
and his colleagues and followers have been trying to do of set purpose was, to
some extent at least, accomplished automatically by the working of the system
of individual examinations under the English and Scotch Codes of Elementary
Education. Binet has drawn up certain tables with the express purpose of
testing the intelligence of children at various ages. But we are only at the
threshold of investigation work of this kind, and the tests cannot be regarded as
satisfactory, either in themselves or in their application. But they have been
drawn up with the deliberate purpose of supplying a more or less objective
standard of intelligence, Now in the British Elementary School Codes we have
the examination requirements from the pupils of different ages set out in a series
of tables each corresponding to one of the seven grades known technically as
‘standards.’ ‘The purpose of these tables of requirements was not primarily to
determine the intelligence of the pupils, but rather to indicate certain minimum
amounts of information that had to be communicated in consideration of a certain
money payment. Yet these tables bear a generic resemblance to those of Binet,
and in actual practice the ‘standards’ did win acceptance as a test of intelli-
gence. The requirements were perhaps less scientifically determined than are
those of Binet’s tests, but their practical value was very much greater, because
of the extremely wide range of their application.

When the Codes had been in working order for a score of years it became
evident to thoughtful observers that there had arisen a standard of comparison
among pupils in elementary schools that was gradually being recognised all over
the country. It was an objective standard, as was shown by the fact that each of
the standards began to have a meaning of its own, apart from the individual
school in which a particular pupil happened to be found. No doubt there were
differences in detail. A Standard III. boy in one school would bs found to have

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L.

greater knowledge and skill than a Standard III. boy in another. But the
important point 1s that the phrase ‘a Standard III. boy’ came to have a definite
meaning apart from any particular school. It began to be used absolutely, and
not merely relatively. Further, if a boy were found to be in a standard lower
than his years warranted, people had no diffidence in drawing their own con-
clusions regarding his ability. It will be remembered that Binet tells us, some-
what vaguely, that if a boy is a year behind others of the same age who have
had the same opportunities it indicates that he is duller than the others, but
not necessarily permanently so. If, however, the pupil is two years behind the
normal test for his age there is a presumption in favour of his being inherently
and permanently duller than his fellows. All this is very familiar and indeed
commonplace to the elementary teachers who were brought up under the Code
Examinations by standards. To tell the truth, M. Binet’s tests are regarded
with much suspicion by such elementary teachers as have been induced ‘to give
them attention. They have the feeling that here we have a University Professor
working out as something new a belated scheme that has had iis day, and in that
day done a great deal of damage. They are afraid that the prestige given to
the intelligence tests may encourage the re-establishment of the rigid individual
examination system from which they have escaped. All the same, experienced
elementary teachers do not deny that the old system did at least have the effect
of establishing a generally recognised standard. Their belief is that the standard
was not worth what it cost.

It is left for Binet’s successors to invent a better scheme than he was able
to produce, and in this way to establish an objective standard, at least in respect
of intelligence. Such a standard is needed in many connections, but there is one
special department of educational administration where such a standard is at
present urgently required. Nothing better illustrates the groping of Education
after a scientific basis than the present demand for some means of determining
which children are ‘ defective’ and which merely dull. So imperative is the
need for an objective standard here that it must be satisfied at any price, with
the result that the decision is being more and more left to the doctors instead
of to the teachers. The cause is not difficult to find. Physiology has already an
objective standard, and the doctors are evidently expected to get their results
by physical examination. No other explanation is admissible, since they are
not only not superior to teachers in their knowledge of the mental reactions of
the child, but obviously inferior. At present the argument moves backwards
and forwards. Some say : Give the teachers a tincture of physiological know-
ledge, and then they will manifestly be the best persons to determine the defec-
tive stage. Others reply : Give the medical men some little experience of school
conditions and the working of the immature mind, and they cannot but be the
proper authorities on all questions of intelligence. The important point in this
competition for power between the two professions is the implied recognition of
the need for an objective standard, and the admission that, at present, such a
standard does not exist. Much investigation, experimenting, and verification
are necessary before the truth on this particular subject can be reached. But
the recognition of the existence of the problem is in itself an indication of pro-
gress, and the need for scientific method in working it out is being more fully
recognised. From our standpoint it is important to note that we are here dealing
with a problem that is distinctly educational, and the bringing in of men from
another profession does not make it less so. If the doctor acquires the power
of dealing with delicate questions of intelligence, it is because he has learnt to be
an educationist if not an educator, Medical men who specialised in this matter
would no doubt very soon attain to high skill, since their previous training gives
them a very suitable preparation to begin the study of Education. Doctors are
consulted regarding ‘defectives ’ mainly for two reasons. First, these defective
children are naturally classed in the popular mind with the mentally deranged,
and these have always been regarded as peculiarly suitable subjects for the doctor.
Further, there exists, without doubt, the implicit feeling in the public mind that
the doctor has definite standards while the teacher has only general impressions.
But it has to be noted that this invasion of the field of Education by men from
another realm of study does not in any way affect the claims of Education to
rank as a nascent science with needs and methods of its own. If the doctors
can supply Education with an objective standard, Education should be very grate-

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. i

ful, but need not abdicate in favour of medicine. Education may use the results
of both Psychology and Physiology without in any way surrendering its claims
to be an independent science. We must not, of course, make too much of the
distinctions among the sciences. Nothing but error can result from seeking to
make each of them rigidly self-contained. So far as Education is concerned,
what we have to seek is that objective standard that we have conceded to be
essential to the recognition of a study as a possible science, and this without
falling back on the standards of either pure Psychology or pure Physiology.

We may learn something from what we have found out about the results of
the individual examination system. The general tendency of quantitative
methods is to eliminate the subjective element. Even in the case of marking
examination papers experience shows that the use of numerical marks tends to
objectify results, and to get rid of some at least of the difficulty involved in the
personal equation of the examiners, Marking by general impression of a whole
paper is much less free from subjective variation. Every individual number set
down as a mark implies a fresh exercise of the critical power, and when there
are many questions there is a compensating principle at work, inasmuch as each
impression is recorded as it is made and the addition of the marks produces a
balancing in which the latest impression has not the determining influence it
too frequently has when a paper is marked as a whole. If an examination in-
cludes many subjects, many examiners, and a great body of examinees, the
subjective element in the marking is, to a large extent, eliminated, and we can
deal with the results in accordance with what is practically an objective stan-
dard. We must not, of course, neglect the fact that after all the whole basis of
the results is the judgment of the individual examiner on the material submitted
to him. This corresponds to the application to real life of any of the physical
sciences. Here, as in many of the other sciences, we have a surd of subjectivity
that can never be got rid of entirely. But its disturbing influence can be mini-
mised by the counteracting influences of other forces in the quantitative manipu-
lation of the data.

Of late the quantitative method of dealing with educational problems has
been greatly developed. Karl Pearson’s product-moment formula has enabled
us to make an accurate arithmetical statement of the amount of correlation that
exists between series of quantitative data. By the application of this formula,
and the simpler formule of Professor Spearman, it is now possible to correlate
a great many facts that were formerly treated as having only a problematic
connection with each other. If these formule preduce really reliable results,
we have at our command a means of answering definitely and definitively a
great number of questions that have hitherto been regarded as the more or less
legitimate matter for the professional controversialist. The vexed question of
‘formal training,’ for example, may be set at rest once and for all by a sufficiently
extended series of correlations of the results of pupils’ progress in certain
subjects. The peculiarity of this method of dealing with correlations is that
once we have handed over our facts to the formule, the process passes out of
our hands altogether. We have only to work out our equations and the results
make their appearance. Here we certainly seem to have reached an objective
standard.

Such results, however, are not unnaturally regarded with some suspicion.
Once the formule have been established by mathematical proof they must, of
course, be accepted as irrefutable on that side; but their application to educa-
tional problems is so mechanical and indeed inhuman that many are unwilling to
accept and use them. Some people are doubtful whether, in dealing with human
beings, it is desirable, even if it were possible, to have an objective standard that
eliminates humanity from all human problems. It has to be pointed out to such
critics that all human problems must begin with the individual and end with the
individual. All the intermediate process may be carried on in the pure objec-
tivity of quantity, without dehumanising the application of its results. This
will be kept in view when we deal with the average.

Apart from this danger of dehumanising our subject, there are two real possi-
bilities of error in the application of the formule. First, there is the danger that
the investigator may be satisfied with an application to an insufficient number
of cases. The second danger is that the subjective element may cause error in

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L.

the preparation of the data. If the first possible source of error be minimised,
the second will be practically removed. Granted a really wide investigation,
there is little room for serious error. If a sufficiently large number of cases be
examined, and these cases selected under sufficiently varied conditions, the sub-
jective variations will neutralise each other, and a reliable result will be pro-
duced. It must never be forgotten that the Pearson and other formule are
merely means of dealing with material already acquired. It is only to this extent
that they supply an objective standard. Many of the recognised sciences are in
no better case.

The hope of the evolution of Education as a science lies in the proper manipu-
lation of the method of experiment. Students of Education have always been in
the habit of asking questions, but they have not always waited for an answer.
Nor have they usually taken sufficient care in making their questions precise.
They have not laid down with the necessary detail the conditions implied in the
question, and when they have reached some answer they have been too often
content either to accept it without any verification at all, or with the support of
nothing but a few general considerations that seemed to confirm it. In the newer
educational investigations questions are set out in great detail. They are usually
limited to one point, and all the relevant conditions are carefully laid down.
Various control tests are appled during the progress of the investigation, and
every precaution taken against the introduction of interfering forces. Then
when a result has been obtained various confirmatory tests are applhed. Even
when all has gone well so far the result is not regarded as authoritative till the
experiment has been repeated with the same results by different experimenters
working under different general conditions, though, of course, all the detailed
conditions must be precisely the same as in the original experiment.

The questions asked are often of a very practical character. In the current
number of Child-Study Mr. W. H. Winch gives an example. The question is
whether one gets better results in working ‘ problems’ in Arithmetic by (a) direct
teaching for a certain period in how to work such problems; or (6) spending
the same period in giving the pupils practice in working such problems. Mr.
Winch gives a very instructive account of all the conditions under which his
experiment was carried out, including all the necessary precautions. The result
is that those who had had the teaching scored an average of 11°1 in the final
test, while those who had had the practice scored only 9:2: the group that was
taught improving on its preliminary record to the extent of 34 per cent., while
the group that had been confined to practice improved by only 11 per cent. It
is thus demonstrated, at present, that teaching counts for more than practice in
the preparation of pupils to do problems in Arithmetic. But the fact cannot be
regarded as a part of the permanent possessions of the teacher till it is verified
by many more experiments in this country and abroad.

We have seen that even at our present stage of advancement there is quite
a respectable collection of recognised facts in connection with Teaching and
Education, and that these are in process of organisation. We shall soon have
such a volume of well-arranged knowledge as shall meet the first requirement for
recognition as a science. But while organisation is imperatively needed and must
go on, there is an equally urgent need for new knowledge. There are hundreds
of definite practical questions that are being asked by teachers every day, and
unfortunately answered according to individual experience, if not indeed ‘accord-
ing to individual caprice. Some few questions about the memory‘are now
definitely answered, and practical educators have the benefit of the results of
experiments; but there are scores of points with regard to memory on which
there is still doubt, and yet these are points on which the practical educator must
adopt a definite line in his daily work. He cannot postpone his decision : he
must do one thing or another, and in the meantime he has no standard. Such
investigations as are being undertaken by the committees of this section are
helping to increase the total body of knowledge at present available. It is true
that hitherto these investigations have been mainly concerned with psychological
matters, and certainly our store of psychological knowledge is not so great as to
warrant any complaint at the concentration on this aspect. But it is pleasant
to note that this year we are having a report on more distinctively pedagogic
matters. There could be no more useful subject of inquiry suggested than an

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

investigation into the questions that are most urgently demanding answers at this
time among the practical educators of the country. To discover and classify
these, and then to correlate them with the various investigations that are being
made throughout the world, would be to render a very practical service to the
study of Education. The truths thus acquired and recorded could be fitted in
to the mass already at our disposal, and the result would be a great strengthen-
ing of that objective standard that is so essential to the independent progress of
our study.

