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ADVANCEMENT
of SCIENCE: 1922—

Addresses delivered at the 90th Annu Neeting of 49057

FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF:
HULL, SEPTEMBER 1922

SOME ASPECTS OF ANIMAL MECHANISM
PROF. SIR C. 8. SHERRINGTON, G.B.E., F.R.S.

(President of the Association.)

The Theory of Numbers ProF. G. H. HARDY, F.R.S

The Organisation of Research, and Problems in the Cire
hydrates PRINCIPAL J. C. IRVINE, F.B.S.

The Physical Geography of the Coal Swamps
PROF. P. F, KENDALL

The Progression of Life in the Sea Dr. BE. J. ALLEN, F.R.S.

Human Geography: First Principles and Some Applications
DR. MARION NEWBIGIN

Equal Pay to Men and Women for Equal Work
PROF. F. Y. EDGEWORTH

Railway Problems in Australia PROF. T. HUDSON BEARE
The Study of Man H. J. E. PEAKE

The Efficiency of Man and the Factors which Influence
PROF. E. P. CATHCART, F.R.S.

The Influence of the tate W. H. R. Rivers on the Develop-

ment of Psychology in Great Britain
DR. ©. S. MYERS, F.R.S.

The Transport of Organic Substances in Plants
PROF. H. H. DIXON, F.R.S.

Educational and School Science Str R. A. GREGORY

“he Proper Position of the Landowner in relation to ‘the
Agricultural Industry Rr, Hon. LORD BLEDISLOB, K.B.E.

Lonpon: Joun Murray, ALBEMARLE STREET
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Thee ADVANCEMENT
of SCABNCE : 1922

Addresses delivered at the 90th Annual Meeting of
THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

HULL, SEPTEMBER 1922

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
Office of the Association: BURLINGTON HOUSE, LONDON, W. 1

PRICE SIX SHILLINGS

THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS

Some Aspects of Animal Mech-
anism

PROF. SIR C. S. SHERRINGTON,
G. BB BeRese

ADDRESSES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF SECTIONS
The Theory of Numbers . :

The Organisation of Research,
and Problems in the Carbo-
hydrates

The Physical Geography of the
Coal Swamps

The Progression of Life in the
Sea

Human Geography : First Prin-
ciples and Some Applications

Equal Pay to Men and Women
for Equal Work

Railway Problems in Australia
The Study of Man . ;

The Efficiency of Man and the
Factors which Influence

The Influence of the late W.
H. R. Rivers on the Develop-
ment of Psychology in Great
Britain

The Transport of Organic Sub-
stances in Plants
Educational and School Science

The Proper Position of the
Landowner in relation to the
Agricultural Industry

PROF. G. H. HARDY, F.R:.S.
PRINCIPAL J. C. IRVINE, F-R.S.
PROF. P. F, KENDALL.

DR. E. J. ALLEN, F.R.S.

DR. MARION NEWBIGIN.
PROF. F. Y. EDGEWORTH.

PROF. T. HUDSON BEARE.

H. J. EK. PEAKE.

PROF. E. P. CATHCART, F.R:S.

Dr. C. S. MYERS, F.R.S,

PROF. H. H. DIXON, F.R.S.

Sir R. A. GREGORY.

RT. Hon. LORD BLEDISLOE, K.B.E.

———

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SWrrg TCR mEOA

BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
SCIENCE: HULL, 1922.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

SOME ASPECTS OF ANIMAL
MECHANISM.

BY

PrRoFessor Sir C. S. SHERRINGTON, G.B.E., Se.D., D.Se.,
LL.D., Pres.R.S.,

PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION.

‘Ir is sometimes said that Science lives too much to itself. Once a
year it tries to remove that reproach. The British Association meeting
is that annual occasion, with its opportunity of talking in wider gather-
ings about scientific questions and findings. Often the answers are
tentative. Commonly questions most difficult are those that can be
quite briefly put. Thus, ‘Is the living organism a machine?’ ‘Is
life the running of a mechanism?’ The answer cannot certainly be
as short as the question. But let us, in the hour before us, examine
some of the points it raises.

Of course for us the problem is not the why of the living organism
but the how of its working. If we put before ourselves some aspects
of this working we may judge for ourselves some at least of the
contents of the question. It might be thought that the problem is
presented at its simplest in the simplest forms of life. Yet it is in
certain aspects more seizable in complex animals than it is in simpler
forms. And so let us turn thither.

Our own body is full of exquisite mechanism. Many exemplifica-
tions could be chosen. There is the mechanism by which the general
complex internal medium, the blood, is kept relatively constant in its
chemical reaction, despite the variety of the food replenishing it and
the fluctuating draft from and input into it from various organs and
tissues. In this mechanism the kidney cells and the lung cells form
two of the main sub-mechanisms. And one part of the latter is the
delicate mechanism linking the condition of the air at the bottom of
the lungs with that particular part of the nervous system which manages
the ventilation of the lungs. On that ventilation depends the proper
respiratory condition of the blood. The nervous centre which manages
the rhythmic breathing of the chest is so responsive to the respiratory

2 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

state of the blood supplied to itself that, as shown by Drs. Haldane
and Priestley some years ago, the very slightest increase in the partial

pressure of carbon dioxide at the bottom of the lungs at once suitably —

increases the ventilation of the chest. And dovetailed in with this
mechanism is a further one working for adjustment in the same
direction. As the lung is stretched by each imbreath the respiratory
condition of the nervous centre, already attuned to the respiratory
quality of the air in the lungs, sets the degree to which inspiration

shall fill them ere there ensue the opposite movement of outbreath. |

All this regulation, although the nervous system takes part in it, is a
mechanism outside our consciousness. Part of it is operated chemi-
cally; part of it is reflex reaction to a stimulus of mechanical kind,
though as such unperceived. ‘The example taken has been nervous
mechanism. If in the short time at disposal we confine our examples
to the nervous system, to do so will have the advantage that in one
respect that system presents our problem possibly at its fullest.

To turn therefore to another instance, mainly nervous. Muscles
execufe our movements ; they also maintain our postures. ‘This postural
action of muscles is produced by nerve-centres which form a system
more or less their own. One posture of great importance thus main-
tained is that of standing, the erect posture. This involves due co-
operation of many separate muscles in many parts. Even in absence
of those portions of the brain to which consciousness is adjunct the
lower nerve-centres successfully bring about and maintain all] this
co-operation of muscles which results in the erect posture. For
instance, the animal in this condition, if set on its feet, stands. It
stands reflexly. More than that, it adjusts its standing posture to
required conditions. If the pose of one of the limbs be shifted that
shift induces a compensatory shift in the other limbs, so that stability
is retained. A turn of the creature’s neck sidewise and the body and
limbs of themselves take up a fresh attitude appropriate to the side-
turned head. Hach particular pose of the neck telegraphs off to the
limbs and body a particular posture required from them, and that
posture is then maintained so long as the neck posture is maintained.
Stoop the creature’s neck and the forelimbs bend down as if to seek
something on the floor. Tilt the muzzle upward and the forelimbs
straighten and the hind linbs crouch as if to look up at a shelf. Purely
reflex mechanism provides most kinds of ordinary postures.

Mere reflex action provides these harmonies of posture. The nerve-
centres evoke for this purpose in the required muscles a mild, steady
contraction, with tension largely independent of the muscle length and
little susceptible to fatigue. Nerve-fibres run from muscle to nerve-
centre. By these each change in tension or length of the muscle
is reported to the activating nerve-centre. They say ‘ tension rising, you

aaa

a
THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3

must slacken,’ or conversely. There also play a part organs whose
stimulation changes with change of their relation to the line of gravity.
Thus, a pair of tiny water-filled bags set one in each side of the skull. In
each of these a patch of cells endowed with a special nerve. Attached
to hairlets of these cells a tiny crystalline stone whose pressure acts as
a stimulus through them to the nerve. The nerve of each gravity-bag

- connects, through chains of nerve-centres, with the muscles of all the

limbs and of one side of the neck. In the ordinary erect posture of the
head the stimulation by the two bags right and left is equal, because the
two gravity-stones then lie symmetrically. The result, then, is a
symmetrical muscular effect on the two sides of the body, namely, the
normal erect posture. But the right and left bags are mirror pictures
of each other. If the head incline to one side the resulting slip,
microscopic though it be, of the two stones on their nerve-patches makes

the stimulation unequal. And from that slip there results exactly the

right unsymmetrical action of the muscles to give the unsymmetrical pose

‘of limbs and neck required for stability. That is the mechanism dealing

with limbs and trunk and neck. An additional one postures the head
itself on the neck; a second pair of tiny gravity-bags, in which the
stones hang rather than press. These, when any cause inclining the

head has passed, bring the head back at once to the normal symmetry

_ .of the erect posture. And these same bags manage the posturing of

ee

the eyes. The eye contributes to our orientation in space; for instance,

to perception of the vertical. And for this the eyeball, that is the
retina, has to be postured normally. The pair of little gravity-bags
in the skull, which act to restore the head posture, act also on the
eyeball muscles. Whichever way the head turns, slopes, or is tilted,
these adjust the eyeball’s posture compensatingly, so that the retina
still looks out upon its world from an approximately normal posture,

retaining its old verticals and horizontals. As the head twists to the

right the eyeball’s visual axis untwists from the right. These reactions
of head and eyes and body unconsciously take place when a bird wheels
or slants in flight or a pilot stalls or banks his aeroplane. And all
this works itself involuntarily as a pure mechanism, whose analysis we
owe mainly to Prof. Magnus and Dr. de Kleijn, of Utrecht.

True, in such a glimpse of mechanism what we see mainly
is how the machinery starts and what finally comes out of it;
the intermediate elements of the process we know less of. Each
insight into mechanism reveals more mechanism still to know.
Thus, hardly was the animal’s energy balance in its bearing
upon food intake shown comfortably to conform with thermodynamics
than came evidence of the so-called ‘vitamines.’ Unsuspected
influence on nutrition by elements of diet taken in quantities so

small as to make their mere calorie value quite negligible; thus, for

A2

4 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

the growing rat, to quote Professor Harden, a quantity of vitamin A of
the order of ;4, milligram aday. Again, as regards sex determination,
the valued discovery of a visible distinction between the nuclear threads
of male and female brings the further complexity that in such cases
sex extends throughout the whole body to every dividing cell. Again,
the association of hereditary unit-factors, such as body colour or shape
of wing, to visible details in the segmenting nucleus seemed to simplify
by epitomising. But further insight tends to trace the inherited unit
character not to the chromosome itself, but to balance of action between
the chromosome group. As with the atom in this heroic age of
physicists, the elementary unit assumed simple proves, under further
analysis, to be itself complex. Analysis opens a vista of further
analysis required. Knowledge of muscle contraction has, from the work
of Fletcher and Hopkins on to Hill, Hartree, Meyerhof, and others,
advanced recently more than in many decades heretofore. The engineer
would find it difficult to make a motive machine out of white of egg,
some dissolved salts, and thin membrane. Yet this practically is what
Nature has done in muscle, and obtained a machine of high
mechanical efficiency. Perhaps human ingenuity can learn from it.
One feature in the device is alternate development and removal of
acidity. The cycle of contraction and relaxation lies traced! to the
production of lactic acid from glycogen and its neutralisation chiefly by
alkaline proteins ; and physically to an admirably direct transition from
chemical to mechanical effect. What new steps of mechanism all this
now opens! ‘To arrive at one goal is to start for others.

But knowledge, while making for complexity, makes also for
simplification. There seems promise of simplification as to the
mechanism of reflex action. Reflex action with surprising nicety calls
into play just the appropriate muscles, and adjusts them in time and in
the suitable grading of their strength of pull. The moderating as well
as the driving of muscles is involved. Also the muscles have to pass from
the behest of one stimulus to that of another, even though the former
stimulus still persist. For these gradings, coadjustments, restraints,
and shifts various separate kinds of mechanism were assumed to exist
in the nerve-centres, although of the nature of such mechanisms little
could be said. Their processes were regarded as peculiar to the nerve-
centres and different from anything that the simple fibres of nerve-
trunks outside the centres can produce. We owe to Lucas and Adrian
the demonstration that without any nerve-centre whatever an excised
nerve-trunk with its muscle attached can be brought to yield, besides
conduction of nerve impulses, the extinction or attenuation or augmenta-
tion of them, That is remarkable, because the impulse is not gradable
by grading the strength of the stimulus. Any stimulus of strength
sufficient to excite the nerve-fibre at all, excites in it an impulse which

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 5

is the fullest which the nerve-fibre can at the time give. The energy
of the impulse comes not from the stimulus, but from the fibre itself.
Lucas and Adrian have shown it gradable in another way. Though the
nerve impulse is a quite brief affair—it lasts about 74,5 second at any
one point of the nerye—it leaves behind it in the nerve-fibre a short
phase during which the fibre cannot develop a second impulse. Then
follows rapid but gradual recovery of the strength of impulse obtainable
from the fibre. That recovery may swing past normal to super-normal
before final return to the old resting state. Hence, by appropriately
timing the arrival of a second impulse after a first, that second impulse
may be extinguished or reduced or increased or transmitted without
alteration. This property of grading impulses promises a complete key
to reflex action if taken along with one other. The nervous system,
including its centres, consists of nothing but chains of cells
and fibres. In these chains the junctions of the links appear
to be points across which a large impulse can pass, though a
weak one will fail. At these points the grading of impulses by
the interference process just outlined can lead, therefore, to narrow-
ing or widening of their further distribution, much as in a railway
system the traffic can be blocked or forwarded, condensed or scattered.
Thus the distribution and quantity of the muscular effect can be regu-
lated and shifted not only from one muscle to another, but in one and
the same muscle can be graded by adding to or subtracting from the
number of fibres activated within that muscle. As pointed out by
Prof. Alexander Forbes, it may be, therefore, that the nerve impulse
is the one and only reaction throughout the whole nervous system,
central and peripheral, trains of impulses simply interfering, colliding
and over-running as they travel along the inter-connected branches of
the conductive network. In this may lie the secret of the co-ordination
of reflexes. The nerve-centre seems nothing more than a meeting-
place of nerve-fibres, its properties but those of impulses in combina-
tion. Fuller knowledge of the mechanism of the nervous impulse,
many of whose physical properties are now known, a reaction open to
study in the simplest units of the nervous system, thus leads to a view
of nervous function throughout that system much simpler than formerly
obtained.

Yet for some aspects of nervous mechanism the nerve impulse offers
little or no clue. The fibres of nerve-trunks are perhaps of all nerve-
structures those that are best known. They constitute, for instance,
the motor nerves of muscle and the sensory nerves of the skin. When
they are broken the muscle or skin is paralysed. They establish their
ties with muscle and skin during embryonic life. These ties they then
maintain practically unaltered throughout the individual's existence,
and show no further growth. If severed, say, by a wound, they die

6 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

for their whole length between the point of severance and the muscle
or skin they go to, And then at once the cut ends of the nerve-fibres

start re-growing from the point of severance, although for years they —

have given no sign of growth, ‘The fibre, so to say, tries to grow out
to reach to its old far-distant muscle. There are difficulties in its way
A multitude of non-nervous repair cells growing in the wound spin
scar tissue across the new fibre’s path. Between these alien cells the
new nerve-fibre threads a tortuous way, avoiding and never joining any
of them, ‘This obstruction it may take many days to traverse. Ther
it reaches a region where the sheath-cells of the old dead nerve-fibres
lie altered beyond ordinary recognition, But the growing fibre
recognises them. Tunnelling through endless chains of them, it
arrives finally, after weeks or months, at the wasted muscle-fibres which
seem to have been its goal, for it connects with them at once. It
pierces their covering membranes and re-forms with their substance
junctions of characteristic pattern resembling the original that had died
weeks or months before. Then its growth ceases, abruptly, as it
began, and the wasted muscle recovers and the lost function is restored,

Can we trace the causes of this beneficent yet so unaccountable
reaction? How is it that severance can start the nerve re-growing.
How does the nerve-fibre find its lost muscle microscopically miles
away? What is the mechanism that drives and guides it? Is it a
chemotaxis like that of the antherozooid in the botanical experiment
drawn towards the focus of the dissolved malic acid? If so, there
must be a marvellously arranged play of intricate sequences of chemi-
cally attractive and repellent substances dissolved suitably point to
point along the tissue. It has recently been reported that the nerve-
fibre growing from a nerve-cell in a nutrient field of graded electrical
potential grows strictly by the axis of the gradient. Some argue for
the existence of such potential gradients in the growing organism.
Certainly nerve regeneration seems a return to the original phase of
growth, and pieces of adult tissue removed from the body to artificial
nutrient media in the laboratory take on vigorous growth. Professor
Champy describes how epithelium that in the body is not growing when
thus removed starts growing. If freed from all fibrous tissue its cells
not only germinate, but, as they do'so, lose their adult specialisation.
In nerve regeneration the nerve-sheath cells, and to some extent the
muscle-cells which have lost their nerve-fibre, lose likewise their
specialised form, and regain it only after touch with the nerve-cell has
been re-established. So similarly epithelium and its connective tissue
cultivated outside the body together both grow and both retain their
specialisation. All seems to argue that the mutual touch between the
several cells of the body is decisive of much in their individual shaping
and destiny. The severance of a nerve-fibre is an instance of the disloca-

“
Oo

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7

tion of such atouch. It recalls well-known experiments on the segment-
ing egg. Destruction of one of the two halves produced by the first
segmentation of the egg results in a whole embryo from the remaining
half-egg. But if the two blastomeres, though ligated, be left side by side,
each then produces a half-embryo. Each half-egg can yield a whole
embryo, but is restrained by the presence of the twin cell to yielding but
a half one. The nerve severance seems to break a mutual connection
which restrained cell growth and maintained cell differentiation.

It may be said that the nerve-sheath cells degrade because absence
of transmission of nerve impulses leaves their fibre functionless. But
they do not degrade in the central nerve-piece, although impulses no
longer pass along its afferent fibres. This mechanism of reconstruction
seems strangely detached from any direct performance of function. The
sprouting nerve-fibres of a motor nerve with impulses for muscular con-
traction can by misadventure take their way to denervated skin instead
of muscle. They find the skin-cells whose nerve-fibres have been lost,
and on these they bud out twigs, as true sensory fibres would do. Then,
seemingly satisfied by so doing, they desist from further growth. The
sense-cells, too, after this misunion, regain their normal features. But
this joining of motor nerve-fibre with sense-cell is functionless, and
must be so because the directions of functional conduction of the two
are incompatible.

So similarly a regenerating skin-nerve led down to muscle makes its
union with muscle instead of skin, though the union is a functional
misfit, and cannot subserve function. Marvellous though nerve re-
generation be its mechanism seems blind. Its vehemence is just as
great after amputation, when the parts lost can of course never be re-
reached. Its blindness is sadly evident in the suffering caused by the
useless nerve-sprouts entangled in the scar of a healing or healed limb-
stump.

But there is a great difference between the growth of such regenera-
tion and the growth impulse in pieces of tissue isolated from the body
and grown in media outside. With pure cultures of these latter
Professor Champy says the growth recalls in several features that of
malignant tumours. Multiplication of cells unaccompanied by forma-
tion of a specialised adult tissue. A piece of kidney cultivated outside
the body de-differentiates, to use his term, into a growing mass un-
organised for renal function. But with connective-tissue cells added
even breast-cancer epithelium will in cultivation grow in glandular
form. New ground is being broken in the experimental control of
tissue growth. The report of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund
mentions that in cultivation outside the body malignant cells present
a difficulty that normal cells do not. To the malignant cells the nutrient
soil has to be more frequently renewed, because they seem rapidly to

8 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

make the soil in which they grow poisonous to themselves, though not
to normal cells. The following of all clues of difference between the
mechanism of malignant growth and of normal is fraught with import-
ance which may be practical as well as theoretical.

The regenerating nerve rebuilds to a plan that spells for future
function. But throughout all its steps prior to the actual reaching the
muscle or skin no actual performance of nerve-function can take place.
What is constructed is functionally useless until the whole is complete.
So similarly with much of the construction of the embryo in the womb
for purposes of a different life after emergence from the womb; with
the construction of the butterfly’s wing within the chrysalis for future
flight ; of the lung for air-breathing after birth; of the reflex contraction
in the foetal child of the eyelids to protect the eye long before the two
eyelids have been separated, let alone ere hurt or even light can reach it.
The neryous system in its repair, as in its original growth, shows us
a mechanism working through phases of non-functioning preparation
in order to forestall and meet a future function. It is a mechanism
against whose seeming prescience is to be set its fallibility and its
limitations. The how of its working is at present chiefly traceable to us
in the steps of its results rather than in comprehension of its intimate
reactions; as to its mechanism, perhaps the point of chief import for us
here is that those who are closest students of it still regard it as a
mechanism. But if to know be to know the causes we must confess
to want of knowledge of how its mechanism is contrived.

And if we knew the whole how of the production of the body from
egg to adult, and if we admit that every item of its organic machinery
runs on physical and chemical rules as completely as do inorganic
systems, will the living animal present no other problematical aspect?
‘The dog, our household friend—do we exhaust its aspects if in assessing
its sum-total we omit its mind? A merely reflex pet would please little
even the fondest of us. True, our acquaintance with other mind than
our own can only be by inference. We may even hold that mind as
object of study does not come under the rubric of Natural Science at all.
But this Association has its Section of Psychology, and my theme of
to-night was partly chosen at the instance of a late member of it, Dr.
Rivers, the loss of whom we all deplore. As a biologist he viewed mind
as a biological factor. The keeping of mind and body apart for certain
analytic purposes must not allow us to forget their being set together
when we assess as a whole even a single animal life.

Taking as manifestations of mind those ordinarily received as such,
mind does not seem to attach to life, however complex, where there is
no nervous system, nor even where that system, though present, is
quite scantily developed. Mind becomes more recognisable the more
developed the nerve-system. Hence the difficulty of the twilit emer-

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9

gence of mind from no mind, which is’repeated even in the individual
life history. In the nervous system there is what is termed localisa-
tion of function, relegation of different work to the system’s different
parts. This localisation shows mentality, in the usual acceptation of
that term, not distributed broadcast throughout the nervous system, but
restricted to certain portions of it. Thus, among vertebrates to what is
called the forebrain, and in higher vertebrates to the relatively newer
parts of that forebrain. Its chief, perhaps its sole, seat is a compara-
tively modern nervous structure superposed on the non-mental and more
ancient other nervous parts. The so-to-say mental portion of the system
is placed so that its commerce with the body and the external world
occurs only through the archaic non-mental rest of the system. _ Simple
nerve impulses, their summations and interferences, seem the one
uniform office of the nerve-systern in its non-mental aspect. To pass
from a nerve impulse to a psychical event, a sense-impression, percept,
or emotion is, as it were, to step from one world to another and incom-
mensurable one. We might expect, then, that at the places of transi-
tion from its non-mental to its mental regions the brain would exhibit
some striking change of structure. But no; in the mental parts of
the brain still nothing but the same old structural elements, set end
to end, suggesting the one function of the transmission and collision of
nerve impulses. The structural inter-connections are richer, but that
is a merely quantitative change.

I do not want, and do not need, to stress our inability at present
to deal with mental actions in terms of nervous actions, or vice versa.
But facing the relation borne in upon us as existent between them, may
we not gain some further appreciation of it by reminding ourselves
even briefly of certain points of contact between the two? Familiar as
such are [ will merely mention rather than dwell upon them.

One is the so-called expression of the emotions. The mental re-
action of an emotion is accompanied by a nervous discharge which is
more or less characteristic for each several type of emotion, so that
the emotion can be read from its bodily expression. This nervous dis-
charge is involuntary, and can affect organs, such as the heart, which
the will cannot reach. Then there is the circumstance that the peculiar
ways and tricks of the nervous machinery as revealed to us in the study
of pure reflex reactions repeat themselves obviously in the working of
the machinery to which mental actions are adjunct. The phenomenon
of fatigue is common to both, and imposes similar disabilities on both.
Nervous exhaustion and mental exhaustion mingle. Then, as offset
against this disability, there exists in both the amenability to habit
formation, mere repetition within limits rendering a reaction easier
and readier. Then, and akin to this, is the oft-remarked trend in both
for a reaction to leave behind itself a trace, an engram, a memory, the
reflex engram, and the mental memory.

10 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

How should inertia and momentum affect non-material reactions ?
Quick though nervous reactions are, there is always easily observed delay
between delivery of stimulus and appearance of the nervous end effect;
and there is always the character that a reaction once set in motion
does not cease very promptly. Just the same order of lag and overrun,
of want of dead-beat character, is met in sense-reactions. The sensa-
tion outlives the light which evoked it and for longer the stronger
the reaction. Just so the reflex after-discharge persists after the
stimulus is withdrawn, and subsides more slowly the stronger the
reaction. The times in both are of the same order. Again, a reflex
act which contracts one muscle commonly relaxes another. Even so
along with rise of sensation in one part of the visual field commonly
occurs lapse of sensation in another. And the stoppage is in both by
inhibition, that is to say, active. Then again, two lights of opposite
colour falling simultaneously and correspondingly on the two retin
will, according to their balance, fuse to an intermediate tint or see-saw
back and forth between the one tint and the other. Just similarly a
muscle impelled by two reflexes, one tending to contract it, the other
to relax it, will according to the balance of these respond steadily with
an intensity, a compromise between the two, or see-saw rhythmically
from extreme to extreme of the two opposite influences.

Reflex acts commonly predispose to their opposites. So similarly
the visual impression of one colour predisposes to that of its opposite.
Again, the position of the stimulated sensual point acts on the mind—
hence the lignt seen or the pain felt is referred to some locus in the
mind’s space-system. Just similarly the reflex machinery directs, for
instance, the limb it moves towards the particular spot stimulated. And
such spots in the two processes, mental and non-mental, correspond.

Characteristic of the nervous machinery is its arrangement in what
Hughlings Jackson called ‘ levels,’ the higher levels standing to the
lower not only as drivers but also as restrainers. Hence in disease
underaction of one sort is accompanied by overaction of another. Thus
in the arm affected by a cerebral stroke, besides loss of willed—that
is higher level—power in the finger muscles, there is in other muscles
involuntary overaction owing to escape of lower centres from control
by the higher which have been destroyed. So similarly with the sensory
effects. Of skin sensations some are painful and some not, for instance
touch. The seat of the latter is of higher level, cortical; of the
former lower, sub-cortical. When cerebral disease breaks the path
between the higher and the underlying level a result is impairment of
touch sensation but heightening of pain sensation in the affected part.
The sensation of touch, as Dr. Head says, restrains that of pain.

Thus features of nervous working resemble over and over again
mental. Is it mere metaphor when we speak of mental attitudes as

:
|
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q

— en ee

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 11

well as bodily? Is it mere analogy to liken the warped attitude of the
mind in a psychoneurotic sufferer to the warped attitude of the body
constrained by an internal potential pain? Again, some mental events
seem spontaneous ; in the nervous system some impulses seem generated
automatically from within.

It may be said of all these similarities of time-relation and the rest
between the ways of the nervous system and such simpler ways of
mind as I here venture on, that they exist because the operations of
the mental part of the nervous system communicate with the exterior
only through the non-mental part as gateway. That there, then, the
features of the nerve-machinery are impressed on the mind’s working.
But that suggestion forgets that the higher and more complex the mental
process, the longer the time-lag, the more incident the fatigue, the
more striking the memory character, and so on,

Yet all this similarity does but render more succinct the old enigma
as to the nexus between nerve impulse and mental event. In the
proof that the working of the animal mechanism conforms with the
first law of thermodynamics can one say that psychical events are
evaluated in the balance sheet drawn up? And, on the other hand, Mr,
Barcroft and his fellow-observers in their recent physiological explora-
tion of life on the Andes at 14,200 ft. noted that, as well as were their
muscles, their arithmetic there was at a disadvantage. The low oxygen
pressure militated against both. Indeed we all know that in any of
us a few minutes without oxygen, or a few more with chloroform, and
the psychical and the nervous events will lapse together. The nexus
between the two sets of events is strict. But for comprehension of its
nature we still require, it seems, comprehension of the unsolved mystery
of the how of life itself. A shadowy bridge between them may lie
perhaps in the reflection that for the observer himself the physical
phenomena he observes are in the last resort psychical.

The practical man has to accept nervous function as a condition
for mental function without breaking his heart over ignorance of their
connection. The doctor, the lawyer, and we all, accept it. We know
that with structural derangement or destruction of certain parts of the
brain goes mental derangement or defect, while derangement or
destruction of other parts of the nervous system is not so accompanied.
Decade by decade the connection becomes more ascertained between
certain mental performances and certain cerebral regions. Certain
impairments of ideation as shown by forms of incomprehension of |
language or of familiar objects can help to diagnose for the surgeon
as to what part of the brain a tumour is compressing; and the tumour
gone the mental disabilities pass. So similarly those who, as Professor
Elliott Smith and Sir Arthur Keith, recast the shape of the cerebrum
from the cranial remains of prehistoric man can outline for us something

12 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

of his mentality from examination of the relative development of the
several brain regions, using a true and scientific phrenology.

Could we look quite naively at the question of a seat for the mind
within the body we might perhaps suppose it diffused there, not localised
in any one particular part at all. That it is localised and that its locali-
sation is in the nervous system—can we attach meaning to that fact?
The nervous system is that bodily system whose special office from its
earliest appearance onward throughout evolutionary history has been
more and more to weld together the body’s component parts into one
consolidated mechanism reacting as a unity to the changeful world about
it. It more than any other system has constructed out of a collection
of organs an individual of unified act and experience. It represents the
acme of accomplishment of the integration of the animal organism.
That it is in this system that mind, as we know it, has had its begin-
ning, and with the progressive development of the system has step for
step developed, is surely significant. So is it that in this system the
portion to which mind transcendently attaches is exactly that where are
carried to their highest pitch the nerve-actions which manage the indi-
vidual as a whole, especially in his reactions to the external world.
There, in the brain, the integrating nervous centres are themselves
further compounded, inter-connected, and re-combined for unitary fune-
tions. The cortex of the forebrain is the main seat of mind. That cortex
with its twin halves corresponding to the two side-halves of the body is
really a single organ knitting those halves together by a still further knit-
ting together of the nervous system itself. The animal’s great integrat-
ing system is there still further integrated. And this supreme integrator
is the seat of all that is most clearly inferable as the animal’s mind. As
such it has spelt biological success to its possessors. From small begin-
nings it has become steadily a larger and larger feature of the nervous
system, until in adult man the whole rest of the system is relatively
dwarfed by it. Not without significance, perhaps, is that in man this
organ, the brain cortex, bifid as it is, shows unmistakable asymmetry.
Man is a tool-using animal, and tools demand asymmetrical, though
attentive and therefore unified, acts. A nervous focus unifying such
motor function will, in regard to a laterally bipartite organ, tend more
to one half or the other. In man’s cerebrum the preponderance of
one-half, namely, the left, over the other may be a sign of unifying
function.

It is to the psychologist that we must turn to learn in full the con-
tribution made to the integration of the animal individual by mind.
But each of us can, without being a professed psychologist, yet recog-
nise one achievement in that direction which mental endowment has
produced. Made up of myriads of microscopic cell-lives, individually
born, feeding and breathing individually within the body, each one

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 13

of us nevertheless appears to himself a single entity, a unity
experiencing and acting as one individual. In a way the more far-
reaching and many-sided the reactions of which a mind is capable
the more need, as well as the more scope, for their consolidation to
one. True, each one of us is in some sense not one self, but a multiple
system of selves. Yet how closely those selves are united and integrated
to one personality. Even in those extremes of so-called double per-
sonality one of their mystifying features is that the individual seems
to himself at any one time wholly either this personality or that, never
the two commingled. The view that regards hysteria as a mental
dissociation illustrates the integrative trend of the total healthy mind.
Circumstances can stress in the individual some perhaps lower instinc-
tive tendency that conflicts with what may be termed his normal per-
sonality. This latter, to master the conflicting trend, can judge it in
relation to his main self’s general ethical ideals and duties to self and
the community. Thus intellectualising it, he can destroy it or con-
sciously subordinate it to some aim in harmony with the rest of his
personality. By so doing there is gain in power of will and in personal
coherence of the individual. But if the morbid situation be too strong
or the mental self too weak, instead of thus assimilating the contentious
element the mind may shun and, so to say, endeavour to ignore it.
That way lies danger. The discordant factor escaped from the sway
of the conscious mind produces stress and strain of the conscious self ;
hence, to use customary terminology, dissociation of the self sets in,
bringing in its train those disabilities, mental or nervous or both,
which characterise the sufferer from hysteria. The normal action of the
mind is to make up from its components one unified personality.
When we remember the manifold complexity of composition of the
human individual, can we observe a greater instance of solidarity of
working of an organism than that presented by the human individual
intent and concentrated,’as the phrase goes, upon some higher act of
strenuous will? Physiologically the supreme development of the
brain, psychologically the mental powers attaching thereto, seem to
represent from the biological standpoint the very culmination of the
integration of the animal organism.

The mental attributes of the nervous system would be, then, the
coping-stone of the construction of the individual. Surveyed in their
broad biological aspect, we see them carrying integration even further
still. They do not stop at the individual; they proceed beyond the
individual ; they integrate from individuals communities. When we
review, as far as we can judge it, the distribution of mind within the
range of animal forms, we meet two peaks of its development—one in
insect life, the other in the vertebrate, with its acme finally in man.
True, in the insect the type of mind is not rational but instinctive, where-

14 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

as at the height of its vertebrate development reason is there as well as
instinct. Yet in both one outcome seems to be the welding of individuals
into societies on a scale of organisation otherwise unattained. The
greatest social animal is man; the powers that make him so are mental.
Language, tradition, instinct for the preservation of the community, as
well as for the preservation of the individual. Reason actuated by
emotion and sentiment and controlling and welding egoistic and
altruistic instincts into one broadly harmonious, instinctive-rational
behaviour. Just as the organisation of the cell-colony into an animal
individual receives its highest contribution from the nervous system, so
the further combining of animal individuals into a multi-individual
organism, a social community, merging the interests of the individual
in the interests of the group, is due to the nervous system’s crowning
attributes, the mental. That this integration is still in process, still
developing, is obvious from the whole course of human pre-history and
history. The biological study of it is essentially psychological ; it is the
scope and ambit of social psychology. Not the least important form
of social psychology is that relatively new one, of which the President
of the Psychology Section at this meeting is a foremost authority and
exponent, namely, that dealing with the stresses and demands that
organised industry makes upon the individual as a unit in the com-
munity of our day, and with the readjustments it asks from that
community.
To resume, then, we may I think conclude that in some of its
aspects animal life presents to us mechanism the how of which, despite
many gaps in our knowledge, is fairly explicable. Of not a few of
the processes of the living body, such as muscular contraction, the
circulation of the blood, the respiratory intake and output by the
lungs, the nervous impulse and its journeyings, we may fairly feel
from what we know of them already that further application of physics
and chemistry will furnish a competent key. We may suppose that
in the same sense as we can claim to-day that the principles of
working of a gas-engine or an electro-motor are comprehensible to

us, so will the bodily working in such mechanisms be understood ~

by us, and indeed are largely so already. It may well be possible
to understand the principle of a mechanism which we have not
the means or skill ourselves to construct. We cannot construct the
atoms of a gas-engine. But, turning to other aspects of animal
mechanism, such as the shaping of the animal body, the conspiring of its
structural units to compass later functional ends, the predetermination
of specific growth from egg to adult, the predetermined natural term
of existence, these, and their intimate mechanism, we are, it seems
to me, despite many brilliant inquiries and inquirers, still at a loss
to understand. The steps of the results are known, but the springs

=e
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THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 15

of action still lie hidden. Then again, the how of the mind’s connection
with its bodily place seems still utterly enigma. Similarity or identity
in time-relations and in certain other ways between mental and nervous
processes does not enlighten us as to the actual nature of the
connection existent between the two. Advance in biological science does
but serve to stress further the strictness of the nexus between the two.

Great, differences of difficulty therefore confront our understanding
of different aspects of animal life. Yet the living creature is funda-
mentally a unity. In trying to make the how of an animal existence
intelligible to our imperfect knowledge we have for purposes of study
to separate its whole into part-aspects and part-mechanisms, but that
separation is artificial. It is as a whole, a single entity, that the animal,
or for that matter the plant, has finally and essentially to be envisaged.
We cannot really understand its one part without its other. Can we
suppose a unified entity which is part mechanism and part not? One
privilege open to the human intellect is to attempt to comprehend,
not leaving out of account any of its properties, the how of the living
creature as a whole. The problem is ambitious, but its importance and
its reward are all the greater if we seize and we attempt the full width
of its scope. In the biological synthesis of the individual it regards
mind. It includes examination of man himself as acting under a
biological trend and process which is combining individuals into a
multi-individual organisation, a social organism surely new in the history
of the planet. For this biological trend and process is constructing
a social organism whose cohesion depends mainly on a property
developed so specifically in man as to be, broadly speaking, his alone,
namely, a mind actuated by instincts but instrumented with reason.
Man, often Nature’s rebel, as Sir Ray Lankester has luminously said,
can, viewing this great supra-individual process, shape even as individual
his course conformably with it, feeling that in this instance to rebel
would be to sink lower rather than to continue his own evolution
upward.

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SECTION A.—MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS.

THE THEORY OF NUMBERS.

ADDRESS BY

Proressor G. H. HARDY, M.A., F.R-S.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION,

I rinp myself to-day in the same embarrassing position in which a
predecessor of mine at Oxford found himself at Bradford in 1875,
the President of a Section which is probably the largest and most
heterogeneous in the Association, and which is absorbed by a multitude
of divergent professional interests, none of which agree with his or mine.

There are two courses possible in such circumstances. One is to
take refuge, as Professor Henry Smith, with visible reluctance, did then,
in a series of general propositions to which mathematicians, physicists,
and astronomers may all be expected to return a polite assent. The
importance of science and scientific method, the need for better organisa-
tion of scientific education and research, are al] topics on which I could
no doubt say something without undue strain either on my own honesty
or on your credulity. That there is no finer education and discipline
than natural science ; that it is, as Dr. Campbell has said, ‘ the noblest
of the arts’; that the crowning achievements of science lie in those
directions with which this Section is professionally concerned: all this
I could say with complete sincerity, and, if I were the head of a deputa-
tion approaching a Government Department, I suppose that I would
not shirk even so unprofitable a task.

It is unfortunate that these essential and edifying truths, important
as it is that they should be repeated as loudly as possible from time
to time, are, to the man whose interest in life lies in scientific work and
not in propaganda, unexciting, and in fact quite intolerably dull. 1
could, if I chose, say all these things, but, even if I wanted to, I should
hardly increase your respect for mathematics and mathematicians by
repeating to you what you have said yourselves, or read in the news-
papers, a hundred times already. I shall say them all some day; the
time will come when we shall none of us have anything more interesting
to say. We need not anticipate our inevitable end.

I propose therefore to adopt the alternative course suggested by my
predecessor, and to try to say something to you about something about
which I have something to say. There is only one subject about which
I have anything to say, and that is pure mathematics. It happens, by a
fortunate accident, that the particular subject which I love the most,
and which presents most of the problems which occupy my own re-
searches, is by no means overwhelmingly recondite or obscure, and
indeed is sharply distinguished from almost every other branch of pure
mathematics, in that it makes a direct, popular, and almost irresistible
appeal to the heart of the ordinary man.

Britisu Assocration : Hull, 1922.] A

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.
There is, however, one preliminary remark which [ cannot resist
the temptation of making. The’present is a particularly happy moment
for a pure mathematician, since it has been marked by one of the
greatest recorded triumphs of pure mathematics. This triumph is the
work, as it happens, of a man who would probably not describe himself
as a mathematician, but who has done more than any mathematician
to vindicate the dignity of mathematics, and to put that obscure and
perplexing construction, commonly described as ‘ physical reality ’, in
its proper place.

There is probably less difference between the methods of a physicist
and a mathematician than is generally supposed. The most striking
among them seems to me to be this, that the mathematician is in much
more direct contact with reality. This may perhaps seem to you a
paradox, since it is the physicist who deals with the subject-matter to
which the epithet ‘real’ is commonly applied. But a very little
reflexion will show that the ‘ reality’ of the physicist, whatever it may
be (and it is extraordinarily difficult to say), has few or none of the
attributes which common-sense instinctively marks as real. A chair
may be a collection of whirling atoms, or an idea in the mind of God.
It is not my business to suggest that one account of it is obviously
more plausible than the other. Whatever the merits of either of them
may be, neither draws its inspiration from the suggestions of common-
sense.

Neither the philosophers, nor the physicists themselves, have ever
put forward any very convincing account of what physical reality is, or
of how the physicist passes, from the confused mass of fact or sensation
from which he starts, to the construction of the objects which he
classifies as real. We cannot be said, therefore, to know what the
subject-matter of physics is; but this need not prevent us from under-
standing the task which a physicist is trying to perform. That, clearly,
is to correlate the incoherent body of facts confronting him with some
definite and orderly scheme of abstract relations, the kind of scheme, in
short, which he can only borrow from mathematics.

A mathematician, on the other hand, fortunately for: him, is not
concerned with this physical reality at all. It is impossible to prove,
by mathematical reasoning, any proposition whatsoever concerning the
physical world, and only a mathematical crank wvuld be likely now to
imagine it his function to do so. There is plainly one way only of
ascertaining the facts of experience, and that is by observation. It is
not the business of a mathematician to suggest one view of the universe
or another, but merely to supply the physicists with a collection of
abstract schemes, which it is for them to select from, and to adopt or
discard at their pleasure.

The most obvious example is to be found in the science of geometry.

Mathematicians have constructed a very large number of different

systems of geometry, Euclidean or non-Euclidean, of one, two, three, or
any number of dimensions. All these systems are of complete and
equal validity. They embody the results of mathematicians’ observa-
tions of their reality, a reality far more intense and far more rigid than
the dubious and elusive reality of physics. The old-fashioned geometry
of Euclid, the entertaining seven-point geometry of Veblen, the space-

is he aks

ees ee EE Es

A —MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS. 3

times of Minkowski and Einstein, ave all absolutely and equally real.
When a mathematician has constructed, or, to be more accurate, when
he has observed them, his professional interest in the matter ends.
It may be the seven-point geometry that fits the facts the best, for
anything that mathematicians have to say. There may be three dimen-
sions in this room and five next door. As a professional mathematician,
I have no idea; I can only ask the Secretary, or some other competent
physicist, to instruct me in the facts.

The function of a mathematician, then, is simply to observe the
facts about his own hard and intricate system of reality, that astonish-
ingly beautiful complex of logical relations which forms the subject-
matter of his science, as if he were an explorer looking at a distant range
of mountains, and to record the results of his observations in a series
of maps, each of which is a branch of pure mathematics. Many of
these maps have been completed, while in others, and these, naturally,
the most interesting, there are vast uncharted regions. Some, it seems,
have some relevance to the structure of the physical world, while others
have no such tangible application. Among them there is perhaps none
quite so fascinating, with quite the same astonishing contrasts of sharp
outline and mysterious shade, as that which constitutes the theory of
numbers.

The number system of arithmetic is, as we know too well, not with-
out its applications to the sensible world. The currency systems of

_ Europe, for example, conform to it approximately ; west of the Vistula,

two and two make something approaching four. The practical appli-
cations of arithmetic, however, are tedious beyond words. One must
probe a little deeper into the subject if one wishes to interest the ordinary
man, whose taste in such matters is astonishingly correct, and who
turns with joy from the routine of common life to anything strange
and odd, like the fourth dimension, or imaginary time, or the theory
of the representation of integers by sums of squares or cubes,

It is impossible for me to give you, in the time at my command, any
general account of the problems of the theory of numbers, or of the
progress that has been made towards their solution even during the last
twenty years. I must adopt a much simpler method. [ will merely
state to you, with a few words of comment, three or four isolated
questions, selected in a quite haphazard way. They are seemingly
simple questions, and it is not necessary to be anything of a mathe-
matician to understand them; and I have chosen them for no better
reason than that I happen to be interested in them myself. There is
no one of them to which I know the answer, nor, so far as I know, does
any mathematician in the world; and there is no one of them, with one
exception which I have included deliberately, the answer to which any
one of us would not make almost any sacrifice to know.

1. When is a number the sum of two cubes, and what is the
number of its representations? This is my first question, and first
of all I will elucidate it by some examples. The numbers 2=1* + 1*
and 9=23+4 1% are sums of two cubes, while 3 and 4 are not: it is
exceptional for a number to be of this particular form. The number
of cubes up to 1000000 is 100, and the number of numbers, up to this
limit and of the form required, cannot exceed 10000, one-hundredth of

I SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

the whole. ‘The density of the distribution of such numbers tends to
zero as the number tend to infinify. Is there, [ am asking, any simple
criterion by which such numbers can be distinguished ?

Again, 2 and 9 are sums of two cubes, and can be expressed in this
form in one way only. There are numbers so expressible in a variety
of different ways. The least such number is 1729, which is 12°4 18
and also 10°+9%. It is more difficult to find a number with three
representations ; the least such number is

175,959,000 = 560° +- 70° = 552° + 198° = 525° + 315°
One number at any rate is known with four representations, viz.
19 X 363510°
(a number of 18 digits), but I am not prepared to assert that it 1s
the least. No number has been calculated, so far as I know, with
more than four, but theory, running ahead of computation, shows that
numbers exist with five representations, or six, or any number,

A distinguished physicist has argued that the possible number of
isotopes of an element is probably limited because, among the ninety. or
so elements at present under observation, there is none which has more
isotopes than six. I dare not criticise a physicist in his own field;
but the figures I have quoted may suggest to you than an arithmetical
generalisation, based on a corresponding volume of evidence, would be
more than a little rash.

There are similar questions, of course, for squares, but the answers
to these were found long ago by Kuler and by Gauss, and belong to
the classical mathematics. Suppose, for simplicity of statement, that
the number in question is prime. Then, if it is of the form 4m+1, it
is a sum of squares, and in one way only, while if it is of the form
4m+8 it is not so expressible; and this simple rule may readily be
generalised so as to apply to numbers of any form. But there is no
similar solution for our actual problem, nor, I need hardly say, for the
analogous problems for fourth, fifth, or higher powers. The smallest
number known to be expressible in two ways by two biquadrates is

635318657 = 158' + 59° = 134° + 133°;
and I do not believe that any number is known expressible in three.
Nor, to my knowledge, has the bare existence of such a number yet
been proved. When we come to fifth powers, nothing is known at
all. The field for future research is unlimited and _ practically
untrodden.