Education ranks with a group of studies that deal with humanity in its various
aspects. Psychology naturally is the science that underlies them all, since it
is the abstract study of human nature which is their raw material. But Politics,
Economics, Sociology, Eugenics, all claim to be sciences, and if we probe into
their standards we find that they are largely statistical. It is quite possible by
careful investigation among the subject-matter of these sciences to organise a
system of general principles based upon averages obtained from a very wide
field of investigation. These principles are of very general application, though
they may not enable us to prophesy in individual cases. This, indeed, is at the
root of a great deal of the criticism levelled at the claims of Education to rank
as a science. A parent or an education authority presents a boy to an educator
and calls for a prophecy. The educator must decline, since he cannot honestly
prophesy in an individual case, though he may be prepared to venture on a
reasoned statement of what is likely to occur in the boy’s educational career.
The educator is, in fact, in precisely the same position as a medical man called
in to a case. He can prophesy, but only in general terms. In both cases it is
the application of general principles to a particular case.

This raises the whole question of the value of the average in matters of
Education. Psychologists in addressing teachers are beginning to warn them
that the average is only an abstraction, and really does not exist. We are told
that what the teacher has to concern himself with is ‘the lhving child here and
now before him,’ and he is accordingly warned against the insubstantiality of the
elusive abstract. But this is to confound two distinct things. It is true that the
teacher must always deal with a living pupil here and now before him. But in
his dealing with that living pupil he has to apply a paid-up capital of knowledge
of men and of boys in general. He must seek to understand the living boy by the
aid of knowledge previously acquired, and this knowledge is represented by the
average. The master may be unable to prophesy with certainty how Jones minor
will act under certain specified conditions. But from a knowledge of Third Form
boys in general he can make a guess that is very likely to hit the mark. The
teacher who applies his knowledge of the average Third Form boy to the minor
Jones, without modification to suit Jones’s case, acts unintelligently, but the
possibility of blunders by a dull master does not reduce the value of the know-
ledge of the average in the hands of one who is capable. The concept of the
average boy as it is developed by experience and study in the mind of the master
forms a standard by which other boys may be estimated. ‘This standard is partly
subjective, partly objective. In so far as the standard is acquired by the personal
experience of the master it is subjective. The unreasoned but very effective
knowledge of boy nature that enables an efficient master who is guiltless of any
acquaintance with educational theory to know how a boy is likely to act under
given circumstances results from the training of experience, and is peculiar to
its possessor. On the other hand, the knowledge of boy nature that has been
acquired by deliberate study and by experiment is something that has an exist-
ence independent of the individual. It is objective, or at any rate has an objec-
tive bias.

We must distinguish in practice between the average and the type. The
average boy may have no existence in reality, he may be a pure abstraction ;
but the type is concrete, and may be regarded as the embodiment of all the
essentials that go to make up the average, With the addition of certain qualities
that must be present in some form or other, though the particular form is im-
material. The average is to the type as the concept is to the generalised image.
The type may form a very useful standard for masters whose tendency is strongly
towards the concrete, but the average has a special and a different value, and in
capable hands is more effectively applied because it is of a wider range, To con-

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L.

sider a class as made up of types tends to break up the class feeling, and make
the master think of his pupils as a mere group of separate individuals. Un-
doubtedly the master must in certain connections think of his pupils as indi-
viduals, but in other connections he must deal with his class as a whole, as a
psychological unit.

This introduces one of the most striking developments of modern educational
theory. The older psychologists treated their subject as limited to the study of
the mature human individual. The introduction of the idea of development led
to the founding of genetic psychology with its consideration of the individual
at his various stages. A further advance is marked py the appearance of collec-
tive psychology which carries the study of the individual into his relations with
other individuals. Naturally both changes were of the greatest advantage to
education. The first gave scientific guidance to the popular movement known as
Child-Study, the second suggested the scientific study of the class as a collective
organism. It is true that this collective psychology is at present in its infancy.
But while we owe much to the French psychologists with thet dazzling exposi-
tion, we are glad to turn to our more solid McDougall for the best scientific basis
available for a sound collective psychology. The material he has supplied is
waiting to be worked up from the educational side. His statement of the relation
between the instincts and the emotions and his manipulation of Mr. Shand’s
theory of the sentiments provide tempting material for the establishment of an
objective standard in connection with the training of the individual character
and the interaction of individual characters in groups.. Naturally the results
must be expressed in averages, and equally naturally there will be a complaint
from certain practical educators. What is the use, it will be asked, of informa-
tion about how classes in general act? What we want to know is how this par-
ticular class before which I stand is going to act. But this is to confound the
practice of a science with the science itself. There must always be an intelligent
intermediary between the principles of a science and their application to the
affairs of life. In this respect the nascent science of Education differs in no way
from those that are more fully developed. The educator who prides himself on
being specially practical is frequently very unreasonable in his demands from
educational theory. He is rather apt to complain that it does not supply him with
sufficiently detailed instructions. What he wants is a series of recipes which, if
scrupulously followed, will inevitably produce certain specified results. But
such men take a very humiliating view of their profession. So far from seeking
this spoon-feeding, they should rejoice that their work demands the exercise of
intelligent initiative. Herein consists, in fact, the dignity of the educator’s
office. He must be master of the organised knowledge that Education has
acquired, and must have the power of making the appropriate application of that
knowledge to every case as it arises. To ‘assist him in avoiding error he is
entitled to look for an objective standard at the hands of those who make Educa-
tion their special study, but for the use of that standard he must himself accept
the full responsibility.

British Association for fhe Advancement
of Science.

Section M: DUNDEE, 1912.

ADDRESS

AGRICULTURAL SECTION

TH. eMED DLE TON, MEAS

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Early Associations for Promoting Agriculture and Improving the
Improver.

Tue honour which has been done me by the Council of the British Association
in electing me to be President of the new Section, ‘ Agriculture,’ carries with it as
its first privilege the opportunity of congratulating those officers of the Sub-
sections who have been the means of securing for agriculture the place which its
students have long coveted in the meetings of our great Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science. Sir Horace Plunkett, than whom no one has shown a
better appreciation of the advantages of association for the improvement of agri-
culture, made his Address as Chairman of the Sub-section a special plea for the
recognition of this subject, and a subsequent Chairman, Major Craigie, used, I
have been led to understand, all those arts of peaceful persuasion of which he is a
master, in order to secure the formation of this Section. Other officers of the
Sub-sections, too, have worked hard for this result, and to them those of us who
are now assembled to take part in the first meeting of the new Section owe a debt
of gratitude.

In view of the subjects which, in recent years, have engaged the attention of
the Agricultural Sub-sections, it was suggested to me that for the Dundee meet-
ing a paper dealing with some agricultural question of the past would be appro-
priate. As from my personal point of view this would have the advantage of
causing me to renew acquaintance with treasured, but latterly somewhat
neglected, old volumes which fill my study shelves, I readily accepted the sug-
gestion. A subject from the past has for me the additional attraction that it
relieves me altogether from a discussion of questions related to my daily work.
A President of a Section is, indeed, expected to speak about his own work; but
mine belongs to that category which many people seem anxious to learn about
before it has been made public, and in which nobody is particularly interested
after, in buff, or blue, or white garb, it has been issued by His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, and is purchasable at the modest figure which represents the
cost of paper and printing.

With the view, then, of informing ourselves of certain phases cf agricultural
progress in the past, and at the same time gaining some inspiration for the future,
I propose to invite your attention to the prototypes of Section M. When did the
first associations for improving agriculture appear? What were the circum-
stances which led to their formation? What were their aims? What did they

M

2 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

accomplish? These are the questions which I shall try to answer, or, rather, to
which I shall attempt to indicate the answers; for to deal with them adequately
would occupy much more time than is at our disposal to-day.

It is not inappropriate that the relation of societies and associations to
agriculture should occupy our attention in this town of Dundee, for here, in
1796, there was published a work on agriculture by a prominent Forfarshire
agriculturist, James Donaldson, in which a vigorous appeal was made for the
establishment of societies so that a spirit of improvement might be aroused
among farmers. Donaldson, in referring to the Reports of the Board of Agricul-
ture, then being issued, complained that it was quite impossible to reach the
farmer by means of such expensive volumes, He urged, therefore, the publica-
tion of a cheap journal, and with this the formation of county societies with
the object of spreading far and wide the information of which Sir John Sinclair
and Arthur Young had collected so large an amount. Three years later, in
May 1799, the Board, taking Donaldson’s hint, addressed a circular letter to
landowners on the subject, which resulted in the formation, between the beginning
Bee century and 1815, of a number of local associations for improving agri-
culture.

I began the preparation of this Address with the intention of giving some
account of the progress made in the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of
the nineteenth centuries, when Sir John Sinclair and Arthur Young were so
actively engaged in promoting agriculture. But, as my notes progressed, I found
that it would be necessary to Jimit my remarks to a period ending with the acces-
sion of George III. I will therefore ask you to follow me while I endeavour to
trace the rise and progress of the Improver of Agriculture and the work of
associations which, before the year 1760, prepared the foundation on which, in
the second half of the eighteenth century, Sir John Sinclair and Arthur Young
reared the superstructure of the first Board of Agriculture. While this subject
calls for no references to my official work, I may perhaps be permitted to claim
that it is one on which I may appropriately address you, inasmuch as the func-
tions of the old Board closely resembled those of that Division of the present
Board of Agriculture and Fisheries with the supervision of which I am charged.

Although Section M meets for the first time to-day, and though Sub-sections
for agriculture belong to recent years, agriculture, on many occasions in the
past, has occupied a place in the discussions of the British Association. To one
of the earliest meetings Justus von Liebig contributed a report on the state of
organic chemistry which he subsequently republished under the title ‘ Chemistry
in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology.’ In the dedication of this
volume to the British Association occur these words : ‘One of the most remark-
able features of modern times is the combination of large numbers of individuals
representing the whole intelligence of nations for the express purpose of advanc-
ing Science by their united efforts, of learning its progress, and of communicating
new discoveries.’ ;

I think that Liebig’s statement, which had reference more especially to the
sciences: then occupying the attention of the members of the British Association,
applies also to movements for promoting the study of agriculture. I can find no
evidence that societies for the advancement of agricultural knowledge existed
among the ancients. The question is, however, not one which I have investigated
fully, and without further study I am not prepared to state definitely that
such societies belong exclusively to modern times. The old Scottish writer
“A Lover of his Country’ states that ‘the Propagation of this useful Science
(agriculture) was the Care, as well as the first Rise of many considerable and
famous Societies in Athens’ : and so it may have been that centuries before
St. Paul visited the Areopagus, the Athenians congregated on Mars Hill discussed
questions of husbandry after the manner of Socrates, Critobulos, and Ischomachus
in Xenophon’s ‘Economics.’ Indeed, if we reflect that Europe was backward
among the continents in giving attention to husbandry; that 2,800 years before
Christ an Emperor of China is said to have instituted a ceremony for the purpose
of impressing on his subjects the importance and the dignity of agriculture; that
the Egyptians had developed a Land of Goshen before the time of Joseph; that
the trees in the ‘ paradises’ of Persia were planted by those princes skilled in
arboriculture who are praised by Socrates, and that the treatises of Mago, the
‘father of Husbandry,’ were among the treasured possessions of which Carthage

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3

was despoiled by her Roman conqueror, it does not seem improbable that associa-
tions for the advancement of agriculture may have existed in ancient times.

But if such associations did exist, they either neglected to appoint recorders
or their records were among the many old writings on husbandry which are
known to have been lost. It is certain that Columella, who in the first century
of our era garnered the wisdom from all known works on agriculture, had never
heard or read of associations for promoting agriculture. For in his First Book on
Husbandry he laments the absence both of the means of instruction and of the
desire for study among his fellow-countrymen, and, writing of agricultural educa-
tion, he sorrowfully describes how in the case of other arts,’ ‘ everyone sends for a
person from the society and assembly of the wise to form his mind and instruct
him in the precepts of virtue; but Husbandry alone, which, without all doubt, is
next to, and as it were near akin to wisdom, is in want of both masters and
scholars.’ And he proceeds, ‘ For hitherto, I have not only heard that there are,
but I have myself seen, schools of professors of Rhetoric, and as I have already
said of Geometry and Music; or, which is more to be wondered at, academies for
most contemptible vices, for delicately dressing and seasoning of victuals, for
contriving and making up dainty and costly dishes for promoting gluttony and
luxury; and I have also seen head-dressers and hair-trimmers; but, of Agri-
culture, I have never known any that professed themselves either teachers or
students.’