2. I pass to another question, again about cubes, but of a somewhat
different kind. Is every large number (every number, that is to say,
from a definite point onwards) the sum of five cubes? This is another
exceptionaliy difficult problem. It is known that every number, with-
out exception, is the sum of nine cubes; two numbers, 23 (which is
2.284 7.15) and 239, actually require so many. It seems that there
are just fifteen numbers, the largest being 454, which need eight, and
121 numbers, the largest being 8042, which need seven; and the evidence
suggests forcibly that the six-cube numbers also ultimately disappear
In a lecture which T delivered on this subject at Oxford I stated, on
the authority of Dr. Ruckle, that there were two numbers, in the

. .
A,—MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS, 5

immediate neighbourhood of 1000000, which could not be resolved into
fewer cubes than six; but Dr. A. E. Western has refuted this assertion
by resolying each of them into five, and is of opinion, I believe, that
the six-cube numbers have disappeared entirely considerably before this
point. It is conceivable that the five-cube numbers also disappear, but
this, if it be so, is in depths where computation is helpless. The four-

cube numbers must certainly persist for ever, for it is impossible that a

number 9n+4 or 9n+5 should be the sum of three.

I need hardly add that there is a similar problem for every higher
| power. For fourth powers the critical number is 16. There is no
| case, except the simple case of squares, in which the solution is in any
sense complete. About the squares there is no mystery ; every number
is the sum of four, and there are infinitely many which cannot be
expressed by fewer.

3. I will next raise the Ferrie whether the number 2'87_-1 1s
3 prime. I said that I would include one question which did not interest
. me particularly, and I should like to explain to you the kind of reasons .

which damp down my interest in this one. I do not know the answer,
and I do not care greatly what it is.

The problem belongs to the theory of the so-called ‘ perfect ’ numbers,
which has exercised mathematicians since the times of the Greeks. _ A
number is perfect if, like 6 or 28, it is the sum of all its divisors, unity
included. Euclid proved that the number

9” (Qs a 1)
is perfect if the second factor is prime; and Euler, 2,000 years later,
that all even perfect numbers are of Euclid’s form. It is still unknown
whether a perfect number can be odd.

It would obviously be most interesting to know generally in what
circumstances a number 2”— 1 is prime. It is plain that this can only
be so if n itself is prime, as otherwise the number has obvious factors ;
and the 137 of my question happens to be the least value of n for
which the answer is still in doubt. | You may perhaps be surprised

_ that a question apparently so fascinating should fail to arouse me more.

It was asserted by Mersenne in 1644 that the only values of n, up
to 257, for which 2” —1 is prime are

Mie 0, 1 doy 1, 19,°3%, 67, 127, 257:
and an enormous amount of labour has been expended on attempts to
verify this assertion. There are no simple general tests by which
the primality of a number chosen at random can be determined, and
the amount of computation required in any particular case may be
quite appalling. It has, however, been imagined that Mersenne
perhaps knew something which later mathematicians have failed to
rediscover. The idea is a little fantastic, but there is no doubt that,
so long as the possibility remained, arithmeticians were justified in their
determination to ascertain the facts at all costs. ‘The riddle as to
how Mersenne’s numbers were discovered remains unsolved,’ wrote Mr.

Rouse Ball in 1891. Mersenne, he observes, was a good mathemati-

cian, but not an Euler or a Gauss, and he inclines to attribute the

discovery to the exceptional genius of Fermat, the only mathematician
AQ

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ae

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

of the age whom anyone could suspect of being hundreds of years ahead
of his time. ;

These speculations appear extremely fanciful now, for the bubble
has at last been pricked. It seems now that Mersenne’s assertion, so
far from hiding unplumbed depths of mathematical profundity, was a
conjecture based on inadequate empirical evidence, and a rather
unhappy one at that. It is now known that there are at least four
numbers about which Mersenne is definitely wrong; he should have
included at any rate 61, 89, and 107, and he should have left out 67.
The mistake as regards 61 and 67 was discovered as long ago as 1886,
but could be explained with some plausibility, so long as it stood alone,
as a merely clerical error. But when Mr. R. E. Powers, in 1911
and 1914, proved that Mersenne was also wrong about 89 and 107, this
line of defence collapsed, and it ceased to be possible to take Mersenne’s
assertion seriously.

The facts may be summed up as follows. Mersenne makes fifty-five
assertions, for the fifty-five primes from 2 to 257. Of these assertions
forty are true, four false, and eleven still doubtful. Not a bad result,
you may think; but there is more to be said. Of the forty correct
assertions many, half at least, are trivial, either because the numbers in
question are comparatively small, or because they possess quite small
and easily detected divisors. The test cases are those in which
Mersenne asserts the numbers in question to be prime; there are only
four of these cases which are difficult and in which the truth is known;
and in these Mersenne is wrong in every case but one.

It seems to me, then, that we must regard Mersenne’s assertion as
exploded; and for my part it interests me no longer. If he is wrong
about 89 and 107, I do not care greatly whether he is wrong about
137 as well or not, and I should regard the computations necessary
to decide as very largely wasted. There are so many much more
profitable calculations which a computer could undertake.

I hope that you will not infer that I regard the problem of perfect
numbers as uninteresting in itself; that would be very far from the truth.
There are at least two intensely interesting problems. The first is the
old problem, which so many mathematicians have failed to solve,
whether a perfect number can be odd. The second is whether the
number of perfect numbers is infinite or not. If we assume that all
perfect numbers are infinite, we can state this problem in a still more
arresting form. Are there infinitely many primes of the form 2"—1?
I find it hard to imagine a problem more fascinating or more terribly
difficult than that. It is plain, though, that this is a question which
computation can never decide, and it is very unlikely that it can ever
give us any data of serious value. And the problem itself really belongs
to a different chapter of the theory, to which I should like next to
direct your attention.

4. Are there infinitely many primes of the form n?+12 Let me
first remind you of some well-known facts in regard to the distribution
of primes.

There are infinitely many primes; their density decreases as the
numbers increase, and tends to zero when the numbers tend to infinity

A.— MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS. 7

More accurately, the number of primes less than x is, to a first
approximation,

ALL
log x
The chance that a large number n, selected at random, should be
prime is, we may say, about 7 1. Still more precisely, the ‘ logarithm-
og n
integral ’
Li «x mt a.
, log t
gives a very good approximation to the number of primes. This

number differs from Li « by a function of « which oscillates continually,
as Mr. Littlewood, in defiance of all empirical evidence to the contrary, ©
has shown, between positive and negative values, and is sometimes
large, of the order of magnitude »/z or thereabouts, but always small
in comparison with the logarithm-integral itself,

Except for one lacuna, which I must pass over in silence now, this
problem of the general distribution of primes, the first and central
problem of the theory, is in all essentials solved. But a variety of most
exciting problems remain as to the distribution of primes among numbers
of special forms. The first and simplest of these is that of the arith-
metical progressions: How are the primes distributed among all possible
arithmetical progressions an+b? We may leave out of account the case
in which a and b have a common factor ; this case is trivial, since an+b
is then obviously not prime.

The first step towards a solution was made by Dirichlet, who proved
for the first time, in 1837, that any such arithmetical progression contains
an infinity of primes. It has since been shown that the primes are,
to a first approximation at any rate, distributed evenly among all the
arithmetical progressions. When we pursue the analysis further
differences appear; there are on the average, for example, more primes
4n+3 than primes 4n+1, though it is not true, as the evidence of
statistics has led some mathematicians to conclude too hastily, that
there is always an excess to whatever point the enumeration is carried.

The problem of the arithmetical progressions, then, may also be
regarded as solved; and the same is true of the problem of the primes
of a given quadratic form, say am? +2bmn+cn?, homogeneous in the
two variables m and n. To take, for instance, the simplest and most
striking case, there is the natural and obvious number of primes
m*+n?, A prime is of this form, as I have mentioned already, if and
only if it is of the form 44 +1. The quadratic problem reduces here to a
particular case of the problem of the arithmetical progression.

When we pass to cubic forms, or forms of higher degree, we come
to the region of the unknown. This, however, is not the field of inquiry
which I wish now to commend to your attention. The quadratic forms
of which I have spoken are forms in two independent variables m and n ;
the form n?+1 of my question is a non-homogeneous form in a single
variable n, the simplest case of the general form an?+2bn+c. It is
clear that one may ask the same question for forms of any degree:

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

Are there, for example, infinitely many primes n*+2 or n*+1? I do
not choose n*+1, naturally, because of the obvious factor n+1.

This problem is one in which computation can still play an im-
portant part. You will remember that I stated the same problem for
perfect numbers. There a computer is helpless. For the numbers
2”—1, which dominate the theory, increase with quite unmanageable
rapidity, and the data collected by the computers appear, so far as one
can judge, to be almost devoid of value. Here the data are ample, and,
though the question is still unanswered, there is really strong statistical
evidence for supposing a particular answer to be true. It seems that
the answer is affirmative, and that there is a definite approximate
formula for the number of primes in question. This formula is

ptigfex (145) 5)0+a)Q4 a)

ghin/e X(1+5)(1 a@iegicicecc ss
where the product extends over all primes p, and the positive sign is
chosen when p is of the form 4n+3. Dr. A. E. Western has submitted
this formula to a most exhaustive numerical check. It so happens that
Colonel Cunningham some years ago computed a table of primes n* + 1
up to the value 15,000 of n, a limit altogether beyond the range of
the standard factor tables, and Cunningham's table has made practicable
an unusually comprehensive test. The actual number of primes is
1199, while the number predicted is 1219. The error, less than 1 In
50, is much less than one could reasonably expect. The formula
stands its test triumphantly, but I should be deluding you if I pretended
to see any immediate prospect of an accurate proof.

5. The last problem I shall state to you is this: Are there infinitely
many prime-pairs p, p+2? One may put the problem more generally :
Does any group of primes, with assigned and possible differences, recur
indefinitely, and what is the law of its recurrence ?

I must first explain what I mean by a‘ possible ’ group of primes.
It is possible that p and p+2 should both be prime, like 3, 5, or 101, 103.
It is not possible (unless p is 3) that p, p+2 and p+4 should all be
prime, for one of them must be a multiple of 3: but p, p+2, p+6 or
p, p+4, p+6 are possible triplets of primes. Similarly

p, p+2, p+6, p+8, p+12

can all be prime, so far as any elementary test of divisibility shows, and
in fact 5, 7, 11, 13 and 17 satisfy the conditions. It is easy to define
precisely what we understand by a ‘ possible’ group. We mean a group
whose differences, like 0, 2, 6, have at least one missing residue to
every possible modulus... The * impossible’ group 0, 2, 4 does not
satisfy the condition, for the remainders after division by 3 are 0, 2, 1,
a complete set of residues to modulus 3. There is no difficulty im
specifying possible groups of any length we please.

We define in this manner, then, a * possible’ group of primes, and
we put the questions: Do all possible groups of primes actually occur,
do they recur indefinitely often, and how often on the average do they
recur? And here again it would seem that the answers are affirmative,
that all possible groups occur, and continue to occur for ever, and
with a frequency whose law can be assigned. The order of magnitude

A—MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS. 9

of the number of prime-pairs, p, p+2, or p, p+4, or p, p+6, both of

whose members are less than a large number , 1s, it appears,

~

ie

(log x)°
The order of magnitude of the corresponding number of triplets, of any
possible type, is

all

(log ay"?
and so on generally. Further, we can assign the relative frequencies
of pairs or triplets of different types; there are, for example, about twice
as many pairs whose difference is 6 as pairs whose difference is 2. All
these results have been tested by actual enumeration from the factor
tables of the first million numbers; and a physicist would probably
regard them as proved, though we of course know very well that they
are not.

There is a great deal of mathematics the purport of which is quite
impossible for any amateur to grasp, and which, however beautiful and
important it may be, must always remain the possession of a narrow
circle of experts. It is the peculiarity of the theory of numbers that
much of it could be published broadcast, and would win new readers for
the Daily Mail. The positive integers do not lie, like the logical foun-
dations of mathematics, in the hardly visible distance, nor in the un-
comfortably tangled foreground, like the immediate data of the physical
world, but at a decent middle distance, where the outlines are clear
and yet some element of mystery remains. There is no one so blind
that he does not see them, and no one so sharp-sighted that his vision
does not fail; they stand there a continual and inevitable challenge to
the curiosity of every healthy mind. TI have merely directed your
attention for a moment to a few of the less immediately conspicuous
features of the landscape, in the hope that [ might sharpen your
curiosity a little. and that some of you perhaps might feel tempted to
walk a little nearer and take a rather closer view.

ee

SECTION B.—CHEMISTRY.

PART I.—THE ORGANISATION OF
RESEARCH.

ADDRESS BY
Principat J. C. IRVINE, C.B.E., D.Sc., LL.D., F.B.S.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION,

I am deeply sensible of the honour done to me in electing me to this
chair, and am well aware of my own unworthiness to occupy the
position. Nevertheless, I feel that there is something appropriate in
the choice which brings once more into close relationship the University
of St. Andrews and the British Association. You will forgive me if,
for the moment, my thoughts are focussed not so much on the subject
assigned to our Section as on the origin and nature of this annual
gathering of scientists.

The British Association was the product of an age rather than the
inspiration of any one man, yet of those who first gave practical effect
to the movement which has spread scientific learning and has bound
its devotees in a goodly fellowship there was no more eager spirit than
Sir David Brewster. It is not an exaggerated claim that it was he
who founded the British Association. One may trace his enlightened
action to a desire to combat the apathy and distrust shown by the
Government of his day towards scientific work and even scientific men.
Only in the historical sense can I claim any relationship with Brewster.
It is my privilege to occupy the Principalship he once held, and I
cannot escape from the thought that the daily tasks now mine were
once his.

It is thus inevitable that to-day a name often in my mind should
spring once more into recollection, especially as my distinguished
predecessor was present at the first Hull meeting in 1853, when he
contributed two papers to Section A. Chemists should be among the
first to pay grateful tribute to Brewster’s efforts on behalf of science,
and I propose, therefore, to include in my address a review of the
position scientific chemistry has won since his day in public and official
estimation. Moreover, at the express suggestion of some of our
members whose opinions cannot be disregarded, I am induced to add
the consideration of the new responsibilities chemists have incurred
now that so many of Brewster’s hopes have been realised. These were
recently submitted by me to another audience and, through the medium
of an article in ‘ Nature,’ are possibly known to you already, but I
agree with my advisers that their importance warrants further elabora-

~ tion and wider discussion.

It would be idle to recall the lowly position of chemistry as an
educative force in this country, or to reconstruct the difficulties with

_ which the scientific chemist was confronted during the first thirty years

Britis Association : Hull, 1922.] B

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

of the nineteenth century. Present difficulties are serious enough, and

press for all our attention, without dwelling unduly on troubles of the

past. But we must at least remember that in the early days of the

British Association ‘ schools’ of chemistry were in their infancy, and

that systematic instruction in the science was difficult to obtain.

Another point of fundamental importance which has to be borne in

mind is that the masters of the subject were then for the most part
solitary workers.

Tt is difficult for us, looking back through the years, to realise
what it must have meant to search for truth under conditions which
were discouraging, if not actually hostile. Yet, although his labours
were often thankless and unrewarded, the chemist of the time was
probably a riper philosopher and a finer enthusiast than his successor
of to-day. He pursued his inquiries amidst fewer distractions, and
in many ways his lot must have been happy, save when tormented by
the thought that a subject so potent as chemistry in developing the
intellectual and material welfare of the community should remain
neglected to an extent which to us seems incredible.

Public sympathy was lacking, Government support was negligible
or grudgingly bestowed, and there was little or no co-operation between
scientific chemistry and industry. As an unaided enthusiast the
chemist was left to pursue his way without the stimulus, now happily
ours, which comes from the feeling that work is supported by educated
and enlightened appreciation.

Let me quote from one of Faraday’s letters now in my possession
and, so far as I can trace, unpublished. Writing to a friend imme-
diately before the foundation of the British Association, he relates that
a manufacturer had adopted a process developed in the course of an
investigation carried out in the Royal Institution. The letter con-
tinues: ‘ He’ (the manufacturer) ‘ writes me word that, having repeated
our experiments, he finds the product very good, and as our information
was given openly to the world he, as a matter of compliment, has
presented me with some pairs of razors to give away.’ If ever there
was a compliment which could be described as empty, surely this was
one; yet the letter gives the impression that Faraday himself was quite
content with his reward.

It is perhaps unfair to quote Faraday as a type, for few men are
blessed with his transparent simplicity of character, but there is
obviously a great gulf fixed between the present day and a time when
a debt of honour could be cancelled in such a manner. A little reflec-
tion will show that the British Association has played a useful part
in discrediting the idea that because so much scientific discovery is
given ‘ openly to the world,’ those who profit by such discoveries should
be absolved from their reasonable obligations. Even where scientific
workers do not expect or desire personal reward, the institutions which
provide them with their facilities are often sorely in need. The recogni- _
tion, not yet complete, but more adequate than once was the case,
that the labourer is worthy of his hire represents only one minor change
which the years have brought.

An even greater contrast, embodying more important principles, is

—~ ‘yy

;
.

~~»
2.

*
B.—CHEMISTRY. 8

found in the changéd attitude of the State towards scientific education
and discovery. Remember Brewster's fond hope that, by means of our
Association, the whole status of science would be raised, and that a
greater measure of support and encouragement would be received from
the Government. How eagerly the venerable physicist must have
listened to the Presidential Address delivered at the twenty-third meeting
of the Association assembled in Hull for the first time. It dealt with
many problems familiar to him. No doubt he followed with keen
interest the account of the observations on Nebulae made with Lord
Rosse’s telescope, and appreciated the references to the work of Joule
and Thomson. The address was a masterly synopsis of scientific pro-
gress, but from time to time a new note steals in. There is a signifi-
cant reference to a consultation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
another to a conversation with Mr. Gladstone, and a third to a working
arrangement concluded with the Admiralty. These would fall sweetly
on Brewster's ear, and he would cordially approve of the report of our
Parliamentary Committee which had established sympathetic contact
with the House of Commons. He could not fail to be impressed with
the changes a few years had brought.

Let us bridge the further gap of sixty-nine years which separates
us from that day. The contrast is amazing, and once more we can
trace the steady, persistent influence of the British Association in
bringing about what is practically a revolution in public and official
opinion. We have learned many lessons. The change has come
suddenly, but it was not spontaneous. Many years had to be spent
in disseminating the idea that research is a vital necessity, and toward
this end Presidents of our Association have not hesitated, year after
year, to add the weight of their influence and eloquence. It was
courageous of them to do so. I would refer you particularly to the
forcible appeals made by Sir James Dewar at Belfast and Sir Norman
Lockyer at Southport, when the plea for more research was laid before
the Association, and thus found its way by the most direct channel to
the Press and to the public. No doubt many other factors have played
a part in creating a research atmosphere in this country, but the steady
pressure exerted by the British Association is not the least important
of these influences.

The principles of science are to-day widely spread; systematic
scientific training has found an honourable place in the schools and
in the colleges; above all, there is the realisation that much of human
progress is based on scientific inquiry, and at last this is fostered, and,
in part, financed as a definite unit of national educational policy. Public
funds are devoted to provide facilities for those who are competent to
pursue scientific investigations, and in this way the State, acting through
the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, has assumed the
double responsibility of providing for the advancement of knowledge
and for the application of scientific methods to industry. Scientists
have been given the opportunities they desired, and it remains for us
to justify all that has been done. We have this morning glanced briefly

~ at the painful toil and long years of preparation; now it falls to us to
sow the first crop and reap the first harvest.

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.j

Thanks to the wisdom and foresight of others, it has been possible
to frame the Government policy in the light of the experience gained
with pre-existing research organisations. The pioneer scheme of the
kind is that administered by the Commissioners of the 1851 Exhibition,
who since 1890 have awarded research scholarships to selected graduates.
When in 1901 Mr. Carnegie’s benefaction was applied to the Scottish
Universities the trustees wisely determined to devote part of the revenues
to the provision of research awards which*take the form of Scholarships,
Fellowships, and Research Lectureships. These have proved an im-
mense boon to Scottish graduates, and the success of the venture is
sufficiently testified by the fact that the Government Research scheme
was largely modelled on that of the Carnegie Trust.

In each of these organisations chemistry bulks largely, and the
future of our subject is intimately connected with their success or failure.
The issue lies largely in our hands. We must not forget that we are
only at the beginning of a great movement, and that fresh duties
now devolve upon us. It was my privilege for some years to direct
the work of a Chemistry Institute, where research was organised on
lines which the operation of the Government scheme will make general.
If, from the very nature of things, my experience cannot be lengthy
it is at least intimate, and I may perhaps be allowed to lay before you
my impressions of the problems we have to face.

Two main objectives lie before us: the expansion of useful learning
and the diffusion of research experience among a selected class. This
class in itself will form a new unit in the scientific community, and
from it will emerge the ‘ exceptional man’ to whom, quoting Sir James
Dewar, ‘ we owe our reputation and no small part of our prosperity.’
When these words were uttered in 1902 it was a true saying that ‘ for
such men we have to wait upon the will of Heaven.’ It is still true,
but there is no longer the same risk that the exceptional man will fall
by the way through lack of means. Many types of the exceptional
man will be forthcoming, and you must not imagine that I am regarding
him merely as one who will occupy a University Chair. He will be
found more frequently in industry, where his function will be to hand
on the ideas inspired by his genius to the ordinary investigator.

I have no intention of wearying you by elaborating my views on
the training required to produce these different types. My task is
greatly simplified if you will agree that the first step must be systematic
experience in pure and disinterested research, without any reference to
the more complicated problems of applied science. This is necessary,
for if our technical research is to progress on sound lines the founda-
tions must be truly laid. I have no doubt as to the prosperity of
scientific industries in this country so long as we avoid hasty and prema-
ture specialisation in those who control them. We may take it that in
the future the great majority of expert chemists will pass through a
stage in which they make their first acquaintance with the methods of
research under supervision and guidance. The movement is already
in progress. The Government grants are awarded generously and
widely. The conditions attached are moderate and reasonable, and
there is a rush to chemical research in our colleges. | Here, then, I

|
.

B,—CHEMISTRY. 5

issue my first note of warning, and it is to the professors. It is an
easy matter to nominate a research student; a research laboratory com-
fortably filled with workers is an inspiring sight, but there are few more
harassing duties than those which involve the direction of young
research chemists. No matter how great their enthusiasm and abilities,
these pupils have to be trained, guided, inspired, and this help can
come only from the man of mature years and experience. I am well
aware that scorn has been poured on the idea that research requires
training. No doubt the word is an expression of intellectual freedom,
but I have seen too many good investigators spoiled and discouraged
through lack of this help to hold any other opinion than that training is
necessary. | remember, too, years when I wandered more or less aim-
lessly down the by-paths of pointless inquiries, and I then learned to
realise the necessity of economising the time and effort of others.

The duties of such a supervisor cannot be light. He must possess
versatility ; for although a ‘ research school’ will doubtless preserve
one particular type of problem as its main feature, there must be a
sufficient variety of topics if narrow specialisation is to be avoided.
Remember, also, that there can be no formal course of instruction
suitable for groups of students, no common course applicable to all
pupils and all inquiries. Individual attention is the first necessity, and
the educative value of early researches is largely derived from the daily
consultations at the laboratory bench or in the library. The responsi-
bility of becoming a research supervisor-is great, and, even with the
best of good will, many find it difficult to enter sympathetically into

- the mental position of the beginner. An unexpected result is obtained,

an analysis fails to agree, and the supervisor, out of his long experience,
can explain the anomaly at once, and generally does so. If the pupil
is to derive any real benefit from his difficulties, his adviser must for
the moment place himself in the position of one equally puzzled, and
must lead his collaborator to sum up the evidence and arrive at the
correct conclusion for himself. The policy thus outlined is, I believe,
sound, but it makes severe demands on patience, sympathy, and, above
all, time. |

Research supervision, if conscientiously given, involves the com-
plete absorption of the director’s energy and leisure. There is a rich
reward in seeing pupils develop as independent thinkers and workers,
but the supervisor has to pay the price of seeing his own research
output fade away. He will have more conjoint papers, but fewer
individual publications, and limitations will be placed on the nature of
his work by the restricted technique of his pupils.

I have defined a high standard, almost an ideal, but there is, of
course, the easy alternative to use the technical skill of the graduate
to carry out the more laborious and mechanical parts of one’s own
researches, to regard these young workers as so many extra pairs of
hands. I need not elaborate the outcome of such a policy.

There is another temptation, and that, in an institution of university
rank, is for the professor to leave research training in the hands of
his lecturers, selecting as his collaborators only those workers who
have passed the apprenticeship stage. This, I am convinced, is a

B2

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

mistake. Nothing consolidates a research school more firmly than the
feeling that all who labour in its interests are recognised by having
assigned to them collaborators of real ability.

I am not yet done with the professor and his staff, for they will
have other matters to attend to if research schools are to justify their
existence and to do more than add to the bulk of our journals. In
many cases it will be found that the most gifted of the young workers
under their care lack what, for want of a better expression, is known as
‘ general culture.’ Remember, these graduates have just emerged from
a period of intensive study in which chemistry and the allied sciences
have absorbed most of their attention. For their own sake and in the
interests of our subject, they must be protected from the criticism that
a scientific education is limited in outlook and leads to a narrow
specialism. The research years are plastic years, and many oppor-
tunities may be found in the course of the daily consultations ‘ to
impress upon the student that there is literature other than the records
of scientific papers, and music beyond the range of student songs.’
[ mention only two of the many things which may be added to elevate
and refine the research student’s life. Others will at once occur to
you, but I turn to an entirely different feature of research training, for
which I make a special plea: I refer to the inculcation of business-like
methods. You will not accuse me, I hope, of departing from the
spirit of scholarship or of descending into petty detail, but my experi-
ence has been that research students require firm handling.
Emancipated as they are from the restrictions of undergraduate study,
the idea seems to prevail that these workers ought to be excused the
rules which usually govern a teaching laboratory, and may therefore
work in any manner they choose. It requires, in fact, the force of a
personal example to demonstrate to them that research work can be
carried out with. all the neatness and care demanded by quantitative
analysis. Again, in the exercise of their new freedom young col-
laborators are inclined to neglect recording their results in a manner
which secures a permanent record and is of use to the senior collaborator.
As a rule, the compilation of results for publication is not done by
the experimenter, and a somewhat elaborate system of records has to
be devised. It should be possible, twenty years after the work has
been done, to quote the reasons which led to the initiation of each
experiment, and to trace the source and history of each specimen
analysed, or upon which standard physical constants have been deter-
mined. I need not enter into detail in this connection beyond stating
that, although a system which secures these objects has for many years
been adopted in St. Andrews, constant effort is required to maintain
the standard.

One of the greatest anxieties of the research supervisor is, however,
the avoidance of extravagance and waste. The student is sometimes
inclined to assume a lordly attitude and to regard such matters as
the systematic recovery of solyents beneath his notice. My view is
that, as a matter of discipline as much as in the interests of economy,
extravagant working should not be tolerated. There is naturally an
economic limit where the time spent in such economies exceeds in

B,—CHEMISTRY, 7

value the materials saved, and a correct balance must be adjusted.
It is often instructive to lay before a research worker an estimate of
the cost of an investigation in which these factors of time and material
are taken into account. As a general rule it will be found that the
saving of material is of greater moment than the loss of time. The
point may not be vitally important in the academic laboratory, but
in the factory, to which most of these workers eventually migrate,
they will soon have the lesson thrust upon them that their time and
salary bear a small proportion to costs of production.

You will see I have changed my warning from the professor to the
student. A student generation is short. In a few years, when almost
as a matter of course the best of young chemists will qualify for the
Doctor of Philosophy degree, it will be forgotten that these facilities
have come to us, not as a right, but as a privilege. Those who reap
the advantages of these privileges must prove that the efforts made on
their behalf have been worth while.

Looking at the position broadly, if one may criticise the research
schemes of to-day, it is in the sense that the main bulk of support is
afforded to the research apprentice, and the situation has become infinitely
harder for the supervisor in that new and onerous tasks are imposed
upon him. To expect him to undertake his normal duties and, as a
voluntary act, the additional burden of research training is to force
him into the devastation of late hours and overwork. The question
is at once raised—Are we using our mature research material to the
best advantage, and is our policy sufficiently focussed on the require-
ments of the experienced investigator? I think it will generally be
agreed that members of the professor or lecturer class who join in
the movement must be relieved in great measure of teaching and
administrative work. I am decidedly of the opinion that the research
supervisor must be a teacher, and must mingle freely with under-
graduates, so as to recognise at the earliest possible stage the potential
investigators of the future and guide their studies. To meet this
necessity universities and colleges must realise that their curriculum has
been extended and that staffs must be enlarged accordingly. There
could then be definite periods of freedom from official duties for those
who undertake research training as an added task. Opportunities must
also be given to these ‘ exceptional men ’ to travel occasionally to other
centres and refresh themselves in the company of kindred workers.
It is evident that our universities are called upon to share the financial
burden inyolyed in a National Research scheme to a much greater
extent than possibly they know.

I may perhaps summarise some of the conclusions I have reached
in thinking over these questions. The first and most important is that
in each institution there should be a Board or Standing Committee
entrusted with the supervision of research. The functions of such a
body would be widely varied and would include: —

1. The allocation of money voted specifically from university or
college funds for research expenses.

2. The power to recommend additions to the Teaching Staff in
departments actively engaged in research.

B3

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

3. The recommendation of promotions on the basis of research
achievement.

A. The supervision of regulations governing higher degrees.

Among the more specific problems which confront this Board are
the following :—

1. The creation of Research Libraries where reference works cau
be consulted immediately.

2. The provision of publication grants, so that where no periodical —
literature is available the work will not remain buried or obscure.

3. The allocation of travelling grants to enable workers to visit
libraries, to inspect manufacturing processes, and to attend meetings
of the scientific societies.

I have dealt merely with the fringe of the question, but would add
that there is one thing which a Research Board should avoid.

It is, I am convinced, a mistake for a governing body to call for
an annual list of publications from research laboratories. Nothing
could be more injurious to the true atmosphere of research than the
feeling of pressure that papers must be published or the Department
will be discredited.

What I have said so far may seem aes a recital of new difficulties,
but they are not insurmountable, and to overcome them adds a zest
to life. It would have taken too long to go more fully into details and
I have tried to avoid making my address a research syllabus, merely
giving in general terms the impressions gained during the twenty years
in which the St. Andrews Research Laboratories have been in existence.

Save for the fact that I realise my audience is not confined to
university teachers I would have liked to speak on some such points
as these: The choice of a research student, the selection of a research
subject, the writing of scientific papers. Each would demand a lengthy
discussion, as would also the painful situation created when a research
topic fails or a research worker proves disappointing.

T have confined myself to the first stage in the research development
of the chemist. His future path may lead him either to the factory or
to the lecture-room, and in the end the exceptional man will be found
in the director’s laboratory or in the professor’s chair. | However
difficult these roads may prove, I feel that with fhe financial aid now
available, supported by the self-sacrificing labours of those who devote
themselves to furthering this work, he has the opportunity to reach the
goal. It is the beginning of a new scientific age, and we may look
forward confidently to itd time when there will be no lack of trained
scientific intellects to lead our policy and direct our efforts in all that
concerns the welfare of the country.

=
B.—CHEMISTRY.

<a)

PART II.-SOME RESEARCH PROBLEMS
IN THE CARBOHYDRATES.

CELLULOSE, STARCH, AND INULIN.

In submitting at this stage an account of the researches upon which
my co-workers are at present engaged, I am impressed by the recollec-
tion that the first paper on the alkylation of sugars was read to Section B
twenty years ago. The communication’ dealt merely with the progres-
sive methylation of methylglucoside and with the trimethyl and tetra-
methyl glucoses to which the products give rise. Even at that time it
was recognised that the study of methylated sugars opened up a new
method of attacking the constitutional problems of the carbohydrates,
and the further progress reported to the Association in the following
year showed how the process could be applied to determine, in part, the
structure of sucrose and maltose.2 The principle underlying these
studies may be very briefly stated. Adopting for the moment the
accepted formula for glucose it will be seen that a hexose sugar contains
five hydroxyl groups :—

lie .
—GHOH. . oss Ie
|
Peta ERoe by isin AB
oO |
PEL a seg
|
Selsey Gives 9 Ce
|
CUO io es Be
|
GEOR f as. 248

It is to be noted that one of these groups differs from the remaining
four in that, although it may be replaced by a methyl group, this is
easily removed by acid hydrolysis. On the other hand, when methyl
groups are introduced into the remaining positions (numbered 2, 3,
5, and 6 in the formula), they are exceedingly resistent to hydrolytic
action. It follows, therefore, that a fully methylated glucoside (II.)
when heated with acid will be converted into a tetramethyl glucose

(IIT.).

LE: ITI.
—CHOCH, uae
|
CHOCH, - CHOCH,
De! Or
CHOCH, ae,
—
'_¢CH —CH
|
CHOCH, CHOCH,

; au
CH,OCH, CH,OCH,

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

Similar reactions are impossible with acetyl or benzoyl derivatives
of sugars owing to the ease with which the substituting groups are
eliminated. In order to illustrate the utility of methylation in deter-
mining structure, we may ascribe to any sugar derivative the general
formula S—G, where $ is a sugar residue and G the group with which
it is condensed. Complete methylation may be effected, according to
the solubilities involved, by silver oxide and methyl iodide or, alterna-
tively, by methyl sulphate and alkali. The compound obtained will
yield, on hydrolysis, at least two products, one of which is a methylated
sugar. Determination of the number and distribution of the methyl
groups in each of the cleavage products gives the structure of the parent
compound, as the mode of attachment of the constituents is thereby
known.

In the special case where the group G is also a sugar residue the
general formula. of the complex may be written S—S:. The compound
would thus be a disaccharide, and precisely the same structural study
can be applied to it. The method is equally applicable to trisaccharides,
S—S:i—S:, and finally to polysaccharidesS.......

The development of this line of research has demanded the prepara-
tion of a large variety of methylated sugars, which play the part of
reference compounds in that the position of the alkyl groups in them
is known.

As I wish to deal particularly with the constitutional problems of
polysaccharides, I shall make no attempt to summarise the results which
have been obtained in the study of the simple sugars, the glucosides,
or the disaccharides, but turn at once to the case presented by cellulose.

Cellulose.
(With Dr. W. S. Denuam and Dr. E. L. Hirst.)

The extensive literature which has grown up on the constitution of
cellulose affords little satisfaction to the organic chemist. Despite the
complications involved and the many liabilities to error, it seems
impossible for workers on cellulose to resist the temptation to ascribe
a molecular formula to the compound. The difficulties which stand in
the way are too numerous to mention, but the marked stability of
cellulose under some conditions and its curious reactivity under others,
coupled with its limited solubility and lack of volatility, are outstanding
obstacles. As aresult, many divergent and even conflicting suggestions
have been put forward to represent the polysaccharide structurally,
and the views of chemists both within and without the large circle
of workers in this field are chaotic. The confusion is increased by
the fact that many formule for the compound are published in haste
to be corrected at leisure, and this unhappy state of affairs was never
more pronounced than to-day. I would refer you to an article by Hans
Pringsheim,* in which he classifies the mentality of investigators and
puts “for ward a plea that, if sure progress is to be made, the chemistry
of polysaccharides must be pursued slowly step by step. Impetuous
and hasty theorising does infinite harm.

The first essential in arriving at a satisfactory formula for cellulose

Ed
-B,—CHEMISTRY. 1]

is to ascertain if the aggregate (C,H, O,), is composed entirely of

glucose units, as even this fundamental point has been disputed. To
obtain the necessary evidence is not so simple as might appear, and
many of the ‘ proofs’ which have been offered do not carry conviction
to those familiar with the detailed chemistry of the simple sugars. By
converting cellulose into the triacetate and thereafter decomposing this

' product so as to give methylglucoside, we have recently obtained data

which leave no doubt that glucose alone is the basis of cellulose.t The
yield of pure crystalline methylglucoside thus isolated amounts to more
than 95 per cent. of the theoretical yield calculated on the basis of the
equation :—

(CgH,00s)x + x H,O ———> ZF C,H,.0,.

This result applies only to cotton cellulose, and further discussion
is therefore restricted to this particular variety. Disregarding
structures which are not based upon glucose, the numerous formule
proposed for cellulose may be approximately divided into two classes :

1. Constitutions modelled on that of the glucosides, involving the
aldition of numerous glucose residues by mutual condensation.
According to this view, cellulose consists of large molecules.

2. The unit of cellulose may be regarded as a simple anhydro-
glucose, O,H,,O;, highly polymerised.

As pointed out, the situation alters almost from day to day, but for
the moment a compromise between the above classes is supported, and
some authorities prefer to regard cellulose as a simple anhydro-n-
saccharide (where n is a small multiple) polymerised in unknown
numbers.

Twelve years ago, after developing the methylation process into a
trustworthy method for determining the linkages of sugar complexes,

we turned our attention to the constitution of cellulose. The work

was undertaken by Dr. W. S. Denham,* who, using methyl sulphate
and sodium hydroxide as the alkylating reagents, obtained a methylated
cellulose in which the methoxyl content was 25 per cent. This value
is lower than that required for a dimethyl] cellulose (32.6 per cent.),
and it followed that, on hydrolysing the product, a mixture of methy-
lated glucoses resulted. From the mixture one definite sugar was
isolated, and this Denham® proved to be 2,3,6-trimethyl glucose (IV.),
which was then isolated for the first time.

IV.
—CHOH
baocu,
CHocH,
—CH

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

Denham’s work thus gave the the first clear evidence as to the
linkage of part of the cellulose molecule, and is one of the most
important contributions made to the structural study of complex
carbohydrates. Cellulose must contain the unit

Ve
—CH——0—_X
ie

CHOH
0 |
CHOH

|
—CH

|
CH——O—_Y
|
CH,0H

but as an incompletely methylated. cellulose was employed in the
hydrolysis the research left unexplained the nature of the residues X
and ¥5.

The investigation was therefore continued with the object of com-
pleting the methylation of cellulose and providing answers to the follow-
ing questions :—

(a) does trimethyl cellulose give, on hydrolysis, a mixture of
methylated glucoses in which the average methoxyl con-
tent is three groups per (, unit,

or alternatively,

(b) if trimethyl cellulose gives trimethyl glucose alone, is this
sugar a single individual or a mixture of isomerides ?

The War interfered with the progress of the work, but other authors
have not hesitated to propose formule for cellulose based on Denham’s
results before he had an opportunity to complete his researches and
provide answers to the fundamental questions raised above.

In consultation with Dr. Denham we have repeated his experiments,
and amplified them, so that we are now in a position to propose a
structure for the cellulose unit which is based on secure evidence. We
find that the exhaustive methylation of the polysaccharide, when re-
peated twenty times, gives a product containing 43.0 per cent. of meth-
oxyl in place of the 45.6 per cent. required for a trimethyl derivative.
The carbon and hydrogen values also agree with the formula
(C;H,;O.(OMe),)« and as the material preserved a fibrous structure
there seems little likelihood that profound molecular alteration had
taken place. The trimethyl cellulose was heated with a large excess
of methyl alcohol containing 1 per cent. of hydrogen chloride for fifty
hours at 125-130°. This treatment effected depolymerisation, hydro-
lysis, and conyersion of the scission products into the corresponding
methylglucosides. These were distilled in a high vacuum, the total yield
obtained being 90 per cent. of the theoretical amount. The following
fractions were collected :—

B,--CHEMISTRY, 13

A. Trimethyl methylglucoside.

B. Trimethyl methylglucoside.

C. Trimethyl methylglucoside containing a small proportion of
dimethyl methylglucoside.

All the fractions were analysed, and in this way it was shown that
the small quantity of dimethyl methylglucoside in fraction C agreed
exactly with the deficiency of 2.6 per cent. in the methoxyl content
of the trimethyl cellulose used. No trace of tetramethyl methylqlucoside
was present. Moreover, the physical constants of the trimethyl methyl-
glucoside agreed exactly with those recently established for this com-
pound by Irvine and Hirst.? On hydrolysis of fractions A and B an
89 per cent. yield of crystalline 2,3,6-trimethyl glucose was obtained.
The identity of this product was confirmed by analysis, by mixed
melting-point with an authentic specimen, and by the mutarotation in
aqueous solution
. {a], +108°—— + 67.0°.

No isomeric trimethyl glucose was present; higher and lower methyl-
ated glucoses were absent. We thus reach the conclusion that tri-
methyl cellulose gives 2,3,6-trimethyl glucose as the only product.
The reactions involved in the research are shown below, and, consider-
sy ing the nature of the operations involved, the yields may be claimed to
be quantitative.

‘ Cellulose

a

Trimethyl cellulose
| | Yield 90%
2,3,6-Trimethyl methyl glucoside
\ Yield 89%
2,3,6-Trimethyl glucose
The scheme affords a proof that all the glucose residues in«-cellulose
are identical in structure, and the simplest possible formula which will
satisfy this condition is that of a 1,5-anhydro-glucose.
aa |
be -CHOH - CHOH -CH- CH -CH,OH VI.
I 0
It is necessary, however, to include at least one additional glucose unit
to account for the formation of cellobiose,* and this is fulfilled by the

formula
—CH ad)

CHOH Vik.

-
©
1
7,
+
t
®

CH——O0-——CH : CHOH : CHOH - oe -CH- CH,OH
| | ;
CH,OH C=

14 SECTIODAL ADDRESSES.

In terms of the above structure, 100 parts of cellulose should give
105.5 parts of cellobiose, and here the difficulty is encountered that the
yields of this disaccharide are extremely variable, and rarely exceed
35 per cent. The highest claimed is of the order 50-60 per cent., and
in the meantime it is prudent to select a formula for cellulose which
will give a result only slightly higher than this figure. We therefore
propose the symmetrical tri-1,5-anhydro-glucose (VIII.) for the unit
of cellulose, on the ground that this structure would give a 70 per cent.
yield of cellobiose as the theoretical maximum.

CH,OH O
|
—CH — © — CH - CH CHOH - CHO CH
| | |
CHOH
On|
| CHOH oO VIIl.
| |
|—CH

|
CH——O——CH - CHOH - CHOH - CH - CH - CH,OH

| | |
CH OH 0

There is, however, an alternative method of coupling the glucose
residues, and this gives the structure shown in Formula IX.

— oO =—
| |
—CH— 0—CH-CHOH-CHOH -CH - CH: CH,OH
| |
CHOH |
| O
CHOH | Ix.
} | |
—CH

| :

CH — 0— CH: CHOH - CHOH- CH: CH: CH,OH
| |

CH0H-. = 0

Taking into account the fact that it can yield only one disaccharide, we
prefer Formula VIII. to the above structure. The essential properties
of cellulose, so far as they are displayed in chemical reactions, are
accounted for by both formule. Further, the structures are not incon-
sistent with the production of bromomethyl furfuraldehyde ® from cellu-
lose, and indicate that the normal yield of this derivative involves the
reaction of one-third of the total unit.

The various formule which, in the past, have been proposed for
cellulose have been summarised by Hibbert.’° With the exception of
a structure suggested by this author, and in supporting which he pre-
maturely assumed that only one form of trimethyl glucose could be
obtained from cellulose, the structures he tabulates do not in any case
agree with the evidence we now produce. Typical examples are
quoted :—

B.—CHEMISTRY. 15
Green's formula ** :—

- CHOH———_CH CH, |
| »e yo | X.
| CHOH———-CH——CHOH |

Zz

would give a trimethyl cellulose which on hydrolysis would lose one

methyl] group and be converted into 3,4-dimethy] glucose of the amylene-
oxide type.

Vignon’s formula 13 :—

|
| CHOH——CH —_——. Ca,

‘\

0 “<a XI.

| CHOH——-CHOH--—CH
| az

is equally unsatisfactory in that the final product should then be
2,3,4-trimethyl glucose of the amylene-oxide type.

The formule proposed by Tollens,** Cross and Bevan,'* Bartelemy,*®
and Pictet '* may be deleted for similar reasons. It is also possible to
dispose of Karrer’s!7 formula, which is that of an anhydro-cellobiose
(termed ‘ cellosan ’)

—CH ~ _—____ —O
| |
CHOH
oO |
| CHOH
H

XIL

. |

CH——0-——CH -CHOH -CHOH. CH- CHOH: CH,
|

du,on ew

A compound possessing this structure would yield, on methylation and
hydrolysis,
1 molecule of 2,3,5-trimethyl glucose

and 1 molecule of 2,3,6-trimethyl glucose.
Our experimental evidence is completely opposed to this view.

An entirely different type of cellulose formula may now be
tested. Hess proposes ‘* a glucosidic structure which bears a general
resemblance to Fischer's constitution for tannins. Space does not

16 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

permit of these formule being given in full, but the general form will
be evident from the simplest example :—

O
|
-—CH—O—CH - CHOH -CHOH -CH - CHOH -CH,0OH
j O
CH—O—CH - CHOH -CHOH:-CH-CHOH -CH,OH
O
| CH—O—CH -CHOH -CHOH -CH -CHOH -CH,OH XIII.
hea
\—CH
O
CH—O—CH -CHOH - CHOH : ba -CHOH -CH,0H
— O =

| |
CH,—O—CH - CHOH -CHOH - CH - CHOH -CH,0H

Variations are introduced by lengthening the sugar chains until finally
a molecule is obtained with eighteen glucose residues (Cj y,Hi@O). The
feature common to all these glucosidic formule is that the hydroxyl
groups are not symmetrically distributed in the glucose residues, The
simplest structure suggested by Hess would give by our processes five
molecules of 2,3,5,6-tetramethyl glucose and one molecule of glucose,
while his more elaborate molecules would also result in these compounds
together with trimethyl glucose. The reactions of trimethyl cellulose
exclude all formule of this nature.

Starch.
[With Mr. Joun Macponautp M.A., B.Sc. ]

Turning to the problem of the constitution of starch, we encounter
very much the same difficulties as have already been referred to under
the heading of cellulose. The importance of the compound, its mani-
fold technical applications, and the special appeal its study makes to
the biologist have alike combined to produce a voluminous and some-
what scattered literature. If, however, we eliminate unsupported or
contradictory results the following evidence as to structure emerges.
Starch, when purified from constituents containing nitrogen and phos-
phorus, possesses the formula (C,H,0;),, and the molecule consists
entirely of glucose units. Further, three hydroxyl groups are pi*sent
for every six carbon atoms, but, as in the case of cellulose, this does
not necessarily imply that each glucose residue contains three unsub-
stituted hydroxyl groups, or that their distribution is symmetrical. The
primary reaction of starch, which must be accommodated by a structural
formula, is the production of maltose by the action of diastase.