These quotations, while they show that associations for the advancement of
agriculture were unknown to Columella, also show the Roman writer to have been
fired with that zeal for knowledge which possessed our own Improvers of Agri-
culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nor is it a difficult task to
trace back to the ancients the ‘Spirit of the Improver, which appeared in
England about the middle of the seventeenth century. The influence of the classical
writers may indeed be traced in the second half of the sixteenth century; but at
that period English agriculturists were impressed only by the practice of the
ancients, as exemplified in the careful rural economy of Roman husbandmen: the
knowledge, or science, of agriculture—on the importance of which several of the
ancient writers have discoursed at length—did not attract Englishmen before
Bacon’s time.

Interest in the practice of improved husbandry was first aroused in England
by the books of Fitzherbert. The extent to which this author stimulated agricul-
ture may be inferred from the appreciation with which his works were received in
his own day, and copied by others for a century. He himself does not appear to
have been acquainted with the classical writers. He describes the English prac-
tices with which he was familiar; he quotes frequently from the Scriptures and
refers to early religious works, but only in writing of animal diseases, when he
cites the ‘Sayinge of the Frenche man,’ is there any indication that he was
influenced by foreign authors. Fitzherbert’s ‘Boke of Husbandry’ and ‘Sur-
ueyenge,’ while they are free from the direct influence of Roman writers, show
us, nevertheless, that the English agriculture of his day owed much to Roman
traditions. The careful business methods and accounting of the farm bailiffs of
the Middle Ages, with which Thorold Rogers has acquainted us, were the
methods which Fitzherbert learned and counselled, as they were the methods
which Columella taught.

It was between 1523, when Fitzherbert’s ‘Boke of Husbandry’ was first
printed, and 1557, when Tusser published his ‘ Points of Good Husbandry,’ that
the classical writers began to exert a direct influence on English farming. In
15327 there appeared Xenophon’s ‘ Treatise of Householde,’ ‘ ryht counnyngly
translated out of the Greke tonge into Englyshe by Gentian Hervet,’ which at
once became popular and ran through a number of editions. At least as early
as 1542 editions of the works on agriculture and gardening of Cato, Varro,

2 J quote from the edition published in 1745 by A. Millar, London.

2 The earliest edition in the Cambridge University Library is dated 1537, but
Dr. Peter Giles informs me that the earliest copy in the British Museum is
dated 1534, and that, according to the old Bodleian Catalogue, Oxford had a
copy dated 1532. My own copy is a 1767 reprint which describes Hervet’s
translation (in 1537 bound in one volume with Fitzherbert’s ‘Husbandry and
Surveying) as having been extremely popular.

4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

Columella, and Palladius* were published in England, and they must certainly
have been known to Tusser, for in his ‘Five Hundred Points of Good Hus-
bandry,’ composed some years later, there is clear evidence of the influence of the
writings of Xenophon and Columella. From the latter author Tusser adopts the
method of a calendar, and he appears now and again to adapt Roman maxims to
modern conditions. Thus in his calendar Columella says of March that it ‘is the
proper time to cleanse meadows, and to defend and secure them from cattle; in
warm and dry places indeed that ought to be done even from the month of
January,’ and Tusser in his ¢alendar for March rhymes :—

‘Spare meadow at Gregorie Marshes at Pask

For feare of drie Sommer no longer time ask

Then hedge them and ditch them, bestow thereon pence,
corne, meadow, and pasture aske alway good fence.’

It might be, of course, that in discussing the same subject, a subject moreover
which does not admit of much difference of opinion, the similarity of the above-
quoted passages is accidental; but many of Tusser’s rhymes so closely follow
Xenophon’s ‘ Householde’ and Columella’s Eleventh Book that I am satisfied
Tusser was familiar with both these ancient writers. Here, for example, from
Tusser, 1s the charge concerning sick servants which Ischomachus gives to his
young wife :—

‘To Seruant in Sickness see nothing ye grutch,
a thing of a trifle shell comfort him mutch.’

And here is a maxim for the housewife that Columella enforces :—

‘The woman the name of a huswife doth win
by keeping hir house and of dooings therein
And she that with husband will quietly dwell
must thinke on this lesson and follow it well.’

Until the dawn of the twentieth century no mere man would have been found
to question the conclusion come to in the above verse; nevertheless, the emphasis
on the ‘ quietly dwell’ indicates that in this particular case the inspiration is
derived from Columella rather than from Xenophon. For while the woman
described by the Greek writer is likened to the queen bee, by the Roman there
is much lamentation because of the emergence of the ‘ butterfly.’ Columella
refers to the diligent dames of ancient Rome who lived at home and studied to
improve their husbands’ estates, and contrasts them with their successors in the
first century, who had become indolent, refused to make their own clothes, and
spent their husbands’ incomes on dress. He then remarks, ‘Is it a wonder that
these same ladies think themselves mightily burdened with the care of rural
affairs, and esteem it a most sordid business to stay a few days in their country
houses ?”

Personal carefulness on the part of master and mistress was to the Roman
the essence and the sign alike of good husbandry ; by Tusser’s rhymes this lesson
was enforced at a time when an increase in the cost of living was attracting
attention all over the country; his book went through a number of editions, and
his pointed rhymes appear to have exercised a greater influence on the rural
economy of the first half of the seventeenth century than the works of ‘any other
writer. Thus, for example, in Best’s ‘Farming Book,’ written by a Yorkshire
gentleman in 1641 for the guidance of his son, Tusser is frequently cited as an
authority. But Best, though a classical scholar himself and probably acquainted
with some of the ancient writers on husbandry, makes no reference to them;
the Yorkshire squire apparently regarded the writings of Varro and Columella
as being of no real use to a farmer.

It was, then, the practice of husbandry that engaged the English agriculturist’s
attention from the time of Walter de Henley to Thomas Tusser, and the purpose
of my digression into domestic subjects is to show that when the ancient writers
were rediscovered in the middle of the sixteenth century, it was not the’ frequent

* A translation of Palladius into English was made about 1420, but it was
not discovered and published until within recent times.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5

references of Xenophon to the science of husbandry but his economic and
moral teaching: not Columella’s First Book, with its appeal for doctors and
disciples who might apply themselves to the study of agriculture, but his
Eleventh Book, with its calendar of operations and its directions for the ordering
of the bailiff and the bailiff’s wife, that attracted Tusser and his readers.

The awakening of interest in husbandry was largely due to the rapid changes
in the economic conditions of England which set in about Fitzherbert’s time.
These changes we cannot now discuss, but their magnitude may be indicated
by the rise in price of the single staple, wheat. According to Thorold Rogers,
the average price between 1400 and 1540 was 5s. 113d., the decennial average for
the last four decades being 5s. 53d., 6s. 83d., 7s. 6d. and 7s, 84d. Between
1541 and 1582 the average price was 13s. 10$d., and 16s. 8d. for the last twelve
years of this period. Between 1583 and 1642 the average price rose to 36s. 9d. In
particular years high prices were reached, and in 1596 and 1597 Fleetwood .
chronicles prices of from 80s, to 104s. per quarter.

The change in the cost of living directed men’s attention to the husbandry
and housewifery recommended by Fitzherbert and Tusser. The smaller land-
owners, who could no longer afford to live on their rents, and who saw that yeomen
and tenant farmers were prospering, turned their attention to farming, and agri-
culture became an important occupation of the educated classes,

The yeoman and tenant farmer did not ask for text-books on agriculture, but
the new agriculturists required information, and thus there arose at the end of
the sixteenth century a great demand for books. The booksellers were not slow
to make provision for the demand, writers were secured, books were published,
and of the more popular many editions were sold.

Even such a ready writer and successful adapter of other men’s books as
Gervase Markham got more work than he could do. His book on live-stock was
bought up so freely that in 1617 he resolved to write no more on this subject,
and the public demand was satisfied by the issue of reprints. His ‘ Farewell to
Husbandry,’ too, was reprinted in many forms. My copy, for example, is a
fourth revision printed by William Wilson for John Harison in 1649, while the
copy figured in MacDonald’s ‘ Agricultural Writers’ is also a fourth revision, with
an almost identical title-page, but printed by Edward Griffin for John Harison
in 1638.

At the end of the sixteenth century the practice of continental farming began
to attract attention in England, and a further proof of the demand for informa-
tion which then existed was the translation in 1600 of ‘ Maison Rustique,’ a French
work by two doctors of medicine, Charles Stevens and John Liebault. This
volume, in its English form known as the ‘ Countrie Farme,’ contains seven books
and nine hundred quarto pages. It is intended to be a complete guide for
residents in the country, and deals with everything that the landowner wants to
know, from the care of his health to forecasting the weather. The work is
interesting in other ways than as an indication of the new appetite for books.
As in Heresbach’s works, translated by Barnaby Googe in 1577, we find in the
‘Countrie Farme’. the acknowledged influence of the ancients. Reference is
made to the Greek writings of Hesiod, to Mago of Carthage, and to the high
esteem in which the Latin works of Columella, Varro, and Cato were held: we
are informed that French translations of the works of the three last-named were
in existence in 1582.

The English agriculturists of the sixteenth century went abroad for more
than books. Gerarde, who like others of his profession deserted medicine to the
great advantage of botany, had obtained a number of foreign plants for his col-
lections. From the gardener, too, England learned of the skill of the Flemings,
and would gladly have copied their practice. But the Flemings were too busy
to write books; so Englishmen went to see for themselves how and why they
prospered.

Sir Richard Weston, a Surrey landowner, who succeeded to his estates in
1613 and who had travelled in Brabant and Flanders, was the first English
agriculturist to introduce practices approved on the Continent. He grew
turnips for feeding cows, a century before the time of Turnip Townshend ;
nearly three hundred years ago he was experimenting, as we are still doing,
with clover seed grown in different countries; he had thirty to forty acres of
clover sown with barley, and he was inveighing against the sophistication of

M 2

6 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

‘outlandish’ grass seeds and contriving plans for raising pure stocks at home
in the approved fashion of to-day.

The importance of such crops as clover, lucerne, sainfoin, and turnips was
quickly recognised, and agriculturists wished to hear and read more about the
husbandry of the places from which they had come. Information was supplied
in the works of the alien writers Plattes and Hartlib; the latter especially, by his
‘Legacie’ and his ‘ Reformed Husbandman,’ did much to popularise a knowledge
of Continental farming and to suggest ‘the errors, defects, and inconveniences
of our English husbandry.’ Hartlib was a widely travelled man, and gave
our Improvers many fresh ideas, among them a suggestion for a ‘Colledge of
Husbandry,’ but we cannot claim him as an English agriculturist.

It was not only from Brabant and Flanders that travellers brought to
England information about foreign agriculture. As one result of the develop-
ment of commerce voyagers were introducing from distant countries such
important plants as the potato and tobacco, and were exciting interest by their
stories of foreign products. A desire to make experiments with these novelties
was but natural, and experimental farming received a powerful impetus from
the teachings of Francis Bacon, the first exponent of the inductive method.
Having, as he wrote, ‘taken all knowledge to be my province,’ Bacon was him-
self an amateur farmer, and if he was not a successful one he was at least intent
upon introducing methods of ‘industrious observation and grounded conclu-
sions.’ It is to Bacon, I think, that Arthur Young alludes in a passage in which
he describes a Lord Chancellor‘of England as having procured and read every
published work on husbandry so that he might learn how to farm, and who,
having met with ill-success, collected the offending books and lighted a bonfire!
But let us not think lightly of the efforts of this distinguished amateur farmer.
The agricultural writers of the succeeding century, indeed, refer to the influence
of Bacon in terms that suggest for Agricultural Science the origin of the
phoenix. We may, at least, agree that about the time of Bacon’s bonfire this
subject first began to attract the notice of scholars.

In spite of the political troubles of the second quarter of the seventeenth
century, agriculture continued to secure increased attention, for England had
learned that in war or peace the food-supply must be cared for, and the import-
ance of corn-growing increased with the rise in prices. Thus when the Common-
wealth was established everything favoured a forward movement. At peace and
able to return to country pursuits, the combatants, Cavaliers and Roundheads
alike, became active improvers. Engineer agriculturists, like Vermuyden, car-
ried out great drainage-works. Many estates had changed hands, and the new
owners, not a few of whom, as Harte remarks, ‘had risen from the plouch,’
were glad to return to it; others were amateur farmers intent on learning. The
books of the old and trusted writers, Fitzherbert and Tusser, had been followed
by the works of such authors as Norden, Markham, Plattes, and Hartlib.
Bacon’s teaching emphasised the need for further study and experiment.
Behind the political and economic changes were the powerful, moral influences
of the Puritan movement; it was at this time and under these conditions that
the Spirit of the Improver, which had animated Columella, appeared among
Enelish agriculturists.