The first essential is the identification of the unit of which the starch
molecule is composed, and here, as in the case of other polysaccharides,
molecular weight determinations give results of doubtful value. At the
present time there is little tendency to regard starch as a highly complex
glucoside in which a large number of hexose residues are mutually con-
densed together, and the view prevails that-the polysaccharide is derived
from a comparatively simple anhydro-sugar by profound polymerisation.
Attention may be focussed on three formule based on such ideas.

4
a
:
bs

«
B.—CHEMISTRY. a3

The unit of starch has been claimed to be :—

1. B-glucosan . . . (Pictet)"

2. anhydro-maltose . . (Karrer)”
3. triamylose . . (Pringsheim)”

It is possible to test these views by the methylation method.

The first successful methylation of starch was effected by Denham
and Woodhouse,?? and the reaction was afterwards adopted by Karrer.?*
He was, however, unable to complete the alkylation, the substitution
being arrested, as we ascertained many years ago, when the methoxyl
content was of the order 35 per cent. This value is slightly higher than
that demanded for a dimethyl starch, but is considerably lower than
that calculated for a trimethyl derivative. It is significant that Prings-
heim encountered similar difficulty in methylating the amyloses, diamyl-
ose giving a tetramethyl compound, whilst «-tetramylose was converted
into the corresponding octamethy] derivative. Pringsheim’s combined
results lead him to the conclusion that the molecule of starch is built
up of not more than 4-6 glucose residues, and, on the whole, he is
disposed to retain triamylose as the basis of the polysaccharide.

On the other hand, Karrer’s view that starch is a polymerised
anhydro-maltose rests upon very insecure evidence. The claim that
the action of acetyl bromide on the amyloses gives practically quantita-
tive yields of heptacetyl bromo-maltose has been adequately repudiated
by Pringsheim. It is, moreover, possible to dispose completely of
Karrer’s formula for starch by the results now submitted.

When the polysaccharide is methylated repeatedly by the methyl
sulphate method, the reaction ceases when the methoxyl content is
37 per cent. It is to be noted that this maximum is not reached when
the silver oxide and methyl iodide reaction is employed, as the substitu-
tion then stops definitely at the dimethyl stage. Now, the higher value
for methoxyl corresponds exactly with the theoretical amount calcu-
lated on the basis that one hexose residue has acquired three methyl
groups, while four are shared by two glucose residues. _ Ultimate
analysis is also in agreement with this view. Hydrolysis of the methy-
lated starch has shown that this is not a fortuitous coincidence, and
we thus obtain a direct clue to the magnitude of the unit which goes
to form the starch molecule. When digested with methyl alcohol con-
taining hydrogen chloride the methylated polysaccharide was converted
into trimethyl methylglucoside and dimethyl methylglucoside. These
were purified by distillation in a high vacuum, and thereafter hydrolysed
to give the parent sugars. A totally unexpected result was encountered
in that the trimethyl] glucose actually isolated proved to be the crystalline
form in which the methyl groups occupy the 2,3,6-positions. This
sugar has been shown to have the constitution given in Formula XIV.,
and the linkage of one glucose unit in the starch molecule is thus
established (Formula XV.). It is to be noted that this particular type
of structure is not present in maltose, but is characteristic of cellobiose
and lactose.

18 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

XIV. XV
—CHOH —CH—-0 x
CHOCH, eo
: baocu, CHOH
_tn _du

dnon bao Ss: NG

éu,ocH, ba,on

In order to accommodate the formation of maltose from starch either
one or two additional glucose residues must be present at X and Y in
the unit. Before developing a formula which will fulfil the above
conditions an outline of the reactions involved may be given :—

STARCH
+
Methylated Starch (OMe = 36-4 %)
(13 grams) [a]p + 186°3°
+ !
+ + Vebe
Trimethyl methylglucoside Dimethyl methylglucoside Depolymerised

Methylated Starch
(OMe = 37 %)

[a]y + 80°
J ih (4 grams)
2,3,6-T'rimethyl glucose Dimethyl glucose
(3 grams) (6 grams)
—~ a

2,3,5,6-Tetramethyl glucose

It will be seen that the removal of trimethyl glucose and dimethyl
glucose in the molecular ratio of 1:2 is effected without alteration in
the composition of any methylated starch which survives hydrolysis.
The result is striking confirmation of the view that starch is based on
an anhydro-trisaccharide in which two hexose residues are linked in
a different fashion from the third. One of these is constituted as in
Formula XY., and the remaining two must be added in such a way
that at least one pair displays the essential structure of maltose.74

Four different structures may be built up to accommodate these
factors :—

0)
| |
—CH——O——CH, - CHOH - CH - CHOH - CHOH - CH
|
CHOH
0.04
CHOH O XVE
|
—CH

|
CH——O——CH - CHOH - CHOH - CH - CHOH - CH,

|
bon =e

:

.

B.—CHEMISTRY. 19
Kelana

—CH——-O-——-CH - CHOH - CHOH - ne - CHOH - CH,

CHO

|

CHOH XVII.
\ |

—CH

|

CH——-O-——-CH, - CHOH - CH - CHOH - CHOH - CH

| |

CH,OH a

Tete

= eee H - CHOH - CHOH - CH - CHOH - CH,
|

| CHOH
oO |

| CHOH O XVII.

be

bx o-- on - CHOH - CHOH - = - CHOH - CH,
buon ae

—CH——O——CH, - CHOH - da . cHOH - CHOH - dH
HOH
duon XIX.
aba
bx_—_o-_on, . CHOH - CH - CHOH - CHOH - CH
buon aaa eat st

(Letters in block type designate the potential reducing groups. )

j
The methylation process cannot discriminate between these possibili-
ties, and with the data at our disposal it is inadvisable to make a definite
e claim in favour of any one of them. Each formula postulates that
; starch is derived entirely from the butylene-oxide form of glucose, and
: this we have shown to be the case. The formule are all consistent with
the steric hindrance encountered in completing the methylation of
starch, previous experience having shown that the alkylation of
| position 5 is difficult when position 6 of the glucose chain is already
| substituted.
® The formule differ in one important respect, as maltose may be
obtained from form XVI. in two ways, and in only one way from each
of XVII., XVIII., XIX. Pending the completion of further work on
this subject we prefer formula XVI., but recognise that our results
apply only to a purified rice starch.

20 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

One objection may, however, be discussed. In the formation of
maltose no more than one molecule of this disaccharide could be obtained
from one such unit. The maximum yield of the sugar would there-
fore be of the order 70 per cent. (74 per cent. calculated as maltose
hydrate). Yields higher than this figure are quoted in the literature,
but 1t may be remarked that most specimens of maltose do not behave
as identical homogeneous chemical individuals in bacteriological tests.
Further, von Euler and Svanberg,?° who conducted the diastatic
hydrolysis of starch under conditions in which the optimum hydrogen
ion concentration was present, report that the yield of maltose formed
is then 75 per cent. The small margin unexplained by our formule
may be due to the synthetic action of the enzyme on the molecule of
glucose liberated during hydrolysis. This suggestion is in agreement
with von EKuler’s observation that the end point of his reaction was
reached with extreme slowness. Another objection to the new structure
is that the acetolysis of starch might result in molecular rupture in
such a manner that cellobiose would be produced. So far, this
disaccharide has not been encountered in the degradation products of
starch, a result which is not surprising in view of the uncertainty
attending the formation of cellobiose. It may also be mentioned that
if starch is composed uniformly of the above anhydro-trisaccharide
residues it is difficult to explain the existence of polyamyloses other
than those to which the general formula (C,H, O;)s;, ¢an be applied.
Taking into consideration the yield of di- and tetra-amylcses obtained
from starch, it is evident that they may possibly be accounted for in
the fraction of the starch molecule which has not yet been converted
into recognisable glucosides, but the alternative is also open that the
polyamyloses may not all be structurally related to starch.

It is perhaps advisable to point out that the experimental results
now presented demand the rejection of various formule for starch

proposed from time to time by Karrer. His structures are based on a_

diamylose (anhydro-maltose), two formule for which have been put
forward differing in the position of the anhydro-ring. The evidence
he adduces in favour of these views is not convincing.

The first unit he gives is:—

, | 0: |
CH,OH - CHOH -: CH - CHOH - CHOH -: CH
|
2.) 0 XX.
l Ono ve
CH - CHOH - CHOH - CH - CH: CH,

bo HE Eig

A formula of this type is open to many criticisms, and would
demand the direct production of 2,3,5,6-tetramethyl glucose from
a methylated starch. It is needless to state further objections, as

o
B—CHEMISTRY, 21
Karrer rapidly changed his views in favour of an alternative which
is equally incorrect. The unit he prefers at present is :—
io: 0
SHOH |
|

( XXI.
—CH

CH, O——CH - CHOH - CHOH - CH - CHOH - CH,
|
Oo =< =

It is clear that the only trimethyl glucose to which such a structure
could give rise is the 2,3,5-form described by Irvine and Oldham.*°
No trace of this compound was detected by us, and, moreover, the
2,3,6-variety of trimethyl glucose actually obtained cannot possibly
be accommodated by Karrer’s formula. For similar reasons it can no
longer be maintained that starch is an aggregate of @-glucosan residues.
Irvine and Oldham have proved that glucosan is convertible into
2,3,5-trimethyl glucose, and the same sugar should be formed on
hydrolysing methylated starch if there is any structural relationship
between glucosan and the polysaccharide. The result obtained is
obviously opposed to such a view.

Our work has also thrown light on various other problems connected
with the chemistry of starch, including the attachment of nitrogen and
phosphorus to the molecule. These elements do not appear to be
constitutents of extraneous compounds, but form part of the polymerised
aggregate. This is shown very clearly by the behaviour of nitrogenous
starch, which was methylated in the first instance by the use of methyl
sulphate and alkali. Thereafter the product was treated with silver
oxide and methyl iodide, but contrary to expectation the whole of
the material became converted into an insoluble additive compound
with silver iodide. This behaviour does not extend to a purified starch,
and finds an exact parallel in the case of glucosamine derivatives which,
under identical conditions, form insoluble complexes with silver
halides.27 Obviously if nitrogen were present merely as part of an
adventitious impurity only this component would be removed in the
course of the silver oxide alkylation, and the fact that the total material
was precipitated is a proof that the fragment containing nitrogen is
definitely polymerised to the starch unit. Similar considerations apply
to the case of glycogen and have served to complicate our work on the
alkylation of this compound. It has been established, however, that,
as in the case of starch, the methylation of glycogen shows a tendency
to be arrested when the methoxyl content is under 40 per cent. The
separation of the methylated glucoses is not yet sufficiently far advanced
to permit of their identification, but a publication on the exact relation-
ship of glycogen to starch will not be long delayed.

22 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

Synthetic Dextrins.
(With Mr. J. W. H. Oupuam B.A.]

With the courteous permission of Professor Pictet we have applied
the methylation process to the synthetic dextrins recently prepared by
him.** These compounds are formed by the polymerisation of
B-glucosan and, in properties and composition, they closely resemble
the natural dextrins. It is, however, abundantly evident that the
synthetic compounds differ structurally from starch as, although
methylation was extremely tedious, complete alkylation was effected
with the production of trimethyl derivatives. Contrary to expectation,
hydrolysis of these compounds did not lead to the formation of 2,3,5-

trimethyl glucose, although this sugar has already been obtained from

8-glucosan by similar treatment. On the other hand, large quantities
of 2,3,5,6-tetramethyl glucose were invariably formed, together
with lower methylated glucoses in which the position of the alkyl
groups is unknown. It follows from these results that the synthetic
dextrins are complex polyglucose-glucosides, and it is interesting to note
that they thus conform to the structural type suggested for cellulose
by Hess. Although starch is convertible into glucosan and this, in
turn, into the synthetic dextrins, it is evident that profound structurai
alterations must accompany each change.

Inulin.

[With Dr. Errre S. Streetz, Mr. G. McOwan M.A., B.Se., and Miss -

M. I. SHannon B.Sc. ]

The statement has been made that, of all the polysaccharides,
inulin is the representative of which the structure has been most
definitely established. The opinion ‘is gratifying, but not altogether
accurage.

Inulin is derived from fructose, and, until recently, there was no
reason to doubt that the parent hexose was the well-known levo-rotatory
form of the ketose. This view is no longer tenable as, although inulin
itself yields the normal form of fructose on hydrolysis, trimethyl inulin
is converted into a dextro-rotatory trimethyl fructose.*® In similar
manner, dimethyl inulin gives a dextro-rotatory dimethyl fructose.
Each of these alkylated ketoses was proved to be a derivative of the
‘._fructose,’ which is a constituent of sucrose.

This result places inulin in a position which is quite unique, and
the evidence is conclusive that the polysaccharide is entirely composed
of +-fructose residues, each of which retains three hydroxyl groups.

The many problems involved in the constitution of inulin have been
discussed by us at some length in recent papers, and attention may
now be restricted to the additional evidence we have secured. One
important point left unsettled was whether the trimethyl -fructose
obtained from trimethyl inulin is a single chemical substance or a
mixture of isomerides. The question is fundamental, as only in the
event of the methylated fructose proving to be a single individual are
we justified in claiming that the hydroxyl groups in inulin are

symmetrically disposed. The experimental difficulties in the way are

PT ae)

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—————

————eEe— Cc erlUr”—

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PE ORAS Oe Se ee ES a

a
B.— CHEMISTRY. 23

formidable, as methylated fructoses of the y-type are liquids and give
no crystalline derivatives. By the following method, however, it has
been possible to obtain the necessary information, and it is now
established that only one form of trimethyl fructose is produced from
inulin.
A large quantity of trimethyl inulin was digested with methyl] alcohol
containing hydrogen chloride under conditions which effected :—
(a2) Depolymerisation,
(b) hydrolysis,
(c) condensation to give trimethyl methylfructoside.
The product was distilled in a high vacuum, and fractions were
abstracted at frequent intervals while the boiling-point remained
constant. All the fractions showed the same refractive index and
specific rotation. Moreover, the speed of hydrolysis of the fructoside,
as indicated by polarimetric observations, was in each case the same
and in each experiment the trimethyl fructose then formed showed
identical physical constants. Of greater importance is the faét that
all the specimens of trimethyl methyl-fructoside reacted in the same
way when dissolved in acetone containing hydrogen chloride. Under
these conditions trimethyl fructose monoacetone was formed, and here
again the speed of the reaction measured polarimetrically showed no
difference in any of the specimens.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that inulin is an aggregate of
anhydro y-fructose residues and that each of the units is identical.
As the exact structure of the methylated fructoses of the y-type is
not yet determined with certainty, it is needless to speculate here on the
marner in which these residues are united. The subject has been
engaging our attention for a considerable time, but is complicated by
the readiness with which the methylated inulins undergo both
polymerisation and depolymerisation.
It is not unlikely, bearing in mind the structure assigned to cellulose
and starch, that inulin is based on a tri-anhydro-+-fructose.

The structural discussion which I have had the honour to lay before
you on one of the most important groups of natural compounds is
admittedly incomplete, and no claim is made that the formule now
submitted are final. But they at least indicate a new development in
the chemistry of polysaccharides, and lines of further research are
opened out which promise in time to reveal the intimate constitution of
these substances. Much reliance has been placed on the validity of the
methylation process as a means of determining structure, but it has to
be remembered that most speculation of the kind on carbohydrates is
now based on results obtained by this one particular method. The
structure of glucosides, the nature of y-sugars, the constitution of
sucrose, maltose, and cellobiose, are all involved in current discussions
on this subject, and all are based on the properties of the simple
alkylated sugars.

Numerous details, such as the specific reactions of the individual
hydroxyl groups in carbohydrate units, have still to be settled before
the further problem of the polymerisation of polysaccharides can be

24 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

adequately dealt with, but many features, for the most part unexpected,
have been revealed.

The polysaccharides, like many other research fields, are, after all,
not so complicated as they appeared when viewed from afar, and the
close relationship now established between cellulose and starch, starch
and lactose, inulin and sucrose, will, it is hoped, play a part in bringing
within the range of exact experiment the structural study of all types
of natural compounds. related to the simple sugars.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

. Purdie and Irvine, Reports, 1902.
. Purdie and Irvine, Reports, 1903.
. Pringsheim, Zeitsch. angew. Chem., 1922, 53, 345
. Irvine and Soutar, J.C.S., 1920, 117, 1489.
Irvine and Hirst, J.C.S., 1922, 121.
5. Denham and Woodhouse, J.C.S., 1913, 108, 1735; bid. 1914, 105, 2357.
Denham, J.C.S., 1921, 119, 77.
6. Denham and Woodhouse, J.C.S. 1917, 111, 244.
7, Irvine and Hirst, J.C.S., 1922, 121, 1213 ;
8. Irvine and Soutar, loc. cit.
Haworth and Hirst, J.C.S., 1921, 119, 193.
9. Fenton and Gostling, J.C.S., 1899, 75, 423 ; 1901, 79, 361.
10. Hibbert, J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 1921, 13, 256.
1l. Green, Zeit. Farb. Text. Ind., 1904, 3, 97; 309.
12. Vignon, Bull. Soc. Chim., 1899, 21 (3), 599.
13. Tollens, Kurzes Handbuch der Kohlenhydrate, 1914.
14. Cross and Bevan, J.C.S., 1901, 79, 366.
15. Bartelemy, ‘ Caoutchouc and Gutta Percha,’ 1917, 9274; 9328.
16. Pictet and Sarasin, Helv. Chim. Acta, 1918, 1, 187, and subsequent papers.
17. Karrer and Smirnov, Helv. Chim. Acta, 1921, 5, 187.
18. Hess, Zeitsch. Elektrochem., 1920, 26, Nr. 11.
19. Pictet, loc. cit.
20. Karrer, Natur. wiss., 1921, 9, 399.
Karrer and Smirnoy, loc. cit.
21. Pringsheim, loc, cit.
22. Denham and Woodhouse, loc. cit.
23. Karrer, Helv. Chim. Acta, 1920, 8, 620; ibid. 1921, 4, 185; 678.
24. Purdie and Irvine, J.C.S., 1905, 87, 1022.
Irvine and Dick, J.C.S., 1919, 115, 593.
Haworth and Leitch, ibid., 809.
25. Euler and Svanberg, Zeitsch. physiolog. Chem., 1921, 112, 207.
26. Irvine and Oldham, J.C.S., 1921, 119, 1744.
27. Irvine and Hynd, J.C.S., 1912, 101, 1128.
28. Pictet, Helv. Chim. Acta., 1918, 1, 226, and subsequent papers.
29. Irvine and Steele, J.C.S., 1920, 117, 1474.
Irvine, Steele-and Shannon, J.C.S., 1922, 121, 1060.

Bm Cob =

eee eee

kV

SECTION C.—GEOLOGY.

THE “PH¥SIOGRAPHY OF THE
COAL SWAMPS.

ADDRESS BY

Proresson PERCY FRY KENDALL, M.&c., I.G.5.
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Tuis enterprising and progressive city in which we are assembled is
one of the three ports of shipment for the products of our most
important coalfield and for the entry of many of the commodities which
we receive in exchange. It seems not unfitting, therefore, that I should
address you upon geological problems relating to Coal, more especially
as the development of the portion of the Coalfield concealed under
newer rocks is approaching nearer and nearer to Hull.

The subject of Coal Measures Geology has been discussed piece-
meal in innumerable papers and memoirs, so that an enquirer may
well be appalled at the mass of facts and of often conflicting deductions
with which he is confronted. Indeed, it is surprising to discover how
fundamental are some differences of opinion which exist.

A cause that has largely contributed to this confusion has been
that the geological specialist has commonly worked too exclusively on
the outside of the earth, and the miner, who has viewed things below,
has seldom attempted any broad generalisations, his experience being
limited usually to a small number of collieries or of coal-seams.

In my treatment of the subject I shall be frankly and freely specula-
tive, for I hold that the Geology of Coal has now reached a stage when
the mass of accumulated data calls for an attempt at a general review
and synthesis. A Scottish Divine, addressing members of the British
Association at Edinburgh last year, said: ‘An ounce of theory is worth
a ton of fact.’ With some qualifying adjectives this embodies a pro-
found truth. A carefully considered and weighed theory is worth a
great mass of uncoordinated facts, and when I survey the vast un-
digested, though not indigestible, mass of facts in. the body of coaly
literature—without taking into account the 250 million tons of solid
black facts raised by the British collieries in an average year—I am
emboldened to cast into the opposite scale an ounce or so of theory
compounded from the ideas of my illustrious fellow-workers and perhaps
an odd grain or two of my own.

Growth in place, or Drift.
Among the questions in the answer to which doctors have differed
there is, I imagine, none more fundamental than this :
Were coal seams simple aggregations of plant remains swept together
by the action of water—a process of accumulation which the learned
Britisu Assocration : Hull, 1922.] G

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

call allochthony ; more simply by drift ; or were they formed, like peat,
by the growth of vegetable material in its place—the process of
autochthony ?

I do not intend to labour the answer to this question. Categorical
arguments in favour of the growth in place origin of the coal-forming
vegetation are on record, and they have never been as categorically
answered. Many arguments in favour of the Drift Theory seem to me
clearly to have arisen from confusion between cannel and true coal.
This distinction is again fundamental. True coal-seams are charac-
terised by :—

(1) Wide extent.

(2) Uniformity of thickness and character over extensive areas.

(3) Freedom from intermingled detrital mineral matter.

(4) Constant presence of a seat-earth or rootlet bed.

(5) Entire absence of remains of aquatic animals within the seam.

Substitute affirmatives for negatives, and negatives for affirmatives,
and the characteristics of cannel are as truly set forth. The whole
subject has been exhaustively reviewed with all the resources of wide
study and great field experience in Professor J. J. Stevenson’s memoirs
or monographs entitled respectively The Formation of Coal Beds, and
Inter-relation of Fossil Fuels, volumes which are treasure-houses of
facts. Without a familiar knowledge of these two masterpieces of
scientific induction, no geologist is fully equipped for an inquiry into
the Geology of Coal. Not the least arresting chapters are those in
which the author demonstrates the inadequacy of river-drift to provide
materials for the formation of a coal-seam. He shows that even when
in high flood the gross amount of timber, drift-wood and general raffle
of plant detritus carried along and available for the purpose of coal-
seam formation is quite insignificant. He gives many citations from
reports of geologists and others, as well as from his own experience,
to show that when a flooded river sweeps through a forest it scarcely,
if at all, disturbs the humus.

High-Moor or Deltaic Swamp.

Granted, therefore, that coal-seams were, in the main, formed by
the growth, death, and accumulation on the spot of plant tissues after
the general manner of beds of peat, our next inquiry must be into the
further and consequent question: What type of modern peat-growth
most nearly represents the conditions of the old peat areas? Were
they upland or lowland peats; were they wet or dry? If in search of
an answer to this question we examine a section of Coal Measures
strata in which coal-seams are included, we find a series of well-
stratified layers of sandstones, shales, and the like, exhibiting general
regularity of bedding, fine lamination of the layers, and the frequent
occurrence of beds charged with the remains of aquatic animals, some
marine and some of fresh-water habitat. We cannot fail to recognise
in this the inexpugnable evidence of a lowland area undergoing inter-
mittent depression, such as would bring in, at one time, the muds and
sands of an area of alluvial drainage, and, at another time, even the
sea. We are presented, then, with a clear initial conception of a vast

C.—GEOLOGY. 3

lowland peat-bog coextensive with, not merely the coal-seam as it
now exists, but with its much greater development before denudation
had clipped its edges or cut it into several detached areas. This must
be our starting-point and principal postulate.

In obedience to the wholesome admonition that the geologist should
interpret the past by the present, I have sought in descriptions of the
great alluvial areas of the world for some tract that shall exhibit to us
conditions closely paralleling—after allowance for biological differences
---those of Coal Measure times, especially as regards the extent of the
areas of peat formation. In the great Dismal Swamp of Virginia some
resemblance may be found, but the area is far too small. The Amazon
alluvium is comparable in area, but we have no knowledge of the peats.
The deltas of the Nile and the Indus equally fail us. The Ganges
delta comes much nearer. But after long flights of inquiry in many
parts of the earth I find that one of the best illustrations lies very
literally at our doors. At some period subsequent to the Pleistocene
Ice Age the whole of the British Isles appears to have stood—relatively
to the sea—at the least 80 ft. above its present level, and this uplifted
position similarly affected Holland, Belgium, and much of France.
The North Sea, in its southern half, appears to have been brought
by the net effect of glacial erosion and deposition to the condition of a
vast plain so nearly at the then sea-level that it became a morass.
Round its margins were forests of oak, pine, and birch, while the greater:
part of the area furnished the conditions for a great peat-swamp.
Under favourable conditions of tide, peat-beds, with or without the
frayed and torn stumps of trees in position of growth, may be seen
below high-water mark, and in this city of Hull the Forest Beds
are exposed when deep cuttings are made or they are encountered in
borings. In Holland the peat-beds are similarly present, and in the
excavations for docks at Antwerp a peat-bed was found, overlain by a
deposit with estuarine shells. This evidence alone would do no more
than prove a fringe of swamps surrounding the North Sea, but the
trawlers who rake every square mile of the North Sea floor tind their
operations impeded in places by masses of peat (Moorlog). Clement
Reid, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of Post-glacial con-
ditions, expressed his interpretation of the physiography of the North
Sea area at this stage in a map which showed the portion of the North
Sea south of a line joining Flamborough Head to the northern point
of Denmark as a plain intersected by the multiple tributaries and mouths
of the Rhine, the Weser, the Elbe, and other rivers.

If we assume that the peat-beds found on the margins and at many
stations upon this sea-floor were once approximately continuous, the
area would furnish the nearest modern parallel in respect of size to the
ancient peat-morasses which the coalfields must once have presented.
Beyond this the parallelism fails us. The Coal Measures of England
are preponderantly of fresh-water origin, as the recurrent beds of
Carbonicola and its allies demonstrate, while the Holocene peats of
the Dogger Bank and Holland are associated chiefly with marine or
estuarine deposits. The coals of the Lower Carboniferous of the North
of England and of the Scottish Lowlands, on the other hand, present

c2

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

requent intercalations of marine strata—generally of hmestone—which
is again unlike the North Sea peat-fields.

In the Yorkshire Coalfield—I hope I may be forgiven for styling
the coalfield extending from Leeds to Nottingham by the short title
‘The Yorkshire Coalfield ’"—in the Yorkshire Coalfield, then, marine
intercalations are represented by beds of shale of extremely fine, blue,
unctuous, almost textureless character. These are never more than
20 ft. in thickness, though it would not, perhaps, be quite fair to judge
by this relatively small thickness that the marine incursions, though
not infrequent, were of proportionately short duration.

The Coal Measures,

The succession of strata in a coalfield exhibits a , consid aaa
diversity. Shales—the laminated muds of the old lagoons and swamps—
are the predominant elements. These vary much in texture from
coarse sandy and micaceous deposits, scarcely separable from actual
sandstones, through finer and finer materials to the ‘ marine bands ’
already referred to.

The sand—now sandstone—beds are second in bulk only to the
shales, and it is interesting to observe that two principal stratigraphic
forms are presented. There are, first, the broad sheets extending
over hundreds or even thousands of square miles—for example, the
Elland Flags are recognisable by their position in the sequence
throughout the coalfield from Leeds to Nottingham; their equivalent
has been identified in Lancashire and with much probability in
North Staffordshire. | Whether it reappears in North Wales is doubt-
ful, but its total area must certainly extend to several thousands
of square miles. No signs of marine life accompany it anywhere, but
in the northern part of its range it is surrounded, either directly or more
commonly with an interval of twenty or thirty yards, by a coal-seam—
the Better Bed, renowned for its purity and for the very valuable fire-
clay that accompanies it. Within or directly upon the top of the rock
was found the magnificent stigmarian root now in the Manchester
Museum. The evidence, positive and negative, proves the Elland Flags
to be of the delta flat type. No decisive indication of the direction of
the stream has been sought, though the analogy of the great sandstones
of the Millstone Grit series tempts me to conjecture that it was from
N. or N.E., and this surmise is strengthened by the occurrence of
the coal-seam in that direction and not to S. or S.W., and we may
picture a great sandy delta growing by its edge southward and west-
ward with a peat-swamp establishing itself on the higher parts.

Lesser sandstones of the same general types are of frequent occur-
rence and bear the same general interpretation.

In the other principal stratigraphic form the sandstones are of more
limited extension, especially in what I take to be the width of the bed.
This type is often called lenticular, but the adjective is a bad one, for
such a bed is in fact shaped more like the bean-pod than the bean.
Beds of this character I interpret as the infilling of channels cut in the
deltaic flats.

Two lithological types peculiar to strata of the Coal Measure facies

ee eEeEeEeE

SS Trn\yeun. «

o
C—GEOLOGY., 5

are the underclays and ganisters—‘ seat-earths ’ to use their common
denominator. These are the clayey or sandy beds which underlie coal-
seams, or have stood in the relation of soil to vegetation insufficient in
amount to form coal. There are many more of these old soils than
there are coal-seams.

Both underclays and ganisters possess physical and chemical
characteristics which separate them from all other deposits. Physically
they are destitute of signs of lamination, and they are traversed by
carbonaceous markings often to be identified with certainty as the roots,
rootlets, and rhizomes of plants, usually lycopodiaceous. These have
pierced through and through the material, obliterating any traces of
bedding which may once have been there. The chemical peculiarities
of the old soils are the absence of alkalies, the rarity of calcium com-
pounds, and the low percentage of iron. These features also can be
ascribed to abstraction of mineral substances by plant activity, and
perhaps in part to leaching by passage of water charged with organic
compounds arising from the decay of vegetable tissues.

In some beds—but never in the seat-earths—molluscan remains
occur. They are of two contrasted groups. Shells of Carbonicola,
Anthracomya, and Naiadites are commonly found in packed masses in
which, as is commonly the case in fresh-water muds of our day, the
lack of variety is compensated for by a great abundance of individual
specimens. Beds containing these fossils are usually argillaceous, but
they sometimes constitute important beds of ironstone. The marine
bands offer the remains of a2 much more varied fauna—not usually
with the same superabundance of individuals. The fossils include
Pterinopecten, Pseudamusium, Lingula, Orthoceras, goniatites, and
many other genera—obviously a marine assemblage. Sometimes the
fine blue shales thus characterised are accompanied by hard limestone

In the bright-coloured measures belonging to the Staffordian division
limestones of peculiar texture and contents are found—commonly called
Spirorbis Limestones. Their texture is usually smooth and fine ; occa-
sionally they enclose angular fragments of a similar limestone, as
though a deposit had been shattered in situ by some agency, and deposi-
tion of like material had then been renewed.

To all these add coal-seams and the series is complete.

The constituents of Coal-seams.

We must now turn to a more minute examination of the coal itself.
Any seam of ordinary house coal—such, for example, as the Silkstone
seam—will present us, if we look closely, with three substances,
agreeing in a carbonaceous character and in a modicum of combustibility,
but otherwise very different. The first constituent is a black, lustrous,
dense material—the typical coal. This is disposed in apparent bedding
with some appearance of regularity, though an individual layer can
rarely be traced as much as three or four feet, and is never continued
for many more. It presents in great perfection a close and regular
cleavage perpendicular to the bedding. This cleavage is the cleat, of
which I shall have more to say presently.

The second constituent, which is rarely altogether absent though

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

more abundant in some seams than in others, is dull in aspect with a
brownish tinge, sometimes even being of a deep coffee colour. It is of
rougher texture, breaking with a rather hackly fracture. The third
material, commonly known as ‘ mother of coal "—a name innocent of
misleading implications, for which the French name ‘ fusain’ is often
substituted—is disposed in thin layers between the other constituents.
The fusain layers are of weak texture, so that the coal when struck
almost invariably splits along one of these. Upon the cleft surface a
soft charcoal-like substance is seen, made up apparently of broken
fragments. It is this which makes coal dirty to handle.*

What is the meaning of these three types of substance constituting
the seam? Even with the unaided eye we may gain a clear reply to
cur question, but the microscope gives a better answer, and discloses
many interesting details. The highly lustrous coal was long ago recog-
nised by Dawson as being produced from the bark of trees, and it is
common experience that isolated shells of bark with the characteristic
external leaf-scars and internal marks of leaf-traces are usually of
bright coal. This, however, is probably not quite the whole of the
explanation of the bright coal, for I have in my possession specimens
in which a larger fraction of the original radius of a trunk than can be
ascribed to bark in the most elastic sense of the term is represented by
coal of extraordinary brilliance. Again, where coal has undergone
great disturbance prior to its ‘ mineralisation’ it is usual to find a
great development of bright coal. However, it is a great aid to the
interpretation of a seam to know that the long bright streaks do usually
represent in some shape the trunks or branches of trees. The dull
coal may be a felt of the finer elements of plants, or, in Lomax’s phrase,
mixed humic debris, but few, if any, of the seams in the Yorkshire
Coalfield fail to include layers of which the main constituents are the
spores of lycopods—both megaspores and microspores. With a glass
of even low magnifying power we may recognise in hand specimens
of coal the small discs which represent the flattened spores, each with
a triradiate mark indicating its contact with the other three members of
the tetrad. In thin section for the microscope they appear as yellow
discs, or sacs, sometimes in horizontal sections showing the three-
rayed ridge. The methods by which these plant-spores have been
accumulated may have differed. The spores may have been wafted
from distant jungles of Sigillaria or kindred trees, though their large
size is rather opposed to the view of wind carriage from a considerable
distance, and it seems the more probable supposition that they accumu-
lated on the ground or on the carpet of vegetation in the water beneath

1 Dr. Stopes has proposed (Proc. R.S., Ser. B., xe., p. 470) a classification of
constituents of coal-seams into four types: 1, Fusain, the familiar ‘ mother of
coal’; 2, Durain, which includes the spore coals (generally these belong to the
‘hards’ in a seam); 3, Clarain apparently includes the humic coal of Lomax ;
and 4, Vitrain, a very brilliant coal forming thin bands and showing a com-
plete absence of structure in typical specimens. Mr. Sinnatt (7'’rans. Inst. Min.
Eng., vol. \xiii., p. 307) adopts these names and proposes a system of con-
ventional shading by means of which they may be distinguished in drawings.
He also attempts an analysis of the proportions of each type in certain coal-
seams in Lancashire.

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.
C.—GEOLOGY. 7

the parent trees. That they were drifted into place and distributed
with the thinness and regularity which we see the layers to possess is
quite inconceivable. For sometimes a layer of spore coal an inch in
thickness may be traced at a specific level in a seam over an area of
scores of square miles. In the Haigh Moor seam there is a layer of
this kind half or three-quarters of an inch in thickness, which can be
traced through several collieries in the neighbourhood of Castleford.

The constituents of fusain, or ‘ mother of coal,’ are even more easily
recognised than those of spore coal. Upon a bedding plane fusain is
seen to be composed of fragments of plant-tissue, commonly showing
a fibrous or cellular structure, and in many instances of rectangular
form suggesting scraps of wood. In the seams most commonly used
as house coal in Yorkshire recognisable fragments of Calamite stems
are very common—usually in single internodes or lesser fragments.
though occasional examples of three or four internodes in apposition
are found. Some fusain, according to White, is composed of fern
leaves.

The charcoal-like aspect is in agreement with the results of chemical
analysis, which show a very high carbon content.

Fusain layers are much less defined in the spore coal than in soft
coal, a fact which may have some bearing upon the mode of origin of
the two materials. In bright coal the fusain layers exhibit consider-
able regularity and continuity.

There has been much speculation regarding the origin of fusain
layers, some authors ascribing them to the wood and smaller plant
rubbish which appear to have undergone rapid aerial decay at or near
the water surface of the swamp in which most of the debris was
submerged.

This explanation appears to me the most in accord with the facts
as I have observed them, but the regularity of the layer seems too great
and the fusainisation too indiscriminate and too complete to accord with
any supposition that these layers represent the ordinary crop of decay-
ing materials. It would.be worth a detailed and systematic study to
ascertain whether they represent the raffle of dead twigs, leaves, and

other stuff brought down by periodic flood-waters. This supposition

gains a little support in my experience of the abundance of calamitean
stems, for although Calamites is provided with a stout woody axis,
the cortex has very large air-spaces that would impart great buoyance
to the fragments. I have collected the drift’ along the flood-line of
two English lakes, Bassenthwaite and Semmer Water, and in both
cases fragments of Equisetum were preponderant elements. Periodio
flooding is not inconsistent with what is known about the conditions of
coal-formation, or of the régime of great rivers. The great swamps
of the world are in the flat portions of the course of great rivers or in
their actual delta. The North Sea, for instance, we have chosen for
example, was a great delta flat. That the Coal Measures were a similar
deltaic flat is evident.

The idea that fusain is the imperfectly burnt residue of a forest fire
is opposed by so great an array of facts that it is difficult to understand
its frequent restatement. The fusain layers are as even and regular

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

as any of the layers, and may recur several times in an inch of coal.
It would be difficult to imagine reafforestation so frequent and so
necessarily extensive.

These varying types of material recurrent in the thickness of the
coal-seams leave us, it is true, some unsolved problems, but they
present us with a sufficient basis of fact to enable imagination to call
up the general conditions of coal-formation.

Let us now imagine a great expanse of newly formed or forming
mud or sand flats. Over this area semi-aquatic plants creep out and
establish themselves, their dead remains and windfalls gradually
accumulating into a bed of decaying vegetable debris upon which other
plants—not necessarily of the same type—follow. With varying and
perhaps recurrent conditions of drainage and moisture one flora succeeds
another. Some day it should be possible to map out the ecology of
the Coalfields at the time of the formation of the coal-seams in some-
what the same way that Dr. W. G. Smith has portrayed the dis-
tribution of plant associations on the surface of Yorkshire to-day, and
we may be able to trace the chronological plant-sequence, as has been
done for modern peat-bogs. This result will be achieved through the
study with the microscope of thin sections of coal—especially serial
sections extending from base to summit of a particular seam. Such
a method of study was first attempted by Wethered, but it was not
until mechanical methods of section-making were brought to perfection
by Mr. James Lomax that complete success was attained.

There are now available for study—thanks to the interest taken in
these inquiries by coal-owners in the Yorkshire Coalfield—six complete
series of sections taken from our great Barnsley Bed at geographical
intervals of about four or five miles. When the whole coalfield is
spanned by a suite of such series a great addition will be made to our
knowledge of the swamp-forests of the Coal Measures.

Lomax declares that there is a general succession of constituents
recognisable in many seams, which must be related to the predilections
of the plants concerned in the matter of drainage and other factors.
He says:

‘Usually the lower part of a seam consists of a bed of very fine
humus or mixture of leaf-like matter, with here and there portions of
stems, fructiferous organs, &c., probably derived from the remains of
small, more or less delicate, plants, and forming soft bright-looking beds
of coal. Ascending upwards in the seam other plant remains are to
be found, some belonging to the Gymnosperms.

‘ Other remains are the Lycopods (Club-mosses), which as time went
on increased both in size and vigour, ultimately crowding out almost
every other kind of vegetation, and becoming the predominant plants
of their time.

‘The various changes, progress, and deterioration can be traced until
ultimately the plant life represented in the top of the seam is found
to be practically identical with that at the bottom.’

Some such sequence is, of course, to be expected. When a bed
‘of mud, sand, or limestone emerges from below water-level to be a
land surface it could not be expected that every type of plant-life could

oe

—— | en

ca
C.—GEOLOGY. 9

grow upon it without preparation. And Lomax remarks: ‘ In order to
prepare a humus for the higher plants humic material must have
accumulated by the growth of lower orders.’

The general result of Lomax’s studies—in which result my experi-
ence enables me to concur—is that the base of a seam is a rather soft
coal, exhibiting upon a vertical face a dull ground mass with fine spindle-
shaped streaks of bright, lustrous coal, apparently composed of small
scraps of a variety of plants of what the modern gardener would term
the herbaceous type. Following this we have the appearance of a
bright coal with sections of compressed stems or branches of trees inter-
mingled with ‘ humic’ material and spores. In the upper part of the
seam in general hard coals often occur, consisting mainly, or even
exclusively, of megaspores and microspores, \vith an occasional
sporangium, or even a complete fruit.

This is the simple succession. ‘There may, however, be a recurrence
of any of these phases. At first inspection the sequence seems to fortify
Lomax’s inference that the giant Lycopods demanded a soil of
humic materials upon which to grow, but this inference must admit
of many exceptions to meet the innumerable cases of fossil-trees stand-
ing rooted in sandstone (gannister), or other purely mineral deposit,
with no trace of humic soil. I have also seen a two-inch seam with
its underclay resting upon a coralliferous limestone into which the
stigmarian roots had penetrated.

The nature of the last crop on the ground is not infrequently indi-
cated by the plant-remains in the roof. In the coalfield nearest us the
most common occurrence is to find in the shales of the roof prostrate
stems of Sigillaria, very often in great numbers. Not infrequently the
mud-filled stumps forming the dreaded * pot-holes ’ stand in attitude of
growth in the roof shales; their roots, too, may sometimes be detected
ramifying in the seam or on its surface. The great Barnsley Bed is
sometimes in this condition, ‘but occasionally the last crop of this seam
when overwhelmed and drowned in muddy water was a profuse growth
of the fern-like Pteridosperms, such as Neuropteris heterophyllus. At
South Kirkby colliery a whitish efflorescence from the shale with the
black carbonaceous plant-remains gives the aspect of a sheet out of
a botanist’s hortus siccus.

Cannel.

I have already mentioned that, in all those characteristics which
prove the growth in place origin of true coal, cannel seams present the
exact reverse, so that here all authorities are agreed that drifting in
some form must be invoked, but there are other forms in which the
material occurs to which the general theory can be applied only with
some qualification.

The structure and composition of cannel have an important bearing
upon all questions of its origin. It is sometimes described as consisting
of spores, but in fact all the more exact descriptions speak of a dense
amorphous ground mass in which the recognisable structures are usually
spores. My observations show that they constitute only a small fraction
of the whole. Other plant-remains are rare; indeed, I can recall very
few examples, of which the most notable was a calamitean stem of

C3

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

3 or 4 internodes. But if recognisable plant-remains are scarce, it is
far otherwise with remains of animals. Scales, teeth, and bones of
fishes are almost invariably present, and it is from cannel that our largest
collections of Coal Measure vertebrates have been obtained. Amphibian
remains are more rare; Ostracods, such as Beyrichia arcuata, are
crowded in some planes, and lastly, fresh-water shells such as Carboni-
cola are represented commonly not by the shells themselves, but by
tha flattened wrinkled epidermis, the calcareous shell having evidently
been dissolved by the acids generated by decomposing vegetable matter.
The texture of cannel is usually smooth and the fracture conchoidal in
the purest specimens, but in most cases it graduates into a black
carbonaceous shale. The ash content is always high, rising to 40 per
cent. before reaching the point at which it would be regarded as shale.
Chemically it is distinguished by the high yield of hydrocarbons, obtained
on distillation either as mineral oil or as gas. For this reason, in days
before the invention of the incandescent mantle, cannel for enrichment
of gas of low illuminating power was in great demand, and commanded
so high a price that I have seen our most famous fish-bed worked when
it was only seven inches in thickness. All these characteristics of
cannel are consistent with the view that it originated from a mass of
vegetation macerated in pools of water somewhat after the manner of the
‘retting ’ of flax. Sometimes the cannel is in unconformable relation
to the underlying beds, as at the Abram Colliery, Wigan, where it
rests in one district upon true coal, and, in the course of about a mile,
encroaches first upon the coal, then upon its underclay, and, finally,
where seven feet in thickness, it rests upon a bed of shale underlying the
underclay. Green suggests that cannel consists of vegetable matter
which was drifted down into ponds or lakes and lay soaking until it
became reduced to pulp.

Some modes of occurrence of cannel are of particular interest for
the light they throw upon Coal Measure conditions. Some beds are of
wide extent, having been traced over an area of several hundreds of
square miles; on the other hand, strips and patches of a fraction of an
acre occur, such as that at the foot of a fault in the Barrow Colliery,
which I interpret to indicate a depression in the coal-swamp which was
connected with some movement of the fault. An interesting relation
is often found to subsist between the total thickness of a coal-seam
and the presence of a local patch of cannel. It commonly happens that
the presence of a patch of cannel as a constituent of a coal-seam is
accompanied by an increased thickness, even out of: proportion to the
magnitude of the cannel, and this irrespective of whether the cannel
is above, within, or below the true coal. It may be explained by the
fact that the process of fermentation by which the cannel was produced
reduced its volume more rapidly than the ordinary decay did that of the
adjacent peat, and so maintained a depression in which more plant
debris could accumulate; but the ultimate effect of this fermentation
was a less complete loss of hydrocarbons, and consequently, both
because its contemporaneous loss was greater, and its subsequent loss
was less, the presence of a cannel component increases the thickness
of a seam.

> ents

>
C.—GEOLOGY., 11

It may be pointed out that well-decomposed peat forms a buttery
mass almost, or perhaps quite, as impervious to water as a bed of clay
would be. This may explain why at Teversall Colliery there is a thin
bed of poor cannel at the base of the Top Hard (or Barnsley Bed) coal
and a second bed of better quality at the top. Where the lower bed
is thick the upper one is thin, and vice versd.

Coal-Balls and their significance.

The bodies known, besides several aliases, as coal-balls are masses
of mixed vegetation ‘ petrified’ by being so completely permeated by
mineral substances, such as dolomite or calcite, that even the most
delicate and tender tissues have been preserved with every cell in its
proper position. Coal-balls occur in coal-seams as isolated masses,
varying in size from mere pellets up to masses of a ton or two in weight.
Sometimes they form clusters closely crowded together and at others
sporadically. Apart from their enormous value to paleobotany, they
present to the general practitioner in Coal-Measure Geology a number
of attractive problems, the solution of which cannot fail to throw a
vivid beam of light upon the question of the physiography of the coal-
swamps.

Their limitation to seams carrying marine roof-measures at once
suggests a source for the petrifying substance and a reason why they
are of such restricted occurrence that they are wholly unknown in the
great majority of coal-fields. The notable memoir by Stopes and
Watson? is so important a compendium of the significant facts that
I shall forbear to cite the writings of others, including myself, who
contributed to the discussion. I would further say that I find myself
in almost complete agreement with the authors. Their argument in
brief is that the seams in question grew in salt or brackish swamps and
that a mass of debris of the plants accumulated under water. Sea-
water has a remarkable preservative effect upon plant-tissues, experi-
ments by one of the authors showing that fronds of ferns, and even the
more delicate structures of liverworts, could be preserved for at least
three years without signs of decay or even loss of their green colour.
They then proceed to argue that the partial decay of some vegetable
materials would liberate carbon dioxide which, reacting with sulphates
and sulphides with which the sea-water would have impregnated the
mass, produced these isolated concretions which represent a true sample
of a bed of peat accumulated on the spot where the plants grew. One
instance is cited of two seams separated by a sandstone seat-earth
(gannister) in which coal-balls are scattered through both seams.
Assuming, as the text implies, that the general character of the
concretions is the same throughout the sequence, the inference seems
to be justified that the formation of coal-balls was continuing during
the whole period of accumulation of the seam. At the same time, it is ,
not clear why the petrifaction should be so local, and it is perhaps worth
while to examine any evidence which might decide whether, as happens
with some other rocks, the sporadic character may not be due to local
escape from decalcification rather than to local petrifaction.