The first practical farmer to plead the cause of the improvement of agricul-
ture was Walter Blith, one of Cromwell’s soldiers. who is supposed to have been

a Yorkshire landowner, but who for some years, at least, was stationed in Tre-
lati. To him may be attributed the first improvements in Trish farming.
Writing in 1770 Harte says: ‘Ireland it must be confessed had a wretched
method of husbandry and strong prejudices and beliefs in that method when
Blythe alone (who then lived in Treland) was sufficient to open men’s eyes by his
incomparable writings.’

Blith was himself an ardent agriculturist, and prefaced his practical book,
' ©The English Improver Improved,’ by seven epistles designed to attract the atten-
tion of all classes of his fellow-countrymen to agriculture. These epistles were
addressed to ‘The Lord Generall Cromwell,’ the ‘Industrious Reader,’ the
‘ Nobility and Gentry,’ the ‘ Honourable Society of the Houses of Court and Uni-
versities,’ the ‘Souldiery of these nations of England, Scotland, and Treland,’ the
‘Husbandman, Farmer, or Tenant,’ and to the ‘ Cottager, Labourer, or Meanest

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, !

Commoner.’ With the ‘ Lord Generall’ he pleaded for an Agricultural Holdings
Act and the other legislative measures required by Improvers. To the ‘ Indus-
trious Reader’ he expounded the reasons for the methods of his book, and com-
mented on the work of previous authors, commending Sir Francis Bacon’s
*“Naturall History’ as ‘ worthy of high esteeme, it is full of Rarities and true
Philosophy.’ He exhorted the army to set themselves to the improvement of
the land now that they have the ‘ goodness and welcomeness of a Calme after a
storm.’ But it is in the epistle to the ‘Honourable Society of the Houses of
the Court and Universities’ that chief interest lies for us, for here we find an
appeal for the systematic study of agriculture in words that recall the classical
writers. Blith showed that agriculture required the close study of the learned,
and that the societies (i.e., the Colleges) of the Universities might if they wished
do much for its advancement. He approaches them as a suppliant with no sug-
gestion that they should abandon their ‘sublimer Notions,’ but with the hope
that they may be induced to regard agriculture as a recreation, so that, as he
says, ‘you may step a little into the field and Country and cast away an hour or
two upon this Subject at your leisure.’ He adds, ‘You that have the Theorick,
may easiest discover the Mysteries of the Practick, and from you have I found
most encouravement to this work, and seen most experiences of good husbandry
than from any, and from you too I expect and waite for more discoveries of some
thing I scarce know what to name it, which lies yet in obscurity, but I will
call it the Improvement of the Improver.’

Were we not now concerned with the spirit rather than with the form of the
improvement, an interesting parallel might be drawn between the topics which
Blith considers of greatest importance and those which to-day are engaging
attention. In his epistle to the Society, for example, there is an appeal to the
learned to give their attention to Applied Science. Discussing the progress of
the Dutch, Blith deplores that policy which Englishmen afterwards termed
laisser faire. He says, ‘Our niceness in not nursing the fruits of our own
bowells hath given them the opportunity to Improve our native commodities to
the advance of their Manufacturidge to our shame, their praise’; then address-
ing members of the Universities he adds, ‘I speak to wise men whom I would
have more publique men. . . . Let me entreat you for the Peoples and your own
posterity sake . . . put your shoulders to the work, greater things remaine and
larger Improvements are yet to be discovered.’

The earnest advocacy of Blith, the Essays of ‘my good friend Mr. Samuel]
Hartleps,’ and the energy of landowners like Sir Richard Weston led to a demand
for the records of experiments, and in 1658 there was issued the first series of
abstracts of agricultural experiments with which I am acquainted, under the
title ‘ Adam out of Eden.’ The experiments recorded by the author, Ad. Speed,
are of considerable interest; but I mention him for another reason. He appears
to have made a living by propounding improvements of an imaginary character.
He wrots tracts for noblemen and others, containing estimates of the profits to
be gained by adopting new methods. Blith scathingly refers to him as ‘Mr.
Speed that superlative Improver,’ and remarks that so long as his books were
private ‘TI could bear it, and suffer wiser than myself to bee fooled because I was
not wise enough as to beware of him, but now that they come to be sold in the
Stationers’ Shops, and spread abroad the country, to deceive, and beguile the
Nation, I cannot forbear.’ This was written in 1652; as my edition of ‘Adam
out of Eden’ is dated 1659, it is clear that the nation continued to be ‘ beguiled ’
for a considerable period by this particular Adam, the forerunner of a numerous
family. Whenever there is a revival of interest in agriculture he flourishes;
the new manure, the ravaging insect, the blighting fungus, all serve to bring
‘ Adam out of Eden,’ and so long as an interested and gullible public exists ‘that
superlative Improver Mr. Speed’ will be found among us. The pamphlet and
the stationers’ shop have become antiquated; the Adam of to-day has other
methods, which I will not venture to particularise. After all, it is a healthy
sign. It is only when the public thirst is deep that Adam gets his chance, and
like Blith we must resign ourselves now and again to ‘bee fooled,’ for is it not
one of the methods by which the Improver is improved ?

Walter Blith’s appeal for the assistance of the learned did not long remain
unanswered. At the time his ‘English Improver Improved’ was published a

M3

8 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

society of scientific men had already been formed in London, and ten years later
this society first received the name Royal Society, at the suggestion of John Evelyn.
On October 15, 1662, Evelyn’s ‘ Discourse on Forest Trees’ was presented to the
Society. Five years later, when the ‘Sylva’ was published, the author in the
preface tells us that the Royal Society was then doing much for husbandry.
Evelyn records his own experience in studying agriculture and forestry, how he
had read all the old authors and got but little good from his studies, and he
congratulates his countrymen that ‘the World is now advis’d and (blessed be
God) redeemed from that base and servile submission of our noblest Faculties
to their blind Traditions.’ Again, referring to the absence of a ‘compleat System
of Agriculture, which as yet seems a desiderata,’ he says: ‘It is (I assure you)
what is one of the Principal Designs of the Royal Society; not in this Particular
only, but through all the Liberal and more useful Arts; and for which (in the
estimation of all equal Judges) it will merit the greatest of Encowragements ; that
so, at last, what the learned Columella has wittily reproach’d, and complained of,
as a defect in that Age of his, concerning Agriculture in general.-and is applicable
here, may attain its desired Remedy and Consummation in This of Ours.’ He
then quotes Columella’s remarks about the Schools of Rhetoric, Geometry, and
Music, and the absence of agricultural professors and scholars, which I have
already read.

John Evelyn was one of the prominent members of the Royal Society, and he
seems to have taken a leading part in defending it against the attacks to which,
in the first years of its existence, it was subjected. With much satisfaction he
points out, in dedicating the second edition of the ‘Sylva’ to King Charles IT,
that his essay and the work of the Royal Society have in the past eight years
resulted in the planting of over two million timber-trees, and he adds that he has
preserved the testimonials he has received with the more care ‘ because they are
Testimonials from so many honourable Persons, of the Benefit they have receiv'd
from the Endeavours of the Royal Society, which now adayes passes through so
many Censures.’

With the exception of the ‘ Societies of Learning and Gallantry ’ of the ‘ Houses
of Court and Universities’ addressed by Blith, the Royal Society is the earliest
to which any influence on agriculture may be traced, and it is certainly the first
society which definitely included the improvement of agriculture as coming within
its scope. It appears to have depended in no small degree for its early successes
on the public interest aroused by the writings of Evelyn and Houghton, and there
is evidence that the Society gave much attenticn to agriculture during the second
half of the seventeenth century, and that its patronage was much valued. The
immediate influence of the Royal Society may be traced in Worlidge’s ‘ Systema
Agriculture.’ In my edition (the third, 1681), Worlidge makes a strong plea for
improving agriculture ; he quotes at length from ancient writers to-prove the esteem
in which the art was held by them, and then says: ‘ Also a most evident demon-
stration and sure Argument of the Utility, Pleasure and Bxcellency of this Branch
of Natural Philosophy, is the principal care the Royal and Most Tlustrious
Society take for the advancement thereof, and for the discovery of its choicest and
rarest secrets.’ He also refers with special approbation to the work of Evelyn,
not only in promoting forestry, but in improving the making of ‘ that incomparable
Liquor Cider.’

Evelyn’s ‘Pomona,’ in which he discourses of fruit trees and cider, gives an
interesting glimpse of some of the early activities of the Royal Society, for the
work itself is based chiefly on contributions by members of the Society to its
‘well furnish’d Registers, and Cimelia.’ Evelyn is careful to point out that
these contributions were original papers and that it was not the design of the
Society to ‘accumulate repetitions where they can be avoided.’ These new
observations being in the Society’s esteem ‘and according to my Lord Bacon’s’
preferable even when ‘rude and imperfect draughts’ than commonplaces ‘ adorn'd
with more pomp.’ Evelyn himself was not practically acquainted with cider-
making, and his own interest in the subject, like that of the majority of his fellow-
members, was Raconian—/.e., it consisted in a search for ‘ grounded conclusions
and profitable inventions and discoveries.’ Possibly, too, the badness of the
French wines of the period had some share in directing the attention of the
Fellows of the Royal Society to cider, for as early as January 28, 1662, they
listened to a discourse on the Adulteration of Wine, by Dr. Charleton, which so

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

stirred Evelyn that he wrote: ‘7'o sum up all: If Health be more precious than
Opinion, J wish our Admirers of Wines, to the prejudice of Cider, beheld but
the Cheat themselves; the Sophistications, Transformations, Transmutations,
Adulterations, Bastardizings, Brewings, Trickings, not to say even Arsenical
Compassings, of this Sophisticated God they adore; and that they had as true
an Inspection into those Arcana Lucifera, which the Priests of his Temples (our
Vintners in their Taverns) do practice ; and then let them drink freely that will.
Give me good Cider.’ And so apparently said some of his fellows, for the
Society’s curator, the ‘ingenious Mr. Hooke,’ introduced a new cider-press, and
Sir Paul Neile, that ‘ most worthy member’ Dr. Beale of Yeovil, and others,
were commanded to discourse on the manufacture of varieties of this pure
beverage, and to recommend such brews as Pepin-cider adapted for splenetic
gentlemen, and Gennet-moy] suited to the palates of ladies.

In other ways the members of the Royal Society encouraged one another in
making improvements; thus when in 1666 Evelyn’s ‘ worthy friend’ Mr. Hake
went on a journey, he returned carrying with him—for eight hundred miles—
some grafts for Evelyn, together with a ‘taste of the most superlative
perry the world certainly produces.” It was by means such as these, and by a
policy which approved ‘plainness and usefulness’ rather than ‘ niceness and
curiosity ’ that the newly formed Royal Society commended itself to the country.

It is indeed probable that agricultural questions occupied much more of the
attention of the Royal Society in the earlier years of its existence than the printed
records suggest ; we are told, for example, by the Scottish Improver, ‘A Lover of
his Country,’ that one of its most illustrious members, Sir Robert Boyle, was
an enthusiastic agriculturist; he says: ‘I had the Honour to be known to that
excellent Person and oft in his Company. He was the greatest Lover of Agri-
culture I ever knew, and I wonder he never wrote of it. I heard him say, it
was a Pity there was not Seminaries of that, the most useful, and except
Pasturage, the most ancient of all Sciences.’

Not only were agriculturists attracted by the practical investigations of the
Royal Society, but impressed by the value of its methods and organisation, and
Worlidge suggests that nothing would more conduce to improving agriculture
than the constitution of subordinate Provincial Societies ‘whose principal care
and office might be to collect all such Observations, Experiments, and Improve-
ments they find within their Province . . . which of necessity must abundantly
improve Science and Art and advance Agriculture and the Manufactures.’

The proposal made by Worlidge was unheeded at the time, for not until
nearly a century after his suggestion was made did English Agricultural Societies
begin to appear. A retrograde movement set in soon after the Restoration,
and although the Government sought to foster improvements and passed
several Acts with the object of stimulating farming, Harte tells us that a ‘total
change of things, as well as the very cast and manner of thinking, joined with
immoral dissipation, and a false aversion to what had been the object and care
of mean despised persons, soon brought the culture of the earth into disrepute
with the nobility and gentry.’

An insight into the conditions of the last quarter of the seventeenth century
and the first quarter of the eighteenth is given us by Lisle, who wrote the Intro-
duction to his ‘Observations on Husbandry’ in 1713. He begins by remarking
that it is one of the misfortunes of the age that it lacks honourable conceptions
of a country life, he draws attention to the fact that in the decadent days of
Rome luxury increased and husbandry was neglected. He calls on the land-
owner to look round him and see how many fine estates are daily mortgaged or
sold, ‘and how many antient and noble families destroyed by the pernicious and
almost epidemic turn to idleness and extravagance.’ He discusses at length the
advantages of an agricultural career and recommends it as a profession for the
eldest sons of gentlemen, who might regard it as ‘a school of profit and education ;
whereas,’ he continues, ‘ it is rather looked on as a purgatory for the disobedient,
a scene of punishment, to which a son, who answers not his father’s expectations,
is to be abandoned ; or a condition of life of which none would make choice, but
such whom fortune has not in other respects favoured. If the country gentle-
men therefore frequently consist of persons who are either rusticated by their
parents in anger, or who, making a virtue of necessity, settle on their estates
with aversion or indifference, it is no wonder the comedians exhibit them on our

10 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

stage in so despicable and ridiculous a figure; but this is the fault of the persons
and not of the art, Were they properly initiated in the study of Agriculture, and
pursued it as they ought, it would be so far from excluding them from useful
knowledge, and bringing them into contempt, that I may venture to assert, they
would find it the best school of education, and the fittest to prepare them for the
service of their country in the two houses ‘of parlament of Great Britain.’

Such were the dispiriting social conditions with which the successors of
Evelyn in the Royal Society had to contend. The agricultural experiments of
the Society therefore attracted but little attention outside the ranks of the
curious. Houghton, a contemporary of Evelyn’s, started a periodical publication,
‘Houghton’s Letters,’ but it soon ceased. A generation later, and about the
period to which Lisle refers in the above quotation, a work on husbandry was
written by a Fellow, John Mortimer. It is dedicated to the Society, ‘ to whose
encouragement, inquiries, and direction it owes its birth.’ Special thanks are
given to another Kellow, Dr. Sloane, who assisted the author, and ‘has greatly
contributed to the adv ancement of useful knowledge.’

Testimony to the activity of the Royal Society at this period is also to be
found in a work on ‘ Curiosities of Nature and Art in Agriculture and Garden-
ing,’ a translation from the French of the Abbot de Vallemont by Bishop
William Fleetwood, published anonymously in 1707; this work contains the
passage ‘The Royal Society of England who are so zealous for the Perfection
of Agriculture and Gardening, have apply’d themselves with great Care to find
out the true way to make Salt-petre, which they likewise allow to be the chief
Promoter of the Vegetation of Plants.’

About this time botanical questions of much interest to agriculturists were
occupying the attention of the Royal Society. Robert Ball and Samuel Moreland
were investigating reproduction in plants, and a few years later Richard Bradley,
another Fellow, Professor of Botany at Cambridge, but more of an agriculturist
than a botanist, was explaining how, by cross-breeding, ‘such rare kinds of
plants as have not yet been heard of ’ may be produced. He refers specifically to
a cross between a carnation and a sweet-william, but by inference to Burgoyne’s
Fife and the other things ‘not yet heard of,’ that are associated with agri-
culture and botany in the Cambridge of to-day.

Various causes, among which the infiuence GE Fellows of the Royal Society
must be given an important place, led the jandowners and the educated classes
of England again to turn their attention to agriculture about the beginning
of George II’s reign. The revival was associated with and followed, as it has
in recent time, a development in gardening. William and Mary were patrons of
horticulture, they greatly improved the Royal Gardens, and the nobility, in imita-
tion, laid out parks and parterres. This demand gave opportunity to the profes-
sional gardener, and the garden-designer and nurseryman started business. It
likewise gave authors their opportunity, and that it was well taken advantage of
is proved by the popularity of Miller’s Gardeners’ Dictionary written by the
Gardener of the Botanic Gardens at Chelsea, and dedicated to Sir Hans Sloane,
President, and to the Fellows of the Royal Society.

A second writer on gardening of this period, the Reverend John Laurence, of
Bishop Weremouth, Durham, may be mentioned, for he was also one of the
chief agricultural writers of the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1726
he published a large folio work entitled ‘A New System of Agriculture.’ This
book marks the time when what the author calls the ‘ Spirit of Gardening’
appeared, and it proves that gardening was very popular with the landed and
educated classes for some years before the revival in agriculture began. Laurence
refers, as Lisle did a few years before, to the lack of interest in husbandry, and
remarks : ‘If Gentlemen could persuade themselves to cast their Estates into Beauty
and Order, they would quickly experience it the noblest Exercise and greatest
Delight.’ Every age, he remarks, has its own amusements, ‘ This Age, it 1s plain,
seems to taste and relish everything new on the Subject of vegetable Nature.’ He
attributes the ‘ relish’ not merely to progress in the art of “gardening, fostered
by nobles and statesmen, but to the Royal Society—of whom he says that their
Philosophical Transactions ‘ are standing Memoirs of the Zeal and Activity of
many Persons of Quality and Learning,’ whose ‘ Discourses and Experiments’
have ‘advanced much Light in the Art of Husbandry.’ Incidentally he refers

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. hi

to the condition of the North of England, and says that the county of Durham
may properly be termed the Garden of the North, such are the possibilities of
improvement afforded by its soil and situation and the ‘ hasty Diligence of a wise
and polite People.’ Laurence’s work was intended to place before these northern
agriculturists an account of all the experiments that had been made in husbandry,
and especially to set forth in plain language the information published by the
Royal Society. He appeals to his brethren in the Church to exert themselves in
the cultivation of their glebes which would give them both the ‘ Relaxation and
Refreshment they require,’ and he says, ‘ 1 should think myself extremely happy
if 1 could be instrumental in reviving among Gentlemen whose affairs do not
oblige them to spend a great part of their Year in London, a Spirit of improving
their Estates and imploying their Time in making Experiments, which cannot
be expected from the farmer.’

Although for seventy years after its formation, and throughout a period during
which agriculture was neglected by the landed classes, the Royal Society dia
much to keep alive the Spirit of the Improver, the unfortunate apathy of the
agriculturist prevented that progress which appeared to be imminent when John
Evelyn wrote his ‘Pomona.’ It was not possible for a learned society in London
to investigate agricultural questions in the absence of the scientific agriculturist
himself ; subjects of agricultural interest were therefore discussed chiefly from
a theoretical standpoint, and, neglecting the teachings of Bacon and the example
of Evelyn, there arose that use of the deductive method which in the past two
centuries has done so much to hinder the progress of agricultural science.

The first to show up the fallacy of the deductive method in studying this
subject was Jethro Tull, who, though he himself fell into the errors which he
condemned, was, in his understanding of the true relationships of science and
practice, far ahead of any of his contemporaries. A lawyer by training, he prob-
ably took to agriculture because of his poor health. He worked at it for twenty
years before he was induced to set out his views in writing, and it was years after
he began farming before he read anything on the subject. Dissatisfied with the
practice of his times he set himself to reason out new methods and to make
experiments. He got suggestions from foreign travel; he tells us, for example,
that the first hint of the value of horse-hoeing husbandry was derived from the
ploughed vineyards of France; but he was careful to submit his ideas to the test of
experiment before he adopted them in farm practice. He was nota Fellow of the
ttoyal Society. He lived a lonely life, and until the fame of his farming spread
abroad and he published his ‘ Horse-hoeing Husbandry,’ in 1730-31, he appears
to have devoted himself entirely to experiments in farming. The appearance
of his book occasioned much correspondence, and thereafter he made himself
acquainted with both the ancient and modern writers on husbandry, and used
his knowledge to good effect in his arguments with the writers whom he terms
collectively Hquivocus. His temper, which, if one may judge from his references
to his labourers, was far from serene, was much tried by his controversies with
Equivocus, and his criticisms of the writers and scientific men of the preceding
half-century are severe. He remarks, for example, on the superficial knowledge
of agriculture shown by ‘Mr. Laurence, a divine; Mr. Bradley, an academic;
Dr. Woodward, a Physician; Mr. Houghton, an Apothecary ; these for want of
practice could not have the true theory; and the writers who are acquainted
with the common practice, as Mr. Mortimer (whether for want of leisure, or not
being qualified, I do not know) have said very little of any theory.’

Tull himself, a thoroughly experienced, practical farmer, whose successful
methods had drawn widespread attention to his Berkshire farm, showed no
hesitation in setting out his own views on roots, leaves, the pasture of plants,
and other scientific subjects then.engaging attention. His remarks were based on
original observations, and it is clear that he did not merely copy opinions from
scientific treatises. He freely criticised the writings of others; even ‘ Mr. Boyle’
and that ‘ miracle of a man Sir Isaac Newton’ are severely handled by this
critical farmer, and in a characteristic sentence he remarks: ‘From Sir Isaac’s
transmutation arguments we may learn that a man never ought to depend entirely
upon his own for support of his own hypothesis.” An admirable sentiment
which I am afraid that Tull himself, and many another agriculturist since his
time, failed to lay to heart. When we remember how meagre were Tull’s oppor-
tunities for study, that he lived a retired life in the country, that he had long

12 ~ TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

abandoned letters for practical farming and only began to read the works of others
late in life; if, further, we remember that his health was bad, and that his
appliances for scientific study were indifferent—‘ my microscope, indeed, is but
a very ordinary one,’ he writes—we must give him a foremost place among the
scientific agriculturists, not only of the eighteenth century, but of all time. His
wide knowledge and keen reasoning place his ‘ Horse-hoeing Husbandry’ in a
class by itself among the works of the early Improvers.

Jethro Tull’s great work was published two generations after Walter Blith
first endeavoured to awaken the Spirit of the Improver in English farmers.
Throughout this period-not much progress had been made, but a change was at
hand. When in 1730 Turnip Townshend left politics and went down to Norfolk
to farm his estates, the tide had turned, and henceforward throughout the
eighteenth century there was a rapid improvement in the practice of English
agriculture. Of these developments no small share may be attributed to the

influence exercised by the Royal Society during the first seventy years of its
existence.

The agriculture of Scotland had not shared in the revival due to the work
and writings of the English Improvers, and was in a very backward state in the
middle of the seventeenth century. Its condition is indicated by John Ray, who
in 1661, some months before the Royal Society received its charter, set out from
Cambridge to spend the Long Vacation in a Scottish tour. He crossed the Tweed
on August 16, and proceeded from Berwick, vid Dunbar, to Edinburgh. His first
day’s Journal gives us his impressions of what is now, and probably was then,
one of the foremost agricultural districts in Scotland. ‘The ground in the
valleys and plains bears good corn,’ he says, but ‘ the people seem to be very lazy,
at least the men.’ Scottish women, he writes, ‘are not very cleanly in their
houses, and but sluttish in dressing their meat.’ ‘They have neither good bread,
cheese, or drink. They cannot make them, nor will they learn. Their butter is
indifferent, and one would wonder how they contrive to make it so bad.’

There is evidence in the Journal that this rude fare disagreed with the
traveller, who had but recently quitted Trinity ‘high table,’ and he is unduly
severe on the people of the Lothians. He draws attention, for example, to the
plainness of the Scottish women and the vanity of the men; he criticises Edin-
burgh, and having studied its architecture he remarks on the College that ‘ the
building of it is mean and of no great capacity, in both comparable to Caius
College.’ Surely a superfluous comment in the Journal of a Scholar of St. Cathe-
rine’s and a Fellow of Trinity!

Ray’s speech appears to have been as unguarded as his Journal, for he records
that ‘the Scots cannot endure to hear their country or their countrymen spoken
against,’ and it is indeed a fortunate thing that he did not seek to cross the Tay.
It would have gone ill with him in 1661 had he ventured to criticise the High-
landers or their food and drink. English Science would, I fear, have suffered
an irreparable loss, and there might have been no sufficient reason for that
Cambridge Club whose members engage at festive gatherings to prevent the
association of the name of Ray with indifferent viands.