2 Phil. Trans., Ser. B., vol. 200.
C4

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

This view of the origin of the seams of coal that enclose these bodies
is quite in accord with opinions long held by palzobotanists, that the
structure of the plants found in them is compatible with their growth in
brackish water, and corroboration is found in the fact that ‘ roof-balls’
are found in the overlying shales that contain well-preserved remains of
a flora very significantly different from that of the seams.

Boulders in Coal-seams.

The occurrence of well-rounded masses up to several hundred-
weights of foreign rocks is well attested by many writers, and it is no
uncommon occurrence to see small specimens upon the mantelshelf in a
colliery office. The subject is, as usual, thoroughly and almost ex-
haustively summarised by Stevenson,* to whose pages any who desire
to study the subject further must be referred.

These erratics have been found in coal-seams in many parts of the
world. They occur in every part of the seams from roof to floor, and
even penetrating the floor. Two forms of transport of these masses have
been suggested. The first ascribes it to floating ice, an hypothesis that
fails to take account of the smooth rounded and water-worn appearance
of the stones, no less than the incompatibility of ice action on an ade-
quate scale with the climatic conditions indicated, in the judgment of
palzobotanists, by the character of the vegetation.

The other explanation, which ascribes the transport to floating trees,
is not without difficulty when the size, and particularly the shape, of the
boulders is considered. | Stevenson comments upon the difficulty of
imagining a tree of sufficient magnitude carrying such a load with the
tenacious grip which would be required to maintain it from the source
of the boulder to its place of deposition. It is clear that thoroughly
rounded boulders of intensely hard quartzite could have been shaped
only by either a long journey in a mountain torrent or by prolonged
pounding on a beach. In either case a tree so burdened would need a

considerable depth of water for its flotation, and it is inconceivable that

it could steer its way through a forest, unless one deeply submerged.
T am disposed to think that such were indeed the conditions—that either
during a temporary flood or in the final submergence of the coal-swamp
some stray gymnospermous tree whose roots were adapted, as those of
Stigmaria clearly are not, to wrap round a smooth boulder, drifted over
or among the tree tops, and either came to a final anchorage or simply
dropped its burden. This explanation is not inconsistent with the
presence of boulders at all or any levels in the seam, for it will appear,
on reflection, that a mass of rock would readily sink into peat, the
rate of its descent being determined by the impetus of its fall, the
tenacity of the peat, the shape of the stone, and other factors. Some
might bring up against an embedded tree trunk, while others might
sink completely through the seam. That some stones have sunk in
this manner seems to be indicated by the fact that one of the large
stones preserved in the Manchester Museum occupied a vertical attitude
in the coal when discovered.

3 Op. cit., pp. 391 and 426-433.

.

ad
C.—GEOLOGY. 13

Surprise is sometimes expressed that these stones should be found
in the seams of coal and not in the Coal Measure sandstones and shales
that are quarriéd or wrought in brick-yards. The reason is partly
statistical. The weight, and still more the bulk, of these materials
extracted year by year is far less than the 250 to 300 millions of tons
of coal raised; but a yet more important reason is that no stone in the
coal as large as a man’s head could escape detection by the collier, and
arousing the interest of the officials, whereas in a quarry it would
probably, if observed, be cast aside without notice as merely a blemish
in the stone of no more interest than any ordinary concretion. The
locus of the parent rock of these stray boulders is wholly conjectural,
but the great preponderance both in Britain and in America of quartzites
should furnish a clue, and the petrologist who will undertake the
investigation may certainly rely upon the sympathetic interest of Coal
Measure geologists and colliery managers.

The Aberrations of Coal-seams,

Having got our coal-swamp clothed with vegetation, and the coal-
forming materials accumulating, let us next consider the various inter-
ruptions of continuity and the aberrations to which it is liable. These
interferences may be either contemporaneous with the accumulation of
the materials, or, as one may say, posthumous. These categories, at
first sight, seem capable of easy and definite recognition, but, as we
shall see presently, it is not so easy as it looks.

Faults, overthrusts, and unconformities may as a rule be classed
among what I have called the posthumous type of interference, though
in many cases true faults appear to have achieved a portion of their
total movement contemporaneously with the deposition of the seams, or
during the interval between seam and seam. An illustration of a con-
temporaneous fault is found at the Barrow colliery, near Barnsley,
where, on the down-thrown side of the fault and parallel with it,
the Thorncliffe Thin Coat swells up from 3 feet to 5 feet 6 inches, and
carries a strip of cannel absent elsewhere in the mine. Of a fault
moving between seam and seam an example is furnished at Whitwood,
where a lower seam is thrown to the extent of 60 feet while an over-
lying one is unbroken. The case of a fault affecting an upper and not
a lower seam is noticed at Aldwarke Colliery.* Among the contem-
porary interferences with the coal-seams are to be accounted uncon-
formities, which, no doubt, occur on various scales of magnitude. Some
may be interpreted—as Mr. Clarke suggested for the great ‘ Symon
Fault ’ of the Forest of Dean—as the denudation of a folded series ; other
examples would, as I shall presently show, be better explained, as
Prestwich explains the Symon Fault, as the erosion of a channel.
Prominent in this category of contemporary interferences must be put
the phenomena of split-seams. A split-seam is the intercalation into
the midst of the coal of a wedge of sandstone, shale, or the like, in such
wise that the seam becomes subdivided by intervening strata into two
or more seams. This phenomenon is of special practical importance

4 Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. lvii., p. 86.

Se) SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

because it may mean that a thick seam may in the divided condition
become incapable of being worked at a profit.

The great Coalfield that I have so often cited furnishes examples of
_every known type, and interesting as they are to the geologist, they
are an abomination to the colliery-owner or manager, and often a
source of severe disappointment and loss. The most notable split seam
in Britain is not, however, in Yorkshire but in the famous Staffordshire
Thick Coal. Jukes showed that this magnificent seam, 40 feet thick
at its maximum, is split up into a number of minor seams by wedges
of sedimentary strata which aggregate, in a distance of 44 miles, a
thickness of 500 feet. Whether these intercalations again thin out, or
not, is unknown to me; but whether so, or not, the explanation offered
by that sagacious student of coal, Bowman of Manchester, might find
here a typical application. Bowman supposed that a local sag occurred
in the floor of the coal swamp, resulting in the drowning of the vegeta-
tion (in his illustration bearing a suspicious resemblance to a coconut
palm) and interrupting the formation of peat until the hollow was silted
up and a new swamp flora re-established. This explanation remained
for many years unchallenged, but in 1875, in the great memoir on The
Yorkshire Coalfield, Green advanced a new reason for the splitting of
seams, which is a very common phenomenon here, scarcely any, if
any, seam being exempt.

Green pointed out that as the Silkstone seam is traced northward
from the locality near Barnsley with which its name is associated, it
begins to exhibit partings of ‘ dirt,’ which thicken to a belt of country
where no collieries afforded information as to the behaviour of the seam.
On the far side of this gap a seam is found on the same horizon,
but if it represents the Silkstone seam it is very much attenuated and
divided. He attributed these features to the development, contem-
poraneously with the accumulation of the measures, of a ridge of land,
whence mud was washed into the coal-swamp on either hand. Later
in the same volume exactly the same problem is presented by the
Barnsley Bed, which deteriorates in just the same manner in an
almost identical geographical position. This was hailed by Green as
a further example of the same process.

So long as the problem was of merely academic interest I was content
with a silent demurrer, but having to consider the probable resources of
the debatable ground for the purpose of colliery development I sought
criteria with which to decide whether Green’s growing anticline or
Bowman’s developing syncline was the correct explanation. This was
the more necessary as I found that the tendency to split affected seams
still higher than those named. Now, it will be obvious upon reflection
that an anticline undergoing intermittent elevation and denudation should
cause a convergence of the strata representing the stationary phases as
they approach the axis, while a deepening trough should produce a
corresponding divergence of the strata—principles well illustrated by the
Market Weighton and Cleveland axes respectively. A careful plotting
of intervals showed that, selecting the two seams that were most gener-
ally worked, isopachytes of the strata separating them could be drawn,
and Bowman’s sag demonstrated.

— ew ee ee

o
C.—GEOLOGY, 15

Care has to be taken in such an inquiry to eliminate a source of
error not hitherto taken into account, namely the relative compressibility
of different sedimentary materials. Freshly deposited mud may contain
90 per cent. by volume of water, and even when reduced by time and
pressure to the condition of shale may still have 20 per cent. of inter-
space; a bed of fairly consistent clayey mud might be reduced to one-
half its thickness. Sand, however, suffers scarcely any loss of bulk
once it has got past the condition of a quicksand. This source of error
is eliminated in the calculations relating to the split of the Silkstone
and Barnsley seams, and it is seen that the increase of thickness in the
sagged area far exceeds the total thickness of the sandstone present, so
that the sag is a real one and not the effect of the relative compressibility
of the measures. There may be cases in which there is no further
shore to the sag, and the seam once lost is lost for good and all. Such
might be the margin of a deltaic flat undergoing intermittent
depression.

It has occurred to me to consider whether, the sediments with which
the Staffordshire Thick Coal is subdivided need necessarily have de-
manded an earth movement to an extent corresponding to their aggregate
_ thickness; in other words, whether the aggregate thickness of the sedi-

ments plus the seams that they now separate were, in the uncompressed

- original condition, materially different in thickness from the great un-
divided seam. I have not the data upon which to found an opinion,
but we are promised a full discussion of this seam, when I hope the
problem will receive attention. The idea I had in mind has apparently
been current for some time, for I find Mr. Walton Brown expressed
the opinion many years ago that the Coal Measures might be regarded
actually as a single coal-seam, with the necessary implication that the
A sedimentary measures are in the nature of local interruptions. | Some
-

measure of the reduction of thickness which the original substance has
undergone and some consequences will be considered later.

I now turn to a form of split seam of extraordinary interest, which

i has received comparatively little attention from geologists though
__-—s mining engineers must surely have a special comminatory formula to
express their sentiments thereon. The first example that came under
my notice was encountered in the eastern workings of the Middleton
Main Seam, at Whitwood Colliery, near Wakefield. Thin intercalations
of shale and other sedimentary materials, appearing at different horizons
in the seam, were found to thicken gradually to the east concurrently
with the gradual dwindling of the lower part of the seam. An explora-
tion was then carried out. The bottom coal was followed, but it was
found that though the underclay continued the coal disappeared, and
was wholly lost for a short distance when it reappeared. The top coal
rose over a steadily thickening shale parting, and disappeared into the
roof of the workings, but boreholes proved that it was present above
a parting which was, at the maximum, 29 feet thick. At the farther
end of the heading the top coal came down and the integrity of the
seam was restored. Two other transverse explorations have proved the
same general” arrangement on the same scale of magnitude and one
or both margins have been traced for a long distance, enabling the

16 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

interruption to be mapped continuously for about 8 or 9 miles and
intermittently much further.

My first impression was that this was just a simple case of Bowman’s
‘sag,’ until I observed that in every traverse the upper element of the
seam was arched while the floor was flat.

Several analogous cases came under my notice before an explanation
of this anomalous arching was reached. The explanation was found to
he essentially in the differential shrinkage undergone by peat-stuff in
the process of forming coal, and, on the other hand, by any sand or
mud which may have been deposited so as to replace a part of the peat.

Let us imagine a stream being diverted at flood time across a bed
of peat and scooping out for itself a hollow channel, which channel
subsequently becomes filled with sediments, after which the formation
of peat continues, the peat plants creep out, and presently envelop the
whole mass of sediments. When the beds consolidate there will
obviously be very different contraction between the sands, muds, and
the coal-stuff. The sands as I have said will hardly contract at all, the
muds will contract a good deal, the coal-stuff will contract very greatly.

Various estimates—or guesses—hayve been made of the amount of
reduction in bulk which attends the conversion of peat into coal.

Lomax shows that where coal-balls—which are really masses of com-
paratively uncrushed coal-forming material that has been preserved by
minerals infiltering the tissues and the interspaces—occurred abundantly,
the seam, including the coal, became thicker according to the quantity
of coal-balls present. Where a large number were massed together the
seam became more than 6 feet thick, while on every side the coal was
not more than a foot thick. Again, he says ‘a large mass of petrifac-
tions was found, and which, although more or less crushed by superin-
cumbent weight, retained a héight of 7 feet 3 inches, while the corre-
sponding layer of coal syas only 10 inches thick.’ He estimated the
loss by flattening out at one-third ‘so that it might be estimated that
11 or 12 feet of vegetable matter had been deposited to form one foot
of coal.’ >

I have found that dry peat can be compressed in a testing machine
to one-fifth of its original thickness, and making allowance for the loss
in drying, and for the great reduction of bulk attendant upon the change
from peat to coal, I am disposed to set a still higher value than Lomax
on the reduction. It should be borne in mind that wood has an average
of about 50 per cent. of carbon and 50 per cent. of hydrogen, oxygen and
nitrogen, while the carbon in an average house coal ranges from 80 to

5 Dr. Stopes and Professor D. M. S. Watson adopt a much lower ratio for the
compression. They figure a huge coal-ball which ‘ has entirely replaced the coal-
seam where it occurs, leaving but a film of coal at the top and bottom’ and
it is ‘nearly 4 feet thick, while the coal on either side is under 1 foot’ (Phil.
Z'rans., B. 200, p. 174). The evidence of this great ball is not at all complete,
as not only is there a film of coal of unstated dimensions above and below, but
‘ streaks of coaly matter run irregularly through it.’ Against this may be cited
Renault and Zeiller, quoted by Drs. Stopes and R. V. Wheeler. They measured
the tracheids in coal and ‘ other portions preserved uncrushed ag a mineralised
petrifact. ... They concluded that the specimen of wood (of Arthropitus
bistriata) in the coal occupied only one-twelfth of the volume it had in life.’

EEE EEE ee eel

z
\

o
C.—GEOLOGY. 17

85 per cent., but this does not merely imply the loss of 75 or 80 per
cent. of the other elements, for the oxygen and hydrogen have gone off
largely in combination with carbon. What the gross amount may be
I do not venture to say, but my opinion is that the reduction in passing
from the state of wet undisturbed peat will not be much less than 15 or
20 to 1.°

Let us now, with these facts in mind, return to the consideration
of the plano-convex lens of ‘ dirt’ occupying a position between the
upper and lower elements of the split seam at Whitwood. On the sag
explanation it should be convex downward, yet in this as in all other
cases I have investigated, it is convex upward. ‘The explanation is
simple. Let us make our mental picture of the infilled channel in the
peat a little more specific in detail. Let us suppose that the peat was
40 feet in thickness when the river commenced to cut its course across it ;
the channel we will say was, like most channels, deeper in the middle
than at the sides and in the middle actually cut through to the seat-
earth. Then the channel silted up completely, so that a cast of its
meandering course in sands or mud reaching 40 feet in thickness at the
maximum, but much thinner at the margins, was formed, then the upper
bed of peat, formed to a further depth of 40 feet. The conversion of the
peat into coal would reduce it to two beds, each, let us say, 2 feet in
thickness at the, maximum, enclosing the sediment with a proportionately
smaller thickness in the eroded peat on either margin of the channel.
The sedimentary mass would have the transverse section of a plano-
convex lens, the convexity being downward, but when the peat under
the edges of the sediment is condensed to one-twentieth of its original
bulk the base becomes almost flat, and the unconsolidated mass of sedi-
ments adjusts itself thereto. Thus the curve, originally at the base of the
mass, reproduces itself in the top of the mass, which was originally
quite flat and now is curved. The lens of infilling has reversed its
curvature.

In the Castle Comer Coalfield, County Kilkenny, I have been able
to examine underground an almost exactly similar case of a portion
of a horse-shoe-shaped meander exhibiting the same reversal of the lens,

6 I take this opportunity to expose a fallacy of very wide acceptance. It
appears to be a general belief that, as in Coal Measure rocks pebbles of coal
occur which are closely embraced by the matrix, and similarly that the shell of
coal surrounding a standing tree-trunk is in contact with the matrix both within
and without, therefore no appreciable reduction of bulk of the vegetable interior
took place in the process of ‘ coalification.” The assumption here made is that
the surrounding rock attained complete induration prior to the accomplishment
of that change in the enclosed masses of vegetable matter, yet all analogy
forbids that supposition. The Mid-Eocene beds of Alum Bay and Bourne-
mouth, though quite incoherent, contain thin coals as bright and lustrous, as
truly ‘ coalified,’ as many of our Carboniferous coals, yet it would hardly be
contended that the period that has elapsed since their formation is materially
less than the duration of Coal Measure times. The evidence points to the proba-
bility that the accomplishment of the greater part of the change from plant to
coal took place while the measures were still unconsolidated, and were able
to adjust themselves to the shrinkage of the contained masses of coal-stuff.
When I come to speak of the cleavage of coal a further argument will emerge
. — of the consolidation of the ‘measures’ being subsequent to that of
the eoal.

18 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

but in this instance there are additional features of extraordinary interest

and significance. The channel is filled mainly with two beds of anthra- |

citic coal, one below and the other above a lens of black shale. The
fact that this anthracite is devoid of underclay and that it yields remains
of fishes and amphibia at once declares it to have originated as cannel,
which I have found to be a usual component of these lenses. Just
outside the channel the section at the pit bottom shows 4 inches of coal
resting upon an underclay and overlain by coarse sandstone, showing
that this is a relic of the original seam, but it must have been largely
destroyed by a later incursion of the stream which laid down the
sandstone.

The split in the Middleton Main Coal must be regarded as a silted
channel of a river that traversed the swamp after the formation of the
lower part of the seam, and, as might be expected, evidence is abundant
of similar stream action in other phases of the Coal-Measure deposition.
In the shales intervening between the seams belts of strongly current-
bedded sandstone with the transverse section of an infilled trough are
often to be found. Small examples are now to be seen in the railway
cutting just east of Leeds on the line to Hull; and in Altofts Colliery,
Fox Pit, a similar trough has been traced in the roof of the Middleton

Main seam for a distance of about half a mile. In this instance it is _

probable that the direction in which the water was flowing is indicated
by the fact that in the N.E. workings the floor of the trough is
wholly above the seam, while in the $.W. it is cut into the seam to a
depth of about a foot. When a seam is more deeply eroded the only
too familiar phenomenon of a ‘ wash-out,’ in the miner’s sense, not in
that of the modern colloquialism, is formed. We should expect such
a deltaic area to afford evidence of the actual meanderings of the main
stream, or of its more or less transient tributaries or distributaries.
These are most easily recognised by the channels which they cut in
the new-formed deposits.

Extensive beds of gravel or conglomerate are of very exceptional
occurrence, the source of the materials being in general so remote and
the grade of the rivers so low that such deposits would hardly be
expected unless the tearing up of the new strata could furnish them—
as we shall see that in some cases they did. The lesser *‘ wash-outs ’
may be the effects of transient streams which swept across the shallow
mud-floored lagoons, cutting out a channel and later silting it up.

Such rivers, contemporary and sub-contemporary with the formation
of the coal, show the ordinary complications inseparable from river
erosion. They meander on a large scale; the bows are frequently
found to be subjected to ‘ cut-offs,’ and in such cases the ‘ oxbows ’
frequently contain beds of cannel, speaking of their existence as a stag-
nant bayou in which vegetable mud accumulated. They exhibit the
phenomena of ‘cut within cut,’ consequent upon rejuvenescence or
the scour of flood waters, and the margins are often affected by the
falling in of the banks. These are quite ordinary phenomena connota-
tive of the action of moving water.

A typical ‘ wash-out ” occurs in the Parkgate seam at Aldwarke
and Rotherham Main Collieries. Here a mass of sandstone cuts out

7
C,—GEOLOGY, 19

the coal over an area of some hundreds of acres. The sandstone is a
strongly current-bedded rock 60 to 80 feet in thickness. Bands of
conglomerate, including at times masses of 2 or 3 feet in length, occur.
The smaller stones consist of clay ironstone concretions, sometimes with
their original form but little modified by attrition. The larger blocks
are mostly of sandy shale. Ripple markings are frequent, and large
limbs or trunks of trees are encountered. The whole aspect presents a
very close resemblance to sections of the old bed of the River Irwell
exposed in the cuttings for the Manchester Ship Canal,

This channel must evidently have been that of a river of considerable
size which commenced to erode on a plane far above that of the Park-
gate seam. ‘This is indicated, not merely by the thickness of the mass,
and by the evidence afforded by the pebbles and larger blocks, of the
erosion of Coal Measure materials, but also it will be noted that the
pebbles are chiefly of clay ironstone, betokening a lapse of time sufficient,
not only for the deposition of shales, but for the formation of ironstone
concretions. This need not, however, have been a very protracted
period. The Pleistocene Leda clays of Ottawa contain concretions quite
comparable with those now under consideration.

The form of this river channel cannot, at Aldwarke and Rotherham
Main, be defined, for the interposition of a few yards of shale would
remove it from the ken of the miner except where shafts, or cross-
measure drifts to traverse faults, explored the rocks more thoroughly,
but it is evident from the records of neighbouring collieries that the
Parkgate Rock is not one of the widely extended sandstones of which
examples occur in this Coalfield, and we may therefore regard the
channel which it fills as of limited breadth.

Another instance of the same kind in a seam about 650 feet higher
in the Coal Measure series is furnished by the Haigh Moor Rock which
in some places encroaches upon the Haigh Moor Coal seam. It rests
upon a conglomerate composed of clay ironstone nodules which, in this
instance, can be traced with much probability to their source, for at
Robin Hood, about midway between Leeds and Wakefield—where the
whole series of strata adjacent to the Haigh Moor seam is exposed in
a great excavation, affording one of the best sections of Coal Measures
in Yorkshire—the seam is surmounted by a varied suite of rocks com-
prising coal-seams with their underclays, thin beds of sandstone, and
shales containing great numbers of clay ironstone nodules. Such a
suite would yield the constifuents of the Haigh Moor Rock.

Though it is not practicable to define the course of this rock-filled
channel in the way that has been done for the great Warrensburg
channel of the Missouri Coalfield, there is yet a convincing proof that
it is not an example of folding and denudation, for, if that were the
case, the strata would show a diminution as measured from seam to
seam as the area is approached, but the area occupied by the rock is
just that where the great thickening takes place alluded to a propos the
splitting of the Barnsley Bed.

An inference of some moment can be drawn from these two eroded
channels—general subsidence of the Coal Measure area must have been
interrupted at least twice by actual elevation or we should not find

20 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

channels cut to the depth of 90 feet in a deposit which must at the
time of its deposition have approximated to sea level.

So far we have been examining irregularities of the seam which are
clearly connected ‘with the erosive effects of running water. But the
majority of the irregularities have not this simple character, and are of
a nature quite distinct from the consequences of erosion.

The most common abnormality is the occurrence of belts or patches
of ‘proud coal’ in which the seam swells up to twice or thrice its
normal thickness—sometimes, though not always, by repetition of the
whole seam or of the upper part, either by shearing or by overfolding.
Hull long ago proposed to explain ‘ proud coal’ as the effect of the
stony infilling of the wash acting as a wedge of incompressible
material forcing out the coal-substance from beneath its margins. I
have observed effects attributable to the apposition of coal to sandstone,
but they were not of the kind in question.

I have examined, underground, wash-outs in eight different seams,
some in only one colliery, others in eight or ten. In many instances the
seam which has been interrupted lies between two seams that have by
extensive workings been proved to be entirely unaffected by such dis-
turbances. [ have on several occasions passed entirely across the site
of a ‘ wash-out’ in the workings of seams lying either above or below,
thus demonstrating that the phenomena are confined to a single seam
and the strata immediately adjacent to it; usually the seat-earth itself
is unmoyed.

It has been suggested that all the violent displacement and over-
ridings are brought about by tectonic agency, and that they are thrust-
planes. The localisation to a single stratigraphical plane should suffice to
discredit this explanation, but it is still more definitely refuted by the
fact that, in reply to questions put to every colliery manager I en-
counter, I have heard of only three examples of faults of thé reversed
or overlap type in the whole coalfield, two of which accomplished a dis-
placement of only 3 or 4 feet. An amplification of the same explanation
ascribes the displacements to a thrust with a movement from 8.E. to
N.W. and a common cause to the cleat or cleavage of the coal which
is normally directed to the N.W. _ It suffices to refute this to remark
that the wash-outs I have explored in this coalfield are aligned in four
principal directions, so that if superposed they would give what may
be called the Union Jack pattern, i.e. N.E.—S.W., N.W.—S.E.,
N.—S., and E.—W.

Moreover, if these so-called ‘ wash-outs’ are not due to the erosive
effects of contemporaneous or sub-contemporaneous streams, but to
flat-hading faults, any coal displaced should be presently found again
without any loss whatever. That swellings and duplications of the
seam occur we have already noticed, and such phenomena have been
pointed to as evidence that there is ‘ no loss ’ of coal in connection with
the so-called wash-outs. But losses and the gains by duplication do
not, in fact, balance. A simple and convincing case is a wash-out
in a thin seam of coal only 1 ft. 9 in. in thickness at Mirfield, in which,
by taking measurements of the thickness of coal present and the breadth
of the barren area, I have been able to show that a gap with no coal

~ eid? Srey CO eS

3
*
2
i
gg

Sa
C,—GEOLOGY, 21

for 210 feet is compensated for by only 35 feet of excess on the
margin.

Seismic Phenomena in the Seams,

While the displacements and duplications are totally unlike those
produced by faults, there are cases in which the seam appears to have
been subjected to a stretching tension and to have broken under the
strain. Along the zone of such a stretch great confusion is commonly
found. Masses of sedimentary materials of the coal seam, and slabs
and seams of cannel commonly occur, besides a curious argillaceous
substance unlike any natural rock with which I am acquainted. In
its unstratified structurelessness it suggests a kind of consolidated sludge
such as might be produced by violently stirring or shaking a quantity
of not too liquid mud. Where the seam abuts against this stuff it
presents usually a nearly vertical ragged edge, its bright and dull layers
preserving their characteristics quite up to the contact.

Masses of the seam enclose streaks of sandstone or muddy material
along the bedding planes, and plates of sandstone descend in tortuous
folds in the body of the seam. Sometimes ‘ eyes’ of sandstone are
seen embedded in the coal without any visible feeders, though in most
cases the feeders, even almost hair streaks, can be discerned.

In many instances the sandstones in a wash-out of this type are
found to be in great boat-bottom rolls, and even the whole sedimentary
contents of the wash-out may lie in recumbent folds. The degree in
which these disturbances are developed varies extremely ; for example
at Shirebrook and Steetley Collieries there is no complication of any
description either in the seam—the Top Hard or Barnsley Bed—or on
the margins of the infilling of the ‘ wash-out.” At Manton, probably
on the same wash-out, not more than two miles away, though there
is only a small amount of swelling of the seam on the margin and a
little injected sandstone in the coal, the filling of the wash-out was for
some distance in perfectly horizontal recumbent folds of more than the
full height of the workings. In this case it is interesting to observe that
there were many tree-trunks represented by bright coal of great bril-
liance, and I observed one large Calamite standing in the position of
growth in the undisturbed material of the filling.

I would illustrate by a concrete example—the great ‘ wash-out ’
represented by the Haigh Moor Rock is accompanied by a disturbance
of the seam of portentous magnitude. In a range of four coterminous
collieries the seam exhibits dislocations and over-riding repetitions and
other anomalies along a generat S.W.-N.E. line, coinciding roughly with
the course of a normal steep hading fault of considerable magnitude.
In many places the disturbance just along its edge culminates in over-
ridings and repetitions whereby the thickness of the seam is increased
from the normal 4 feet 6 inches up to 15 and 16 feet in some places, but
this excess of coal is restricted to a narrow belt, while the default
extends to scores or even to hundreds of yards.

That there is a connection between wash-outs and tectonic features
I have long believed, and I pointed out some seventeen years ago,’ that

7 Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. 1xi., p. 344.

22 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

the connection between great normal faults and the occurrence of wash-
outs was too close to be merely fortuitous. But what the cause might
be I was quite unable to suggest, and it was not until many years had
elapsed that enlightenment came from a wholly unexpected quarter.

- In brief, the explanation I have offered in a communication to the
Geological Society of London, in a paper that has not yet been placed
in full before that body, is that all these disturbances which complicate
the already complex features of wash-outs are the effect of the lurching
of the soft alluvial materials by earthquake agency. The present is
not the occasion for amplifying the preliminary account of my evidence
and argument published in the Proceedings of the Geological Society
(No. 1,031, Jan. 17, 1919), but I may say this, that every predicable
subterranean consequence of earthquake action upon unconsolidated
alluvial deposits, such as the Coal Measures were, can be seen in the
Yorkshire Coalfields. The lurchings, the rolling and heaving of sand-
beds, the shaking to pulp of the muddy deposits, the rending and heaving
of the peat, cracks in the peat, and cracks infilled with extraneous
material passing through the strata; and lastly, though actually the
first clue to the explanation, masses of sandstone in the form of inverted
cones (‘ dog’s-teeth,’ ‘ paps,’ or ‘ drops ’), descending on to coal-seams,
which I interpret as the deep-seated expression of the sand-blows that
are the invariable accompaniments of earthquakes in alluvial tracts.

Let us imagine an earthquake sweeping across an alluvial plain
beneath which lay a thick bed of water-charged peat overlain by
laminated clay, and that in turn by sand and an upper layer of mud
or clay, the impulse would throw the peat and its watery contents into
a state of severe compression which would result in the bursting of the
immediate cover of clay and the injection of water into the sand, and
probably, a large quantity of gas, converting it thus into quicksand.
This in turn under the stress of the earthquake would eject water in the
form of fountains through the upper muddy or silty stratum, producing
sand-blows and craters on the surface. When the disturbance subsided
sand would run back down the orifice into the funnel above the peat.
These are the ‘drops.’ They are commonly flanged down the sides,
showing that they were formed upon a line of crack. An earthquake not
infrequently gives rise to permanent deformations of soft deposits either
by the lurching of the surface and the production of permanent wrinkles,
or by subterranean migration of quicksand so as to produce, here a sag or
hollow, there a ridge or bbmbement. Mr. Myron Fuller’s admirable
account of the effects of the New Madrid earthquake of 1816 as observed
one hundred years after the event is full of the most interesting and
suggestive observations, not the least so those upon the sand-blows and
sand-filled fissures containing lignite—the sand having come up from a
bed lying at a depth of not less than 80 feet—the elevated tracts and
the new lakes produced by subsidence. His photographic illustration
of Reelfoot Lake with its broken and hollowed trunks of drowned trees
must appeal to the imagination of every Coal Measure geologist.

Displacements or undulations of the surface of the Coal Swamps
are readily traceable in many, perhaps in most, of the seams in this
coalfield, but it is not always possible to prove their contemporaneity,

OC a aS

ar rye een

;
;

.
C.—GEOLOGY. 23

and especially is this the case with the rising folds. The depressions,
however, are different. Our colliers apply the term ‘ swilly,’ or some-
times ‘swamp,’ to shallow, trough-like, inflections of a seam. These
vary in depth from 2 or 3 feet up to as much as 50 or 60 feet; they
vary greatly in breadth, but, so far as I have seen them, they are all
steep-sided, perhaps 20° to 40°. Their linear extension ranges within
wide limits; there is one at Rockingham which is known to extend for
more than a mile. It has a breadth of 6 chains (132 yards) and a depth
of 26 feet. A yet larger one traverses the whole extent of a colliery in
Nottinghamshire. The evidence that these depressions were produced

-contemporaneously is in many cases decisive. Not only is the coal

conspicuously thicker in a swilly than the normal, but the infilling is
frequently of a different character from the normal roof material. In
some cases it carries a patch of cannel; in others, while the normal
roof passes over the swilly without bending, between coal and roof, a
muddy deposit levels up the hollow Swillies are peculiar to a given
seam, and I have learned of only one case in which more than one seam
is affected by the same fold, but here it is also noted that, as in all
wash-outs, the swillies are anterior to, and are thrown by, the
faulting.

It seems probable that the isolated patches of cannel by which some

-coal-seams are surmounted may, in other cases than those of swillies,

lie in hollows produced by earthquake deformation ; and Fuller's picture
of Reelfoot Lake tempts the reflection that upon its floor the maceration
of peat into cannel substance may now be proceeding. If it were not so
distant I would fain test it with a few probings.

The ‘Cleat’ or ‘Slynes’ of Coal.

One feature of coal-seams I must discuss before I conclude, though
it will not at first appear clear that it can be brought within the title
of this address—I allude to the cleavage or cleat or slynes of coal. If
we look at a piece of coal this cleavage is very conspicuous, for, lying
at right angles with the bedding, it gives the straight sides to the
fragment. It is obviously not, like the cleavage of slate, a texture, but
it is a series of well-developed joints varying in their individual vertical
extension, some being restricted to a single layer of bright coal, and
here and there one traversing bright and dull and fusain alike. A
thick layer of fusain very commonly interrupts most of the cleat planes
that have affected the other materials, and it is seen in such instances
that chips of woody texture lie quite across the ineffective cleat.

It is a vital element in the cleat problem that it is as well developed
and as definite in direction in a flake of bright coal the ;35th of an inch
in thickness as in a tree-trunk. While I was preparing this address |
procured a slab of shale from the bed underlying the uppermost bed
of the Millstone Grit. It bore numerous imprints of goniatites and a
leaf of Cordaites, which, in its present condition of bright coal, varies
in thickness from about th down to ;}5th of an inch in thickness.
It is traversed by an even and regular cleat at intervals of about 4, th
of an inch, disposed at an angle of about 35° to the length of the leaf.

24 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

With great care it was possible to replace the slab in its original position
and to determine the orientation of the cleat to be N.W.-S.E. This
is not nearly the extreme of tenuity reached by well-cleated plant
remains. I have specimens that are mere shiny films, and cannot, I
should judge, exceed ,4,th of an inch, yet they show well-defined and
regular cleat. Further, it should be noted that the production of cleat
was subsequent to the erosion of stream channels as well as to the pro-
duction of phenomena on the margins of the wash-outs. Every
pebble and flake of coal found in the displaced masses in these stream-
casts has the cleat well developed, and in strict parallelism with the
cleat of the adjacent undisturbed seam. Whether its production was
later than the faulting has not been determined, and perhaps is in-
determinable, as the faults have not been shown to rotate the strata ;
but, in the argument which follows, grounds will appear for regarding
the cleat as produced before the induration of the strata, and the
faulting has evidently happened in the main after consolidation.

In a paper which I contributed to the Geological Magazine in 1914,
I directed attention to the fact that cleat is quite independent of the
joints traversing the shales and sandstones of the associated measures ;
whence I drew the inference that the cleat must have been produced
prior to the jointing, for had the two sets of divisional planes been
produced simultaneously the agency that gave direction to the one would
have influenced the other, while if the jointing had been produced first
the coal could not possibly have escaped fracture by the joints. On
the other hand, if the intimate and regular cleating preceded the pro-
duction of the joints, no fresh fracturing would be requisite, or possible.
But the jointing of the measures may, or rather, must, be regarded
as an incident of the consolidation, so that, as a necessary corollary, we
must regard the cleating of the coal as preceding the consolidation of
the sediments in which the seams lay. This presents no a priori
difficulty, and it is corroborated by experience of lignite in unconsoli-
dated strata; for example, a bed of bright lustrous lignite lies inter-
bedded in the wholly soft and incoherent Eocene sands and clays of
Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight. This lignite, I find from a specimen
collected before my interest was aroused, is divided by a definite cleat,
but I did not make any observation of its direction.

The reason for this early development of a joint system is easily
found—the original peat, in passing into lignite, acquired a brittle con-
sistency and a consequent disposition to joint. Indeed, the change of
consistency is the effect of chemical change and loss, whereby the peat
substance contracts. Hence, when our Coal Measures were first laid
down they would consist of a series of incoherent sands and muds, and
this uncompacted condition may have persisted for a very long period
so long as pressures were not excessive and no cementation took place ;
even surviving considerable tectonic disturbances, if we may judge by
the conditions of the Bovey “Tracey beds. The peats, however, would
be subject to changes entirely innate: the gradual loss of volatile con-
stituents, or at least the resolution of the carbon compounds into new
groupings and the conversion of the mother substance of the coal into
lignite. In this condition the coal-substance would be brittle and liable

o
C.—GEOLOGY. 25

to joint in response to the tensile strains set up by the contractility of
the mass.° .

There are questions of very deep import concerned with the geo-
graphical direction of the cleat. The first reference to this interesting
topic is, I believe, in a work, close upon a century old, by Edward
Mammatt, entitled Geological Facts to elucidate the Ashby-de-la-
Zouch Coalfield, published in 1834. His fourth chapter, headed ‘ On
the polarity of the strata and the general law of their arrangement,’
contains these remarkable passages: ‘ Polarity of the strata is a subject
which hitherto has not been much considered. The extraordinary
uniformity in the direction of the slynes and of the partings of the
rocky strata seems to have been determined by the operation of some
law not yet understood. . . . Wherever these slynes appear, their direc-
tion is 23° West of North by the compass, whatever way the stratum
may incline. The coal between them has an arrangement of lines all
parallel to the slynes, by which it may be divided. This is called the
end of the coal. . . . Many of the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire
Coal Measures have their slynes in the same arrangement as the strata
upon Ashton Woulds, and this is also preserved in those of Coleorton,
about five miles to the westward.’

In my paper in the Geological Magazine I commented on the fact
that little had been written on the subject of cleat since Jukes’ Manual
of Geology (1862), in which he quotes a Nottinghamshire miner’s remark
that the slyne faced ‘ two o’clock sun, like as it does all over the world,
as ever I heered on,’ a generalisation te be remembered.

John Phillips, in a report presented to this Section in the year 1856,
corroborates the statement so far as concerns the coalfields of North-
umberland and Durham, where he says it ‘runs most generally to the
north-west (true).’ The same direction, he says, prevails in Yorkshire
and Derbyshire and also in Lancashire.

I have suggested a reason why coal should acquire a joint system
anterior to, and independent of, that of the associated measures, but
while providing a jointing-force that theory furnishes no explanation of
the directional tendency of the cleat. This tendency must have been
supplied by some directive strain—not necessarily of great intensity,
but continuous in its operation.

The idea that the initiation of joints, as it were the pulling of a
trigger, is due to seismic tremors, is urged by Mr. W. O. Crosby, but
it seems that an agency much more constant in operation and direction
is required.

In 1914 and since I have collected a great body of data regarding
the direction of the cleat in coals and lignites in many parts of the
world, chiefly by means of circular letters to every colliery manager
in the British Isles and to many abroad. I have also obtained most
generous help and information from valued correspondents in the United
States, foremost of whom I must mention Professor J. J. Stevenson.

Cleat observations in the Northern Hemisphere show an overwhelm-
ing preponderance of a N.W.-S.E. direction in coals and lignites of all

8 Fusain, being already greatly decomposed, would not be as brittle and
would not cleat so readily.

SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

ea

DIRECTION
CLEAT
IN

LANCASHIRE
CHESHIRE

NORTH STAFFS?
aNortwH Wales.

MILES

SCALE oF

LANCASHIRE
& CHESHIRE.

Deals Sip
wee VE = Eek
\ \ A SO% PY

¢
C.—GEOLOGY. 27

YORKSHIRE
_ DERBYSHIRE &
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

——
SCALE eo MILES.

YORKSHIRE
DERBYSHIRE &
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE.

28 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

ages from Carboniferous to Pleistocene and from regions as remote
as Alaska, Spitsbergen, the Oxus, Nigeria, and China. This direction
persists through every variety of tectonic relations, but seems most
regular in the largest and least disturbed fields.

Jukes’ miner’s astonishing statement that ‘the slyne faces two
o'clock sun . . . all over the world ’ involves more than is at first glance
apparent, for, as a friend has pointed out—and when one gives the
matter a thought it is obvious—that two o’clock sun must shine from
a quite different compass-bearing in the Northern and Southern Hemi-
spheres. Yet the data I have collected confirms generally the miner’s
declaration in the Southern Hemisphere as well as the North, though
exceptions occur that may possess a deep significance.

Many of the southern coals have no definite cleat, but in such as
do display a regular system there is a distinct predominance of the
N.E.-S.W. direction which has a curious inverse relationship with the
N.W.-S.E. direction of the Northern Hemisphere.

With war-time interruptions of my inquiries, and, since the war,
a spirit of unrest in the mining world which is not conducive to scientific
research, I do not feel that the matter is ripe for full discussion, and I
forbear to disclose the speculations as to cause which are confided to
my note-books, further than to say that I feel persuaded that the cause
will be found in some relation to influences, tidal or other, dependent
upon the earth’s planetary réle. I have reason to believe that some of
the information sent to me from distant fields went to the bottom of
the sea in the submarine war. When such deficiencies are made good,
and all the data gathered together, will be time enough to invoke the aid
of specialists in the department of Mathematics most concerned with
questions of this nature.

Meanwhile I would invite attention to the case of another type
of organically formed rock that shares with coal the capacity for early
consolidation, namely, limestone. My attention was long ago attracted
by a remarkable bed of limestone in the gorge at Gordale. It is, at a
guess, 100 feet in thickness, and is distinguished by a remarkable system
of vertical joints that split the mass into thin plates ranging from half
an inch up to several inches in thickness. Determinations of the direc-
tion of jointing are not easily made, as the plates are irregular, but a
series of eleven determinations made for me gave a maximum deviation
of 114 degrees on each side of the mean value N.41° W. (true bearing)
which agrees remarkably with the jointing of the more normal lime-
stones in the district and also with the jointing of the chalk over large
areas of the south-east of England.

There is a negative aspect of the cleat question which brings it more
clearly within the ambit of an inquiry into the physiography of the coal-
swamps. I allude to the absence of cleat that characterises anthracite
the world over, and is the basis for the broad classification of coals in
the United States into cubical and non-cubical coals. Upon this absence
of cleat is attendant features that have been regarded as indicative of
conditions prevailing during the formation of the coal, and hence clearly
within my terms of reference.

In the Memoir of the Geological Survey on the Coals of South Wales,

ae ee eor,COee

ACs Troe tr =
.

:
7

7
C,—GEOLOGY., 29

it is pointed out that the anthracite condition, instead of being accom-
panied by a high ash-content—which is what might be expected if the
ash ratio were determined simply by the reduction in the non-ash—is
shown statistically to bear the reverse relationship. That is, the more
anthracitic the coal, the lower the ash. From this it is argued that the
anthracites of South Wales were formed of plant-constituents different
from those contributing to the steam and house coals. This proposition
gains no support from the study of the plants found in the associated
measures, nor does it explain why the coals of other fields, composed
in their various parts of very diverse constituents, do not exhibit the
anthracite phase. But the ash question needs to be approached from
another point of view. The ash of coal may, as I have shown else-
where, be composed of three entirely distinct and chemically different
materials. There may be (1) the mineral substances belonging to the
plant-tissues ; then (2) any detrital mineral substances washed or blown
into the area of growing peat; and, finally, the sparry minerals located
in the lumen of the cleat. As to the first, I have long considered that
the coal was in large measure deprived by leaching of much of its
mineral substances; it is otherwise difficult to account for the almost
total absence of potash. The second—detrital matter—is probably
present in some though not in all coals; the high percentage of alu-
minium silicate is probably of this origin. But the third constituent—
the sparry matter—may, both on a priori grounds and upon direct evi-
dence, be assigned a very important réle in the production of the ashes
in most coals. When a coal with a strongly developed cleat is examined
in large masses it is at once seen ihat the cleat spaces are of quite
sensible width, and that they are occupied most commonly by a white
crystalline deposit which may consist of either carbonate of iron or
carbonate of lime, and there are also in many seams crystals of iron
sulphide—either pyrites or marcasite. These sparry veins may be as
much as ;1,th of an inch, or even more, in thickness, and they clearly
constitute the principal contributors to the ash. It has been suggested
that they are true components of the original peat, a proposition to
which no botanist would assent, and it appears certain that the veins
consist of material introduced by percolation from the overlying
measures, subsequent to the production of the cleat. If that be so,
it then will follow that the amount of the material present in coal must
be in some direct proportion to the available cleat space, and if there
is no cleat neither will there be any vein-stuff to contribute to the ash.
It should be pointed out that ordinary bituminous coal broken into
minute dice and washed so as to remove any heavy mineral particles
is found to contain a percentage of ash quite comparable with that of
an average anthracite. It is to be concluded, therefore, that the varia-
tions of the ash contents of a coal are no indication of the plant-
constituent of the coal.

I have sought to show how the concept of the Coal Measures with
their sandstones, shales and coal-seams accords entirely with what we
know of modern swamps and deltas, and that just as each Coal Measure
fact finds its illustration in modern conditions, so we may, inverting
the method of inquiry, say that no noteworthy features of the modern
swamps fail to find their exemplification in the ancient.

30 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

Even what may seem the most daring of my propositions—the
seismic origin of abnormal ‘ wash-outs ’"—finds, I cannot doubt, a full
justification in what has been seen in the Sylhet region by Mr. Oldham,
and in the Mississippi valley by Mr. Fuller, or in what can be inferred
as a necessary subterranean accompaniment of these surface signs of
great earthquake convulsions. é

One, and one only, Coal Measure phenomenon lacks its obvious
modern ‘parallel, the cleat, and hereon I present the complement to the
text of this address—the ton of fact awaiting the illuminating ounce of
theory that shall outvalue it.

|

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7.

SECTION D.—ZOOLOGY.

THE PROGRESSION OF LIFE IN
THE SEA.

ADDRESS BY

E. J. ALLEN, D.Sc., F.R.S.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Tue method we usually follow in the ordinary course of zoological work
is to make first, with the unaided eye, a general examination of the
animal that interests us, and then study in detail its separate parts
with a simple lens, with a low power of the microscope, with gradually
increasing powers, until, finally, minute portions are examined with the
highest oil-immersion lens. The successful research worker is generally
one who, whilst carrying to the utmost limit he can achieve his search
into detail, maintains as by instinct a true sense of proportion and
holds firmly to the idea of the organism as a whole.