Agricultural affairs in Scotland became worse instead of better after Ray’s
visit, for a series of disastrous seasons set in as the century drew toa close. In
August 1694 we are told that ‘ a cold east wind accompanied by a dense subphurous
fog passed over the country, and the half-filled corn was struck down with
mildew.’ So bad was the harvest that Hugh Miller tells of the children of a
Cromarty farmer who spent the whole winter trying to pick out seed corn from the
blighted crop. In the following year summer and winter were alike tempestuous,
and thereafter for five seasons there was scarcity, amounting in some districts
to famine. By 1701, when the climate began to improve, much land had gone
out of cultivation. Landowners could not get tenants to take vacant farms, and
the outlook was of the gloomiest. But a change was at hand, and at the time
when Lisle and Laurence were deploring the lack of interest which English
gentlemen manifested in rural economy, Scotland was beginning those improve-
ments which in a century made Scottish agriculture and gardening the best in
Europe. It is indeed a remarkable circumstance that four generations after
Johan Ray recorded his impressions of this lazy, backward nation, we should

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 13

find another member of the Cambridge Science School, Professor Martyn, taking
some pains to prove that Philip Miller of Chelsea never saw Scotland. Miller
was so great a gardener, Martyn remarks, that it was generally supposed he
must have been a Scotchman; but it was a satisfaction to the Cambridge people of
1800 to know that this distinguished man (whose name and ancestry had then a
local interest, for his son was first Curator of the Botanic Garden) had won his
pre-eminent place in the gardening world on a purely English ancestry. I am not
satisfied that Martyn was right, but in view of the manner in which the Spirit
of the Improver was conveyed to Scotland, it would be ungracious to argue the
point.

The North Country saying ‘the Gordons hae the guidin’ o’t’ applies to
agriculture as to much else in Scottish history. In 1706 Lord Huntly married
the daughter of the soldier Earl of Peterborough, himself a notable [mprover.
Lady Huntly (afterwards that Duchess of Gordon who is extolled by ‘ A Lover
of his Country’) found the north-east of Scotland in the miserable condition in
which ‘King William’s dark years’ had left it. As late as 1709 many farms
nerth of the Grampians were lying waste, the country was depopulated, and the
state of the labouring poor was wretched in the extreme. Lady Huntly sent to
England for ploughs and ploughmen and taught her neighbours the methods of
improved husbandry. Three North Country lairds, stimulated by her example,
forsook politics and fighting for draining, planting, and experimenting with
French grasses. Among the three was Sir William Gordon of Invergordon, who
began those improvements in Easter Ross which have converted the shores of the
Cromarty Firth into one of the choicest agricultural tracts of Britain. It was to
share in the improving of this district that my own great-grandfather, later in
the century, deserted Teesdale for the parish of Cromarty. Thus the work of
this first group of Scottish Improvers has for me.a very direct interest.

Just as in England: a revival of agriculture occurred after the Civil War,
so in Scotland the disturbances of 1715 were followed by important developments.
After the Union Scotchmen in increasing numbers took the high road to London,
and at first with much less profit to themselves than those acquainted with the Scot
in modern times might suppose. As a result of social intercourse the upper classes
began to copy the manners and customs of their rich English neighbours, and
prices and the cost of living rose rapidly. These economic changes, as in England
a century before, turned the attention of landowners to the improvement of their
estates; but as the Scottish laird of the beginning of the eighteenth century did
not take readily to farming, a few of the more enlightened men among them saw
that if improvements were to be made special measures were necessary. Im-
pressed by the usefulness of the Royal Society, these reformers conceived the
idea of establishing an Agricultural Society in Scotland. This Society, which
met for the first time in Edinburgh on June 8, 1723, and adopted the name of
‘The Honourable the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in
Scotland,’ was the first association to be formed for the express purpose of pro-
moting agriculture. Some account of its work is given in its ‘ Transactions’
published twenty years later, but for a contemporary view of the problems which
engaged the Society’s attention we must go to a book published in Edinburgh
in 1729 under the title of ‘An Essay on Ways and Means for Inclosing, Fallow-
ing, Planting, &c., Scotland, and that in Sixteen Years at farthest, by a Lover
of his Country.’ ;

Of all old books on agriculture this is, to me, the most interesting. The
anonymous writer is believed to have been Brigadier-General Mackintosh of
Borlum, one of the Rebel Leaders of 1715, who fell into the hands of the English
at Preston, was imprisoned in Newgate, and sentenced to death. But this
Highlander was not to be held by English gaolers. With some of his comrades
he overpowered the prison guard and made good his escape. The Essay was
written, its author informs us, in ‘my Hermitage "—supposed to have been a cell
in Edinburgh Castle—and the writer remarks that he can give no better reason
for his work ‘than other Enthusiasts do, the Spirit moves me.’

Assuming ‘A Lover of his Country’ to have indeed been Mackintosh of
Borlum, the prisoner employed his enforced leisure to great advantage. He
displays more familiarity with the classical authors than any of his predecessors,
or for that matter than any of his successors, except Harte and Adam Dickson,
and he had obviously studied all the more important works published in England

14 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

in the previous century. He argues that since the Union, Scotland had not
made progress, and that, while extravagance had spread and necessaries greatly
increased in cost, no attempt had been made to learn good rural economy from
the English. He points out that until they improve their estates Scottish lairds
cannot hope to emulate English landowners. He counsels fallowing and inclosing,
and recommends that skilled English labourers should be brought to teach English
methods. He indicates where the best workmen might be obtained. Men from
Devonshire for denshiring (paring and burning); men from Cambridgeshire for
draining ; men from Hertfordshire for ploughing; from Hereford for fruit plant-
ing; and from Shropshire for hedging. He estimates that six hundred and forty
men would be required for Scotland. A ‘regimental number,’ he facetiously
remarks, but a welcome regiment, for they would be armed only with spade and
shovel! He would apportion a group of these men to every county in Scotland
and place them under the guidance of County Supervisors. ‘ And if I might have
my wish,’ he says, ‘we should not go on by Halts, and all Hurope should be
quickly disabused of the Reproach they load us with of Jdleiess and Poverty.’
In another passage he prophesies that ‘ Scotlund from one of the poorest, ugliest,
and most barren Countries of Hurope, is, in a very few Years, become one of the
richest, most beautiful and fertile Nations of it,” and who would now assert that
the old rebel’s prophecy has not been fulfilled ?

Other objects requiring the attention of the Scottish Improver of 1729 were
Land Tenure and Education. Our author urges upon landowners the folly of
a system of tenure which demands services from their tenants, and which affords
the occupiers no incentive to improve their farms, and he advocates leases not only
in the interests of the lairds themselves but in justice to the farmers.

Mackintosh was an enthusiastic educational reformer; he animadverts on the
unsuitable instruction offered in rural schools and explains how easily it might be
improved. Their Scottish schoolmasters knew Latin; why should they not trans-
late passages from Varro, Columella, and other writers which boys might read?
Tor the use of Charity Schools in remote parts the ‘learned Mr. Ruddiman
should be employed ‘to translate and compendize’ the works of Cato, Palladius,
and others. Why, he asks, should not one day a week be set aside for the discus-
sion of agricultural subjects, so that country boys might ‘dispute on points of
Husbandry or breeding or fattening Cattle’ ? And why should those advanced
pupils, who read Greek and Latin authors, have unsuitable text-books placed in
their hands? Might not the chaste Hesiod and the useful Varro supplant such
works as those of Sappho and Ovid? And why send so many dunces to the uni-
versity? Let able lads go there by all means, but for the sake of fashion why
spend the family income on educating one son at college and neglecting the others?
Irom the school ‘ A Lover of his Country’ turns to the kirk. Much might be done
if ministers fallowed or enclosed their glebes, and used their pulpits to enforce
lessons of thrift and honest dealing. Then, like Blith, he appeals to the universi-
ties. ‘And certainly,’ he says, ‘the learned Masters of our Universities are too
well acquainted with the Ancients not to know that Agriculture was the first Care
of all Legislatures’; and he continues: ‘Natural Philosophy was acquired and
attained to by those that laboured the Ground and sowed Seeds, saw their different
Ways of Propagation, planted and transplanted Trees, Herbs, Roots, found what
ground produced this best, what that, and left their well demonstrated experiments
to their sons and posterity ; they were the very first Philosophers. . . . To be sure
Natural Philosophy was the first, and the sagacious Husbandman\the first
Philosopher ; as the wandering Star-gazing Shepherd or Herdsman was the first
Astronomer.’

There is much else in this essay on ‘Ways and Means’ to which attention
might be directed, but my immediate object is to indicate the nature of the ques-
tions that stirred the early Scottish Improvers to take action, and having done
this I must pass on to notice the work of the Honourable the Society of
Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture.

As already mentioned, the Society of Improvers was constituted at a meeting
held on June 8, 1723. At subsequent meetings in the same summer rules were
drafted and the Society began its useful career at once. A Council of twenty-
five members was elected, the Council was divided up into sub-committees, each
of which was charged with the care of a special branch of agriculture; the rules
set out that the members of committees were to ‘chuse different subjects in

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 15

Agriculture and mark down their thoughts thereon in writing.’ They were also
to correspond with the most intelligent agriculturists all over the country and to
endeavour to get small local societies formed. The chief duty of each sub-com-
mittee was, however, to give advice on the means of carrying out improvements.
Members were asked to send in an exact statement of their difficulties, and
answers were forwarded by the Society. If the suggestions proved useful, the
recipient of advice was expected to report the result for the benefit of his
fellow members.

The volume of ‘ Select Transactions,’ published in 1743, contains a number of
specimens of the questions sent in and the answers supplied. Such subjects as
the draining of boggy land, the use of marl and lime, the effects of seaweed as
manure, the cultivation of potatoes, hops, sainfoin, and flax; the feeding of
cattle and the employment of steeps for corn were dealt with. Most of the
correspondence is with Scotchmen, but occasionally letters from others occur,
including an interesting communication from Jethro Tull in which he says that
“twenty years ago there was much the same way of tillage in England as is now
in Scotland, but it has since been exploded by experience, and the farmers have
enriched both the land and themselves by plowing it more than they were wont.’
Directions for lime-burning are contributed by Mr. Lummis, ‘who came from
England and made the Rotheran Plough.’ The ‘Transactions’ have an adver-
tisement of this plough, from which it appears that the Earl of Stair had
sent one of his men to be taught by ‘the best Plough and Wheel-Carriage
wrights in England,’ and that Rotheran ploughs of very superior workmanship
were being made at Newliston, West Lothian. The Earl of Stair further laid
agriculturists under obligation by introducing turnips, cabbages, and carrots as
field crops, and he bred very good Galloway cattle. Another notable man among
these early improvers was the Earl of Islay, who gave special attention to the
cultivation of peaty soils and succeeded in producing good corn and grass on
land previously thought to be of little value. He also planted extensively, and,
according to Maxwell, introduced the larch, among other trees, to Scottish
foresters.

The Society did not confine its attention exclusively to agriculture. It noted
a natural connection between the agricultural and fishing industries, and did
much to promote the latter, thus establishing an early precedent for the associa-
tion of agriculture with fisheries for administrative purposes. Manufactures
too were encouraged, and in this connection there stands out the name of the Duke
of Hamilton, who moved the following ‘ Overture’ : ‘ That all of you and all under
your Influence, should, for Examples to others, buy no foreign Linen for Shirt-
ing, Bed-linen, or any other Household-furniture ; and that you should propagate
to the utmost of your power the wearing of home-made stamped Linen.’ The
consequence, we are informed, was that ‘ even at Publick Assemblies of Persons
of the greatest Distinction, the whole Company appeared dressed in Linen of our
own Manufacture.’ The Duke’s success with linen led him next to propose a
resolution against the drinking of foreign spirits, so that the great sum annually
sent to France for brandy might be kept at home! The consequences were not so
immediately noticeable as in the case of linen, for the local records of the east
of Scotland show that the smuggling of French brandy was a very profitable
trade throughout the eighteenth century. It is, however, the case that at a later
date the Duke’s advice was followed, for not only linen but liquor of native manu-
facture came to be appreciated, ‘even at Publick Assemblies of persons of the
greatest Distinction’ ; at assemblies, moreover, on both sides of the Tweed !

As the Fellows of the Royal Society had interested themselves in cider, so the
Honourable Society of Improvers selected whisky for their care, and a good deal of
attention was given to improvements in distilling. Their correspondence shows that
Scottish progress in this art was mainly attributed by them to Mr. Henricus Van
Wyngaerden, a Dutchman who settled in Edinburgh about 1730, and ‘ followed
the distilling business with success and a fair character’; but here I question if
the Society are altogether just to the enterprise of the father of one of their own
most prominent members, Duncan Forbes of Culloden. About 1670 John Forbes,
a staunch Presbyterian, who owned an estate in the parish of Ferintosh, with-
stood Charles and James, and suffered for conscience sake. When William
came to the throne, John’s son Duncan (father of the Society’s member) claimed
compensation from the Scottish Parliament. His claim to compensation was

16 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

proved, but Parliament, having no money wherewith to pay, granted him per-
mission to distil all the grain of Ferintosh at a nominal duty. ‘Thus, says John
Hill Burton, Ferintosh became ‘ illustrious as the head-quarters of the distilling
of whisky,’ and he adds, ‘so short-sighted is man, the efforts of the ‘‘ merry
monarch ’’ to subdue the spirit of the stubborn Presbyterian became the source
of conviviality for generations after he and his roystering companions were in
their graves.” To Duncan Forbes and Ferintosh rather than to the Duke of
Hamilton or Mr. Henricus Van Wyngaerden may be attributed the wide adver-
tisement of native liquor and the gradual displacement of French brandy.
During the twenty-two years of its existence the Honourable Society of
Improvers became a powerful and important body. Its influence, it should be
noted, was obtained by educational methods, for its funds were small, it had no
State subsidy as had the Irish Society, it offered no premiums, but it drew
together in the cause of agricultural improvement many of the most prominent
Scotchmen of the period, and it undoubtedly laid the foundations of that suc-
cessful agriculture for which Scotland has ever since been noted. In 17428 the
Society had 299 members, and an examination of the list reveals many well-known
names representing all sections of the educated classes of Scotland, with the
notable exception of the clergy. The great territorial houses were represented
by the Dukes of Athole, Hamilton, and Perth, the Earls of Breadalbane, Hope-
toun, Stair, and others; politics by Duncan Forbes of Culloden and his restless
neighbour Simon of the °45; the College of Justice, the Bar, Writers to the
Signet, the University of Edinburgh, and the Medical profession by Bethunes,
Campbells, Dalrymples, Erskines, Fergusons, Gordons, and many another well-
known Scottish name. A link with the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries of
to-day existed in Sir John Anstruther of Anstruther; and of another member,
Alexander Brodie of Brodie, Lord Lyon, I have been frequently reminded in
preparing this Address, for my copy of * Columella’ bears his bookplate.
But of all the members, those who best deserve our notice are Thomas Hope
of Rankeilor, President, and Robert Maxwell of Arkland, editor of the ‘ Trans-
actions.’ Mackintosh refers to Hope as a man who had taught improved agricul-
ture to hundreds of his fellow-countrymen. He studied the subject not only in
England, but in France, Flanders, Holland, and other Continental countries, and
Maxwell says of him ‘that it has been much owing to Mr. Hope of Rankeilor
your Preses, that this Society was entered into and that the Spirit of it rose so
high,’ and adds that he ‘has been instructing others in the Knowledge of it and
been preaching up the publick and private Advantages arising from it for a con-
tinued Tract of more than Twenty Years’ Time.’ Of the spirit which animated
Robert Maxwell himself we have ample evidence in the Dedication of the ‘ Select
Transactions.’ Reviewing what has been done by the Society and considering
that which might still be done, Maxwell writes, ‘since the Case stands thus,
how much doth it concern the Publick and every Individual that Agriculture
be encouraged and that the Anowledge of it, the efficient Cause of all those
inestimable Benefits, should be taught to all who are williag to learn the Prin-
ciples of this the most useful of all the Sciences; to all who desire to know the
secret Causes why some plants enrich, and others impoverish the Ground in
which they grow ; why different Methods of Husbandry produce different Effects ;
and in general to all who incline to study the Reasons for and against, the
different Methods practised? They that do not study Agriculture as a Science
do right only by chance, and that rarely happens. Why then should Reason be
so little exercised, as generally it is, in this Matter of the greatest Importance?’
He then refers to the opinions of Virgil, and to the views expressed by Columella
on the subject of teaching agriculture, and he urges the Society to take steps
to found a professorship, or to secure an inspector of experiments; ‘surely a
practical farmer should be chosen, who could teach Rules established upon
rational Experiments tried in our own country; one who has given Testimonies
that he has studied, and does understand the Principles of Agriculture. Your
careful Endeavours to get a Fund settled for such a Professor or Inspector
would crown your former labours. It will then be said and be certainly true,
that you did all you could as Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture.’
Maxwell proposed that the Society should address a Memorial to the Kin
on the subject of a Professorship. ‘ You are,’ he wrote, ‘a great Body of loya
Subjects and generally of great Distinction, and I humbly think upon a proper

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. It

Application to his Majesty, you could not fail to have sufficient Influence to get
such a Professor or Inspector named or both.’

But alas! Neither professor nor inspector did Maxwell see, for within two
years Prince Charles Edward had landed in Scotland, the Marquis of Tullibardine
was rallying the Highlanders to the Stuart flag, and the loyalty of the
Honourable Society was subjected to a strain which it could not withstand. Most
of the members took the advice of Duncan Forbes and held out for.the King, but
others, like the Duke of Perth and Lords Cromartie, Balmerino, and Lovat, fol-
lowed Prince Charlie. When peace was restored, the Honourable Society, and
not a few of its members, had ceased to exist; but the purpose for which it was
founded had been achieved, and the Spirit of the Improver lived on.

One of the objects of the Honourable Society of Improvers was to develop
local societies. Two of these may be traced in Scotland before 1745, one in
Buchan, the other in East Lothian. The former appears to have been started
about 1730 by James Ferguson of Pitfour among his Buchan tenantry. Ferguson
was a friend of Thomas Hope’s and believed in his methods of ‘ preaching
improvements.’ He supplied the members of the Buchan Society with books
and he himself attended their meetings. In 1735 this Society published a small
volume which had been drawn up by the members at their meetings, entitled ‘A
True Method of Treating Light Hazely Ground; or, an Exact Relation of the
Practice of Farmers in Buchan containing Rules for Infields, Outfields, Haughs,
and Laighs.’ In many respects this is a remarkable little work. It relates
exclusively to local farming, and while the inspiration may have come from
Edinburgh, the book itself bears no evidence of outside influence. Their indepen-
dence is indeed a noteworthy characteristic of the members of this Buchan
Society. From certain references which appear in their ‘ Proceedings’ it may be
surmised that they were well acquainted with agricultural writers. But instead
of recounting the opinions of others, and speculating as to their value for Buchan,
this Society of tenant-farmers adopted the true scientific method, they described
their practices in detail, discussed them fully, and, being satisfied that they
were applicable to local conditions, they reduced their methods to rules. But the
Society were most careful to point out that these rules held only for the conditions
of Buchan. Their soil ‘ differs from all others in natural qualities,’ it is therefore
necessary to give ‘uncommon rules in managing it.’ They even exclude land
lying near the sea in their own immediate neighbourhood ; ‘in this relation,’ they
say, ‘we make no record of our coast side—neither are our Rules calculated for
that part of the country, but are only to be received at two or three miles distance
from the sea.’

The Buchan Society’s attitude to the agricultural practices recommended by
others is well illustrated by the following comment on steeps for seed. Several
methods of steeping are mentioned by them, but they add: ‘This we doubt not
may have some good effect, but frankly own we can give no advice from ex-
perience, and so refer the inquisitive to the elaborate works of elder practi-
tioners.’ In matters too deep for them, their philosophy rested on a firm basis.
Here, for example, is an explanation of the early fruiting of wild oats. This
pestilent weed they urge all farmers to destroy by ‘cropping the wild oats how
soon they come out of the hose, who appear always about eight days before the
tame. Thus is Providence so kind as to tack that to their nature which is the
means of their own destruction.’

Although improved practices did not reach Scotland for a century after they
had been adopted in England, they spread much more rapidly among the northern
people. In 1720 there were but a few landowners who made any attempt at
improvements in husbandry. In 1723 the Honourable the Society of Improvers
was formed, and ten years later we can trace a small society of Aberdeenshire
tenants applying the scientific method to the common practice of Scottish farming.
The tenant farmers of the North had educated men within their own ranks, and
through these men a knowledge of improved practice quickly reached the others.
The compiler of the Buchan ‘ Rules,’ James Arbuthnot, tenant of Wester Rora
in the parish of Longside, was a type of this class. He had received a classical
education and belonged to a branch of a well-known family. The verses of a
local poet written on his death show him to have been a man greatly respected
in Buchan. A reference to men of the same class—the educated Scottish farmer
of the eighteenth century—is made in a lecture given by the Rev. Harry Stuart

18 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

to the Forfarshire Agricultural Association in 1853. Speaking of his own farm-
ing ancestors, Mr. Stuart describes how his grandfather had been made heir to six
relatives all in one month by the ambitions of Prince Charlie, and had to begin
farming on his own account at seventeen; but before he settled to the plough
he had wrestled hard with his books, had committed his Latin grammar to
memory, and, as was then the custom in the better schools, had been wont to
address the dominie in the Latin tongue. ‘There were many such farmers then
as he,’ says Mr. Stuart, ‘reading their Livy to their breakfast and having a tilt
at the fencing-foils in the evening with the young fellows. . . . After the fashion
of the times he kept open house and I heard all the good and the bad of the new
schools just opened discussed a thousand times over by his visitors, many of them
retired farming officers, who had seen much in other countries and in a rough
enough way, and who did a great deal in spiriting on improvements.’ These
men, representatives as a rule of a minor branch of some powerful family, fought
when the country was at war and farmed when there was peace; they exercised
a Considerable intluence on the development of agriculture, especially in the
Highlands,

The second of the local Scottish societies, existing before 1745, was that
established by an enlightened landowner, John Cockburn of Ormistown, in East
Lothian. Robertson, in his ‘ Rural Recollections,’ gives July 18, 1736, as the
cate of its formation. With Cockburn were associated Sir John Dalrymple and
cther country gentlemen. From a reference made to their meetings by Henry
Ifome, it would appear that in this Society we have the origin of the ‘farmers’
dinner.’ Home counsels landlords to ‘convene’ tenants once a year to a ‘ hearty
meal’ at which they were to be instructed in new methods of husbandry. ‘ It
was by such means,’ he adds, ‘ that the late John Cockburn of Ormistown pro-
moted emulation and industry among his people.” But Cockburn did not confine
himself to an annual dinner. Monthly meetings were held for the discussion of
agricultural improvements, and these were much appreciated not only by Cock-
burn’s tenants but by neighbouring landowners like the Earl of Stair and the
Duke of Perth, who attended regularly. Even the °45 did not suppress these
monthly meetings, and after Preston Pans the Duke of Perth was mindful
enough of Ormistown to send troops to protect the members, so that they might
quietly continue their criticisms of Tull and their appreciations of turnips. For
which action, had Prince Charlie retained his hold on Scotland, the Duke might
have been created first Chairman of the Scottish Board of Agriculture, a Depart-
ment of State of which, even then, men were beginning to dream!

Maxwell tells us that the Dublin Society (established 1731) was formed in
imitation of the Society of Improvers. It is clear when Arthur Young wrote that
to the Dublin Society ‘ belongs the undisputed merit of being the father of all
similar societies now existing in Europe’ he meant that it was the oldest of
existing agricultural societies, and not the first society of its kind. The Dublin
Society soon after its formation received a Government grant and could therefore
spend much more on its work than its Scottish prototype. Time will not permit
of a reference to the work of this Society; but mention may be made of the
experimental farm established by the unfortunate John Wynn Baker, under its
auspices. The farm was started in 1764 and continued until about 1770. Schemes
were drawn up by Baker in consultation with the Society, and an annual grant
of 2001. was made in support of the experiments ; two volumes giving the. results
were issued. Baker was, as Arthur Young says, ‘a very ingenious man’ who
worked hard for the Society, made experiments in agriculture, recorded
meteorological information, manufactured implements, and wrote essays; but he
lived in poverty and ‘broke his heart’ because of the Society’s treatment of
him. Young and he projected a literary partnership, but Baker’s views on
authorship could not be reconciled to the demands of the publishers of the time,
and it was not until after Baker’s death that Young realised in his ‘ Annals’
(1784) the periodical publication which, with Baker, he had tried to start some
ten years earlier,

In 1754 the Royal Society of Arts was established, and almost immediately
afterwards it began to give attention to agriculture. A record of its valuable
work written by Sir Henry Truman Wood has recently been published in the
Society’s ‘ Journal.’