In discussing the living organisms of the sea I shall try to follow
a similar plan, thinking of the life of the sea as a whole, built up of
individual plants and animals, each in intimate relation with its sur-
roundings, and all interdependent among themselves. But even this
is not enough, for we must take still a wider view and keep in mind
not only the life of the waters, but that also of the land and of the air,
for both, as we shall see, have a bearing on our theme. Deep oceans,
coastal waters, shallow seas, rivers and lakes, continents and islands,
all play their part in one scheme of organic life—life which had, it seems,
one origin, and notwithstanding migrations and transmigrations from
water to land, from land to air, and from land and air back again to
the water, remains one closely inter-related whole.

Both Brandt? and Gran? have recently emphasised the fact that it
is in the coastal waters and shallow seas, which receive much drainage
from the land, that plant and animal life are most abundant, the more
open oceans far from land being relatively barren; as Schiitt puts it, the
pure blue of the oceans is the desert colour of the seas. This increased
production in the coastal waters is due principally to the presence of
nitrogen compounds and compounds of phosphorus derived from terres-
trial life. From forest, moor and fen, wherever water trickles, the life
of the land sends its infinitesimal quota of these essential foodstuffs to
fertilise the sea.

When, however, we go back to the beginning of things, we shall
probably be right if we say that any influence of terrestrial life upon
life in the sea must be left out of account. Different views are still

1 Wissensch. Meeresunters. Kiel, 18, 1916-20, p. 187.
? Bull. Planktonique. Cons. Internat., 1912 (1915).

Britisu Association : Hull, 1922.] D

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

held as to where life in the world had its origin, but no one questions
that it began in close connection with water. That it began in the
sea, where the necessary elements were present in appropriate concen-
trations and in an ionised state, is an idea which appeals to many with
increasing force the more closely it is examined. This view has been
developed recently by Church® in his memoir on ‘ The Building of an
Autotrophic Flagellate,’ in which he boldly attempts to trace the pro-
gression from the inorganic elements present in sea-water to the uni-
cellular flagellate in the plankton phase, floating freely in the water.
The autotrophic flagellate, manufacturing its own food, he regards as
the starting-point from which all other organisms, both plants and
animals, have sprung. ‘To understand the first step in this progression,
the passage from the dead inorganic to the living organic remains, as it
has always been, one of the great goals of science, not of biological
science alone, but of all science. Recent research has, I think, thrown
much light on the fundamental problems involved. In a paper pub-
lished last year, Baly, Heilbron, and Barker,* extending and correcting
previous work by Benjamin Moore and Webster,® have shown that
light of very short wave-length (A= 200 uu), obtained from a mercury-
vapour lamp, acting upon water and carbon dioxide alone, is capable
of producing formaldehyde, with liberation of free oxygen. Light of
a somewhat longer wave-length (2»= 290 wu) causes the molecules of
formaldehyde to unite or polymerise to form simple sugars, six mole-
cules of formaldehyde, for example, uniting to form “hexose. The
arresting fact brought out in these researches is that the reactions take
place, under the influence of light of appropriate wave-lengths, without
the help of any catalyst, either organic or inorganic. Where a source
of light is used which furnishes rays of many wave-lengths, the simple
reaction of the formation of formaldehyde is masked by the immediate
condensation of the formaldehyde to sugar, but this formation of sugar
can be prevented by adding to the solution a substance which absorbs
the longer wave-lengths, so that only the short ones which produce
formaldehyde are able to act.

When the formation of sugars is postulated, the introduction of
nitrogen into the organic molecule offers little theoretical difficulty ; for
not only has Moore* shown that nitrates are converted into the more
chemically active nitrites under the influence of light of short wave-
length, but he maintains that marine alge, as well as other green plants,
can under the same influence assimilate free nitrogen from the air.
Baly” also has succeeded in bringing about the union of nitrites with
active formaldehyde in ordinary test-tubes by subjecting the mixture
to the light of a quartz-mercury lamp.

* Biological Memoirs T. Oxford, 1919.

“ Journ. Chem. Soc., London, vols. 119 and 120, 1921, p. 1025. Nature,
vol. 109, 1922, p. 344.

* Proc. Roy. Soc. B., vol. 87, p. 163 (1913), p. 556 (1914}; vol. 90, p. 168
(1918).

6 Proc. Roy. Soc. B., vol. 90, p. 158 (1918); vol. 92, p. 51 (1921).

’ Baly, Heilbron and Hudson, Journ. Chem. Soc., London, vols. 121 and
(22, 1922, p. 1078.

OO

ee ee ae a

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D,—ZOOLOGY. 3

. It will be admitted that these three reactions: (1) the formation of
formaldehyde, H.CO.H, from carbonic acid, OH.CO.OH, with libera-
tion of free oxygen, or, to put it more simply, the direct union of the
carbon atom of CO: with a hydrogen atom of H20; (2) the formation
of sugars from formaldehyde, and (3) the formation from nitrites and

formaldehyde of nitrogenous organic substances, are the most funda-
- mental and characteristic reactions of organic life. It is true that light
of sueh short wave-lengths (A= 200 uu) as were required in Baly’s
experiments to synthesise formaldehyde do not occur in sunlight as it
reaches the earth to-day; but, as we shall see later, the same author
has shown that, in the presence of certain substances known as photo-
catalysts, the reaction can be brought about by ordinary visible light ;
and from Moore and Webster’s work it appears that colloidal hydroxides
of uranium and of iron are suitable photocatalysts for the purpose.

lf these results of the pure chemist are justified, they go far towards
bridging the gap which has separated the inorganic from the organic,
and make it not too presumptuous to hazard the old guess that even
to-day it is possible that organic matter may be produced in the sea and
other natural waters without the intervention of living organisms. We
may note here, too, that if we take account of only the most accurate
and adequately careful work, the actual experimental evidence at the
present time requires the presence of a certain amount of organic matter
in the culture medium or environment before the healthy growth of
even the simplest vegetable organism can take place. This was illus-
trated in some experiments made by myself some years ago when

__ attempting to grow a marine diatom, Thalassiosira gravida, in artificial

_ sea-water made up from the purest chemicals obtainable dissolved in

twice-distilled water. Even after nutritive salts, in the form of nitrates

and phosphates, had been added, little or no growth of the diatom
occurred. But if as little as 1 per cent. of natural sea-water were
added excellent cultures resulted, in which the growth was as healthy
and vigorous as I was able to obtain when natural sea-water was used
entirely as the basis of the culture medium. There was clearly some
substance essential to healthy growth contained in the 1 per cent. of
natural sea-water, and from further experiments it became practically
certain that it was an organic substance. When, for instance, the
natural sea-water was evaporated to dryness, the residue slightly heated
and redissolved in distilled water, 1 per cent. of this solution added to
the artificial culture medium was as potent in producing growth of the
diatom as the original natural sea-water had been. When, on the
other hand, the residue after evaporation was well roasted at a dull
red heat and redissolved in distilled water, the addition of this solution
to the artificial culture medium produced no effect and growth did not
take place. Growth could also be stimulated by boiling a small frag-
ment of green seaweed (Ulva) in the artificial culture medium, the
weed being removed before inoculation with the diatom. All this points
to the necessity for the presence of some kind of organic matter in
the solution before growth can take place. One must not dogmatise,
however, for there are many pitfalls in the experimental work and the
necessary degree of accuracy is difficult to attain. My own experience
D2

~~" ——

eae +

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

of these difficulties culminated when I discovered, covering the bottom
of my stock bottle of distilled water—water which had been carefully ~
redistilled from bichromate of potash and sulphuric acid in all-glass
apparatus—a healthy growth of mould.

- Let us then assume that we are allowed to postulate in primitive
sea-water or other natural water organic compounds formed by the
energy of light vibrations from ions present in the water, and see how
we may proceed to picture the building up of elementary organisms.
Without doubt the evolutionary step is a long and elaborate one, for
even the simplest living organism is already highly complex both in
structure and function. As the molecules grew more complex by the
progressive linkage of the carbon atoms of newly formed carbohydrate
and nitrogenous groups, we must suppose that the organic substance,
for purely physical reasons, assumed the colloidal state, and at the same
time its surface-tension became somewhat different from that of the
surrounding water. With the assumption of the colloidal state, the
electric charges on the colioidal particles would produce the effect of
adsorption and fresh ions would be attracted from the surrounding
medium, producing a kind of growth entirely physical in character.
We thus arrive at the conception of a mass of colloidal plasma differing
in surface-tension from the water and increasing in size by two pro-
cesses, the one chemical, due to linkage of carbon atoms; the other
physical, brought about by the adsorption of ions by the colloidal
particles. .

The difference of surface-tension would tend to make the surface a
minimum and the shape of the mass spherical. On the other hand,
maximum growth would demand maximum exchange with the sur-
rounding medium, and hence maximum surface. From the antagonism
of these two factors, surface-tension and growth, there would follow,
firstly, the breaking up of the mass into minute particles upon the
slightest agitation, and, secondly, changes of form wherever growth
involved local alterations of surface-tension, which changes of form
would represent the first indication of the property of contractility.

So far we have considered only the process of the building up of
the elementary plasmic particles, the anabolic process. Church, whose
memoir already referred to I am now closely following, points out that
these anabolic operations must from the beginning have been subject
to the alternations of day and night, for during the night the supply of
external energy is removed. ‘If during the night,’ he asks, ‘ the
machine runs down, to what extent may it be possible so to delay the
onset of molecular finality that some reaction may continue, at a lower
rate, until the succeeding day?’ And his answer is: ‘ The successful
solution of this problem is defined physiologically by the introduction
of the conception ‘‘ katabolism,’’ as implying that energy derived from
the ‘‘ breaking down’’ of the plasma itself . . . may be regarded as a
““secondary engine,’’ functional in the absence of light, and evolved
as a last resort in failing plasma.’ Katabolism persists as the ultimate
mechanism in the physiology of animal as contrasted with plant life,
but if the suggestion just quoted is sound it originated, as the first
‘adaptation ’’ of the organism, to meet the factor of recurring night

ee

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D.—ZOOLOGY. 5

and day. That the problem was successfully solved we know, but as
to the mechanism of its solution we have no key. It is at this point
again, to use Church’s words, that the ‘ plasma, previously within the
connotation of chemical proteid matter, becomes an autotrophic, increas-
ingly self-regulated, and so far individualised entity, to which the term
**life’’ is applied.’

The elementary plasma is thus now fairly launched as an individual
living organism, and the great fundamental problems of biology—
memory, heredity, variation, adaptation—face us at each step of our
further progress. We see in broad cutline the conditions the advancing
organism had to meet, we see the means by which those conditions
were in fact met, we know that only those individuals survived which
were able to meet them. Further than this we, the biologists of to-day,
have not advanced. The younger generation will pursue the quest,
and, with patient effort, much that now lies hidden will grow clear.

The differentiation of the growing particles of plasma into definite
layers, which followed, seems natural; first the external layer, in mole-
cular contact with the surrounding water, from which it receives sub-
stances from outside in the form of ions, and to which it itself gives
off ions; beneath this the autotrophic layer to which light penetrates,
and in which, under the influence of the light, new organic substance
is built up; in the centre a layer to which light no longer penetrates.
This central region, the nucleus, depends entirely on the peripheral
layers for its own nutrition, and becomes itself concerned only with

' katabolic processes, those processes of the organism which depend upon

the breaking down, and not the building up, of organic substance.

At an early stage in the development of the individual organism
the spherical shape, which the organic plasma was compelled to assume
under the influence of surface-tension, underwent an important modifica-
tion, the effect of which has impressed itself upon all later developments.
A spherical organism floating in the water and growing under the direct
influence of light would obviously grow more rapidly on the upper side,
where the light first strikes it, than it would on the lower side away
from the light. There followed, therefore, an elongation of the sphere
in the vertical direction, and the definite establishment of an anterior
end, the upper end which lay towards the light and at which the most
vigorous growth took place. In this way there was established-a
definite polarity, which has persisted in all higher organisms, a distine-
tion between an anterior and a posterior end. With the concentration
of organic substance which took the form of nucleus and reserve food
supply, the specific gravity of the plasma would become greater than
that of the surrounding water and the organism would tend to sink.
The necessity, therefore, arose for some means of keeping it near the
surface, that it might continue to grow under the influence of light.
The response to this need, however it was attained, came in the de-
velopment of an anterior flagellum. This we may regard as an elonga-
tion in the direction of the light of a contractile portion of the external
layer, moving rhythmically, which by its movement counteracted the
action of gravity, and acting as a tractor drew the primitive flagellate
upwards towards the surface layers, into a position where further growth

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

was possible. That this speculation of Church’s represents what was
actually accomplished, even though it does not make clear the means
by which it was brought about, is shown by the interesting researches
of Wager ® on the rise and fall of the more highly organised flagellate
Euglena. Euglena is a somewhat pear-shaped flagellate, the tapering
end being anterior and provided with a single flagellum, which
acts as a tractor drawing the organism towards the light. The
posterior end carries the nucleus and most of the chlorophyll and
food reserves. The whole organism has a specific gravity of
1.016, being slightly heavier than the fresh water in which it lives.
When dead, or when the flagellum is not moving, it takes up, under
the action of gravity alone, a vertical position in the water, with the
pointed anterior end uppermost, and the heavier, rounded, posterior
end below, and sinks gradually to the bottom.

In a very crowded culture a curious phenomenon is seen, because
the organisms tend to aggregate into clusters beneath the surface film,
and when they are crowded together in these clusters the flagella cease
to work. This makes the whole cluster sink to the bottom under the
action of gravity. When the bottom is reached the individuals are
spread out by the action of the downward current, and, when they are
sufficiently widely apart, the flagella again begin to move, carrying the
organisms in a more diffuse stream once more to the surface. The
whole culture vessel becomes filled with a series of vertical lines of
closely aggregated falling organisms, surrounded by a broad cylinder
of disseminated swimming ones, rising to the surface by the action
of their flagella. If the conditions are kept uniform such a circulation
of EHuglenas, falling to the bottom by gravity when the flagella are
stopped and returning to the surface under their own power, will
continue for days.

The flagellum in this species, therefore, retains its most primitive
function of drawing the organism to the light in the surface layer.
With the establishment of the flagellum an organ is produced which
shows remarkable persistence in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms,
and from the existence of the flagellated spermatozoon in the higher
vertebrates, in accordance with Haeckel’s biogenetic law that the indi-
vidual in its development repeats or recapitulates the history of the
race, we conclude that they also in their earliest history passed through
a plankton flagellate phase.

Exactly at what stage in the history of the autotrophic flagellate the
first formation of chlorophyll and its allied pigments took place we
have no means of determining, but it may have been before even the
flagellum itself had begun. This advance and the subsequent concen-
tration of the pigments into definite chromatophores or chloroplasts
doubtless immensely increased the efficiency of the organism in pro-
ducing the food which was necessary to it. The recent work of Baly
and his collaborators becomes here again of the first importance, and
though the subject of the part played by chlorophyll in photosynthesis

* Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., vol. 201, 1911; and Science Progress, vol. vi.,
October 1911, p. 298.

.
D.—ZOOLOGY. 7

belongs rather to botany and chemistry than to zoology, I may perhaps
for the sake of completeness be allowed to refer to it very briefly. I
have already said that Baly brought about the synthesis of formaldehyde
from CO, and H,O under the influence of rays of very short wave-length
(A=200.2u) from a mercury-vapour lamp. _He was also able to show
that when certain coloured substances were added to the solution of
carbon dioxide in water the same reaction took place under the influence
of ordinary visible light. His explanation of this process is that the
coloured substauce known as the photocatalyst absorbs the light rays
and then itself radiates, at a lower infra-red frequency corresponding
to its own molecular frequency, the energy it has absorbed. At this
lower frequency the energy thus radiated is able to activate the carbonic
acid, so that the reaction leading to the formation of formaldehyde can
and does take place. In the living plant this synthesised formaldehyde
probably at once polymerises to form sugars.

Malachite green and methyl orange, as well as other organic com-
pounds, were found to act as photocatalysts capable of synthesising for-
maldehyde, and Moore and Webster’s work had previously shown that
inorganic substances, such as colloidal uranium oxide and colloidal ferric
oxide, can do the same. Chlorophyll in living plants may with some
confidence be assumed to operate in a similar way, though no doubt the
series of events is more complex, since the green pigment itself is not
a single pigment, and others, such as carotin and xanthophyll, are also
concerned.

We have tried to picture the gradual building up from elements
occurring in sea-water of a chlorophyll-bearing flagellate, capable of
manufacturing its own nourishment and able to multiply indefinitely
by the simple process of dividing in two. If we assume only one divi-
sion during each night as a result of the day’s work in accumulating
food material, such an organism would be able in a comparatively short
space of time to occupy all the natural waters of the world. But
here we are met by a difficulty which is not easily overcome. Chloro-
phyll, the photocatalyst, the most essential factor in the building up
of the new organic matter, is itself a highly complex organic substance,
and in any satisfactory theory its original formation and its constant
increase in quantity must be accounted for. Lankester * has maintained
that chlorophyll must have originated at a somewhat late stage in the
development of organic life, and has suggested that earlier organisms
may have nourished themselves like animals on organic matter already
existing in a non-living state. An alternative hypothesis, which in
view of the recent work seems more attractive, is to suppose that the
earlier organisms were either activated by some simpler photocatalyst,
or that they received the necessary energy at suitable frequency directly
from some outside source.

It must not be forgotten, also, that at the time these developments
were taking place the conditions of the environment would in many
ways have been different from those now existing in the sea. One

® Treatise on Zoology, Part I, Introduction. London, 1909.

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. ie

suggestion of special interest that has been made'® is that the concen-
tration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and hence also in natural
waters, was very much greater than it is to-day. Free oxygen, indeed,
may have been entirely absent, and all the free oxygen now present in
the air may owe its existence to the subsequent splitting up of carbon
dioxide by the action of plant life. With such possibilities of differences
in the conditions in this and in so many other directions, may we not
be well satisfied if, for the time, we can say that the formation of
carbohydrates and proteids has been brought within the category ot
ordinary chemical operations, which can oceur without the previous
existence of living substance ?

To return once more, however, to the free-swimming, autotrophic
flagellate. In the early stages of its history the loss caused by sinking,
and so getting below the influence of light and the possibility of further
growth, must have been enormous. We may conceive a constant rain
of dead and dying organisms falling into the darker regions of the sea,
and thus a new field would be offered for the development of any slight
advantages which particular individuals might possess. Under such
conditions we may suppose that the holozoic or animal mode of nutrition
first began in the absorption of one individual by another one, with
which it had chanced to come into contact. If the one individual were
more vigorous and the other moribund we should designate the process
‘feeding,’ and the additional energy obtained from the food might well
cause the individual to survive. If the two individuals which coalesced
were both sinking from loss of vigour, the combined energy of the two
might make possible a return to the upper water layers, where under
the influence of light growth and multiplication would proceed, and we
should, I suppose, designate the coalescence ‘ conjugation,’ or sexual
fusion.

Other individuals, again, sinking in shallow water, would stick to
solid objects on the sea-floor, whilst the flagellum continued to vibrate.
The current produced by the flagellum under these conditions would
draw towards the organism dead and disintegrating remains of its
fellows, and again we should have ingestion and animal nutrition. At
this stage we witness the definite passage from plant to animal life.
A further stage is seen when a cup-like depression to receive the incom-
ing particles of food is formed at the base of the flagellum, to be
followed still later by a definite mouth.

Any roughening of the external surface of the swimming flagellate,
such as we so often find brought about by the deposition of calcareous
plates or siliceous spicules, or the production of ridges or furrows, would
tend to slow down its speed of travel, from increased friction with the
surrounding water. This would have a similar effect to actual fixation
in drawing floating particles by the action of the flagellum, and also
lead to animal nutrition. Still another development would occur when
the fallen flagellate began to creep along the sea-floor by contractile
movements of the plasmic surface, losing its flagellum, and adopting

*° See Carl Snyder, ‘ Life without Oxygen,’ Science Progress, vol. vi., 1912,
Day LOT:

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D.—ZOOLOGY. 9

the mode of life of an amcba. That amceba and its allies, the
Rhizopods, are descended from a flagellate ancestor is a view suggested
by Lankester™ in 1909, which was adopted by Doflein,’? and is now
strongly advocated by Pascher’® as a result of much new research.

The transformation from the plant to the animal mode of feeding
we can see in action by studying actual organisms which exist to-day.
In the course of my work already referred to on the culture of plankton
organisms there has on several occasions flourished in the flasks a small
flagellate belonging to the group of Chrysomonads, which was first
described by Wysotzky under the name of Pedinella hexacostata, and
to which I drew the attention of Section D at the Cardiff Meeting in
1920. The general form of Pedinella resembles that of the common
Vorticella, but its size is much smaller. The body, which is only about
5 in diameter, is shaped like the bowl of a wine glass, and from the
base of the bowl, which is the posterior end, a short, stiff stalk extends.
From the centre of the anterior surface there arises a single long
flagellum, surrounded at a little distance by a circle of short, stiff, proto-
plasmic hairs. Arranged in an equatorial ring just inside the body
are six or eight brownish green chromatophores or chloroplasts. In a
healthy culture Pedinella swims about freely by means of a spiral move-
ment of the flagellum, which functions as a tractor, the stalk trailing
behind. The chromatophores are large, brightly coloured and well
developed, and the organism is obviously nourishing itself after the
manner of a plant, like any other Chrysomonad. But from time to
time a Pedinella will suddenly fix itself by the point of the trailing stalk.
The immediate effect of this fixing is that a current of water, produced
by the still vibrating flagellum, streams towards the anterior surface
of the body, and srnall particles in the water, such as bacteria, become
caught up on the anterior surface, the ring of fine stiff hairs surround-
ing the base of the flagellum being doubtless of great assistance in the
capture of this food. One can clearly see bacteria and small fragments
of similar size engulfed by the protoplasm of the anterior face of the
Pedinella and taken into the body. The organism is now feeding as
ananimal. In some of the cultures in which bacteria were vgry plentiful
nearly all the Pedinella remained fixed and fed in the animal way, and
when this was so the chromatophores had almost disappeared, though
they could still be seen as minute dark dots. We can as it were in this
one organism see the transition from plant to animal brought about
by the simple process of the freely swimming form becoming fixed.

In the group of Dinoflagellates, also—the group to which the naked
and armoured peridinians belong—the same transition from plant to
animal nutrition can be well followed by studying different mem-
bers of the group. In heavily armoured forms, with a rich supply of
chromatophores, nutrition is chiefly plant-like or holophytic. In those
with fewer chromatophores there is, on the other hand, often distinct
evidence of the ingestion of other organisms, and nutrition becomes

11 Lankester, 7'reatise on Zoology, Part I., London, 1909, p. xxii.

'2 Doflein, Protozoenkunde, 1916.

13 Pascher, Archiv f. Protistenkunde, Bd. 36, 1916, p. 81, and Bd. 38, 1917,
ps 1:

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

partly animal-lke. Amongst the naked Dinoflagellates such holozoic
nutrition is very much developed, and in many: species has entirely
superseded the earlier method of carbonic acid assimilation.

It is really surprising how many structural features found in higher
groups of animals make their first appearance in these naked Dino-
flagellates in conjunction with this change of nutrition, and we seem
to be led directly to the metazoa, especially to the Coelenterata. In
Poiykrikos there are well-developed stinging cells or nematocysts, as
elaborately formed as those of Hydra or the anemones. In Pouchetia
and Hrythropsis well-developed ocelli are found, consisting of a refrac-
tive, hyaline, sometimes spherical lens, surrounded by an imner core of
red pigment and an outer layer of black; the whole structure is com-
parable to the ocelli around the bell of a medusa. In Noctiluca and in
the allied genus Pavillardia a mobile tentacle, which is doubtless used
for the capture of food, is developed. Division of the nucleus, with
the formation of large, distinct chromosomes, has also been described
in several of these Dinoflagellates. With the tendency of the cells -in
certain species to hold together after division and form definite chains
we seem to approach still nearer to the metazoa, until, finally, in Poly-
krikos we reach an organism which may well have given rise to a simple,
pelagic ccelenterate. It is difficult to resist the suggestion put forward
by Kofoid' in his recent monograph, that if to Polykrikos, with its
continuous longitudinal groove which serves it as a mouth, its multi-
cellular and multinucleate body and its nematocysts, we could add the
tentacle of Noctiluca, and perhaps also the ocellus of Erythropsis, “ we
should have an organism whose structure would appear prophetic of
the Ccelenterata and one whose affinities to that phylum and to the
Dinoflagellata would be patent.’ Or it may be that the older view is
the correct one here, and that the first ccelenterate came from a spherical
colony of simple holozoic flagellates, arranged something on the plan
of Volvox, in which the posterior cells of the swimming colony, in
whose wake food particles would collect, had become more specialised
for nutrition than the rest.

Before gproceeding, however, to consider the further progress of.

animal life, we must pause for a moment to ask in what direction plant
life in the sea developed, from which the increasing animal life derived
its nourishment. Here the striking fact is the lack of progress in the
free, floating, plankton phase. The plant life of the plankton has
never proceeded beyond the unicellular stage, for the plankton diatoms,
which with the peridinians form the great, fundamental vegetable food
supply of the sea, are only autotrophic flagellates which have lost their
flagella, having acquired other means of flotation to keep them in the
sunlit region of the upper water layers. Deriving their food, as these
plants do, directly from molecules in the sea-water, the factor which
is for them of supreme importance is the exposure of maximum surface
directly to the water. Hence the minute unicellular form has been
the only one to survive as phytoplankton. The marine region in which

14 Kofoid and Swezy, ‘The Free-living Unarmoured Dinoflagellata.’ Mem.
Univ. California, 1921.

ee 5 eee ad

=e ee _

o
D.—ZOOLOGY, 11

plant life has succeeded in making some progress is the narrow belt
along the shores, where a fixed life is possible, but this belt, limited
by the amount of light which penetrates, extends only to a depth of
about 15 fathoms. The available area is further restricted to rocky
and hard bottoms, and is therefore nowhere great. This is the wave-
lashed region of the brown and red sea-weeds. In the brown sea-
weeds a history can still be traced,'* from the fixture of an autotrophic
flagellate to the building up, by laying cell on eell, of the essential
structures which afterwards, on transmigration to the land, reached
their climax in the forest tree.

But if the flagellate thus rose and gave origin to the flora of the
land, it also degenerated, for it adopted a parasitic habit, living in
and directly absorbing already formed organic matter. In this way
the bacteria arose, whose activities in so many directions influence the
life of to-day. This view exceeds in probability, I think, the suggestion
often put forward,’® that it is to the simpler bacteria we must look for
the first beginnings of life.

After this digression on the botanical side we must return to the
primitive ccelenterate and see on what lines evolution proceeded in
the animal world. As a purely plankton organism, swimming freely
in the water, the progress of the ccelenterate was not great, and
reached, as far as we know, no further than the modern Ctenophore.
The Ctenophore seems to represent the culminating point of the
primary progression of pelagic animals, which derived directly from
the autotrophic flagellate. Further evolution was associated with an
abandonment by a ccelenterate-like animal of the pelagic habit, and
the establishment of a connection with the sea bottom, either by fixing
to it, by burrowing in it, or by creeping or running over it. At a
later stage many of the animals which had become adapted to these
modes of life developed new powers of swimming, and thus gave riSe |
to the varied pelagic life which we find in the sea to-day; but this
must be regarded as secondary, the primary pelagic life, so far as
adult animals were concerned, having ended with the evolution of
the Ctenophore.*? Such is the teaching of embryology, the history of
the race being conjectured from the development of the individual.
In group after group of the animal kingdom, when the details of its
embryology become known, the indications are the same—first the
active spermatozoon, reminiscent of the plankton flagellate, then the
pelagic Iarval stage, recalling the ce@lenterate, and then a bottom-
living phase.

** Church, Botanical Memoirs, No. 3. Oxford, 1919.

16 Osborn, ‘The Origin and Evolution of Life,’ 1918. Waksman and Joffe,
*Micro-organisms concerned in the Oxidation of Sulphur in the Soil,’ Journal
of Bacteriology, VII. 2, March 1922. The authors claim that Thiobacillus
thiooxidans will grow in solutions containing no organic matter. In view of
the minute traces of organic matter that suffice for the growth of bacteria and
moulds, care must be taken, however, in drawing conclusions from experiments
made in flasks or tubes closed in the ordinary way with cotton-wool plugs and
subsequently sterilised in flowing steam. ;

‘* There is perhaps a possibility that further knowledge of the embryology
of Sagitta and its allies might make it necessary to modify this suggestion.

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

The primitive, free-swimming ccelenterate, adopting a fixed habit
and becoming attached mouth upwards to solid rock or stone, gave rise
to hydroids, anemones and corals, typical inhabitants of the coastal
wafers, for the sands and muds at greater depths offered few points
ot attachment sufficiently stable.

A Volvox-like colony of simple holozoic flagellates, according to
MacBride,!® commenced to feed upon miscroscopic organisms lying on
the sea bottom, and under these circumstances only the cells of the
lower half of the colony would be effective feeders. The upper cells,
therefore, lost their flagella and became merely a protective layer, .
which finally grew downwards outside the others and fixed the colony
to the ground. In this way a sponge was formed. The collar cell,
so typical of the group, had been developed already by the flagellates,
its first inception being perhaps a circle of protoplasmic hairs such
as we find in Pedinella. But this adoption of a fixed habit, as it were
mouth downwards, did not lead very far, and though there has been
much elaboration within the group itself, the sponges have remained
an isolated phylum, unable to develop into higher forms.

It is in a Ctenophore-like ancestor that we find the line of develop-
ment to higher animal groups, and this ancestor must have been at
one time widely distributed in the seas. Its immediate descendants
are familiar to every zoological student in the well-known series of
pelagic larval forms. Miiller’s larva, taking to the bottom, and in
its hunt for food gliding over hard surfaces with its cilia, led to the
flatworms; the Pilidium, developing a thread-like body and creeping
into cracks and crevices to transfix its prey, gave rise to the nemertines.
A ‘Yrochophore, burrowing in soft mud and sand, developed a segmented
body which gave it later the power of running on these soft surfaces,
and became an annelid worm. Another Trochophore, developing a
broad, muscular foot, crept on the sand, and afterwards buried itself
beneath it as a lamellibranchiate mollusc, or migrated on to harder
surfaces as the gastropod and its allies. Pluteus, Bipinnaria,
Auricularia, first fixing, as the crinoids still do, and developing a radial
symmetry, afterwards broke free and wandered on the bottom as sea-
urchin, star-fish and cucumarian. Tornaria developed into Balano-
glossus, whose structure hints to us that the ascidians and vertebrates
came from a similar stock. All the phyla thus represented derive
directly from the free-swimming Ctenophore-like ancestor, and only
one considerable group, the Arthropods, remains unaccounted for. The
evolutionary history of an Arthropod is, however, not in doubt. Its
marine representatives, the Trilobites and Crustacea, came directly
from annelids, which, after their desertion of a pelagic life to burrow
in the sea-floor and run along its surface, again took to swimming, and
not only stocked the whole mass of the water with a rich and varied
life of Copepods, Cladocera and Schizopods, but gave rise to Amphipods,
Isopods, and Decapods, groups equally at home when roaming on the
bottom or swimming above it.

Another important addition to the pelagic fauna we should also

18 Vext-books of Embryology. Invertebrata. WUondon, 1914.

|
|

°
D.—ZOOLOGY. 13

notice here. From the molluscs, creeping on solid surfaces, sprang
a group of swimmers, the Cephalopods, which have grown to sizes
almost unequalled amongst the animals of the sea.

All these invertebrate phyla had become established and most of
them had reached a high degree of development in the seas of Cambrian
times. Amongst animals then living there are many which have
survived with little change of form until to-day. One is almost
tempted to suggest that the life which the sea itself could produce was
then reaching its summit and becoming stabilised. Since Cambrian
times geologists tell us some thirty million years’® have passed, a stretch
of time which it is really difficult for our imaginations to picture.
During that time a change of immense moment has happened to the
life of the sea; but if we read the signs aright, that change had its origin
rather in an invasion from without than in an evolution from within,
From whence came that tribe of fishes which now dominates the fauna
of the sea? It would be rash to say that we can give any but a specu-
lative reply to the question, but the probable answer seems to be that
fishes were first evolved not to meet conditions found in the sea, but
to battle with the swift currents of rivers, where fishes almost alone
of moving animals can to this day maintain themselves and avoid being
swept helplessly away.*° It was in response to these conditions that
elongate, soft-bodied creatures, which had penetrated to the river mouth,
developed the slender, stream-lined shape, the rigid yet flexible muscular
body, the special provision for the supply of oxygen to the blood to
maintain an abundant stock of energy, and all those minute perfections
for effective swimming that a fish’s body shows. The fact that many
sea fishes still return to the rivers, especially for spawning, supports
this view, and it is in accordance with Traquair’s classical discoveries
of the early fishes of the Scottish Old Red Sandstone, which were for
the most part fresh- and brackish-water kinds.

Haying developed, under the fierce conditions of the river, their
speed and strength as swimmers, the fishes returned to the sea, where
their new-found powers enabled them to roam over wide areas in search
of food, and gave them such an advantage in attack and defence that
they became the predominant inhabitants of all the coastal waters,
and as such they remain to-day.

The other great migration of the fishes, also, the migration from the
water to the land, giving rise to amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals,
must not be left out of account. The whales, seals and sea-birds,
which after developing on land returned again to the waters and became
readapted for life in them, are features which cannot be neglected.

And so we are brought to the picture of life in the sea as we find it
to-day. The primary production of organic substance by the utilisation
of the energy of sunlight in the bodies of minute unicellular plants,
floating freely in the water, remains, as it was in the earliest times,
the feature of fundamental importance. The conditions which control
this production are now, many of them, known. Those of chief import-

Osborn, Origin and Evolution of Life, 1918, p. 153.
2° Chamberlin, quoted in Lull, Organic Evolution, New York, 1917, p. 462.

14 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

ance are (1) the amount of light which enters the water, an amount
which varies with the length of the day, the altitude of the sun, and
the clearness of the air and of the water; (2) the presence in adequate
quantity of mineral food substances, especially nitrates and phosphates ;
and (3) a temperature favourable to the growth of the species which
are present in the water at the time. Experiments with cultures of
diatoms have shown clearly that if the food-salts required are present,
and the conditions as to light and temperature are satisfactory, other
factors, such as the salinity of the water and the proportions of its
constituent salts, can be varied within very wide limits without checking
growth. The increased abundance of plankton, especially of diatom
and peridinian plankton, in coastal waters and in shallow seas largely
surrounded by land, such as the North Sea, is due to the supply of
nutrient salts washed directly from the land by rain or brought down
by rivers. An exceptional abundance of plankton in particular localities,
which produces an exceptional abundance of all animal life, is also
often found where there is an upwelling of water from the bottom layers
of the sea. These conditions are met with where a strong current
strikes a submerged bank, or where two currents meet. Food-salts
which had accumulated in the depths, where they could not be used
owing to lack of light, are brought by the upwelling water to the surface
and become available for plant growth. The remarkable richness of
fish life in such places as the banks of Newfoundland and the Agulhas
Banks off the South African coast, each of which is the meeting-place
of two great currents, is to be explained in this way.

Our detailed knowledge of the steps in the food-chain from the
diatom and peridinian to the fish is increasing rapidly. The Copepod
eats the diatom, but not every Copepod eats every diatom; they make
their choice. The young fish eats the Copepod, but again there is
selection of kind. Even adult fishes like herring and mackerel, which
were formerly supposed to swim with open mouth, straining out of the
water whatever came in their way, are now thought largely to select
their food.”

A result of extraordinary interest in connection with the food-chain
has recently been brought to light by two sets of investigators working
independently. In seeking to explain certain features which he had
found in connection with the growth of the cod, Hjort?* undertook a
study of the distribution in marine organisms of the growth stimulant
known as vitamin. Fat-soluble vitamin was already known to be
present in large quantities in cod-liver oil, and is what probably gives
the oil its medicinal value. Hjort was able to trace the vitamin, by
means of feeding experiments on rats, in the ripe ovaries of the cod,
in shrimps and prawns, which resemble the animals on which the cod
feeds, and in diatom plankton and green alge. Jameson, Drummond,
and Coward** cultivated.the diatom Nitzschia closterium, and by a
similar method to that used by Hjort showed that it was extraordinarily

*! Bullen, Journ. Mar. Biol. Assoc., 9, 1912, p. 394.
22 Proc. Roy. Soc., May 4, 1922.
*3 Biochemical Journal. 1922.

A oe

——_- =~ sre
‘

* -
D.—ZOOLOGY 15

potent as a source of fat-soluble vitamin. We thus conclude that. this
substance, so essential to healthy animal growth, is produced in large
quantities by plankton diatoms, and passed on unchanged to the fish
through the crustaceans which feed on the diatoms. In the fish the
vitamin is first stored in the liver, and with the ripening of the ovary
passes into the egg, to be used to stimulate the growth of the next
generation. Again we see the fundamental importance of the food-
producing activities of the lowest plant life.

Attention has already been drawn to the suggestion that fishes
developed their remarkable swimming powers in rivers, in response to a
need to overcome the currents, and that they afterwards returned to
the sea, where they preyed upon a well-developed and highly complex
invertebrate fauna already fully established there. Their speed enabled
them to conquer their more sluggish predecessors, whilst they them-
selves were little open to attack. With the exception of the larger
cephalopods, which are of comparatively recent origin, and were
probably evolved after the arrival of the fishes, there are few, if any,
invertebrates which capture adult fishes as part of their normal food.
Destructive enemies appeared later in the form of whales and seals
and sea-birds, which had developed on the land and in the air.

And now in these last days a new attack is made on the fishes of
the sea, for man has entered into the struggle. He came first with
a spear in his hand; then, sitting on a rock, he dangled a baited hook,
a hook perhaps made from a twig of thorn bush, such as is used to
this day in villages on our own east coast. Afterwards, greatly daring,
he sat astride a log, with his legs paddled further from the shore, and
got more fish. He made nets and surrounded the shoals. Were there
time we might trace step by step the evolution of the art of fishing and
of the art of seamanship, for the two were bound up together till the
day when the trawlers and drifters kept the seas for the battle fleet.

There can be little doubt that in European seas the attack on the
fishes in the narrow strip of coastal water where they congregate has
become serious. A considerable proportion of the fish population is
removed each year, and human activity contributes little or nothing
to compensate the loss. We have not, however, to fear the practical
extinction of any species of fish, the kind of extinction that has taken
place with seals and whales. Fishing is subject to many natural
limitations, and when fishing is suspended recovery will be rapid. There
is evidence that such recovery took place in the North Sea when fishing
-was restricted by the War, though the increase which was noted is
perhaps not certainly outside the range of natural fluctuations. Until
the natural fluctuations in fish population are adequately understood,
their limits determined, and the causes which give rise to them dis-
covered, a reliable verdict as to the effect of fishing i is difficult to obtain.

If such problems as these are to be solved the investigation of the
sea must proceed on broadly conceived lines, and a comprehensive
knowledge must be built up, not only of the natural history of the
fishes, but also of the many and varied conditions which influence their
lives. The life of the sea must be studied as a whole.

—— ee

ol ha

SECTION E.—GEOGRAPHY.

. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY:
FIRST PRINCIPLES AND SOME
APPLICATIONS.

ADDRESS BY

MARION I. NEWBIGIN, D.Sc. (Lond.),
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

In his address to this Section in Edinburgh last year, my predecessor,
Dr. Hogarth, devoted some time to a consideration of the position of
geography in the Universities of this country. He had no difficulty
in showing that, from various points of view, this position still leaves
much to be desired. My present concern, however, is not with the
actual facts, but with a deduction which naturally follows from them.
If it be true that the Geographical Departments of the Universities are,
in most cases, insufficiently staffed and equipped, then it is surely clear
that, despite all the progress which has been made in recent years, we
have largely failed to convince the great mass of educated opinion of
the value of our subject. For University chairs are only endowed, and
departments equipped, when those established in educational high places
realise the growing importance of the subject concerned. Usually, also,
before that realisation can take place there must be a driving force in
the shape of a body of enthusiasts, able and willing to convince the
general public that the advance is necessary in the interests of the
community.

Now, in the case of geography the body of enthusiasts does exist ;
where we have failed, as I think, is in making continued and determined
efforts to convince others. The time seems to me to have come for a
determined missionary effort, a deliberate attempt to make clear to the
ordinary citizen that geography, in its modern aspects, is a subject of
direct interest and value to him in his daily life.

Let me take first a single minor example of the need for such a
policy. All those who have had anything to do with the arranging of
lecture programmes for geographical societies are aware how largely
accounts of exploration bulk in these. It may be said generally that
any Committee meeting for such a purpose turns first to a consideration
of what returned explorers are likely to be available at the time. More
than this, whether geographers in the technical sense are well repre-
sented on such bodies or not, there is a general consensus of opinion
that an explorer who has come through great dangers, or shown con-
spicuous personal courage, is, for a society which depends on public
support, a much more valuable lecturer than one who has merely done
careful and painstaking work, with no element of drama in it.

This means that even that section of the public sufficiently interested
in geography to join a geographical society regards the subject as

Britisn Association : Hull, 1922.] E

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

primarily concerned with exploration, leading to the description of
unknown or little-known regions of the earth. Even so, its interest
requires stimulation by the personal factor. If this be the attitude of a
ee specialised public, what is that of the world outside ?

I do not think there can be much doubt as to the answer. In so
far as that public is highly specialised and consists of students either
of those separate sciences from which geography obtains much of its

material, or of such subjects as history in its different branches, it
tends in many cases to regard geography with tolerant contempt. Of
the unspecialised public it may be said generally that the subject in its
modern developments has scarcely come within its range of vision. Its
older members, especially, are for the most part convinced that they
learnt ‘ geography ’ at school, as they learnt reading, writing, and arith-
metic there, and that, since mountains and rivers, capes and bays and
the rest remain where they were, there is little left to be studied or
investigated.

It seems to me, therefore, that the most clamant need at the present
time is a continuous attempt to make it plain to the community at
large that the main interest of geography is not in its facts as sueh—for
if geography ceased to exist the geologists, meteorologists, botanists,
zoologists, and so forth would continue to collect most of these. Rather
does it lie in the way in which the geographer studies these facts in
their relations to each other and to the life of man. Further, whatever
place the study of the human response to the surface phenomena of
the earth should take in the subject considered as a whole—and the
topic was fully discussed by Dr. Hogarth
doubt that it is the aspect which makes the widest appeal. When,
for example, we can take the sheets of a good atlas of physical geography
and show that the facts represented there can be made to yield deduc-
tions of great interest and value to everyone, then we are going far to
persuade the members of the public of the importance of geography ;
and not until they are so persuaded can we hope that the subject will
obtain in the higher institutions of learning the position to which we
believe it is entitled.

Now, I am well aware that such deductions have been and are being
drawn by geographers, both at home and abroad. But their conclusions
have so far reached only a very limited audience. It has seemed to
me that an Address to this Section gives an opportunity of discussing
certain interesting points of view which do not seem to have been
fully treated hitherto. In so far, however; as I am addressing an
audience of geographers in the technical sense, I wish it to be clearly
understood that what I have to say is to be regarded less as a con-
tribution to geographical science than as an attempt to carry out that
forward policy which seems to me essential at the moment. Even if I
fail to carry you with me throughout, I may at least hope to stimulate

some of you to promote the aim already set forth by other and better
methods.

For the reason already given I propose fo take certain points in -

regard to the human response to surface phenomena for special con-
sideration. | Now, it is a somewhat curious fact that, although geo-

;

na
E.—GEOGRAPHY. 3

graphers are agreed that man’s intelligence and power of acquiring
and transmitting knowledge so differentiate him from animals that it
is necessary to distinguish between human geography and animal geo-
graphy ; yet, so far as | am aware, little detailed consideration has been
given to the question as to the respects in which his response to
environmental conditions differs from that of the animals. This is
unfortunate, more especially since, thanks to the biologists, we have
a fairly clear idea as to the mechanism of the response in the latter

' case.

If, for example, we take two familiar animals, such as the rabbit
and the common hare, we find that, though belonging to the same
genus, and generally resembling each other in str ucture, they show
certain minor differences in bodily form and habits fitting them for the
environments in which they respectively live. Thus the long legs of
the hare enable it to maintain the swift movements upon which it
depends for escape from its foes, while the rabbit, inhabiting sandy
uplands instead of open country, finds safety underground, and need
only be able to move swiftly over short distances. Similarly,
the young of the rabbit, born within the shelter of the burrow, are more
helpless than the leverets, brought forth virtually im the open.
The biologists are broadly agreed that these differences are an adaptive
response to the different environments of the two animals. In
explaining the origin of that adaptive response, most of them lay stress
on the two factors of fixation to a particular environment and isolation—
actual or physiological—within it, so that mampient variations are not
swamped by intercrossing.

Now when we turn to look at man, two facts are at once apparent.
In the first place, at the present time, he does not appear to respond
to environmental influences by adaptive modifications of bodily form.
Secondly, there was certainly a time, before he had come fully to his
heritage, when he did so respond. We know this because the anthro-
pologists are agreed that while man once ran into a number of species—
and of genera—now all living human beings belong to the same species,
and eyen the races show marked signs of being in process of becoming
swamped by intercrossing. In other words, there was a time when
there was no human geography, when man reacted to the sum total of
the conditions as an animal does; but that time appears to have largely
passed,

But there is certainly still a human response to environmental
conditions. What precise form does it take? To a certain minor
extent, apparently as an inheritance from what I regard as essentially
the pre-human period, there is a direct structural response. One need
only mention the presence of peoples with thin, almost unpigmented
skins in Western Europe, and the fendency to increased pigmentation
alike as the Tropics and the Poles are approached. But though deter-
mined efforts have been made to correlate in detail the physical
characters of the great races with the climate and relief of the areas
where they are presumed to have originated, most of these correlations
remain uncertain and speculative,

Man’s real response to the surface phenomena of the earth takes
the form of a communal, not an individual response. It is the aptitudes

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

which the members of a community display, the tools which they use,

the kind of knowledge which they accumulate, their modes of organisa-

tion, their type of material wealth, their traditions and ideals, which
show the environmental imprint most closely, far more closely than
the colour of their skins or the shape of their heads.

But when and how did the change in the two modes of response
come about? To answer this question let us recall what has been
already said as to the importance of fixation and isolation in the case
of animals. The surface of the earth is almost infinitely diverse, and
what the biologists call natural barriers, the major barriers like deserts,
seas and mountain chains, or the minor ones produced by the transition
from one type of plant formation to another—e.g. from the forested
river valley to the grass-covered upland—separate different types of
environment, and form obstacles to the distribution of most land
animals. There must have been a time when groups of men, no less
‘than the pigs in the forest or the asses on the steppe, were firmly
gripped by the physical conditions, were isolated from other groups,
forced to become fitted by structure and habit for a particular set of
conditions, or to die out. But with his growing intelligence man
escaped from this iron grip, learnt to make virtually every part of the
surface yield enough for survival, proved capable of overcoming every

kind of natural barrier. When this occurred the old mechanism of

adaptation largely—though not completely—ceased to work. Evolution
then might have ceased also, man might have become specially fitted to

no environment because fitted for all, if the factors of fixation and—

isolation had not, in quite a different fashion, obtained a new hold.

He ceased, save in relatively few parts of the earth’s surface, to
be a continuous wanderer. He settled down afresh on particular parts
of it, and there learnt to use his increasingly complex brain not only
in utilising to their full the natural resources, but also in modifying the
local conditions so that new resources became available. In other
words, I wish to suggest that the cultivation of the soil was the great
agent in ensuring the new type of fixation to a particular area which
once again made evolution possible. But evolution now took the form
of increasing development of communal life, or, in other words, the
growth of what we call civilisation is the precise equivalent of specific
differences in plant or animal.

Further, just as, in the case of the animal, isolation is necessary
before an incipient species can become fixed, so in the case of human
communities a measure of protection from the inhabitants of neigh-
bouring areas—a measure, that is, of isolation—is essential before
civilisation can develop.

Again, in the case alike of plants and animals we know that where
the local conditions are such that the incipient species is limited to a
very narrow area, there highly specialised forms of adaptation may
occur, as they do, for example, on many islands, or in isolated mountain
chains ; but that specialised type of development is associated with the
loss of the capacity to vary, to acquire adaptations fitting the organism

for a wider area. So in the case of human communities, where the™

isolation is too complete the power of adaptation tends to be lost,
and such groups, though their civilisation may, along its own lines,

pace Nes Nenana Sivdetich aptahicheneaa cee

yy Ge GOP) ED 7

:

E.—GEOGRAPHY. 5

be of a highly specialised type, are easily overwhelmed when contact
with the outside world does occur, just as island animals tend to
disappear before introduced forms.

Now with these general statements as starting-point, let us consider
some facts in regard to the development of civilisation in Europe and

-the margins of the adjacent continents.

In this area history has seen three successive great foci of civilisa-
tion, each based on well-marked and distinctive geographical conditions.
The development of the three types has been successive and not simul-
taneous, and there has thus been a steady shift in time of the main
focus, a shift westward and north-westward. The three types of
human societies alluded to are, of course, (1) the river valley type as
represented in Babylonia and early Egypt; (2) the Mediterranean type
on parts of the seaboard of the Midland sea; (3) the forest type of
Europe proper, itself becoming progressively more and more influenced
by the greater ocean to the west, so that forest influences have steadily
given way to maritime ones.

We have to ask ourserves, then, what effects the factors already
considered have had on the origin, growth, and further development, or
decay, of each of these three. In other words, what in each case were
the geographical causes which first fixed man to a particular area in
which he was able to cultivate useful plants? What gave the necessary
isolation and safety during the early stages? Finally, to what extent
were the conditions such as to give that necessary safety without leading
to the loss of the power of continued adaptive modification, as expressed
either in the capacity to spread over adjacent areas showing progressively
increasing differences, or in that of responding to changes within the
home area ?

In the case of the river-valley areas, as represented in the Tigris-
Euphrates region and the Nile valley, and in that of the Mediterranean
seaboard, several geographers, among whom Prof. Myres may be
especially mentioned, have discussed the conditions favourable to the
early development of civilisation. It is therefore not necessary to
consider the geography of these areas in detail. But, beginning with
Babylonia and Egypt, I should like to put the causes which seem to
me to have promoted fixation quite briefly. Among them we must
certainly include the primitive natural resources, scanty though these
doubtless were. The birds of the valley marshes, the relatively small
number of mammals, the fish of the rivers, must have supplied a certain
amount of the animal food. The date palm, in the Tigris-Euphrates
areas at least, would, even in its wild state, doubtless yield a fruit of
some value in the very early days.

But as an important factor in the development of cultivation, I
would lay especial stress upon the presence of what the botanists
call the ‘ open’ plant formation. Native trees, as we know, are very
few, the date palm, one of the most characteristic, being strictly
limited in distribution by its need for water at the roots. For the
greater part of the year the ground between the scattered trees is
naturally either devoid of vegetation, or this is represented only by a
few desert plants. But after the periodic flooding by the rivers, an
abundant growth of vegetation springs up. The plants may be annuals,

E 2

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

whose seeds ripen as the ground dries, and lhe dormant till moisture
comes again; or they may be bulbous and tuberous forms, having but
a short period of vegetative activity, but possessing underground stems
capable of withstanding prolonged drought. The result is that man
did not require to clear land for crops, Nature periodically cleared it
for him. He had but to make the fairly obvious deduction that water
alone was necessary for the apparently barren soil to blossom like
the rose, and from all the choice of plants which the flooded ground
offered, to pick out those of some use to him, and learn to suppress
the rest. As has often been pointed out, he did not need to trouble
greatly about renewing the fertility of his lands, for the flood-water
did this for him,

Se soon as he had learnt the initial lessons of cultivation, iz was
tied to the area normally flooded at certain seasons, or to which he could
lead the flood-water. He intercalated his crops along one of Nature’s
lines of weakness, in a transitional area which passed periodically
from one climatic zone to another, being, according to the seasons,
either a desert or fertile. Fixed in this fashion he could, and did,
adapt his mode of life to the natural conditions as precisely as ever
bird or insect became structurally fitted for life on an island.

The bordering desert ensured isolation, and, continuing the island
metaphor, we may say that it represented the sea. Its effect was to
throw the whole energy of the community towards the centre, for the
periphery formed an area in which the characteristic mode of life could
not be practised. Similarly, it gave protection, for it is unsuited to
any save a highly specialised culture, which must have been of relatively
late origin. So far as it formed the boundaries of the incipient state,
therefore, the desert constituted a barrier preventing the ingress of
potential foes. In neither case, of course, was the desert rim complete,
and the conditions upstream varied in the two areas, and were, as has
been often pointed out, from the point of view of safety, on the whole
less favourable in the case of Babylonia than in that of Egypt.

As to the third point, it is, | think, easy to show that while the
isolation of the areas was markedly conducive to the rise of civilisation
and to its growth up to a certain point, in the long run it became a
danger. In the first place, the contrast between the belt which could
be watered and that to which, with the means available, water could
not be carried, was exceedingly sharp. There was little possibility of
a gradual spread into aveas becoming slowly but progressively different,
where new aptitudes could be acquired, new experience gained, and
new forms of wealth stored. Specialisation was high within the
favoured tract, but the limits set by Nature could not be passed.

Again, as has often been noted, the conditions led necessarily to
a centralised and imperialistic form of social organisation. If there
was a sharp line of demarcation between the areas which could and
could not be-watered, there were great possibilities in the direction of
extending by artificial means the belt over which the flood-water spread.
This involved the gradual growth of an elaborate irrigation system, and
for the maintenance of this a centralised power was essential. This
brought with it, as a correlated advantage, the possibility of organised
defence when developing neighbouring communities attempted to

f

ee. ae

a) seeds \ |

E.—GEOGRAPHY. ff

encroach. But if the attack was made with sufficiently powerful
forces, the centralisation became a menace. An attacking foe able to
destroy or damage seriously the irrigation system could cut off at its
source the basis of prosperity, and render reconstruction on the old
scale almost impossible. In other words, the community became
adapted to artificial conditions created by itself; if and when those
conditions were destroyed, the survival of the old culture became
impossible.

Turn next to the Mediterranean region, that is to the area in which
the typical Mediterranean climate prevails. In so far as the native
plants are concerned, this area shows certain broad general resemblances
to the river valleys, with some striking differences. Thus the
characteristic plant formation is alternately open and closed; closed
during the cooler season of the year when the winter rains cause a
brief but intense growth of annuals and bulbous or tuberous plants,
open during the drought of summer when the trees and shrubs stand
apart from each other with bare earth between. But the contrast is
due, as. indicated, to the rainfall conditions, not to flooding. There
is thus no natural renewal of fertility, and plants which require much
water can only thrive in the cooler season, so that growth is less
intense than in either the Nile or the Euphrates-Tigris valley.

On the other hand, because of the climatic conditions, trees and
shrubs, alike as regards individuals and species, are far more
numerously represented in the Mediterranean region. Here, however,
we come to a very curious fact, which, though it is familiar enough,
does not seem to have been considered in all its bearings. This is that,
despite the (relative) wealth of native species of shrubs and trees, those
which are cultivated seem to have been for the most part introduced.
This is apparently true even of the supremely important olive. The
tree occurs in the fossil state, and the olivaster of the maquis is believed
by many to be truly wild, not feral. Yet it would appear almost
certain that the cultivated olive was introduced, into Europe at least.
The same thing is true of great numbers of other species, and of all
the fruit-bearing trees now grown in the area there are few indeed
which can be reasonably regarded as having originated there as culti-
vated forms. Now, the deduction that I would draw is that the
Mediterranean area is one in which lessons first learnt elsewhere could
be easily practised, but one rendered unsuited by the natural conditions
for the taking of the first steps. Putting the point in another way,
I would suggest that when we see, in any part of the area, olives or
fig-trees rising from above a plot of wheat or barley, we have to say
to ourselves that this is an adaptation to a new set of conditions of
the type of cultivation first practised’ on any scale in Babylonia or
Egypt, olive or fig representing date palm and the accompanying trees,
the narrow plot of corn the local modification of the broad fertile fields
of the river valleys.

Man was doubtless first attracted to the area, as in the case of the
river-valleys, by the natural resources, small though these must have
been, even with the addition of the sea fisheries. He became fixed
to it when he learnt that the hill spurs gave safe sites for settlements,
while affording easy access to the slopes on which his special form of

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. —

intensive cultivation could be carried on. That form, as already sug-
gested, was a derived and not an original one. He replaced the native
trees and shrubs by useful cultivated varieties or species, which had,
certainly for the most part, originated elsewhere. He intercalated short-
lived annuals like corn crops and beans along the line of weakness
indicated by the periodic opening and closing of the natural vegetation.
But one of his great difficulties was always that the absence of much
level land and the climatic conditions. rendered the growth of such crops
relatively difficult, much more difficult than in the river-valleys.

If we think of the early settlements as showing a general
resemblance to the Berber villages of the Algerian Atlas to-day, we
realise that they were more or less isolated the one from the other, so
that the social polity was of a wholly different type from that existing
either in Babylonia or in early Egypt. But, and this seems to me
important, although the natural conditions—especially the fact that
fertility was limited to certain areas—made a measure of isolation
inevitable, yet the sea gave a possibility of free movement in all
directions which was absent in the river-valleys. Thus oversea, if not
overland, spreading could take place, and the changes in the geographical
sonditions as the sea is traversed westward are relatively small, not
outside the limits of adaptation. Thus we have the spread of the higher
forms of Mediterranean culture from the eastern end of the sea towards
the west, with the founding of new settlements of generally similar
type to the old. Greece could, and did, send daughter colonies to
Sicily, and those colonies broadly repeated in their new homes the
conditions which they had left in their old. This possibility of free
movement brought with it a wider range of adaptability, a constant
willingness to profit by new experiences, which has proved of enormous
value to the world at large.

But with all its advantages the Mediterranean area, as already
stated, had the great disadvantage that bread-stuffs were difficult to
produce in quantity. Two methods of getting over that difficulty could
be and were practised. For example, the ancient Greeks, having, it
would appear, learnt the lesson from the Pheenicians, dared, in course
of time, to descend from their hill-spurs to the sea-coast, in order
to supplement the scanty resources of their limited lands by sea-trading.
After a long interval the medieval cities, especially of Italy, did the
same thing on a greater scale and with the advantage of a wider market.
Between the two periods Rome tried the other possible method, that
of holding in subjection the areas, outside that of the characteristic
climate, which were corn-producing. Her failure was, at least in part,
due to geographical causes. The great advantage of the method of
sea-trading was the increase in the power of adaptation which it brought,
as a result of the continual peaceful contact with other lands and other
peoples. The decay of the splendid medieval cities of Italy came when
the Mediterranean ceased to be a great highway of commerce, and
the vivifying breezes from the outside world which had swept through
it took another course—once again, that is, a civilisation based upon
a delicate adjustment to a particular set of conditions fell when those
conditions changed.

ss
E.— GEOGRAPHY. 9

Let us turn next to the third great area where, comparatively late,
a complex civilisation grew up, that of the forest belt of Central and
Western Europe. Here the conditions appear relatively so unfavour-
able that man could scarcely have solved the problem of fixing himself
permanently to particular areas, and adapting himself to them, were
it not for the help of the experience gained elsewhere. The great
agent in transmitting that experience was, of course, first the Roman
Empire, and then the Church which was the direct heir of the empire.

The essential difficulty here was that the characteristic plant
formation was the closed temperate forest. At first sight there appears
to be within it no line of weakness along which cultivated plants
can be intercalated, and the establishment of cultivation seems to depend
upon the complete destruction of the natural vegetation, involving the
slow and peculiarly laborious clearing of the forest. The significance
of this is admirably illustrated by Mr. Delisle Burns when, in his
Greek Ideals, he contrasts Aristophanes’ laudation of the agricultural
life in the Peace with that of the free and noble life in the forest
as set forth by Shakespeare in As You Like It. In the one case the
fig-cakes and the figs, the myrtle and violets by the well, the olives,
the beans, the barley and the grapes, the rain which God sends after
the sowing, which are the elements in the picture, all speak of man’s
age-long endeavour to mould Nature; but the merry life under the
greenwood tree speaks of a thin scattered population, still finding, in
theory at least, that Nature unaltered yields all he needs.

Had the temperate forest been in point of fact as continuous as
we are apt to assume, the problem would have been so difficult that
the hunter’s life in the forest might have lasted much longer than it
did. We know, of course, that there were always ‘islands’ in the
sea of green, and of these the most important, from the point of view
of the development of cultivation, were the loess areas and the lower
uplands, especially those over chalk. In the former case the friable,
well-dramed soil seems to have carried originally but scanty trees;
clearing was therefore fairly easy, and the cleared soil proved exceed-
ingly fertile. In the chalk uplands the local conditions made tree
growth difficult or impossible, so that land was again readily available
for crops or pasture.

We have, therefore, as our starting-point in this case scattered
settlements in the woods—not compact ones like those of the Mediter-
ranean region. In essentials these were doubtless quite comparable to
those made by fugitive Serbs in the Shumadja, from which modern
Serbia finally took origin, though the first foci were almost certainly
the natural clearings already mentioned. As in the case of the Serbs,
the basis of life was a combination of pastoral industries and arable
farming, the pig being the most important source of animal food, and
itself finding most of its food in the woods marginal to the settlement.

As to the next stages, the surrounding wood must be regarded from
two points of view. Initially it formed a protection, the protective
influence being strongest where the ground was ill-drained, owing to
the dense thickets which covered the marshy ground. But, in contrast
to both the types of region already considered, given the necessary
tools for the clearing of the land, the particular type of cultivation

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

could be extended almost indefinitely on the level, while leaving the
woods on the rising ground to supply the necessary fuel, building mate-
rial, and pannage for the swine. This was a great advantage, but it
meant that the necessary protection was soon lost.

Now, in North-Western Europe that protective influence was
peculiarly necessary for one geographical reason, as it was on
the eastern margin of the continent for another. It was necessary in
the west especially, because the sea-coasts, owing to the local wealth
of fish, early attracted population. But in many regions those coasts,
exposed to the oceanic type of climate in its most pronounced form,
were unsuited to cultivation. At the same time, on account of their
sheltered inlets, parts of those coasts were well fitted to breed a sea-
faring folk. Unable, or able only to a very small degree, to supple-
ment their natural resources by cultivation, haying at the same time
command of the sea, those seafarers tended constantly to raid the
painfully cleared and cultivated lands of their more fortunately situated
neighbours. These, as many old tales inform us, did, time and again,
find their encircling woods a protection. We must suppose, therefore,
that the tendency to clear more and more land would be checked by
this need for the shelter of the woods.

But it seems to me that we may regard the growth of feudalism,
from one point of view, as an adaptive device by which the growing
agricultural settlements obtained, at a price, the necessary protection.
Feudalism in the form, for example, in which it grew up in England
before the coming of the Normans was a means of ensuring the exist-
ence of a kind of organisation which permitted clearing of forest
land to go on indefinitely, while diminishing the risk of perpetual
raiding.

It was also, more especially in Eastern Europe, something more,
for it tended to fix the cultivator to the land. The tendency to wander
may be said to be almost universal in the case of forest-dwellers carry-
ing on primitive agriculture. Its wide distribution is due to the great
difficulty of maintaining there the fertility of the land, more especially
when exhausting crops, like the different kinds of grain and flax, are
grown. To this day, when we contrast the advanced agriculture of
Western Europe with the more primitive type practised in the Kastern
part, we have to remember that the Western Europeans have largely
evaded their problem by using their easy access to the great ocean to
draw upon all parts of the world for feeding-stuffs for their large
herds of cattle, and mineral fertilisers for their arable lands. In early
days the difficulty of keeping many cattle through the winter scarcity,
combined with the merely moderate fertility of the deforested lands,
made the restoration of material taken out by the crops a matter of
great difficulty, got over by a variety of devices, including, of course,
fallowing.

Feudalism helped in the solution of this problem by checking the
natural tendency of the cultivator to abandon exhausted lands and
move on to new ones. But even apart from this particular device,
the problem of maintaining fertility had to be tackled early in the
West, because the relief made the forest far less continuous, far less
uniform, than in the East. It must have been obvious quite early

.
q
2
Me
“
*
a

aot,

°
E.— GEOGRAPHY. 11

that it was not illimitable. Conditions were different in the forest
region of the East, where the vast, almost uniform plains, the absence
of well-marked relief, the breadth of the continent, made the forest a
more permanent, a more unmanageable element than in Western
Europe. Here, therefore, we find in suggestive combination two
peculiar features. The first is that the wandering instinct, the instinct
that brought the Slavs from their eastward forest home far into Central
and Southern Europe, still persists. It is said to be quite well marked
in parts of Russia, despite all the artificial checks which existed under
the old régime. Part of the difficulty of the Slav problem also hes in
the fact that the effect of the habit of small groups of wandering con-
stantly from one wooded tract to another is written large on the
ethnological map. 19-5

The second peculiar feature is that feudalism, and feudalism in
a very harsh form, survived here far longer than in Western Europe,
and in fact, if not in law, had scarcely disappeared when the war
broke out. I would suggest that the great significance of this form of
social policy here was that it helped to counteract the effects of the
natural conditions, that it was fundamentally an artificial device for
rendering the population stationary, and enabling it to adapt itself to
the local relief and associated phenomena.

Now, whatever its value in earlier days, the present chaos in
Eastern Europe shows clearly enough that ultimately it checked social
evolution, and became a serious menace. It was fundamentally the
erection of an artificial barrier round the rural community, and led
to the apparent loss of the power of slow adaptation to changing con-
ditions, alike on the part of the overlords and of the freed serfs.

But in the eastern chaos another factor has to be borne in mind.
In the Old Russia, south of the forested area, and extending both
into what is and was Rumania, lie the great treeless plains. Parts
of these, as the nineteenth century showed, are extraordinarily fertile
and well adapted for cereal production. But, from the point of view
adopted here, they suffered from the enormous disadvantage that there
is nothing in the natural conditions to fix their inhabitants to special
areas, thus enabling them to acquire qualities fitting them for life
there; nothing to give protection from constant inroads from Asia.
Literally wastes for long centuries, these plains were for the most
part ultimately incorporated in Imperial Russia, and deliberately
colonised, often with colonists from a distance. The colonists were
brought from areas of other characters, possessed traditions and apti-
tudes due to long experience of different geographical conditions, and
were in the grip of a Government which had itself evolved under those
conditions. There was thus no question of the possibility of the evolu-
tion of a type of culture bearing the imprint of the local conditions.

In consequence Russia to-day—as well as to some extent
Rumania—is faced with a double problem. In both regions parts of
the constituent lands are fitted for the mixed cultivation of the forest
belt, and in them the old social policy has shown itself unfitted for
modern conditions, and a new one has yet to be evolved. Other parts,
again, have never developed even an imperfect social policy which was
a response to their own local environment. Their apparent prosperity,

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

till the outbreak of the war, was due to the fact that they were,
economically though not politically, of the nature of colonies in rela-
tion to the industrialised West, were, fundamentally speaking, the.
equivalents of Imperial Rome’s corn-producing lands in North Africa
and the Danubian plains. The chaos in Eastern Europe is thus having
a reflex disturbing effect upon the West. The West has lost an
important market, but that is perhaps in itself less important than
the fact that over a large tract of European land man and his environ-
ment have been thrown out of gear, a catastrophic condition which
inevitably disturbs equilibrium elsewhere. Just as in the later days
of the Roman} Empire disturbances in the marginal corn-producing
lands shook and ultimately overthrew the centre, so are the centres
of Western European civilisation to-day trembling under the impact of
shocks emanating from the East. | We can well understand, therefore,
how it is that there are those who believe that the focus of civilisation
is destined to undergo another shift, and that the day of the pre-
dominance of North-Western Europe is drawing to a close.

The subject is not one which can be discussed here. But if I
may sum up briefly the points I have been trying to make, I would
say that the human geographer should have before him a twofold
purpose. In the first place he should strive to show that the deduc-
tions which the biologists have slowly and painfully laid down in the
course of the last sixty years apply, though with an essential differ-
ence—which requires careful definition—to the life of man. Second,
he should use his precise knowledge of the surface of the earth to
work out detailed applications of those deductions. In other words,
human geography is the biology of man, and, on account of man’s
vast power of modifying his environment, necessitates a fuller know-
ledge of that environment than can be required of the biologist in the
narrower sense. Investigations along these lines would, I think,
promote greatly the interests of geography as a whole, both by making
clear to the general public its value and in justifying that intensive
study of the surface relief and the associated phenomena which ‘must
always remain its basis.

.
SECTION F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS.

EQUAL PAY TO MEN AND WOMEN
FOR EQUAL WORK.

ADDRESS BY

Proressor F. Y. EDGEWORTH, M.A., F-.B.A.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Contents.

Sec. 1. Introduction. Sec. 2. T'wo questions presented. Secs. 3-21. The
economic question discussed. Secs. 3-5, A. Is universal unrestricted competition
desirable? Sec. 3. Laissez faire tends generally to maximum advantage.
Sec. 4. But a maximum is not always the greatest possible. So the rule must
sometimes be transgressed; Sec. 5, but with great caution. Secs. 6-21, B. Some
kinds of competition being excluded, the question becomes one of degree.
Secs. 7-15. A first approximation makes abstraction of family relations. Sec. 7.
An apparently free labour market may be unfairly influenced by men’s unions.
Sec. 8. A theorem explaining the acquiescence of the employer. Sec. 9. There
has resulted an unfair crowding of women into comparatively few occupations.
Sec. 10. There should be one rule for both sexes as to the practice of collective
bargaining subject to competition. Sec. 11. The practice should not be affected
by prejudices concerning the relative efficiency of the sexes. Sec. 12. Ideal
distribution of occupations and pay; of work measurable without respect to the
sex of the worker. Sec. 13. Arts and customs not being revolutionised ; Sec. 14.
the said measurement is not always available; and so difficulties arise; Sec. 15,
notably in the case of some personal services, e.g. those of male and female
teachers. Secs. 16-21, II. Second approximation. Sec. 16. The great fact that
men commonly support wives and children creates a difficulty; Sec. 17, which
some would evade by reference to dependants of women workers ; Sec. 18, others,
wiser, admit and meet by the Endowment of Motherhood. Sec. 19. Advantages
of this scheme. Sec. 20. Disadvantages. Sec. 21. Suggestion of alternatives.
Sec. 22. Summary.

SHouLD men and women receive equal pay for equal work? This
question is in a peculiar degree perplexed by difficulties that are
characteristic of economic science. They arise from the presence of a
subjective or psychical element that is not encountered in the purely
physical sciences. Outward and visible wealth cannot be quite dis-
sociated from the inward feeling of welfare. But the ideas of welfare
—well-being, or satisfaction—are deficient in the simplicity and dis
tinetness which conduce to accurate reasoning. It may be, indeed, that
there is something indefinite and metaphysical about certain concep-
tions which the higher physics now involve. But the practical uses
of those sciences are not thereby impaired. Speculations about four-
dimensional time-space do not much interfere with the work of the
engineer. But the connexion of our studies with things gher than
material wealth affects injuriously the reasoning even about material
wealth. Sentiment exercises a disturbing influence—a disturbance
peculiarly to be apprehended in dealing with a question which touches
not only the pocket but the home. Nor even when this danger is avoided
Britisn Association : Hull, 1922.} F

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

does the logic of political economy escape the consequences of its
connexion with the higher parts of human nature. The most correct
and unbiassed economic conclusions are liable to be overruled by moral
considerations. This fate, too, is particularly to be apprehended for
arguments on the present subject. Guarding against these difficulties,
I propose to distinguish and to discuss separately two inquiries into
which the proposed question may be subdivided, according as it is
referred to external wealth only, or also to the attendant internal feel-
ing of welfare.

2. The disturbing effect of sentiment or prejudice makes itself felt
at the very outset of the discussion in the definition of the issue to be
discussed. In masculine circles the question is often dismissed with
the remark that the work of women never, or hardly ever, is equal to
that of men. The truth of this proposition will be considered later
(below, 14). Here it is relevant to observe that even if the proposition
were true the question would not be stultified. For the term ‘ equal ’
is evidently not to be interpreted, for the purpose of this inquiry, as
identical in amount. Equality, as Aristotle says, is of two kinds,
numerical and proportional, meaning that the share of A is to the
share of B as the claim or worth (d&a) of A is to that of B. So
when Adam Smith propounds a maxim in the observation of which, he
says, consists what is called the equality of taxation, it would be
trivial to object that the subjects of the State are not all equal in
respect of ability to contribute. Of course he meant, as he says in
the context, taxation ‘ in proportion to their respective abilities ’; not
implying that the abilities are equal. The question then arises (in
economics as well as in politics), What is the criterion of that worth
(the d&a) which governs distribution, according to which shares
are to be distributed? ‘Pay in proportion to efficient output,’ the
phrase used by the War Cabinet Committee on Industry, expresses
the meaning approximately. By ‘equal efficient output ’ may be
understood, in the phrase of Dr. Bowley, ‘ equal utility to the employer.’
To the same effect others speak of equal ‘ productivity ’ or ‘ productive
value.’ With these phrases there must be understood a certain equality
on the side of the employee as well as on the side of the employer or com-
munity. Thus, when the Children of Israel were compelled to gather
straw in the fields, the bricks which they made might have been of the
same utility to the taskmaster as when the raw material was obtained
cratis. But if the workers received the same renumeration per dozen
of bricks as before, we should not say that, as compared with the former
terms, they were receiving equal pay for equal work. Again, there
might be nothing to choose from the workers’ point of view between
carrying a certain quantity of silver or the same weight of lead for
the same distance; while the employer or customer might derive a
much greater advantage from the transportation of lead than from that
of silver. If now the carriage of silver is restricted (by custom, say,
or favouritism) to a class defined by some attribute unconnected with
the value of their service (uncorrelated with speed, security, punctu-
ality, and so forth), the carriers of lead and silyer would not be receiving
equal pay for equal work, although each class received a pay propor-

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¥.—ECONOMICS., 3

tional to the utility of its service. In short we must understand with
the term ‘egual work’ some clause importing equal freedom in the
choice of work. This condition should include equal freedom to prepare
for work by acquiring skill. There are thus presented two attributes :
equality of utility to the employer as tested by the pecuniary value of
the result, and equality of disutility to the employee as tested by his
freedom to choose his employment. These two attributes will concur
in a régime of perfect competition. For then, theoretically, each
employer will apply labour in each branch of his business up to the
point at which the return to the unit of labour last applied is equal
to the cost of that unit, and the same (ceteris paribus) as in all branches
of each business. Likewise, in the state of equilibrium which charac-
terises perfect competition the employee cannot better himself by taking
the place of another. The question thus conceived may be restated :
Should there be perfect competition between the sexes? The question
thus put requiring a categorical answer, Yes or No, may be labelled
A, to distinguish it from the question of degree, B, which may be asked,
if a categorical answer is not forthcoming, namely, What sort or amount
of competition between the sexes is advisable ?

In the question thus stated equal work is defined objectively by the
fact that as between two tasks the worker is indifferent. This fact,
like the action or inaction of Buridan’s ass, is ascertainable by the
senses. But something more than what is given by physical observa-
tions seems to be implied in ordinary parlance with reference to our
question. Some comparison between the feelings of the workers seems
to be implied in statements such as the following: ‘ The remuneration
of the peculiar employments of women is always, I believe, greatly below
that of employments of equal skill and equal disagreeableness carried
on by men’ (J. S. Mill, Pol. Econ. ii., xiv., 5). ‘Men and women
often work side by side in the same schools; . . . and we are satisfied
that the work of women, taking the schools as a whole, is as arduous
as that of men and is not less zealously and efficiently done ’ (Report
on Teachers in Elementary Schools, Lond., Cmd. 8939). ‘An un-
fortunate female does not receive for thirteen or fourteen hours’ close
daily application during six days as much as a man for one day of
ten hours’ (referring to Philadelphia early last century; cp. Carey,
‘Social Science,’ vol. iii. p. 385). If equal work is interpreted as
equal disutility, in the sense of fatigue or privation of amenity, then
equal pay may be interpreted equal satisfaction obtained from earnings.
Equality in this sense is not always predicable of equal external per-
quisites. It is conceivable, for instance, that a quantity of solid food,
or a gaudy livery, might in general have more attraction for one sex
than for the other. This second question, which is presented by the
subjective interpretation of the terms, like the first, may be subdivided
according as (a) a categorical answer is demanded, or (b) the question
is one of degree.

In the first of the two inquiries which have been distinguished we
may, if we can, maintain the position assumed by Jevons when he-
disclaimed any attempt to ‘ compare the amount of feeling in one mind
with that in another,’ when he affirmed that ‘ every mind is inscrutable

F 2

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

to every other mind, and no common denominator of feeling seems
to be possible’ (‘Theory of Political Economy,’ p. 15). The second
inquiry presupposes the faculty which forms the main theme of Adam
Smith’s ‘ Theory of Moral Sentiments,’ Sympathy; in addition to the
self-interest which is prominent in his ‘ Wealth of Nations.’ The first
inquiry belongs to political economy in a strict or ‘ proper ’ sense, which
we may call pure economics. The second inquiry belongs to political
economy in a larger sense, which includes the satisfactions attending
the possession and use of wealth—say the ecnomics of welfare. The
second inquiry is wider than and comprehends the first ; since an increase
in welfare is, ceteris paribus, apt to attend an increase in wealth. As
equality in the first sense, concerned with production only, tends to
maximise the national income, so equality in the second sense, affecting
distribution, tends to maximise that aggregate of welfare which the
utilitarian legislation increases, which wise taxation diminishes as little
as possible.

Above both these aims, higher even than economic welfare, is well-
being other than economic—moral or spiritual good; a hurt to which
may well outweigh a gain in satisfactions less independent of material
conditions. But the ‘should’ in the question with which we started
is to be interpreted as referring only to advisability in the first or second
sense. The answers to the question thus limited may at least afford
materials for the answer to it in all its bearings. For the present I
confine myself to the question in its first sense. In a sequel I hope
to consider the question in its second sense.

3. To the question (A) whether competition between the sexes
should be restricted it may seem sufficient to reply that competition
between all classes should be unrestricted. In the immortal words of
Adam Smith, ‘ all systems, either of preference or of restraint, being
completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty
establishes itself. Kvery man, as long as he does not violate the laws
of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way,
and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those
of any other man or order of men.’ This system tends to increase
‘the real value of the annual produce of its (the society’s) land and
labour,’ or, as we now say, the national income. It is pointed out
by Professor Pigou that, in order to secure a maximum of produce,
productive resources must be so distributed that the net product of the
unit last applied in each branch of industry—the marginal productivity
—may be the same for all branches. To this proximate end laisser
faire isa means. A maximum of wealth will thus in general be attained
‘ by unrestricted competition.

4. But a mazimum is not always the greatest possible value of which
a quantity is susceptible. The top of a hillock presents a maximum;
but it is not always the highest attainable height. Half-way up Mount
Everest is higher than the top of Snowdon. So it may happen that
the unrestricted play of competition between short-sighted, — self-
interested employers and desperately poor workers, though securing a
temporary maximum of production, may bring about that degradation
of labour which the warmest champions of competition have appre-

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F,—ECONOMICS. 5

hended; notably Francis Walker (‘ Wages Question,’ ch. vy. and
* Political Economy,’ Art. 343 et seq.). There may occur the ‘ strange
and paradoxical result ' described by Marshall (‘ Principles of Econo-
mics,’ Vi., ill., 8; ep. iv., 1): employers adhering to old methods which
require only unskilled workers of but indifferent character, who can be
hired for low (time-) wages. Suppose that some doctrinaire despot
imbued with misinterpretations of the classical economists as deeply as
Lenin with the worst interpretations of Marx’ dogmas, should insist on
absolutely unrestricted competition (subject only to prohibition of force
and fraud). He would rule out minimum wage and standard of life,
and other fine phrases (as he would describe them), which disguise
the fact that wages are determined by supply and demand. He
would prohibit combinations of workpeople. If such conditions could
be enforced there would probably result throughout a considerable
part of industry a breakdown, or at least a gradually deepening
depression. To this débdcle the competition of women would largely
contribute. It would be particularly effective owing to three incidents.
First, the minimum of requirements for efficiency, of actual as distinct
from conventional necessaries, is less for a woman than a man (in the
ratio of 4: 5 according to Rowntree). This circumstance might acquire °
a dangerous importance in a struggle for bare life, though not of
much significance, it may be hoped, in prosperous conditions. Secondly,
wives and daughters are apt to be subsidised; and though subsidies do
not always lead to the offer of work on lowered terms, this result
may be anticipated in the case contemplated. Last, and not least,
the woman worker has not acquired by custom and tradition the same
unwillingness to work for less than will support a family, the same
determination to stand out against a reduction of wages below that
standard. Altogether, if we are convinced that some action must be
taken to avert the evils which have been glanced at (cp. Marshall, vi.,
xiii., 12), it seems that our question (A) cannot receive a categorical
answer in the affirmative.

5. I dismiss section A with the following cautions: («) Let us not
forget the general presumption in favour of laissez faire. It may be
true that the top of a hill is not so high as that of a neighbouring
mountain. It may be probable that by getting down from the hill and
getting up on the mountain we shall ultimately attain a position higher
than the hilltop. But the transition, over unknown ground perhaps,
is not without danger. For example, many who have left the simple
path of Free Trade in order to attain greater prosperity through the
protection of infant industries have not bettered themselves. (8) Let
us remember that there are limits to the effects of regulation. It is
well to prescribe: ‘The best way to secure the necessary advances in
wages would be to set up Trade Boards for all industries and instruct
them to bring minimum wages for men as well as women as soon as
possible to a level which would fulfil the conditions indicated above
(enabling the man to marry and support a family and the single woman
to live in decent comfort). The rise will be made possible by the
increase of productivity.’ But unfortunately, such is the uncertainty
of human affairs, the required increase of productivity does not always

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

follow the determination of a desirable minimum, as the Australians
have lately experienced. In the fixing of minimums, as in the cutting
of coats, regard must be had to the amount of material or means ayail-
able. (y) In view of the uncertainties attending our course once we
leaye the obvious and simple system of natural hberty let us advance
with great caution. Our motto should be pedetentim testmg each
foothold before committing ourselves to an irrevocable step; prepared
to retract if the ground prove unsafe. An excellent example of the
appropriate method is afforded by the English Trade Boards. The
Committee to which they owe their institution (1908) recommended
that ‘ Parliament should proceed somewhat experimentally,’ that legis-
lation should at first be ‘ tentative and experimental ’ (Report on Home
Work, 1908, No. xv., 40, 54). The first step having proved encouraging
a further step was tried. But that further step having proved unsafe
is to be retracted, as recommended by the Cave Committee [Cmd. 1645].

6. B. Under section B, dealing with the question as one of degree,
there might perhaps be included the comparative treatment of male
and female workers among the classes which shall have been excluded
from open competition. Thus, according to Charles Booth’s plan of

- segregating the feckless class who spoil the labour market, his class B,
what will be the distribution of work and pay (or should we say
rations ?) as between the sexes? But such questions belong rather to
our less purely economic sequel. In any case I shall not be expected
to pronounce on hypothetical cases as numerous as the Socialistic
schemes which are in the air. Under head B it must suffice to con-
sider a state of things in which, desperate competition having been
somehow ruled out, there remain competitors freed from the deranging
effect of extreme poverty and incompetence. ‘The case is that of which
Charles Booth said that the ‘hardy doctrines’ of the individualism
system ‘ would have a far better chance in a society purged of those
who cannot stand alone (‘ Life and Labour,’ vol. i., p. 167, ed. 2). Or
we may recall Mr. Seebohm Rowntree’s distinction between wages
below and above his minimum: ‘the former should be based on the
human needs of the workers, the latter on the market value of the
services rendered ’ (‘ Human Needs,’ p. 120). It is the latter kind of
wages only that are now to be considered. Let us simplify the problem
by at first (1) abstracting the circumstances of family life, considering
the labour world as if it was composed of bachelors and spinsters.

7. I. Competition now being freed, the Smith-Pigou principle
(above (3)) resumes its authority. The best results will presumably be
obtained by leaving employers free to compete for male or female
labour. Thus equal pay for equal work will be secured in our sense of
the term; which does not imply that the earnings of the sexes should
be equal (2). Equality in our sense would be realised in the conceivable
state of things which a high authority (Professor Cassel) appears to
regard as actual when he argues that but for the inferiority of female
labour ‘it is not clear why the employer should not further (than he
does) substitute female labour for the dearer male labour ’ (“ Theoretische
Sozial-Economie,’ p. 293). There is much force in Professor Cassel’s
argument; and his conclusion would be perfectly true if the implied

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La
F,—ECONOMICS. 7

premiss, the existence of perfect competition, were true. But com-
petition is not perfect while it is clogged by combinations both of em-
ployers and employed. An employer of many workmen is in himself
virtually a combination, as Dr. Marshall has pointed out. Men being
generally better organised than women have exercised an unsymmetrical
pressure on the employer to their own advantage. For instance,

‘London printing-houses dare not employ women at certain machines
unless they are prepared to risk a long and costly fight ’ (Mrs. Fawcett,
Economic Journal, 1904, p. 297, cp. 1892, p. 176). I have been told
of similar proceedings elsewhere.

8. The concession of the employer to male pressure is facilitated
by the circumstances that, though the use of male labour beyond a
certain limit is to his disadvantage, yet it is probably not very much to
his disadvantage. This circumstance is deducible from a proposition
pertaining to the theory of maxima, of which I hereafter shall make
much use. It may be stated thus: If y is a quantity which depends
upon—increases and decreases with—another quantity, z, the change
of y consequent on an assigned change of z is likely to be particularly
small in the neighbourhood of a value of x for which y is a maximum.
For example, in ascending a dumpling-shaped hill from a point of the
plane on which the hill stands, the first hundred yards of advance in
the direction of the summit might correspond to an elevation of fifty
yards above the plane. But as the summit is approached the same
change of length measured along the surface may be attended with a
change of height that is a hundred times, or even a thousand times,
less than what it was at a distance from the summit. The principle is
illustrated by the well-known proposition that a small tax on a mono-
polised article forms a very small inducement to the monopolist to raise
the price and reduce the output of the taxed article. Thus, in an
example given by Cournot (to illustrate another property of monopoly)
a (specific) tax amounting to 10 per cent. of the price before the tax
will afford a motive to the monopolist to raise the price, but a very weak
motive, since by making the change he will benefit himself only to the
extent of 4 per cent. of his profits. A tax of 1 per cent. would afford
a very much weaker motive. By raising the price to the figure which
(after the imposition of the tax) yields maximum profit he stands to
gain (to save upon the loss caused by the tax) about a twenty-thousandth
part of his original profits!

9. The pressure of male trade unions appears to be largely respon-
sible for that crowding of women into a comparatively few occupations,
which is universally recognised as a main factor in the depression of
their wages. Such crowding is primd facie a flagrant violation of that
free competition which results in maximum production and in distribution
of the kind here defined as equal pay for equal work. The exclusion
of women from the better-paid branches of industry may be effected less
openly than by a direct veto, such as the ‘ No female allowed’ in the
rules of an archaic society (‘Industrial Democracy’). Withholding
facilities for the acquisition of skilled trades comes to much the same
as direct prohibition. A striking instance is mentioned by Mrs. Fawcett
with reference to the allegation that women are unable to ‘ tune’ or

F 3

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

“set ’ the machines on which they work. They were never given the
opportunity of learning how to perform these operations (Hconomic
Journal, 1918, p. 4). Exclusion may also be effected. by regulating
that women entering an industry should conform in every particular to
arrangements which are specially suited to male workers. Of such rules
Mrs. Fawcett has well written, ‘ to encourage women under all cireum-
stances to claim the same wages for the same work would be to exclude
from work altogether all those women who were industrially less effi-
cient than men. A woman who was less capable of prolonged physical
toil, who was less adaptive and versatile than the average man, would
be forbidden to accept wages which recognised these facts of her indus-
trial existence’ (Hconomic Journal, 1894, p. 366; cp. 1904, p. 296).
The exclusiveness of male trade unions has been in the past at least
fostered by prejudices and conventions that are becoming obsolete.
Before the Labour Commission, for instance, a witness was asked,
“What is there unwomanly in steering a barge?’ Answer: ‘It is a
work that is entirely unfit for women’; also ‘ it reduces the wages of
men.’ Before an earlier Committee it was testified of another occupa-
tion: ‘ It is most degrading for women . . . it weakens their constitu-
tion . . . and- not only so, but it is depriving men of their proper
labour.’ It should be remembered, however, that many of the prohibi-
tions and prejudices here mentioned as contravening free competition
were adapted to avert that catastrophic competition (4) which we here
conveniently suppose to be excluded.

10. The oppressive action of male unions should be counteracted by
pressure on the part of women workers acting in concert. Suppose
now that these balanced forces encounter the resistance of the em-
ployers, themselves perhaps associated, what will be the resultant?
We may assume that the resulting arrangement will not be in strong
conflict with the natural forces of competition. Probably an arrange-
ment that the weekly earnings of women should be the same as those
of men, though the actual value of a woman as a worker was about
30 per cent. below that of an average man employed in the same capacity
(as testified by a majority of employers before a Committee of the
British Association, Kirkcaldy, ‘ Credit Industry and the War,’ 1915,
p. 108) could not be maintained without tyranny on a Russian scale.
But within limits thus prescribed there is room for a considerable variety
of arrangements. On what principle, then, will a more exact
determination be obtained? The principle most congenial to the
present subsection is that which is suggested by Walker’s doctrine,
that ‘competition, perfect competition, affords the ideal condition
for the distribution of wealth’ (‘ Political Economy,’ 2nd _ ed.
s. 466; cp. s. 343). We should then not only keep within those
limits outside which it would be futile to set up any arrange-
ment, as it would be swept away by the forces of competition,
but also within the wide tract thus delimited we should endeavour to
find the particular point which would be determined by ideal competition.
The first of these precepts may conceivably be carried out by a board
of employers and employees. But the second is. evidently a counsel
of perfection. As Professor Pigou says with reference to railway rates, * it

sd
F,—ECONOMICS. 9

is plain that anything in the nature of an exact imitation of simple com-
petition is almost impossible to attain’ (‘ Wealth and Welfare,’ p, 267
et seq.). In the case before us the task of the board would be particu-
larly diffi¢ult. For, first, even if the labour contract were of the simplest
possible type—so much energy applied, so many foot-pounds raised, in
return for so much standard money—it appears from the mathematical
theory of demand and supply that, even if competition between em-
ployers and employed were as free as can be supposed, a determinate
position of equilibrium would not be reached. And the contracts with
which we have to do are not simple. As well explained in the First
Report on Wages and Hours of Labour (1894, C. 7567) and elsewhere,
the wage-rate proper to each kind of work is obtained by numerous
extras and deductions corresponding to variations from a standard article
or process with specified price—a standard which is itself far from
simple. Here, for instance, is, or was, the definition of the standard
woman’s boot: ‘ Button or Balmoral, 14 in., military heel, puff toe;
7 in. at back seam of leg machine sewn, channels down or brass rivets,
pumps or welts, finished round strip or black waist.’ The extras (and
likewise the deductions) may be presumably calculated on the principle
described by Mr. and Mrs. Webb as ‘ specific additions for extra exertion
or inconvenience,’ so as to obtain ‘ identical payment for identical effort.’
Are these additions, and also the standard to which they are referred,
to be determined objectively as what would result from the play of ideal
competition? Or must we call in Socialistic, or, as I prefer to say,
Utilitarian, principles of distribution in order to fill in the details left
blank by the award of competition? However this deep question is
decided, it remains true that on the suppositions here made (B I) the
distribution of work and pay between the sexes ought to be conducted
upon the same principles as between any other classes of workers.

11. On the general principle of distribution I have nothing to add
to the little that I have said here and elsewhere. [ subjoin some sugges-
tions for carrying out the principle in the case before us. They relate
to the comparative efficiency of the sexes, concerning which assumptions
are to be made with caution. There are to be avoided two opposite
misconceptions: the one exaggerating the comparative efficiency of men,
the other that of women. ‘The first exaggeration is countenanced by
Plato when, notwithstanding his admission of women to the highest
posts in his Republic, he yet holds that they are inferior to men in all
the arts. Even in those arts in which they might be expected to excel,
such as weaving and cookery, he seems to say that they are beaten
by men. In the modern world, however, it appears that women excel
in certain branches of the textile art. ‘ Having smaller hands they are
able to handle the twist and weft with greater dexterity than men’
(Cmd., 167, 79). Superiority is claimed for them, too, in typewriting
and in telephoning. As nursery-maids they are certainly more efficient.
The opposite exaggeration is committed by feminists when they main-
tain, in the words of a generally impartial expert, that ‘there is no
reason save custom and lack of organisation why a nursery-maid should
be paid less than a coal-miner.’ No doubt it is difficult to disprove, and
even to define, this proposition with reference to employments that are

F4

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

not common to both sexes. The comparison would seem to be as to
the time-wages, say the average weekly earnings, of the-two classes.