The same year that saw the formation of the Royal Society of Arts brought

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 19

together in Edinburgh a small group of distinguished men who formed them-
selves into the Select Society. The purposes were the discussion of philosophical
questions and practice in public speaking. The idea came from Allan Ramsay,
aa artist and son of the poet. Alexander Wedderburn was elected Chairman
(as Lord Loughborough, the first Scottish Lord Chancellor of England, he
affixed the Seal that gave Sir John Sinclair his Board of Agriculture), and among
the members were Adam Smith, David Hume, Henry Home (later Lord Kames),
and William Robertson (afterwards Principal of Edinburgh University). This
Society soon attracted all Edinburgh residents who were in any way dis-
tinguished. But in one respect it was a failure; certain members, we are in-
formed, always talked, and the wisdom of others was in danger of being sup-
pressed and unavailing. It is said, for example, that Adam Smith and David
Hume never opened their lips! It appears therefore to have been decided that
the Society’s genius should be turned to practical objects, and within the Select
Society a new organisation, the Edinburgh Society, was formed in 1755, ‘for
the encouragement of Arts, Sciences Manufactures and Agriculture ’—.e., for
the same purposes as the Society of Arts had been established in London a few
months earlier.

An account of the Edinburgh Society is given by Ramsay in his ‘ History of the
Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland,’ from which it appears that the
methods of this society—the offering of premiums for live-stock and implements
—were those which have since been everywhere adopted. In 1759, for example,
we read that at the show of horses nine stallions were exhibited, ‘all very good.’
But the goodness of the stallions and of the objects did not bring prosperity
to the Edinburgh Society; talent was more abundant than money in Edinburgh
in the middle of the eighteenth century, subscriptions remained unpaid, the pre-
mium list had tobe reduced, and finally the Select and the Edinburgh Societies
disappeared together in 1765.

The success of the Royal Society of England and the influence of the Honour-
able the Society of Improvers of Scotland did not escape notice on the Continent,
and after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), when France realised the necessity
of developing her agriculture, societies were established in that country. The
Marquis of Tourbilli, a well-known writer on agriculture, took the lead in forming
a society at Tours; a second important society was formed in Brittany; and so
useful did they prove that by 1761, Harte informs us, there were thirteen at
work for the improvement of agriculture in France. Each society was assigned
a district, and in the larger districts subsidiary societies were formed; of these
there were nineteen in 1761.

The movement spread to other countries about the same time. In 1751
George II founded an agricultural society in Hanover, which awarded half-
yearly premiums for dissertations on agricultural subjects. In 1759 the Swiss
established a society in Berne, which later became the most important agricultural
association in Europe. An active society also began work in Tuscany before 1760.

The value of the work of the early associations was also generally recognised
in this country, and in the second half of the eighteenth century many others
were formed. Among them may be mentioned the Gordon’s Mill (Aberdeen)
Farming Club, the Highland and Agricultural Society, the British Wool Society,
the Norwich, York, and Bath Societies, and the local agricultural societies of
Doncaster, Cornwall, ‘Brecon, and Leicester.

Before concluding these notes on the early associations let me ask your atten-
tion very briefly to some of the evidences of their influence on the agriculture
of a later period.

The chief aims of the early societies were to impress upon landowners in
the first place the interest afforded by the study of agriculture and in the second
the duty of providing an increased supply of food for the nation. Nothing is
more marked in the writings of such Improvers as Blith, Worlidge, Lisle,
Laurence, and Mackintosh than their insistence on the importance of agriculture
as a subject of study. Until the educated among their fellow-countrymen could
be interested in the principles of agriculture, it was clear to these far-seeing men
that progress could not be made. Exhortation, persuasion, and satire are em-
ployed by turns with the object of securing attention for agricultural questions,

20 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M.

Worlidge, for example, extols a country life and laments the fact that in his
day the populace esteemed the country but a place for beasts, while the cities
were for men; and Mackintosh of Borlum in upbraiding Scottish gentlemen for
despising agriculture, is careful to indicate that the ‘pertest Speaker and
Despiser of the Farmer’ he had met with was ‘an upstart estated Spark, Son of a
Merchant, who Cato, Cicero, and Varro, all say, don’t put together Money so
innocently, if the fairest dealing Merchant as the Countryman does.’ :

The change in the attitude of the educated classes to agriculture that took
place within a century of the formation of the Royal Society is indicated in all
the works published after 1750. Hirtzel, of Berne, ¢.g., in ‘The Rural Socrates ’
(second edition, 1764) remarks: ‘It is no longer a controvertible point whether
the science of Agriculture merits the distinguished attention of philosophical
minds, and is the proper study of the most enlightened understanding; since the
proof is beyond contradiction, that a judicious rural economy is one of the chief
supports of the prosperity of a State. In Henry Home’s dedication of ‘The
Gentleman Farmer’ to the President of the Royal Society (1776), we find this
passage : ‘Agriculture justly claims to be the chief of arts, it enjoys beside the
signal pre-eminence of combining deep philosophy with useful practice’; and
in the preface to the same work he says : ‘ Our gentlemen who live in the country
have become active and industrious. They embellish their fields, improve their
lands, and give bread to thousands.’ He contrasts these pursuits with those
which formerly occupied the country gentleman : ‘ His train of ideas was confined
to dogs, horses, hares, foxes; not a rational idea entered the train, not a spark of
patriotism, nothing done for the public.’

How unlike the state of affairs described by Home were the conditions in a
country resembling Britain, but in which the Spirit of the Improver had not been
awakened, may be indicated by a quotation from a report on the farming of Hol-
stein and Mecklenburg sent to Sir John Sinclair in 1794. The writer, M. Voght,
states that the agriculture of North Germany was fifty years behind that of
England, and explains its depressed state by saying: ‘Our noblemen are no
farmers, and our farmers no gentlemen; our authors on agriculture possess no
cultivated land, and those few who could give to the public the precious results of
long experience and labour would starve their printer for want of readers.’

The landowner of North Germany, towards the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, was, indeed, in very much the same state as the landowner of Britain in the
first quarter ; and it is when we compare the conditions described by Lisle, Mackin-
tosh, Home, and Voght, that we begin to appreciate how much British farming
owes to such associations as the Royal Society of England and the Honourable
the Society of Improvers of Scotland. Had not the interest of landowners, and
of the educated classes generally, been secured, there is no reason to suppose that
the agriculture of Britain in 1794 would have been markedly in advance of
that of Germany.

I have already pointed out that both in England and Scotland the first
impetus towards progress was economic in its character, and throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries economic causes were constantly accelerat-
ing the improvement of agriculture; but we must not make the mistake of sup-
posing that a rise in prices necessarily brings about improvements in husbandry.
A motive for improvement is provided and more labour may be drawn to agricul-
ture, but it does not follow that there will be a real advance, and that there will
be more food produced for the use of workers in other industries. Without
changes of system, 7.e., without improvements based on new discoveries, the
effect of a rise of prices in a self-supporting country would merely be to alter
the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture, and to form congested
districts. This was the danger that threatened England early in the seventeenth
and Scotland early in the eighteenth centuries; but fortunately for each country
an intellectual revival followed close on_the rise in prices, and attention was
directed not only to the necessity for more food, but to the need for improve-
ments which would afford a surplus for the support of the industrial classes.

As Adam Dickson, writing at the time, and Thorold Rogers, reviewing
economic history a century later, both point out, there is no question that the
rise of the mercantile class led to a development of the commercial spirit among
the landowners of the eighteenth century: but this is not the particular aspect

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 21

of the economic question that is suggested by a study of the records of these
societies and of the works of the early Improvers. Their first contention was
that agriculture was a subject worthy of study for its own sake, their second
that it was worthy of study for the sake of the nation. The appeal to self-
interest occurs, it is true, but it is not insisted on as being the all-important
consideration.

At the present time, when so much of our food comes from other countries, we
do not, perhaps, suiliciently realise the extent to which the commercial prosperity
of Britain was built up by the aid of, or depended upon an improved agriculture ;
but the relationship of industrial progress to agriculture was never lost sight of
by the early Improvers, and not only the food-supply of the industrial classes,
but the system of agriculture best suited for rearing the type of worker required
for developing new industries was carefully considered by them.

Within recent years the Improvers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries have been much criticised for their land policy, their enclosures, and
their treatment of labourers; but one thing at least the agriculturists of 1760-
1815 saw more clearly than their modern critics, they recognised that if their
country was to become a great manufacturing nation, more food must be grown;
and to this task they applied themselves so successfully that, as Porter points
out, the land of Great Britain, which, in 1760, supported about eight million
inhabitants, in 1831 supported sixteen miliions. When we reflect that the imple-
ments of husbandry were rude, that thorough drainage had not been intro-
duced, that artificial-manures (except crushed bones) were hardly known, that
oileakes were scarce, that grain was too valuable to be given freely to cattle,
that in bad seasons live-stock had to be starved so that men might be fed, that
in good seasons prices fell] rapidly, and with them farming profits, and that
credit was ditlicult to obtain and interest high, those of us who know some-
thing about the ordinary work of the farmer can realise the strenuous efforts
that must have been necessary to wring from land a sufficiency to feed this
rapidly growing nation and to maintain it in health and comparative comfort.
Even as late as 1836 Porter shows that it would have been impossible to feed any
considerable part of the people on imported food. ‘To supply the United King-
dom with the single article of wheat,’ he says, ‘ would call for the employment of
more than twice the amount of shipping which now annually enters our ports.’

Nor was it for man only that an increased food-supply was required ; between
1760 and 1831 there was a great addition to the horse population, owing to the
improvement of roads and the substitution of horses for oxen on farms. To the
increase in the number of horses contemporary writers attributed in some degree
the high prices ruling at the end of the eighteenth century.

Part of the additional food-supply was obtained by enclosing about seven
million acres of land between 1760 and 1854; but as more than three times this
area must already have been enclosed, as much of the land enclosed after 1760
was of poor quality, and as all of it had formerly contributed in some degree
to the food-supply of the country, it is obvious that between 1760 and 1834 the
rate of production per acre must have been largely increased.

Improvements in the art of agriculture cannot be rapidly introduced; there
is first of all an experimental stage, and when improved methods have been
learned they pass but slowly from district to district. Before any marked
adyance in the art can take place, there must therefore occur a period during
which a foundation is being laid. It was about 1760 that our population began
to increase rapidly, and it was then that agriculturists were called upon to pro-
duce more food. As we have seen, they were able to double the food-supply in
seventy vears. It cannot be doubted that this marvellous feat was rendered
possible by the pioneer societies of the preceding century, or that it was the
spirit of the Improver, which the early associations had fostered, that animated
the men from whom Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair learned. If, in place
of those enterprising agriculturists whose improvements are described in the
Reports of the first Board of Agriculture, our shires had been occupied by the
dull-witted country gentlemen referred to by Lisle, or the ‘upstart sparks’
condemned by Mackintosh, the history of this country must have been very
different. Behind the military and naval victories which made Britain a great
Power, was a commissariat supported by the agricultural classes. For the great

Meni ee "TRANSACTIONS OF SECT rm
‘ ; Py Wa e PT sit x - er 4
industrial army which the genius of Arkwright, Watt, and othe
vided with employment there was raised an _ ever-increasin
Political and industrial development alike depended on the rate
:.” the population, and this again on the rate at which the means of su

be raised from British soil.

<'los ae eer

Although the economic position has undergone a revolution there is
for the Improver; no longer indeed do our industrial classes depend
sistence on the surplus products of the British farmer, but after a lor
of forgetfulness, once again it has been recognised that a progressive <
is essential to the well-being of the nation. This is not the time to di
A nature of the questions which press upon us to-day; but let us not -
ae: they are our questions. To this newly formed Section of the British -

has descended the task of the early associations; it is the privilege of its
yu bers to preserve, and to hand down to their successors, that Spirit
. Improver which animated alike the ancient writers of Greece and Ri

. 4 British societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and to-
bi take to ourselves the exhortation of Walter Blith, for his words
i Section M as they did to its predecessors, ‘from you, too, I expect an
a for more discoveries of some thing, I scarce know what to name it, which ]
4 in obscurity, but I will call it the Improvement of the Improver.’ —
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