The institution of the average presents difficulties. Still, I submit it as
an inference based on general impressions and ordinary experiénce that,
even if all restriction of the competition between male and female
workers were removed, we should still find the average weekly earnings
of the former to be considerably higher.

12. The following fuller statement of the matter is submitted as
intelligible and probable. Let us suppose at first that work can be
defined in such precise and neuter terms that it makes no difference to
the employer whether a unit of work is performed by a man or a woman.
The definition should include not only a specification of the product, as
in the case of the boot above instanced, but also the time taken up
(affecting the ‘ overhead’ charge), the expenditure on apparatus (which
may be greater for weaker persons), and so forth. In ideal competition
men and women shall be equally free to choose any of the occupations
so defined. It may be expected that there are some branches of industry
into which women only will enter, others into which they will never, or
hardly ever, enter. Let us call the former A, B, C, . . . F, and the
lather, <M UNG) he aiote Z. Let the average weekly earning in each of
the former occupations be a, b, c, . . . f; and in the latter m, n,... z.
Then I submit that the average of a;'b,=6,) 1. af ar be less than
the average of m, n, . . Z. There remain n occupations that are
entered by both sexes: say G, H, I, K, L. For any one of these, I,
the (rate of) pay, say t, for unit of work in the sense above defined i 1s
the same for men and women; but the weekly earnings will not be the
same, say 4, for the female and 72 for the male workers; i: less than 72.
The letters may be applied so that f:, gi, hi, . . . ls will form an increasing
series ; on which supposition it may be expected that g2, hz, . . . 12, ma
will also form an increasing series, rising from the female to the male
level.

The conception thus presented may be illustrated by an Australian
ruling. Judge Higgins fixed the minimum rate for fruit picking at
one shilling an hour, observing that ‘the majority of fruit pickers
are men,’ that ‘men and women should be paid on the same level,’
the employer being left free to employ persons of either sex. But
for the operations in the packing-sheds the minimum for (women)
workers in these processes, in which men are hardly ever employed,
should be fixed at 9d. per hour (‘Commonwealth Arbitration Reports,
1912,’ vol. vi., p. 72, and context). Fruit-picking and the operations
in the sheds might correspond to our L, and G respectively.

If the rates “attached to each specification of work are proper the
distribution will be ideal. Suppose that a slightly different system of
rates, «', 8’, .uU,...p,v,..é&e., is adopted. There will be a
slight dimetenc’ in the distribution of work and pay. But by the
property of a maximum above noticed the difference to the community
considered as a sort of collective monopolist, the difference to the
national income will be not merely slight, but very slight.

13. It should be understood that the preceding representation
relates only to the present, or rather to a short period in the immediate

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F.—ECONOMICS, 1]

future. The period must be long enough for the removal of trade-
union restrictions to be realised, for training hitherto denied to be
acquired ; but not long enough for a material change in physique, arts
and customs. If in the course of evolution the female sex became
as strong as, or even stronger than, the male, if in the progress of
practical science muscular strength became less and less in demand,
then the average of a, b, . . . f might no longer be less than the
average of m, n, . .. 2. Again, a conceivable change in desiderata
would affect the truth of our representation; for instance, if type-
writing, telephoning and the like became more in demand than coal-
mining and ironworks. Again, if the vast amount of household work
that is now unpaid could only be obtained by paying for it, the demand
for woman's labour and its price might be considerably raised. The
general principle of equal distribution above indicated would hold good
notwithstanding these changes; but the suggestions made for its work-
ing would require modification. The changes, however, do not appear
very imminent.

14. Existing institutions being presupposed, it should be noticed
that the supposition above made of work defined irrespective of sex
is somewhat abstract. It would be appropriate in the Socialist com-
munity imagined by Anatole France (‘ Pierre Blanche’), where the
employer would not inquire whether an applicant for work was a
man or a woman. He would not be informed by the garments of the
applicant, identical attire having been introduced along with equal
conditions of work. But in the present state of things it will often
be within the knowledge of the employer that it is more profitable to
employ a man than a woman, although the work performed by each
is identical so far as it can be defined by the most exact rate. For
a woman, unlike a man, is ‘liable to go off and get married just
as she is beginning to be of some use,’ as a candid champion of equal
pay has observed (Economic Journal, 1917, p. 59). Again, a woman
is generally less useful in an emergency. As a witness before the
Committee on the Employment of Women put it, ‘ A woman punching
a ticket may appear equal to a man, but she is not so useful in case
of a breakdown or runaway.’ Of course these ‘ secondary ’ differences,
as they might be called, are much less serious in some industries than in
others. In some permanence may be less a desideratum, a breakdown
less to be apprehended. Among secondary differences is hardly to
be reckoned the alleged inability of women workers to ‘ tune’ the
machines on which they work; for that regularly recurring need can be
allowed for by a properly constructed rate. But it is otherwise with
the risks which hardly admit of actuarial calculation. Besides, even if
the probability could be calculated precisely, the compensation to the
employer for carrying the risk is not to be measured by the mathematical
‘expectation’ thereof. This point has been well brought out with
reference to risks in general by Mr. Keynes in his great treatise on
Probability. The point is of importance here as it contravenes what
prima facie seems the simplest solution of the difficulty: that is, in
all the industries where secondary differences between the sexes are
operative to lower the rates for female work correspondingly. Thus

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

in industry E, instead of the rate ¢ which would be proper in the
absence of secondary differences, we should put the somewhat lower
rate ¢. Likewise in I (above (12)), instead of the common rate. for men
and women equally, we should put a lower rate 1’ for women retaining t
for men. Such an adjustment seems to carry out the recommendations
of the (majority of the) War Cabinet Committee when they contemplate
‘a fixed sum to be deducted from the man’s rate ’ corresponding to the
‘ lower value of the woman’s work,’ if proved by the employer (par. 10
(5) p. 4). The adjustment would be in accordance with the definition
of equal pay for equal work given by those who are best qualified to
interpret the claim: ‘ Any permanent disadvantage that adheres to
women workers as such should be allowed for by a pro rata reduction
in their standard rates ’ (Mrs. Fawcett, citing Miss Eleanor Rathbone,
Kconomic Journal, 1918, p. 3), But the reduction corresponding to
the demand of the employer for women as compared with men workers
could not well be calculated objectively by a board. It could only be
determined by the play of ideal competition, which exists only in idea.
There would be incurred the danger either («) of the women’s rate
being fixed high above the point for which production would be a
maximum, or () its being ‘ nibbled’ by the employer. The former
danger is probably, as things are, not very serious; the latter is much
apprehended by experts. Altogether it would seem better to proceed on
the lines of Mrs. Sidney Webb’s ‘ occupational rate,’ rather than on
the plan recommended by the majority of the Committee. Instead of
fixing two rates, t and «’, let us fix (for the defined unit of work) a
single rate for men and women alike, say u’, less than t, which would
have been the rate in the absence of ‘ secondary’ differences. The
readjustment will result in a redistribution of male and female work.
The men would back out of occupations in which previously it had been
worth their while to take part; the employment of women would be
correspondingly extended. The process may be illustrated by an in-
cident which Mr. and Mrs. Webb have recorded. The reduction of a
farthing in the pay for a dozen of stockings resulted in that branch of
the industry being deserted by the men and occupied by the women
(‘ Industrial Democracy,’ II., p. 502). If the reduction, from + to vo
was inconsiderable the consequences to the consuming public would be
negligible upon the principle above explained (8). Otherwise a great
drop from + to t” might have as bad an effect on production as fixing
a women’s rate, , too near t, the men’s rate, so as to incur the
danger above labelled @.

15. The specious arrangement by which secondary differences may
be masked through the adoption of a uniform rate is not applicable to
another kind of difference between the work of the sexes which occurs
in the case of some personal services. The vexed question of school-
masters’ pay illustrates this ‘ tertiary ’ difference, as it may be called.
If teaching were an art as mechanical as turning a prayer-wheel, if
teachers were literally, as some of them used to be called, ‘ grinders,’
then (apart from secondary differences) it would be unreasonable that
men should be paid more than women for the same operation. But
supposing that the presence and influence of a master, say in dealing

MD Nt! eatpntye eA OO TC PE Eis

a

*
F,— ECONOMICS. 13

with the bigger boys, is something different from that of a mistress,
and that it is considered indispensable, it is not unreasonable (in a
régime of pure economics) that the desired article should be purchased
at the market price. The market price of a master is higher if he comes
from a class between our M and Z (14), for which the average is higher
than a corresponding class of women between A and F. His higher
pay is quite consistent with the finding of the teachers above cited
(2), that ‘ the work of women, taking the schools as a whole, .. . is not
less zealously and efficiently done than that of men.’ They might,
indeed, be more diligent and in most branches of education better
teachers than men. A steel knife is a more useful implement for general
purposes than a silver blade. But if silver is required to preserve the
flavour of dessert, the epicure must pay for the metal which has the
greater value in exchange. A good cab horse may, for all that I
know, draw a vehicle as well as a high-stepping thoroughbred. But
if for purposes of State and show the high-paced animal is required,
high prices must be paid for the high paces. The distinction, it will be
noticed, turns upon the nature and presence of the horse. If for the
carriage of parcels one kind of horse was as efficient as the other, then,
indeed, a carrier who charged a higher price for the delivery of parcels
because he employed a particular breed of horse could only maintain
this differential charge through a, presumably noxious, monopoly. That
is the difference between the case of the schoolmistress and the case
of Mrs. Jones, whose grievance is recorded by Mrs. Fawcett. Mrs.
John Jones during the illness of her husband passed off her own work
as his to the firm of outfitters which employed him to braid tunics.
‘When, however, it became quite clear, John Jones being dead and
buried, that it could not be his work, . . . the price paid for it by the
firm was immediately reduced to two-thirds of the price paid when
it was supposed to be her husband's’! (Economic Journal, 1918, p. 1).
Here, in the absence of tertiary (and presumably also secondary)
differences, the differentiation of wage was certainly contrary to the
principle of equal pay for equal work.

On behalf of the schoolmistresses it may still be urged that the market
price of male work is artificially raised by inequitable laws and customs.
To this the Teachers’ Committee might reply that if the time in this
respect is out of joint, they were not created to set it right. But itis here
questioned whether the time is so much out of joint. It has been sub-
mitted that the average earnings of male labour (m— z) would probably
be higher than the female average (a—f), even if there had been intro-
duced the most perfect freedom of competition that is thinkable in the
present state of things (12). If so, the higher pay of masters for
similar work does not violate the rule of equal pay for equal work in
the first, purely economic sense of the rule (2). The unequal pay
for equal effort does violate the rule in the second, utilitarian or hedonic,
sense. In fact, the instance is well suited to bring into view the
essential difference between the two definitions of the formula. The
political Socialist who aims at a closer approximation of pay to efforts
and needs, the Utilitarian moralist who desiderates, indeed, that ideal,
but has regard to the danger of pursuing it too directly, naturally do

14 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. -

not acquiesce in the present arrangements (cp. Report on Women in
Industry, Cmd. 135; Minority Report by Mrs. Sidney Webb, sections
12 and 6) But these considerations lie outside pure economics, and
must be postponed to our sequel.

' 16. II. The presumption in favour of free competition and the
methods of putting it in practice require to be reconsidered when we
restore the abstracted circumstances of family life. We now encounter
the dominant fact that men very generally out of their earnings support
a wife and family. ‘It is normal for men to marry and to have to
support families. . . . It is not normal for women to have to support
dependants ’ (Seebohm Rowntree, ‘ Human Needs,’ p. 115). These
words express a very general belief and sentiment. It is a norm
accepted throughout the civilised world. It is embodied in the
Australian determination of minimum wage, one of which, by Judge
Higgins, has been above cited (12). Another Australian Judge rules:
‘the man, and not the woman, is typically the breadwinner of the
family’ (‘South Australian Industrial Reports,’ vol. ii., 1918-19).
Justice Jethro Brown grounds an award on ‘the traditional social
structure which imposes on men the duty of maintaining the house-
hold.’ So Professor Taussig, ‘ For a man wages must normally be
enough to enable a family to be supported and reared. The great
majority of working women are not in this case’ (‘ Principles,’ ch. 47,
s. 9, vol. ii., p. 144). It cannot be supposed that these authoritative
expressions of belief have no correspondence with reality. Indeed, the
wiser and more moderate advocates of equal pay for women admit it
to be ‘ unlikely that any large proportion of married women will aim
at earning their own living as the norm or standard’ (Miss B. L.
Hutchins, ‘ Conflicting Ideals,’ p. 63). Few would agree with the
authoress of ‘A Sane’ (sic) ‘ Feminism’ that ‘ domestic morality and
feminine dignity make it essential for the married woman of to-morrow to
be independent of her husband’s income, and therefore normally depen-
dent on some occupation outside the home, . . . a work to be continued
throughout married life, with occasional lapses incidental to child-bear-
ing’ (pp. 111, 118). Even Mill admits that ‘in an otherwise just state
of things it is not . . . a desirable custom that the wife should con-
tribute by her labour to the income of the family . . . the actual exercise
in a habitual or systematic manner of outdoor occupations, or such as
cannot be carried on at home, would . . . be practically interdicted to
the greater number of married women’ (‘ Subjection of Women,’
pp. 88-89). Does it not follow that the husband must support the
family, so far as he is not assisted by contributions from adult children
or the occasional—not ‘ systematic "—work of the wife?

17. It has been sought to evade this stubborn fact by the contention
that the occupied single woman is responsible for the support of as
many dependants as the man. On the strength of an investigation con-
ducted by the Fabian Research Committee it is maintained that ‘ two-
thirds of the wage-earning women are not only entirely self-supporting,
but have others to maintain besides themselves.’ But grave doubts
are thrown upon these figures by the more elaborate investigation which
Mr. Seebohm Rowntree has recently conducted. He finds from an

a

~~

?
F,—ECONOMICS, 15

extensive observation of samples that ‘ only 12.06 per cent. of women
have either partially or entirely to support others beside themselves ’
(‘ Responsibility of Women Workers,’ p. 36). If we except the cases due
to the death of ‘ the normal breadwinner '"—admittedly requiring special
treatment—the proportion is reduced to 4.12 per cent. The figure
would not be serious even if it proyed on further inquiry to be some-
what greater. For the figure has not the same significance as that which
relates to the dependants of the male wage-earners. The sustentation
of the old and infirm cannot be compared, as regards at least economic
importance, with the support of the young, the cost of which normally
falls on the male breadwinner. The world got on tolerably before the
institution of Old Age Pensions; but it could not have got on at all
without the support of young children by their fathers.

18. If the bulk of working men support families, and the bulk of
working women do not, it seems not unreasonable that the men should
have some advantage in the labour market. Equal pay for equal work,
when one party is subject to unequal deductions from his pay, no
longer appears quite equitable. It is hardly to be expected that the
representatives of female interests should look at this question from the
masculine point of view. The ladies who have shown this unusual degree
of sense and sympathy are entitled to a very attentive hearing. Miss
B. L. Hutchins, in her ‘ Conflict of Ideals,’ has discerned with remarkable
insight the antithesis between the traditional status of the husband and
father, expected to support a family, and the modern régime of contract
tending to universal competition. Miss Hutchins does not see her way
to ending the conflict: ‘it is almost impossible to make any logical
scheme or theory that will fit the woman and the young child exactly
into a commercially organised society based on exchange values’ (loc.
cit., p. 69). Miss Eleanor Rathbone, equally discerning the difficulty,
is more confident about the solution. She proposes a scheme which has
certainly the merit of being logical, the endowment of motherhood, as
set forth in her article on the ‘ Remuneration of Women’s Services ’ in
the Economic Journal for 1917. The plan deserves consideration here
as a step towards that freedom of competition which has been prescribed.
The plan may also be advocated as conducing to advantages less purely
economic than those now considered. When those other advantages
come to be thrown into the scale, the weight of the economic arguments
which I now attempt to estimate will still be a relevant datum.

As text of the plan to be examined we may take the pamphlet
entitled ‘ Equal Pay and the Family,’ the report of the Family Endow-
ment Committee formed in 1917 at the suggestion of Miss Rathbone.
With this pronouncement should be placed the proposal independently
made by Mrs. Sidney Webb in her evidence before the War Committee
(1919, Cmd. 135). The bright and clear résumé of the arguments »
given by Mrs. Stocks in the booklet entitled ‘The Meaning of Family
Endowment ’ is also to be considered.

The purpose of the scheme may be summarised in the words of the
Endowment Report: to secure ‘that within each class of income the
man with a family should not be in a worse position financially because
the has a family than the single man in that class.’ For the partial

16 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

attainment of this purpose, allowances for children being paid only
for six years, there would be required an annual grant of 154,000,000/.
For the fuller realisation of the plan, continuing allowances for children
up to the age of fifteen, the cost would be 240,000,0001. (loc. cit.,
p. 44). ‘ Something like 250 millions sterling annually * is the estimate
of Mrs. Sidney Webb (loc. cit., p. 307).

Let us separately consider, firstly the advantages, secondly the
disadvantages, which this plan presents, and, thirdly, whether there is
any alternative course by which much of the good result with little
of the a may be obtained.

19. i. One main advantage is thus stated in the Endowment Report :
‘When ie national endowment of mothers and children becomes aly.
accomplished fact this excuse for the under-payment of women (that
men have families to keep) will no longer hold good and women will
be free to claim—and men to concede to them—whatever position in
industry their faculties fit them for, ata wage based on the work they
do, and not on their supposed necessities’ (p. 18). The endowment
‘would do away with the present involuntary blacklegging of men by
women, by depriving employers of their one really plausible, if not
actually valid, excuse for paying women less than the standard rates ;
so putting the competition between the sexes for the first time on a
basis which is at once free and fair.’ The endowment would certainly
facilitate the adoption of that free and fair competition which has been
above recommended (9). But that recommendation presupposed that
there had been ruled out a sort of competition which is described by
some high authorities as not free, which is at any rate generally
regarded as deleterious. That tendency to the degradation of labour is,
as above explained (4), aggravated by the competition of women.
Now the endowment of motherhood would not suffice to remove this
danger. ‘The transitory and episodical character of female labour would
still threaten male wages. It may be objected that men, freed from
the obligation of supporting a family, would no longer have a reason for
not competing @ l’outrance with equally free women. They might not
have any reason; but they would surely long retain the habit, the
‘social custom’ as it has been called, engendered by their traditional
position as at least potential heads of families. In short, the proposed
endowment would not remove all the difficulties attending competition
between the sexes, but only those attending the ordered competition
for which alone’ I venture to prescribe (Class B above). How large
an endowment would be required to counteract the consequences of
removing the restrictions on female competition? A measure is
afforded by the extent to which male wages would be depressed. In
making this computation we may, I think, omit to take account of
Wives’ earnings. For if, on the one hand, the greater efficiency, and
possibly the greater number, of married women competing in the labour
market tend to depress male w ages, on the other hand there is a
countervailing gain to the family. We need only, then, consider how
much male wages are likely to be diminished by the liberated competition
of spinsters. In making this estimate we have to take into account the
elasticity of labour, the probability that the greater supply of work

oa
F,—ECONOMICS. 17

will be met by a corresponding demand for work. We have to take
into account also the probability above suggested (12), that the demand
for goods in the production of which men’s labour plays a great part
greatly exceeds, and will continue to exceed (13), the corresponding
demand for women’s work. When these two circumstances are taken
into account it may be doubted whether any great reduction of male
wages would follow on the improvements suggested—better training of
women, hours and appliances suited to their requirements, in short
every degree of freedom that does not evidently tend to the degradation
of labour. A comparatively small endowment, then, might suffice to
deprive men of a reason for objecting to free competition. The excuse,
indeed, without the reason might remain. And no doubt the more
completely that the burden of supporting a family is taken off the
shoulders of men, the more effectually will the excuse be stopped. But
a reason more specious than stopping an excuse may be advanced
in favour of a large endowment. If we are about making an endow-
ment, why confine ourselves to the one advantage of smoothing the way
for free competition? Let us take the opportunity of securing a second
advantage.

ii. The second advantage is the possibility of distributing the
resources available for the nurture of children in such wise that the
requirements of the larger families may be met more adequately than
on the present system. This advantage is thus forcibly stated by Mrs.
Sidney Webb: ‘In the actual course of Nature the distribution of
children among households varying from none to a dozen or more;
the number who are simultaneously dependent on their parents varying
from one to more than half-a-dozen ; and the time in each family over
which this burden of dependent children extends, varying from a year
or two to ten times that period—bear, none of them, any relation to
the industrial efficiency either of the father or of the mother; or
to the wage that either of them, or both of them, could obtain through
individual bargaining by the higgling of the market; or yet to any
actual or conceivable occupational or standard rates to be secured by
them, either by collective bargaining or legislative enactment ’ (Report
of the War Cabinet Committee [Cmd. 135], p. 306). By a children’s
allowance payable to the mothers in all the households of the United
Kingdom it may be secured that * adequate provision is made for children
not by statistical averages, but case by case.’ This second advantage,
as well as the first, would certainly be considerable, if it were unmixed.

20. I will now enumerate some disadvantages; in no particular
order, seeing that the relative importance of the objections will not
be the same for different mentalities.

i. To some the Socialist character of the scheme will form a prime
objection. The increase of bureaucratic routine, the deadening of
individual initiative, will be apprehended.

ii. The end proposed by the Socialist is commendable: to give the
hungry a larger share of the good things produced by the community.
But if the grain which would have been sown for the harvest of next
year is used to fill the hungry with cakes this year, the participants of
future harvests may be worse off than they would have been if the

18 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

resources of the provident had not been thus applied. It requires the
subtlety of a Pigou to devise transferences from the rich to the poor
which shall not have the effect of curtailing the national dividend
(cp. ‘Economics of Welfare,’ pt. v., ch. ix., ss. 7, 8). But there
is reason to apprehend that no such subtlety would be exercised in the
case before us. The Endowment Committee touch lightly the question
of finance. They mention as an alternative to income-tax a levy of
so much per cent. on all incomes, including those of the class not
paying income tax. But is it likely that this method will be employed ?
Mrs. Sidney Webb thinks it better that the children’s fund should
be ‘ provided from the Exchequer (that is to say, by taxation, like any
other obligation of the community)’ (loc cit., p. 309). No doubt a
graduated income-tax would play a great part in the formation of the
fund. Much of the popularity which the scheme enjoys in labour
circles is probably due to the prospect of transferring hundreds of
millions from the income-tax-paying classes to the families of working-
people. The imposition of an enormous additional burden on the
former class would surely tend to check saving.

i. The scheme would resemble the quality of mercy in having an
effect both on him that gives and him that takes. But the resemblance
would end there. The effect on the contributor will be depressing,
but the effect on the recipient is likely to be more seriously deleterious.
It does not require much knowledge of human nature to justify the
apprehension that in relieving the average house-father from the
necessity of providing necessaries for his family you would remove a
great part of his incentive to work. There is doubtless much exaggera-
tion in evidence which has been given to the effect that when wives
earn husbands idle. Yet there is probably an element of truth in
the saying which is thus reported by one of our most experienced
lady-inspectors, ‘I almost agree with the social worker who said that
if the husband got out of work the only thing that the wife should do
is to sit down and cry, because if she did anything else he would remain
out of work ’ (Report on Home-Work, 46, Question 1027, ep. 1024-5).
A gratuitous allowance to the mother would have an effect in this
direction at least as great as her earnings have. A homely truth is
expressed by Rudyard Kipling with his usual vigour when he describes
how the workmen, at the Congress convened by ‘ Imperial Rescript,’
received the invitation to adopt Socialistic motives :

‘ To ease the strong of their burden, and help the weak at their need.’
The English delegate replies, ‘ I work for the kids and the missus ’; and
the workers of all countries join in declaring,

‘ We will work for ourselves and a woman for ever and ever. Amen.’
I owe this quotation to Mrs. Fawcett, who has used it with effect in
the course of a powerful protest against a scheme similar to that now
under consideration, proposed by a member of the Endowment Com-
mittee (Economic Journal, 1907, pp. 377-8).

It may be urged that similar objections were made to Old Age
Pensions, which yet have proved a success. But the motives affected
by pensions given to parents were not exactly the same as those now
considered ; the very mainspring of industry was not equally touched.

_ :
F.—ECONOMICS, 19

Nor was the measure so tremendous a step in the dark. ‘he initial
cost of Old Age Pensions was but a twentieth part, and the present cost

is but a tenth part, of the colossal sum demanded for the endowment of

motherhood.

iv. Lt will be gathered from the two preceding objections that the
proposed scheme is likely to result in a diminution of the provisions at
Nature's feast, to use a Malthusian metaphor. It is now to be added
that the number of guests will probably be increased. There will be
a serious stimulus to population. Now the pressure of population on
resources may not be very alarming in this country at present. But
it is tenable that as regards this danger we are only enjoying a reprieve,
‘an age of economic grace’ (cp. Marshall, Economic Journal, 1907,
p. 10). Is it wise to commit the country to a system which may
prove unsuitable, yet unalterable ?

vy. The increase of population might be welcomed if it consisted
of the higher types. But in the current proposals one sees no security
for the improvement of the race. It is not suggested that Governments
might use for this purpose the power which they will acquire as
distributors of a bounty. Rather it is to be apprehended that the least
desirable classes, say Charles Booth’s Class A and Class B, will be
encouraged to increase and multiply. It is argued, indeed, that the
better class of artisans will be encouraged to keep up their good stock;
while the undesirable class are already so improvident that no stimulus
could add to their recklessness. But these arguments, based on a
calculation of motives, seem precarious in view of the enormous risk
involved. There are degrees of improvidence; there must be many
who are not so improvident but that they may be made more so by
encouragement. The endowment of parents in these classes at the
expense of the income-tax-paying classes may realise the gloomiest
anticipations of Dean Inge. The effect will be ‘ to penalise and sterilise
those who pay the doles ’; to precipitate the ruin of the great middle
class, to which England owes so much (Edinburgh Review, April 1919).

21. Let us now consider some alternative arrangements which make
for the advantages and avoid the dangers which have been described.

Some arrangements calculated to render the freedom of competition
more acceptable follow automatically from that liberation; for the
removal of restrictions on the work of women is calculated to increase
their efficiency, and an increase in their efficiency will be attended,
ceteris paribus, with an increase in their contributions to their families.

i. The burden of the family borne by its head does not increase
in proportion to the number of children; for some contribution towards
family expenses is often made by the elder children. It appears from
an investigation recently made by Professor Bowley that in rather more
than a third of the households which he examined there were ‘ earning .
children.’ It is presumable that they contributed something over and
above their keep to the maintenance of the family (cp. Bowley,
‘Livelihood and Poverty,’ p. 31). The family would be _ losers
pecuniarily by the removal of these children. Many of these members
would be daughters, by hypothesis in the future more efficient than at
present. ‘A eg

20 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

u. Where the number of the children is small, may not some con-
tribution often be expected from the wife? ‘ It is possible to foresee
piece-work arrangements to suit women who cannot work too many
hours ’ a high authority, Mrs. Pember Reeves, observes. It may be
hoped that in the future the only alternatives open to married working
women will not be a whole day’s work away from home, or work in
a home made intolerable by the conditions of home work (as strikingly
described by Mr. and Mrs. Webb for instance, in ‘ Industrial Democracy,’
p. 541). Something better may be expected from the progress both of
physical and of economic science. Leroy-Beaulieu, who is sanguine
as to this resource, characteristically hopes much from science and
nothing from legislation.

ii. Leroy-Beaulieu also hopes for the contribution to a prospective
family made by spinsters who expect to be married. ‘The girl accu-
mulating a dot by work in the factory, in order to remain at home as

a married woman and bring up her family in comfort (dans de bonnes |
conditions )}—this is the only real and practicable progress ’ (‘ La femme

ouvriére ...° p. 425). Mr. Cadbury’s observations on the ways of the
factory girl do not encourage us to hope much from this resource in
this country at present. ‘Only in very few cases are they (savings)

accumulated in readiness for a marriage outfit ’’ (‘ Women’s Work and
Wages,’ p. 244 and context). But we may suppose an improvement
in economic character as well as conditions.

iv. A more obvious compensation to men for the loss of wages—
not, like the preceding, indirectly resulting from the circumstance
which occasions that loss—would be afforded by an extension of the
allowance now made in furtherance of education. They should be in
kind; conforming to Mill’s principle that what Government may
provide with most propriety is the commodities which people would
not have spontaneously demanded (Pol. Econ., v. xi., 8).

These compensations may suffice to meet the male objection to
removing restrictions on female competition.

For the further object of equalising the application of resources to
the nurture of children within each grade a further extension of the
last-named allowances (21, iv.) may be risked. But they should be
guarded against the dangers objected to the endowment scheme (20, ii.,
iii. and iv.). Are those dangers sufficiently guarded against by Miss
M. E. Bulkley when, in a work prefaced approvingly by Mr. R. H.
Tawney, she recommends the provision of a free meal for all school-
children (‘ Feeding of Schoolchildren,’ pp. 223-6)? The cost would be
12,500,0001. a year. That is for one meal, dinner. But of course
breakfast would often be required (p. 228).

y. A plan for equalising the burden of dependent children would be
especially serviceable in the case when the family is larger than the
average. That case might be met by the comparatively modest subsidy
proposed by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree (‘Human Needs’). He estimates
that the allowance necessary to secure physical efficiency ‘in case of
more than three dependent children’ would come to only 8,000,0001.
(if only families with incomes below a certain figure are to be
subsidised).

ma

6) uo phe eee?

ie i i ll he

-
F,—ECONOMICS. 21

Here may be the place to observe that Mr. Rowntree’s proposal to
treat widows with dependent children more generously than at present
is not nearly so open to the objections above enumerated as the endow-
ment of motherhood in general.

vi. Some further suggestions may be obtained from the schemes
now under consideration in Australia. It is proposed to levy on every
employer a tax of so much per employee, and from the proceeds to
form a fund which is to be distributed among mothers according to
the size (perhaps also the needs) of the family. ‘he proposal—like
that of the Endowment Committee—probably owes its chance of being
accepted partly to the belief that the cost of the plan will not fall
on those who are benefited by the plan, but on the employer, or the
capitalist, or that supposed independent and abundant resource, the
State.

But if equality of provision for children within each class is sincerely
desired—without the arriére pensée of equalising the incomes of different
classes—a simpler plan is suggested. It is open to any association of
men—a trades union for example—to resolve that each member of the
association should contribute a quota of his earnings towards the forma-
tion of a fund which is to be distributed among the wives of members
in accordance with the size of their families. This plan would be much
less open to the objections above enumerated than the endowment
of motherhood by the State. It would not disturb the labour market
or the financial system. It would not require legislation. Persuasion
would suffice. Those who believe that such equalisation is desirable,
and that there is a chance of its being accepted, should start a campaign
of argument and exhortation. Bachelors and childless husbands should
be persuaded to support a fund by which they may hope one day them-
selves to benefit as future fathers of families.

22. To sum up; equal pay for equal work, in the sense of free com-
petition between the sexes, has been advocated, with some reservations
and adjustments. Desperate disordered competition, tending to the
degradation of labour, is supposed to be excluded. There are suggested
compensations to families for the loss sustained by the male bread-
winner through the increased competition of women. Among such
compensations the endowment of motherhood on a large scale by the
State is not included. The advantages weighed are economic in a
strict sense. The balance may be affected when welfare or well-being
in a wider sense is taken into account.

APPENDIX.

[The references are to the sections of the text and to the paragraphs of the
sections. |

1. Locke considers that the ‘ complexedness ’ of moral ideas renders
demonstration difficult. But ‘ clearly distinct ideas,’ though moral,
admit of demonstration (‘Human Understanding,’ book iv., ch. 3,
ss. 8, 19). We may extend this remark from demonstration of certainties

22 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

to deduction of probabilities (loc. cit., ch. 17, s. 2); and so hope that the
reasoning about welfare in the sequel may be as legitimate, if only the
ideas are clearly distinct, as the more familiar purely economic reasoning
proposed to the present study.

2, par. 1. The definition given by the (majority of the) War Cabinet
Committee is at s. 211 of their Report [Cmd. 135], 1919. Professor
Bowley’s definition is in the first column of p. 177 of (Appendices to)
the Report on Women in Industry [Cmd. 167], 1919. Mrs. Fawcett
adopts Miss Eleanor Rathbone’s definition, which is substantially
identical with our first definition, the one proper to the present study
(Kconomic Journal, 1918, p. 8). It is quoted in part below (14).

2, par. 3. The isolation professed by Jevons is perhaps more easily
maintained in dealing with Exchange and Interest than when with
respect to Population. When considering the future of a population
as affected by different economic conditions it is natural to have in mind
a quantity of the kind which Burke, referring to the population of
America, described as ‘so Jarge a mass of the interests and feelings
of the human race.’ I follow, however, classic. precedent when I
include in the present study, though purporting to be purely economic,
some reference to the effect of proposed measures on the growth and
condition of the population (below, 20, iv., et passim).

2, par. 3. It may well be that the ‘ complexedness’ (above note
to s. 1) of the objective aggregate, the national income (as to which see
Bowley, Hconomic Journal, March 1922), may exceed that of the
subjective aggregate, which will constitute the central conception of the
sequel dealing with welfare.

4. As to the relation between maximum and greatest possible
advantage, see Pigou, ‘ Economics of Welfare,’ Part II., ch. i, s. 7
et seq., restating the doctrine of his ‘ Wealth and Welfare,’ which has
been paraphrased by the present writer in the Economic Journal for
June, 1913, p. 215.

4, (bis). As to the effect of subsidies see Pigou, ‘Economics of
Welfare,’ Part V., ch. vii., s. 3, restating ‘ Wealth and Welfare,’
Part III., ch. viil., s. 8. A priori, if we construct Supply-and-Demand
curves of the ordinary type, the abscissa representing the quantity of
work offered, and the ordinate the corresponding rate of wage, different
cases are presented. If the Supply curve consists of a horizontal line
at a certain height, corresponding to the classical conception that any
amount of labour will be forthcoming at the cost fixed by the labourer’s
necessaries, then’ the effect of a small or moderate bounty will be to
lower wages by the full amount of the supplement. A case like this
is supposed in sectjons 4 and 20. But the effect of a considerable sub-
sidy may well be to alter the balance between work and leisure, to
change the shape of the Supply curve, raising it and rendering it in-
elastic in such wise as to make the market better for competitors
that are not subsidised. Examples of both results, according to cireum-
stances, will be found in the evidence given by Miss Collett and others
before the Commission on Home Work, 1907, No. 86. It will not be
irrelevant to quote Miss Collet’s judgment about the effect of a large
subsidy. ‘ The girl who earns 1001. a year by her work and receives

i
4
’

—_—

oe ae

°
F.—ECONOMICS. 23

another 1001. a year in one form or another from her father is in all
probability not underselling anyone, but may, even by her liberal views
of what is a good salary, be inciting her less luxurious colleagues to
raise their standard of living and remuneration’ (Hconomic Journal,
1898, p. 544).

4 (ter). On the all-important question where to draw the line which
separates the genuine labour market from those whom it is desired to
rule out as spoiling the market, I cannot pretend to an important
opinion. It may be granted that strong measures and exceptional
treatment are required for the ‘ residuum of persons who are physically,
mentally, or morally incapable of doing a good day’s work with which
to earn a good day’s wage’ (Marshall, ‘ Principles,’ p. 714, ch. 5).
But it is often proposed to fix a minimum at a higher point ; so high as to
exclude great numbers. Consider, for example, a case suggested by
Professor Taussig (“Minimum Wage for Women,’ Quarterly Journal
of Economics, 1915). Suppose that a large proportion (we need not
suppose with Taussig a large majority) of the women in a community
living at home, and so realising the advantages of co-operation, ‘ the
economy of family life,’ do well for themselves and the families by
earning $6 a week. They are not to be ruled out as ‘ parasitic ’; given
that the family would be worse off if an earning daughter were removed
(loc. cit., pp. 418-419). | Now suppose that the ‘ necessary cost of
proper living’ for a woman dependent on herself is authoritatively
determined to be $8 a week. Would it be ‘ immoral ’ on the part of the
home-residents to take less than $8, as might perhaps be inferred from
some authoritative dicta? (Cp. Economic Journal, 1915, p. 627, and
“What we want and why,’ 1922, p. 245.) What is to be done about
independent women workers in such a labour market? Shall we adjust
the minimum wage to the family rather than the individual? (Cp. Mar-
shall, loc. cit., especially note to p. 419.) I do not feel able to add
to what Professor Taussig has wisely written on the subject.

It should be recalled that throughout this inquiry we are abstracting
humanitarian considerations; on classical lines we are seeking purely
economic advantages, including the production of an efficient progeny.

5. The advantages theoretically obtainable by the scientific pro-
tection of infant industries are well exhibited by Professor H. O.
Meredith (Economic Journal, 1906). But he adds: ‘I know no case
in which Protection has demonstrably done more good than harm.’

6. The property of a maximum referred to as relevant to the present
study and the sequel is thus stated by Dr. Marshall: ‘ When the
adjustment is such as to give the best results a slight change in the
proportions in which they (resources) are applied diminishes the
efficiency of that adjustment by a quantity which is very-small relatively
to that change—in technical language, it is of ‘‘ the second order of
smalls ’’’ (‘ Principles of Economics,’ p. 409, note, edition 5). Mr.
Bickerdike has made an interesting application of the property to the
theory of Free Trade (Economic Journal, Dec. 1906). His argument
is discussed by the present writer in the. Economic Journal, for
September 1908. As a simple illustration of the property under con-
sideration there is adduced the incident that in the neighbourhood of

24 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

the summer solstice during eight days there is no change at all in
the length of the day as given in ‘ Whitaker’s Almanack ’; whereas
in other months there is a difference of two or three minutes from
day to day. A more exact illustration may be obtained from the
‘ Nautical Almanac.’ There the average hourly change in the distance
of the sun from the celestial equator (due to his movement on the
celestial sphere along the ecliptic) is given from day to day. For the
year 1923, on June 22 the variation of the (‘ apparent ’) Declination in
an hour (at noon) is given (in the volume published in 1920) as .04 of
a second (angular measure). Whereas on March 19 the corresponding
hourly change was 59.29 seconds. Thus, considering the distance of
the sun from the equator (the North Declination) as the dependent
magnitude, dependent on the time, we find that the dependent magni-
tude when in the neighbourhood of its maximum varies per unit of
the independent variable by an amount which is 1,482 times less than
the variation at another date. The contrast is less striking, but still
marked, if we observe a neighbourhood less close to the maximum and
do not select the most favourable date for the purpose of comparison.

The change in the neighbourhood of a maximum (or minimum) would.

often be thirty times less than the change at a distance. Similar
contrasts are presented by the Declination of the Moon; for which
the average change per period of ten minutes is calculated for every
hour. With less precision than in physical science (it is not ours to
calculate what will happen in every ten minutes of 1923), this charac-
teristic property of a maximum is fulfilled in economics.

An illustration from the theory of monopoly is given in the
Economic Journal, 1908, p. 401, where the law of demand is supposed
(after Cournot) to be

y=a/(400+ p’).

9. Among the many who, following J. S. Mill (Pol. Heon. IL.
“xiv, 5), have noticed the crowding of women into comparatively few
occupations may be specially mentioned Mr. J. H. Jones, who con-
tributes the supplementary proposition that these occupations (before
the War) ‘ resembled each other far more closely than they resembled
the avenues which were closed to them (women) by rule or custom ’
(Report on Women in Industry [Cmd. 167], 1919, p. 182, col. 2,
par. 2). Query whether much importance now attaches to the supple-
mentary proposition submitted by Leroy-Beaulieu (‘ Le travail des
femmes ... ’ p. 136) that the specially feminine occupations do not
admit of much division of labour or frequent intervention of mechanism ?

10. The grounds of the assertion fhat the equilibrium of the labour
market is apt to be, even theoretically, somewhat indeterminate are to
be sought in the writer’s essay on ‘ Mathematical Psychics.” We may
begin by considering two extreme abstract cases: (1) a market consisting
of an equal number of masters and men; subject to the conditions («)
that no man can (or at least does) serve two masters simultaneously,
(8) no master employs more than one man; (2) a market in which
the number of masters (though absolutely large, and so favourable to
competition) is small relatively to the number of men; subject to con-

ee, tn

?
F.—ECONOMICS., 25

dition «, but not to condition 6. In the first case equilibrium is
thoroughly indeterminate (op. cit. p. 46). In the second case the
employers competing against each other can beat down profits to 4
determinate point (the point 7% in fig. 1 on p. 28, the point T in fig. 5
on p. 114 op. cit.) But when a start is made at a point more favour-
able than that to the men, the competition of the men against each other
(owing to condition «) being imperfect, there does not exist a deter-
minate position towards which the higgling of the market will tend. It
may be presumed that this conclusion remains true of the concrete
labour market in which condition « is aimost universally fulfilled.

10, par. 2. On the utilitarian principle of distribution, in the absence
of perfect competition, I may refer to what I have said in the Economic
Journal, 1897, p. 552, and to my lecture on ‘ The Relations of Political
Economy to War,’ p. 15 et seq.

11. Plato hardly commits himself (‘ Republic,’ 455p) to the state-
ment too roundly attributed to him by Grote ‘ that women were inferior
to men in weaving no less than in other things.’ But no doubt he
considered them to be generally less efficient: éxt mao. 8: aobevéotegov
spovi vB 206.

11 (bis.) Professor Cannan, in his important contribution to our
subject (‘ Wealth,’ p. 202 et seq.), realises the difficulty of comparing
the earnings of a children’s nurse with those of her brother in his
occupation of, say, carting coal. Professor Cannan appears to regard
as possible what I have described as probable, that even if all restrictions
on entry into occupations and on education were removed, the field
within which women show themselves superior to men would continue
to be smaller than that in which men show themselves superior to
women (loc. cit. p. 205—the smaller capacity implied in this statement
may be ‘in part the explanation’ of the present lower wages of
women).

12. With respect to the presumption that, even if all restrictions
were removed, the (time-) earnings of women would normally be less
than those of men, some specific evidence is forthcoming in the case
of the cotton-weaving industry—a strong case if women are particularly
well qualified for that work. Yet even in that industry, ‘ though the
earnings are computed on the same table of piece-work prices, the men
average more per week than the women’ (Mrs. Sidney Webb, New
Statesman, August 1914, p. 525). This statement is borne out by the
‘Report on Earnings and Hours’ [Cmd. 4545], 1906, where the
average weekly earnings for men are stated to be 29s., for women
18s. 8d. (p. xxxv).

14. With reference to ‘ secondary’ differences between the sexes,
Mr. J. H. Jones's observations on the ‘ potentiality’ of the worker
(Report on Women in Industry [Cmd. 167], p. 185, col. 1) are
instructive. They show that ‘equal pay (in our sense) would mean
to the employer a higher piece-rate for the man than the woman for
precisely the same job . . . economic value is not always fully repre-
sented in the actual product from week to week.’

14 (bis). With respect to the two systems whereby secondary
differences can be allowed for, either two separate rates for men and

26 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

women (t and 0’), or one common rate (v"), Prof. Henry Clay well

says: ‘ While the second system (of which the one first named here —

may be considered a species) is theoretically more economical, I do
not think it is practicable. Except where a district list of straight piece-
rates is possible, varying earnings are a cause of discontent and friction.
Varying rates, whether time or piece, are difficult to establish, because
productivity is difficult to measure. . . . A single rate .. . is the
only safe policy to pursue’; ‘it is probably cheaper to face the dis-
advantages of the single-rate system ’ ((Cmd. 167], p. 178, col. 2).
Cp. Mrs. Sidney Webb [Cmd. 135], p. 280.

14 (ter). The student may be advised to illustrate the working of
the different systems diagrammatically. The following hints may be
serviceable. Represent the number of employees in an occupation in
which only men or only women are employed by a segment of the
abscissa, and draw an ordinate representing the normal weekly wage
for an individual in that occupation. In the case of an occupation in
which both sexes are employed the segment may be divided into two
parts; the right representing the number of men, the left the number
of women. The ordinate on the right would generally be higher than
the one on the left. The rates might be represented by perpendiculars
to the abscissa measured downwards. The effect of substituting for
the rate which would be best in the absence of secondary differences,
either a system of two rates, 1 and 1’, or a single rate 1” (<1), would
be made visible.

15, par. 1. On the payment of school-teachers, Mrs. Sidney Webb,
in the course of her interesting articles on the right of the woman to
free entry into all occupations, in the New Statesman (July-August
1914), states that ‘ educationists think there are already too few men
on the teaching staff.’ In this connexion it is well said by Mrs.
Webb: ‘ Sex, like youth or middle age, is a peculiar characteristic
which sometimes qualifies and sometimes disqualifies persons for par-
ticular tasks.’

19, par. 1. It is suggested that the proposed allowances would not
abolish the difference of mentality which is thus well expressed by
Professor Henry Clay: ‘Men’s wages are higher than women’s,
because, having as a rule dependants to maintain, men will stand out
for higher wages; the social custom so established imposes itself on
the considerable minority of men who have no dependants.’ ‘ Women,
having in the majority of cases only themselves to support, will not
stand out for a family wage; a social custom is established in this case
also’ (Report on Women in Industry [Cmd. 167], p. 179, col. 1).
This force of habit, surviving after the cause which engendered it may
have been removed, no doubt weakens—though it does not, I think,
remove-—the objection stated below under the head ii.

19, par. 1 (bis). See Pigou, ‘ Wealth and Welfare,’ pp. 88-89,
321 et seq; and ‘ Economics of Welfare,’ Book V., ch. i., s. 8—
where reference is made to the present writer’s statement of the pro-
position as a postulate implied in the theory of free trade.

21, pars. 5 and 6. The objection numbered iv. would not be applic-
able to Professor Karl Pearson’s scheme of endowment, according to

ke a EP ee eye oT 8 ee ae

or ee ee eee oe ee

ae ee a

°
F.—ECONOMICS. 27

which * Births beyond the sanctioned number would receive no recogni-
tion’ (‘Free Thought,’ p. 444). Nor would objection v. be valid
against Professor W. McDougall’s proposal to differentiate in favour of
the better breeds * (* National Decay ’).

21, par. 11. The origin and features of the Australian plans for the
endowment of children are described in the Economic Journal, 1921,
by Professor Heaton. (See also Miss Eleanor Rathbone’s description
of the South Australian scheme in that Journal, 1922). Justice
Higgins’s classical decision in 1907 had defined as a ‘ fair and reason-
able’ minimum or ‘ living’ wage one which provided for ‘ the normal
needs of the average employee regarded as a human being living in a
civilised community ’; these needs including the support of a wife and
three children. In 1920 it was found (by the Royal Commission on
the Cost of Living), partly by taking account of the rise in prices,
partly through the use of statistics not available to Justice Higgins in
1907, that to carry out his ideal of a living wage there would be required
a much higher figure than he had fixed, no less than 51. 16s. weekly
for the average adult male worker. Now, as pointed out by the
Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Piddington, there being in Australia
(in round numbers) a million workers, the resources of the country
would not be sufficient to furnish an average wage of this amount.
But he added that so high a wage would not be required in order to
make provision for children. Say there were 900,000 dependant
children in all, and that 12s. a week was an adequate provision for each
child. By giving the average workman enough to support three children
provision would be made for supporting three million children—above
two million ‘ phantom children’ in addition to the actual numbers.
Accordingly he proposes to fix 41. as the basic wage sufficient to sup-
port man and wife without children, and to make provision for the
children by a tax of so much per employee, payable by the employer.

Suppose now (as in the text above) that the children’s fund is raised
by (associations of) the workers themselves. The Australian statistics
enable us to form an idea of the quota which would be required from
each member. On Mr. Piddington’s reckoning it was thought reason-
able that, while a million times 4]. per week accrued to the workers,
900,000 x 12s. should be provided for the children. Supposing, then,
that the whole of the provision came directly out of the workers’ hands
(41. remaining for the use of man and wife), this would mean that on
an average the worker contributed to the children’s fund 10.8s. out of
a wage of 90.8s., that is, about 11 per cent. The proportion might be
applied to actual earnings, as distinguished from a legal minimum, in
other countries (with correction if necessary for a difference in the pro-
portion of young children to adult men). The provision for children
would not be so generous as that demanded by the Endowment Com-
mittee. But it would avoid some of the objections to their scheme.

~

SECTION G.—ENGINEERING,

RAILWAY PROBLEMS OF AUSTRALIA.

ADDRESS BY

Proressor T. HUDSON BEARE, B.A., B.Se., D.L.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION,

Ix 1914 the Association held its annual meeting in Australia, and,
thanks to the excellent arrangements made by the Local Committees
and the Commonwealth and State Governments, the visiting members
had exceptional facilities for travelling over extensive areas of the great
island continent. The visitors on arriving in Western Australia found
that they were still cut off from the rest of Australia by a sea journey
of 1025 miles, the East-West Transcontinental Railway being then
still uncompleted; they also found later on that the railway jou
from Melbourne to Sy dney and from Sydney to Brisbane involved 1

each case a change of carriage at an intermediate station, owing a
break of gauge; they thus had practical experience of the need of the
solution of the two railway problems I propose to discuss in this address.

I began my professional career in the service of the Public Works
Department of South Australia, at that time engaged on an important
scheme of railway development in the rich wheat-growing northern areas
of that province, under what was called the Boucaut policy, and I have
since that date followed closely the development of the railway systems
of Australia, as in the methods of construction and working there were
important differences from railway practice in this country. While in
Australia in 1914 I specially devoted my time to a study of the two
great problems which were then and are still engaging the attention
of the people of the Commonwealth—namely, (1) the unification of the
existing railway gauges, which are such a serious handicap to railway
transportation between the various States, and (2) the opening up of
the tropical areas of North Australia by a system of railways linking
up with the existing railway systems of the southern and eastern areas
of the continent.

The first is a problem which in great measure affects only the people
of Australia, though, as will be shown later, its solution involves the
expenditure of such a large sum of money—much of which will go
in the purchase of permanent way material and rolling-stock—that the
manner in which it is solved must be a matter of considerable interest
to the iron and steel industries of this country. The second question
is one which I venture to suggest is of paramount importance to the
whole of the Empire. The future safety of Australia depends upon
securing such a rapid increase in the rate of the growth of its population
that any idea of a hostile attack upon it would become a hopeless
proposition. The vast empty spaces of Central and North Australia
are a temptation to the rapidly increasing races of certain Asiatic

Britisn Assocration : Hull, 1922.] G

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

countries, which must be removed if the white Australian policy is

to be maintained, as I personally hope it will be. It is impossible to
expect any s satisfactor y development of the natural resources of the
tropical areas of Australia, and the much-needed closer settlement,
until there ave safe and speedy means of communication between this
part of Australia and the southern and eastern areas; this can only
be provided by railways.

Unification of Gauge.

When railway construction was started about 1854—practically
simultaneously in New South Wales and Victoria—it was intended to
adopt the 5 ft. 3 in. gauge in both States, but a change of professional
adviser at Sydney brought about a change of view, and the New South
Wales Government decided to adopt the standard 4 ft. 83 in. gauge,
and this gauge has heen maintained up to the present date on all the
New Sout th W ales railways. Victoria, on the other hand, adopted the

) {t. 3 in. gauge from the first, and has, with the exception of a trifling
ioth of 2 ft. 6 in. gauge track, built all her State lines on that gauge.
South Australia, when railway construction was begun in 1855, also
chose the 5 ft. 3 in. gauge and adhered to this gauge for some years ;
later on, however, in order to reduce the first cost of construction, a
considerable length of railway mileage was constructed on the 3 ft. Gin.
cauge. Subgesland and Western Australia, when they began railway
construction, selected the 8 ft. 6 in. gauge because of the possibilities
the narrower gauge offered in reduction of capital outlay. Briefly,
therefore, four of the five mainland States have uniform gauges in
their respective areas, and there are three of these gauges—5 ft. 3 in.,
4 ft. 85 in., and 3 ft. 6 in.—while the fifth State has two gauges,
5 ft. 3 in. and 3 ft. 6 in. The Commonwealth, when it was decided
to build the East-West transcontinental line, chose the 4 ft. 84% in.
gauge.

As soon as the four capitals—Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and
Brisbane—were connected by railways the delays and additional work-
ing expenses inevitable with any change of gauge began to be realised,
and as early as 1888 Mr. Eddy, Chief Commissioner for the New
South Wales Railways, drew attention to the matter and urged that
steps should be taken to secure unification of gauges. In 1897 a
Premiers’ conference, held in Adelaide, instructed the various State
railway commissioners to report on the whole question of the unifica-
tion of gauges. A conference was therefore held in Melbourne in
August 1897, and this conference unanimously agreed to recommend
that 4 ft. 85 in. be adopted as the standard Australian gauge; the
decision was based on the fact that it would be cheaper to convert the
5 ft. 3 in. to 4 ft. 81 in., and that 3 ft. 6 in. was too narrow a gauge
for main-line traffic. It was estimated that the cost of unification
would be about 23,600,0001. None of the States took any steps to
carry out the recommendations of the conference.

In 1903 it became necessary to decide upon the gauge which should
be adopted for the East-West transcontinental line to connect Western
Australia with the eastern provinces, the length of the line being about

a ee, Ly

-

+
G.—ENGINEERING, 3

1063 miles. A conference of the Engineers-in-Chief of the five States
unanimously recommended that 4 ft. 84 in. should be the gauge of this
important line, and eventually the line was built on this gauge. This
decision was later on confirmed at a meeting in 1911 of the Railway
War Council, attended also by the Chief Commissioners of the various
State Railways.

Mr. Hales, a well-known engineer of Launceston, Tasmania, in
1911 urged the Commonwealth Government to reconsider the question
as to which gauge should be adopted as the standard for the whole
of Australia: he was of opinion that the 5 ft. 3 in. gauge would enable
locomotives of 20 per cent. more power to be used as compared
with the 4 ft. 8} in., and 10 per cent. more traffic could be carried
on the same mileage, and that it would be easier to secure a market
for discarded 4 ft. 8} in. stock’ Mr. H. Deane, the Chief Engineer
of Railways to the Commonwealth, was, as a result of Mr. Hales’
memorandum, instructed to reconsider the whole question of the stan-
dard gauge and to report as to whether it would be advisable to reverse
the earlier decisions and to select the 5 ft. 3 in. gauge. Mr. ‘Deane
in his report advised that the decision fo adopt the 4 ft. 84 in. gauge
should be adhered to; he was opposed to the adoption of any narrower
gauge than that, and he pointed out that a 5-chain curve could be
used even on a 4 ft. 84 in. gauge track under certain conditions, and
that such lines had been constructed not only in Australia but in other
countries. On the other hand, the speed limit for a 3 ft. 6 in. line
was far below that which could be safely adopted on a 4 ft. 83 in. line,
even on a straight track in flat country. In concluding his report
Mr. Deane urged the need of a prompt settlement of the matter, as
each of the States was steadily increasing its railway mileage and every
year unification was postponed meant that the cost would be steadily
mounting up. Unification of the gauges would facilitate the transfer
of rolling-stock from one State to another during any emergency, and
considerable economies in running expenses would be obtained by
P better utilisation of existing stock; for example, a train from Sydney,
reaching Albury (the change-of-gauge station) in the early morning,
was compelled under existing conditions to remain idle in that station
q all day before returning to Sydney.

5 With regard to the method of conversion, Mr. Deane advocated the
i third-raii method, and he gave in his report a brief account of the
; various methods which had been adopted in other countries where

unification of gauges had been carried out. Inthe United States, where
° the rolling-stock is always of the bogie type, the method adopted had
been to remove the bogies of one gauge and substitute those of the other—
quite a cheap and convenient method, but obviously impossible with
four-wheeled stock. Various methods had been suggested for dealing
with the problem of four-wheeled stock, such as the use of divided
axles with inside bearings or a sliding axle, but there were serious prac-
tical difficulties in both methods, and both methods introduced a sense of
insecurity. Another method, which had been proposed by Mr. Bolton,
was to fit a third wheel just inside one of the wheels of the broader
gauge stock; again, there were substantial practical difficulties—the
third wheel must be kept always on one side of the track, without

G2

1 22-4

Bas 2a eat a 2 ay

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

turning the vehicle, and it would be difficult to carry this out at junctions
where branch lines came in from both the right and the left. Mr.
Deane’s own idea was that the third rail producing a mixed gauge would
be the best solution of the problem. This would involve difficulties at
points and crossings. Mr. Brennan, the well-known torpedo expert,
had prepared a design for compound switches, and a model of this had
been made at the Sydney Railway Interlocking Workshops. Mr.
Deane was of opinion that this design of Mr. Brennan would probably
overcome the difficulties introduced by the use of the third rail, and
he suggested to the Commonwealth Government that two or three full-
size sets of the switches should be constructed and tried at an im-
portant junction station. Mr, Deane was of opinion that the change-
over as regards Victoria and South Australia, if carried out on these
lines, would occupy from five to ten years. The table which follows
gives the lengths of the various gauges, the original capital cost, and
the cost per mile of the State Railways on June 30, 1910, that is at the
date when Mr. Deane was preparing this report.

Mileage and Gauge of Australian Railways on June 30, 1910.

| | Gauge

State —- Capital Cost Cees

| | 5ft. 3in. | 4ft. Sin. | 8ft. Gin,

ere pores -|—

| New South Wales — | 3,643 = | 48,925,348 13,430

Victoria . : Syersni | -- | a= 42,453,801 12,549

South Australia . 599 — = 6,670,794 11,136

| South Australia . — | — Jy Mulbsilse: 7,737,738 5,892

_ Northern Territory | os | a 1454 1,180,155 8,111

| Queensland : =a enon 3,661 24,336,372 6,648
Western Australia | — | — | 2,144$ 11,377,062 5,305

| Tasmania . - | | — 4453 3,949,441 8,860

("> otal. & ys lp vSjOB2 eel S.b48. 7700, © || a6 enone — |

In 1913 a further conference of the Engineers-in-Chief was held,
and this conference adopted two resolutions of considerable importance :

1. That it was advantageous that the work of unification should be
undertaken at once, since the longer the work was delayed the greater
would be the cost.

2. That the relative advantages of the 5 ft. 3 in. and the 4 ft. 83 in.
gauges from the point of view of efficiency and economy of working, and
discarding the question of interest on cost of conversion, approximately
balanced one another, and that, since the cost of conversion of the
wider to the narrower gauge was much less than for .the converse
operation, they recommended the adoption of the 4 ft. 8} in. gauge.

This conference estimated that the cost of converting all the railway
lines of Australia to the 4 ft. 8} in. gauge would be 37,164,0001., but,
if it were decided merely to unify the main-line routes connecting the
various capitals, the cost would be 12,142,0001. Of this latter sum
the new lines which would be required would account for 4,847,0001.,
and the conversion of the existing 5 ft. 3 in. lines (all the Victorian
but only some of the South Australian) would cost 7,295,0001,

]

oo

= -
G.—ENGINEERING. 5

~ ‘This conference emphasised the need of an early solution of the
problem by drawing attention to the fact that, while the cost of con-
verting the New South Wales 4 ft. 84 in. lines to 5 ft. 3 in, had been
estimated in 1897 at about 4,250,0001., the conference now estimated
that this work would cost 19,250,000l.; and, similarly, the cost of
converting the Victorian and South Australian 5 ft. 3 in. lines to
4 ft. 84 in. had been estimated in 1897 at 2,250,0001., and the new
estimate was 7,250,0001. To account for this greatly increased cost it
was pointed out that in the sixteen years which had elapsed between
these two estimates being prepared the railway mileage in New South
Wales had nearly doubled, traffic and rolling-stock had greatly increased,
and the cost of wages and materials had gone up from between 50 per
cent. to 150 per cent.

The decision of the Commonwealth Government to adopt the 4 ft.
84 in. gauge for the East-West transcontinental line, and the construc-
tion of that line on that gauge, ought to have settled definitely the choice
of the standard railway gauge for Australia, but the question was re-
opened, and a Royal Commission was appointed on February 8, 1921,
to report on the whole question of the standard gauge which should be
adopted for Australian railways, and to submit estimates of the cost
of conversion and recommendations as to how the work should be
carried ‘out. This Royal Commission unanimously recommended that
the previous decisions as to the adoption of the 4 ft. 84 in. gauge should
be adhered to; they were of opinion that no important gain in the carry-
ing capacity of the railways would be secured by using the wider
5 ft. 3 in. gauge, while the reduction in the cost of conversion would
be considerable if the 4 ft. 8} in. gauge were adhered to.

Much confusion has arisen in discussing the gauge question by the
failure on the part of many of those who took part in the controversy
to appreciate the difference between ‘ track gauge ’ and ‘ load or struc-
; {ure gauge.’ At the present time locomotives are in use on 4 ft. 83 in.
gauge lines giving a static pressure of 35,000 Ib. between the rail head
aud the wheel tread, and such a pressure produces probably the maximum
permissible deformation in the metal of the rail head and the wheel
tread, hence it is the quality of the metal used in the rails and in the
tyres which determines ultimately the carrying capacity of the 4 ft.
i 84 in. or any other gauge. On the other hand, the structure gauge
ve

determines the density the load must have in order to load the wheels
to their maximum capacity; and it is, therefore, to structural gauge
changes that attention should in the first place be given. The Aus-
tralian 1905 uniform structure gauge, when outside cylinder locomotives
are used, permits, as a matter of fact, the use of bigger diameter engine
cylinders on a 4 ft. 84 in. gauge track than on a 5 ft. 3 in. gauge line,
: as shown in the lantern plate. On the other hand, the 5 ft. 3 in.
gauge permits a higher centre of gravity with the same stability and
ease of riding, but this higher centre of gravity is unobtainable with
E the usual goods traffic on Australian lines. Undoubtedly it would
cost less to change from the wider to the narrower gauge than to
earry out the converse operation, since in the former the same
sleepers can be used, and no changes in banks, cuttings, and ballast
are required, and in the conversion of the rolling-stock the change

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

from the wider to the narrower means shoriening the axles of the
rolling-stock wheels, a simple matter, while to carry out the reverse
operation of lengthening these axles would be practically impos-
sible. At the ‘present. time there are about 60,000,000 sleepers
on the Australian railway lines, of which about half are on the
3 {t. 6 in. gauge lines. The average life of a sleeper in Australia is
about twenty years, and, therefore, the annual renewals run to about
3,000,000 sleepers, but, owing to the results of war conditions, the
annual renewals at the present time are nearly 5 000 ,000. Some 75 per
cent. of the 3 ft. 6 in. sleepers now in use are 7 ft. long, and such
a sleeper could be used with a 4 ft. 84 in. gauge ‘f for each rail four
new 8-ft. long sleepers were introduced along with old 7-ft. sleepers,
one at each end and the other two equally spaced in nee een, provided
that only 60-lb. rails were used and that the traffic was neither heavy
nor. fast. If such an arrangement were adopted there would be a
saving of something like 12,500,000 sleepers during the process of
conversion of the gauges.

The Commission considered very carefully the various proposals
which had been made to obviate the need of the conversion of the
running track, such as, for example, the third-rail. method and the
many mechanical devices which had been suggested for allowing the
same rolling-stock to be run over different gauges, and unanimously
_turned them all dow n; in fact, a special board of experts had been
appointed in 1918 to examine and report upon a number of these
mechanical devices and suggestions, and had been unable to report
favourably on any of them. All such devices were merely in the nature
of temporary plans for postponing the ultimate conversion to a uniform
gauge; they therefore involved additional expenditure and an increase
in the final total cost of conversion. The Commission recommended that
the unification should be carried out gradually by shifting one of the
two rails of the 5 ft. 3 in. gauge inwards, and shifting both es ‘ails in the

case of the 3 ft. 6 in. gauge outw ards, the work to be done in stages

and temporary change stations to be arranged for, the traffic being
diverted as far as necessary while the length of track between two
change stations was being altered.

This Royal Commission went very fully into the cost of the work
of conversion ; first, for the provision of a main line only on one gauge
from Fremantle to Brisbane, leaving all other State lines uneonverteds
and, secondly, from the point of view of bringing the whole railway
system of Australia to one uniform 4 ft. 8} in. gauge, and independent
estimates were prepared for- each scheme.

Cost for Converting the Main Line only, from Fremantle to Brisbane, to
a Uniform 4it. 24 in. Gauge.
Three alternative routes were proposed (as shown in the lanterin
plates) :
Length of Track.

Route Cost Miles
£

A : , . ° 17,850,000 3,356

B : : : 19,583,000 3,243

Modified A ; : . 18,579,000 3,356

o
+.— ENGINEERING. 7

It may be pointed out that the present mileage from Fremantle to
Brisbane is 3,448 miles, and that the chief reduction in the mileage
would be brought about by adopting a coastal route from Sydney to
Brisbane instead of the present route, shortening the distance between
these capitals from 715 to 616 miles. If the main-line route alone
were provided for, serious complications and a great increase in the cost
of operating the unconverted 5 ft. 3 in, lines in Victoria and South
Australia would ensue, and the Commission therefore were of opinion
that the other 5 ft. 3 in. lines in both States would have to be con-
verted at once to the 4 ft. 84 in. gauge, bringing up the total cost to
somewhere about 21,600,000.

Conversion of all Lines to the 4 ft. 8: in. Gauge,

The Royal Commission estimated this would involve a capital ex-
penditure of about 57,200,000L.; this estimate made provision for the
necessary transfer temporary stations as well as the actual work of
conversion, but did not provide anything for the cost of transfer of
goods and passengers during the transition period, or for interest on
capital expenditure while the work was being carried out.

The Commission recommended the appointment of a director to
carry out the whole work, who should be assisted by a competent pro-
fessional staff. In forwarding their report to the Commonwealth
Government the Chairman raised the important question as to whether
the huge expenditure which would be required would be justified under
existing conditions of the money market and the present high cost of
all engineering works.

Method of Changing the Track from the 5ft. 3in. Gauge to the
4 ft, 8; in. Gauge suggested by the Royal Commission.

On the existing 5 ft. 3 in. lines the rafls are usually canted inwardly
from about 1 in 20 to 1 in 26, though actually in practice the canting
varies from 1 in 12 to 1 in 40, and at crossings the rails are kept flat.
As far as is known at the present time there is no practical or theoretical
reason why one rail of a track should not be on the flat while the other
railison acant. It would much facilitate the work of removing inwards
one of the rails if this rail could be laid on the sleeper in its new
position on the flat, the other rail being left undisturbed. It would
be desirable, however, to test this question experimentally by actually
altering one of the rails on a short length of existing main track from
the canted to the flat position; if it were found that high-speed traffic
could be safely carried on under such a condition, the experiment
might be further extended by converting to this condition a length of
about 50 to 60 miles; if again the running results were satisfactory,
this method might be adopted throughout ‘during the process of con-
version. If this plan were adopted there would be no necessity to
adze the sleepers for the new rail position, and the only operation required
on the sleepers would be the boring of the holes for the dog spikes in
the new position of the rail; this could be done throughout before any
M attempt was made to move the rails. It would be better from the
point of view of securing a symmetrical position of the rails on the
sleepers to move both rails inwardly by the necessary small amount,

ss,

& SECTIONAL ADDRESSES

but this would involve boring double sets of holes, and one set of holes
on each side could not be bored out until the rails were lifted from their
existing position. The work could be carried out in the following
order: ‘Temporary permanent-way gangs would carry out the work
of adzing (if this were necessary) and boring the sleepers for the new
position ‘of the rails, and would partly drive in most of the inside spikes
for the new location of the rai il, drawing at the same time many of
the old inside spikes. When this work was complete the next opera-
tion would be to draw the remaining spikes of the rails to be shifted
and then to push inwards the rails in long lengths; there would be
ho necessity to interfere with any of the fish-plates. The permanent
gangs of platelayers would follow up the work of these temporary
gangs and would complete the accurate gauging and spiking of the
track, and at the same time they.wouid draw any spikes left in the old
position. ‘Two constructional trains, one of the 4 {t. 84 in. gauge follow-
ing up, and one of the 5 ft. 3 in. gauge going ahead, would be needed.
At all tunnels and stations it would be necessary to slew over the
whole track 34 inches in order to keep the existing track centres.

With regard to the rolling-stock, if details were carefully worked
out beforehand, no serious practical difficulty would occur in changing
from the 5 ft. 3 in. to the 4 ft. 8} in. gauge, though, in the majority
of the locomotives, new fire-boxes would be necessary besides the
requisite alterations to the frames and axles.

Changing over from the 3 ft. 6in, Gauge to the 4 ft. 8} in, Gauge.

This would be a much move elaborate and difficult job, as both rails
must be moved outwards 7+ inches, and all earthworks, bridges, and
tunnels widened so as to be suitable for the increased gauge and new width
of formation ; there would be, therefore, considerable dislocation of traffic
while the work was being carried out, and it would be necessary to
divide the country up into a series of areas and deal completely with
all the lines in one particular area before any work was started in another
ned.

Cost of Conversion.

In preparing thelr estimates for the cost of the conversion of the

main lines only, the Commissioners based their figures on the employ-
ment of an 80-Ib, rail and the nee essary consequent improvements in
road-bed, bridges, &e., to allow for the heavier rolling-stock which
would be employed if an 80-lb. rail were in use. They had also in
their estimates provided for-the cost of the temporary transfer stations
and the new permanent stations which would be required at Adelaide
(estimated cost 500,0001.), Melbourne (estimated cost 880,000/.),
3risbane (estimated cost 150,0001.). If, however, -it were decided to
convert all the 5 ft. 3 in. lines at once to the 4 ft. 84 in. gauge, much
of this costly main station expenditure would not be required. The
estimate prepared by the Commissioners of the expenditure required
for the work of complete conversion differs very greatly from the
estimate submitted by the five State Railway authorities, and the
attached table shows the enormous discrepancies between the two sets
of estimates.

i

ee ee a ee ee ee ee

Ye ee nd

= a A i ee

ee ee ., !

>
G.—ENGINEERING, 9

Estimated Cost of Converting all the Railway Lines to a Standard
4ft. 8hin, gauge.
re Estimate of Royal Estimate of State and |

‘ ghar a Commonwealth Railway |
) Commissioners hott rik lcs
= £ ae ae ie Ss
|Commonwealth . : : 2,648,000 7,320,904
Western Australia : ; 11,823,000 35,669,092
South Australia. ; ; 8,737,000 16,782,487
Victoria : ‘ ; : 8,324,000 14,798,522
New South Wales ; ‘ — —
Queensland . F : ; 25,668,000 53,332,028
£127,903,033

Gross total . “ £57,200,000

auvhorities based their estimates upon a high-standard 4 ft. 84 in. track
with 80-lb. rails for every mile of line in the State. In Western
Australia, for example, where the State authorities prepared a total esti-
mate amounting to about 35,669,0Q00l., the estimate would be reduced
to about 15,000,000/. if lighter earthworks and 60-lb. rails were adopted
on most of the tracks, and in Queensland a similar procedure reduces
the original estimate of 53,332,0001. to about 32,000,0001., but even
these modified State estimates greatly exceed the figures given by the
Commissioners.

Chief Works required to give a Uniform 4 ft. 8) in. Gauge Line suitable
for fast, heavy Traffic from Fremantle to Brisbane.

As regards Western Australia, it will be necessary to lay a new
line on the 4 ft. 84 in. gauge alongside the present 3 ft. 6 in. gauge
from Perth to Kalgoorlie, and to construct an entirely new bridge over
the river Swan. In South Australia there is at present a very un-
satisfactory length of line on the 3 ft. 6 in. gauge, with severe gradients
and awkward curves, between Terowie and Port Augusta. This would
be eliminated by the construction of a new 4 ft. 84 in. line from Port
Augusta to Lochiel, and by the conversion of the existing 5 ft. 3 in.
line from Lochiel to Salisbury to the 4 ft. 84 in. gauge. These two
pieces of work would at once cut out two of the three present change-
of-gauge stations in South Australia—viz., those at Adelaide and Port
Augusta, and the Terowie change-of-gauge station would be transferred
to Salisbury. The reduction in the existing heavy grades is shown by
the fact that while on the present route on the 3 ft. 6 in. line there
is a summit level of 2,000 ft., the summit level on the proposed new
line would not exceed 400 ft. This work, if taken in hand at once,
would cost about 800,000/., and would in itself, without any other
changes, greatly improve the present railway facilities between East and
West Australia. In converting the 5 ft. 3 in. line from Adelaide to
Melbourne the most important work would be a new bridge over the
river Murray, suitable for the heavier rolling-stock—an expensive piece
of work. In Victoria the Commissioners suggested three alternative
routes, as shown in the lantern plates, but they pointed out that
Route A would be very costly and difficult to work, and therefore it

G3

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

would be much more satisfactory, if the remaining 5 ft. 3 in. gauge
lines in Victoria were not to be converted, to adopt Route B.
There is no doubt, however, that the adoption of either Route A or
Route B would prove extremely unsatisfactory as regards the working
of the remaining railway systems of Victoria; it would be much better
to decide to convert at once the whole of the 5 ft. 3 in. Victorian lines to
4 ft. 84 in., carrying out the work in a series of stages, as shown in
the lantern plate.

Since all the New South Wales railways are on the 4 ft. 83 in.
gauge, the only works required in the State would be the completion
of the coastal route northwards from West Maitland; much of the con-
structional work on this coastal route is already completed. When it
is completed as far as Richmond Gap, and when a new 4 ft. 8% in.
gauge line is built southwards from Brisbane to join the New South
Wales line at Richmond Gap, a greatly superior route will be provided
between the capitals of Sydney and Brisbane. The present inland route
has a maximum summit level of 4,450 ft., while the coastal route
would not have a greater summit level than 800 ft.

The report of the Royal Commission was considered at a Premiers’
Conference held at Melbourne in November 1921. Mr. Groom, the
Federal Minister of Works and Railways, in view of the enormous
cost for complete conversion, advocated that the work of providing
the main-line route connecting all the capitals by a 4 ft. 84 in. high-
standard line should be undertaken at once, and also the work of the
conversion of all other Victorian and South Australian 5 ft. 3 in. gauge
lines to 4 ft. 8} in. gauge. The total cost of these two pieces of work
would be about 21,000,000/. The Premier of South Australia, how-
ever, raised serious objections, the principal one being the difficulties
which would arise in the working of the local railway traffic owing to
the 3 ft. 6 in. lines of that State being left unchanged, and he pointed
out that his State Railway officials disagreed entirely with the estimates
of the Commission in regard to the cost of the conversion of all the
railway lines in Soufh Australia to the standard gauge. They were
of opinion that instead of the cost amounting to about 8,787,0001., as
estimated by the Commissioners, it would be more hke 14,750,0001.,
and, in addition to this heavy capital outlay, there would be a serious
loss of revenue brought about by delays in operating the traffic during
the process of conversion. He was of opinion, and his views were
apparently supported by the Premier of Victoria, that the whole cost
of conversion of the railways in Australia to a 4 ft. 8} in. gauge would
not be far short of 100,000,0001. sterling, and he thought that it would
be very much wiser to spend this huge sum of money on public works
which would be more quickly reproductive.

The Premiers’ Conference eventually accepted the decision of the
Royal Commission with regard to the adoption of the 4 ft. 8} im. gauge,
but postponed decision as to when the work should be undertaken.

The Australian Prime Minister in March last, in a public speech,
drew attention to the steadily increasing cost of the work of conversion,
and to the considerably increased loss in working the existing State and
Commonwealth railways. For the year ending June 30, 1920, he

iat «

stl ee aiden is by

.
G.—ENGINEERING, 11

stated that after paying interest on loans and all working expenses
there was a total deficit of 1,744,000/., and in 1921 this had risen to
3,946,0001. He expressed the view that very important economies in
working expenses would be brought about by unification of gauges.

In giving this summary of the history of the break- of-gauge ‘problem
of Australia | have endeavoured to arouse interest in this country in
this question. A great scheme of railway work, which is to cost any-
thing from 50,000,0001. to 100,000,0001., and which will involve the
manufacture of an enormous quantity of material, must surely be of
interest to the engineers and manufacturers of this country, even if it
were being carried out in a foreign country, and still more so when it
is being carried out in one of our great oversea Dominions.

In spite of the decision of the Royal Commission in regard to
mechanical devices for overcoming the break-of-gauge difficulties, I
think the problem might still be solved by such means, though it must
be admitted that none of the mechanical devices brought forward up
to the present time have offered a satisfactory solution. In March last
a Mr. Mathews, of Victoria, showed a model before the South Australian
Railway Commissioners by which he claimed a solution of the whole
problem without changes in the permanent way, except at the terminal
stations where break of gauge occurred. His proposals were for certain
improvements in the bogies of railway carriages and the under-carriages
of trucks, so as to allow an automatic alteration from 5 ft. 3 in. to
4 ft. 82 in. without manual labour or without power gear. Mr.
Mathews claimed that a whole train could be changed to the new
gauge in ten minutes, and that the only labour required for the alteration
would be that of the ordinary train staff.

As I have only seen brief newspaper accounts of Mr. Mathews’
proposals I can give no technical details, nor can I express any definite
opinion as to the feasibility of this latest proposal. There is certainly a
possibility that some mechanical device might be designed which would
prove satisfactory in operation, and would postpone the need to incur
at the present time the heavy charges required for complete conversion
to one gauge, though undoubtedly sooner or later it is inevitable that
complete conversion must be undertaken.

North-South Transcontinental Railway,
The South Australian Government, at that time in control of the
Northern Territory (annexed to South Australia by Royal Letters Patent
in 1863), on December 10, 1902, advertised that they were prepared to

accept tenders up to May 2, 1904, for the construction on a land grant

system of the 1,063 miles of railway between Oodnadatta, the northern
terminus of the South Australian railway system, and Pine Creek, the
southern terminus of the line from Port Darwin. The gauge was to
be 3 ft. 6 in., rails not less than 60 Ib. per yard, and the mileage was
not to exceed 1,200 miles. This was pursuant to an Act of the South
Australian Parliament passed in 1902, entitled the Transcontinental
Railway Act. The lantern plate shows the proposed route.

The minimum land grant specified in the Act was 75,000 acres per
mile of track; the State was prepared, therefore, to surrender about
80,000,000 acres of land as a prize for the construction of the line.

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

An interesting publication was issued by the State Government giving
full details, as far as then known, of the nature of the country through
which the line would be constructed, and of the possibilities of its future
development from the agricultural, pastoral, and mining points of
view. The total area of the Northern Territory was estimated at
335,116,800 acres, with a seaboard of some 1,200 miles to the Indian
Ocean. The pamphlet in an appendix gave a full bibliography of the
literature on Northern Australia published up to that date.

Unfortunately, owing to change of the State Ministers and to other
circumstances, this scheme fell through, and no further action in the
matter of the transcontinental line was taken until the control of the
Northern Territory was handed over to the Commonwealth on Janu-
avy 1, 1911. The Commonwealth took over at the same time (1) the
national debt of the Territory, largely incurred in constructing the rail-
way line from Port Darwin to Pine Creek and other necessary works
of development ; (2) the 3 ft. 6 in. line from Port Augusta to Oodnadatta,
the South Australian railway department continuing to work the line,
but any deficit on the working and the interest on cost of construction
being met by the Commonwealth Government. The Commonwealth
further undertook to complete the North-South Railway under certain
conditions.

The Darwin to Pine Creek railway, a 3 ft. 6 in. line, single track,
with 41-lb. rails, was opened on October 1, 1889, its total length being
1454 miles; it was intended to be the first instalment of the northern
portion of the transcontinental line. In 1913 the Commonwealth
authorities decided to extend this line a further 544 miles to the
Katherine River, and the railway station at this river now forms the
southern terminus of the line from Darwin.

In order to obtain the necessary information to enable the Common-
wealth Government to implement their undertaking to complete the
transcontinental railway a Royal Commission was appointed on
March 28, 1913, to report upon the following matters in their relation
to the development of the Northern Territory: (1) On the routes of the
necessary railways and the classes of such railways; (2) the desirable-
ness and practicability of creating new ports. The Commission, after
taking evidence at Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane from
the railway authorities and others interested in the development of
North Australia, visited the Territory, and travelled by sea, by river,
and on land some 3,000 miles; during their journeys local witnesses
were examined, and the report of the Commissioners was submitted
to the Commonwealth Government on February 20, 1914.

As a proof of the inaccessibility of this vast province from the resb
of Australia, and of the need of railway development, I may mention
that when returning to this country in 1914 after the meeting of the
British Association in Australia, I left Sydney on the s.s. Mataram
on October 1, and did not reach Darwin, the capital and seaport of the
Territory, until October 15, the sea journey being 2,620 miles; from
Brisbane it is 2,100 miles. In an interesting paragraph of their report
the 1913 Commissioners point out that it takes longer to go by sea from
the nearest State capital (Brisbane) to Darwin than it does to go from
that port to Singapore or Hong-Kong. | How perilous such a state of

*
G.—ENGINEERING. 13

things might be to the Commonwealth in certain contingencies needs
no words from me to bring home to those who are fighting so strenuously
for the white Australian policy.

Royal Commissioners’ Suggested Railways.

The Commission recommended the following lines :—

1. The construction of the main North-South line from Katherine
River to Oodnadatta via Renner and Alice Springs, mileage about
1,020 miles, the gauge to be 3 ft. 6 in., and work to be commenced
from each end.

2. The construction of a branch line from the main line, near or
at Katherine River, to serve the Victoria River pastoral area, should
it be found impossible to give such a westerly swing to the main line
from Katherine to Willeroo as would serve the same purpose.

3. The construction of a railway from a proposed new harbour in
Pellew Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Barkly Tablelands, the
line following the McArthur Valley to Anthony’s Lagoon.

The Commissioners further expressed the view that it would be
essential for the Queensland Government to extend their railway systems
to Camooweal, and for the Commonwealth to connect both the main
North-South line and the Barkly Tablelands line by branch lines with
Camooweal, so as to give direct railway connection between the Terri-
tory and the Eastern States of Queensland and New South Wales.

The Commissioners estimated the cost of the main transcontinental
line at 5,000,000l. for a 3 ft. 6 in. gauge, and 7,500,0001. for a 4 ft.
84 in, gauge.

The lantern plates show (1) routes of proposed lines ; (2) isohyets for
the Territory ; (3) relation of proposed lines to existing Australian
railway systems; (4) alternative railway routes suggested by Mr.
Coombes in a minority report.)

In 1915 the House of Representatives referred to the Parliamentary
Standing Committee on Public Works a proposal to extend the Darwin
Railway a further distance of about 64 miles in a south-easterly direc-
tion from Katherine River Station to Bitter Springs; this would be a
further link in the transcontinental line, and would open up to profitable
exploitation the newly discovered tin mines at Marranboy. The cost
of construction was estimated at 320,Q00l. for a 3 ft. 6 in. line, single
track, 60-lb. rails, using, however, sleepers long enough for a 4 ft. 84 in.
line, should it be decided later on to change the whole line over to this
gauge; the ruling gradient was to be 1 in 100, and the sharpest curve
40) chains; the time of construction was estimated as one and a-half
years.

Mr. Hobler, Commonwealth Engineer for Ways and Works, stated
that the cost of the Pine Creek and Katherine River extension would be
6,0001. per mile, and he estimated the extension to Bitter Springs (now
called Mataranka) would cost 4,9381. per mile. He further said it was
intended to make a permanent survey of a proposed further extension
to the Daly Waters telegraph station, 95 miles south from Matarauka
and 360 miles from Darwin. There can be no doubt that whatever
route is finally adopted for the central portion of the transcontinental

V4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. :

line the existing telegraph route-must be followed, at any rate as far
as Newcastle Waters, 90 miles south of Daly Waters and 450 miles
from Darwin.

The Standing Committee, in recommending that this extension be
authorised, expressed the view that it was inadvisable to use the longer
sleepers, and they recommended further experiments on the possibility
of using reinforced concrete sleepers on steep banks and curves. On the
original Darwin Pine Creek line steel sleepers were used, and these
had worn well except on the coastal section, but their use on the southern
extension was impossible owing to the great increase in their cost.

The 1913 Royal Commissioners in their report had recommended a
westerly swing of the main line to Willeroo to serve the Victoria River
district, but the Standing Committee disapproved of this su ggestion,
owing to the difficult nature of the country, which would much increase
the cost per mile, and would considerably increase the length of the
line. A Sub-Committee of three members of the Commission inspected
in July and August 1916 the whole of the country along the alternative
routes, and the final finding of the Standing Committee was based on
the report of this Sub-Committee.

This Committee emphasised the need of settling population on the
areas already opened up by railways, not merely by | taking people away
from other parts of Australia, but by the introduction of Huropean
settlers. This would be facilitated by inducing railway construction
men to bring out their families, and by offering land settlement facilities
to them when the railw ay construction work was completed.

Since the report of the Royal Commissioners in 1914 a fierce con-
troversy has been going on in the Commonwealth and South Australian
Parliaments and in the public Press in regard to the North- South line,
and as to the precise meaning which ae be attached to the words in
the agreement made between the Commonwealth and the State of South
Australia when the latter ceded the Northern Territor y in 1911—viz., the
Commonwealth shall ‘ construct, or cause to be constructed, a railw ay
line from Port Darwin southwards to a point on the northern boundary
of South Australia proper,’ and ‘ construct, or cause to be constructed,
as part of the Transcontinental Railway, a line from a point on the
Port Augusta Railway to connect w ith the other’ part of the Trans-
continental Railway at a point on the northern boundary of South
Australia proper.’ The Eastern Sfates assert that it w ould be a waste
of national money to construct the due North and South line, as so
much of the country it traverses is useless for pastoral or any other
purpose, and they maintain that the line should deviate easterly from,
say, Newcastle Waters into Queensland to Camooweal, and that South
Australian interests would be completely met by a new line in -that
State, running in a north-easterly direction from Maree on the Port
Augusta line to a connection with the Queensland railways near Birds-
ville. South Australia, on the other hand, insists that a bargain is a
bargain, and that this new proposal is entirely at variance with the
real meaning of the terms of the agreement. They further allege that
much of the land declared worth less would be quite good country for
sheep and cattle rearing if railway facilities existed and if water con-
servation on sound lines was carried out.

my Ro, Oi

Pert NG

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4
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G.—ENGINEERING. 15
In consequence of this divergence of views as to the nature of the

country through which a transcontinental line would pass, a Sectional
Committee of the Commonwealth Joint Standing Committee of Public

Works travelled in 1921 across the continent from Oodnadatta to

Darwin by motors, explored a considerable area of country both east and
west of the overland telegraph line, and examined local witnesses in
order to ascertain the views of those already settled in these areas as
to the most suitable routes for the proposed transcontinental lines.
This Committee was accompanied by Mr. Hobler, Commonwealth Engi-
neer for Ways and Works, who had already in 1920 travelled over the
Kimberley area of West Australia, and had submitted a report on the
railway lines which were required in order to open up that great cattle-
rearing area, and to give that district satisfactory facilities for marketing
their stock.

The Standing Committee, after receiving the report of their Sec-
tional Committee, began to take evidence in the Southern States, and
at a meeting held in Sydney last May Mr. Hobler submitted a lengthy
report setting forth the conclusions he had come to in regard to the
best routes not merely for a transcontinental line, but for the various
other railways which were required in order to connect the undeveloped
tropical areas of Australia with the southern temperate districts already
fairly well provided with railway facilities. Mr, Hobler’s proposals were
based on the principle that the pastoral and cattle industries must be
considered to be the primary ones; mining development would only, he
thought, begin at a later date, and agricultural developments would only
start when the primary industries were firmly established and population
had begun to increase,

Two alternative transcontinental routes were suggested by Mr.
Hobler, with certain essential branch lines, viz. :—

: Western Route.
Oodnadatta to Emun-ga-lan (Main line) 1,018 miles . . Cost £12,077,803
Newcastle Waters to Camooweal (Branch line) 359 miles . . Cost £3,921,750

(Average cost per mile about £11,300) sae
Total mileage . 1,377 Total cost . £15,999,553

This proposal would apparently satisfy the claims of South Aus-
tralia, and would at the same time give a direct connection between the
Eastern States and the Northern Terri itory.

Eastern Route.

Maree to Emun-ga-lan via Boulia, Camooweal and

Daly Waters . : . 1,320 miles ; Cost £14,329,864
(Average cost per mile about el 000)

The lanterr. plates show these suggested alternative routes.

The eastern route, which was the one preferred by Mr. Hobler,
would mean a saving in capital cost of 1,669,6891., to which would be
added a further saving of 2,759,584]. if the widening of the existing
3 ft. 6 in. gauge line between Maree and Oodnadatta were postponed.

If this eastern route were finally adopted it would probably be
necessary, in order to secure the assent of South Australia, to extend

16 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

the present 3 ft. 6 in. line from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs, 2974 miles,
in order to open up for development the pastoral and mining McDonnel
Range country. This line could be built at a very economical cost if
permanent way, released by the widening of the existing track from
Maree to Port Augusta, were utilised and practically a surface track
laid, the cost working out at about 1,490,502I., or 5,0101. per mile.
Taking into consideration the cost of this line, the adoption of the
eastern route would secure a saying in capital cost of 2,938,7711. as
compared with the western route.

With regard to working expenses and receipts, the western route
complete was estimated to show an annual deficit in the early years
of 17,024l., to which must be added interest on capital 973,9271.,
making, therefore, an annual charge on the Commonwealth Treasury
of about 1,000,0001. The eastern route, including the Oodnadatta to
Alice Springs line, would probably have an annual excess of receipts
over expenditure of 107,8321., the interest on capital would be 852,6381.,
making the annual charge on the Treasury about 744,8061. The
eastern route would, according to these estimates, mean a saving of

about 250,0001. sterling per annum as compared with the western route,.

in addition to the saying of nearly 3,000,0001. in the original capital
outlay.

Should the eastern route be adopted Mr. Hobler anticipated a rapid
development of Port Augusta. The erection of large meat works and
the deepening and extension of the harbour would make this port the
natural outlet for the pastoral, agricultural, and mining products of an
immense area of Central Australia.

It will be seen that there is very little to choose between the two
routes as regards mileage of new lines and the cost per mile. The main
factor in the comparison of the two routes and the one which is most
open to dispute is the expected annual charge upon the Commonwealth
finance for a good number of years. Since these proposed railways are
primarily development lines, they cannot possibly become a paying
proposition until the expected increase of population and resultant
more thorough and complete development of the great natural resources
of this hitherto almost unutilised area of Australia have had time to
materialise.

A very recent suggestion by the Surveyor-General of South Australia
is that the transcontinental line should start from Tarcoola on the Kast-
West line, thence run direct to Oodnadatta (a new line), from there
follow the overland telegraph line to Barrows Creek, deviate then
sasterly, but return to the telegraph line route at Powell’s Creek, and
continue to follow it till it reaches the terminus of the existing line at
Katherine River.

Of the two problems, the one which seems most urgent and calls
for a prompt solution is the transcontinental line, with its various pro-
posed branches. Capital can only be provided for either the unification
of the gauges or for the transcontinental lines by borrowing, and it is
obvious that borrowed money, for the interest on which annual provi-
sion must be made, is better spent upon railway work, which will at
once increase the output of the primary products of Australia and pro-
vide work for an increased population. I would therefore urge that

~ wae

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G,—ENGINEERING. 17

an early decision should be arrived at with regard to the route of the
transcontinental line, and that the work of construction should be
immediately started. Mr, Hobler’s scheme seems to satisfy all re-
quirements and to involve the least capital expenditure and the least
probable annual charge upon the Exchequer.

With regard to the unification of gauges, | think this work should
he postponed, except in regard to two improvements which might be
carried out at moderate expense. ‘These improvements are the con-
struction of a 4 ft. 84 in. gauge direct line from Port Augusta to Salis-
bury. ‘The southern half of this line is already constructed, or is being
constructed, on the 5 ft. 3 in. gauge, and this portion could easily be
converted to a 4 ft. 84 in. gauge. From Salisbury through Adelaide
and Melbourne to Albury should be maintained as it is on a 5 ft. 3 in.
gauge. ‘The second improvement would be the completion of the New
South Wales coastal line from West Maitland to Richmond Gap; not
very much work is required upon this, and the line is on the 4 ft. 84 in.
gauge. © A comparatively short new south line on this gauge from
Brisbane to Richmond Gap would give an uninterrupted 4 ft. 84 in.
gauge line from Albury to Brisbane. If these two improvements were
made there would be a quite appreciable shortening of the total railway
mileage between Brisbane and Fremantle, and there would be only
three stations on the route of 3,356 miles of track where passengers
would have to change trains—viz., Albury, Salisbury, and Coolgardie.

In this question of the unification of gauges British engineers might
help their brethren in Australia by devoting serious attention to the
problem of devising adequate mechanical means of coping with the difii-
culties brought about by break of gauge. If the loading and unloading
of trucks at each break-of-gauge station could be obviated the question
of break of gauge would be a very unimportant one. As regards
passenger traffic, it is not an important problem; it is only when heavy
goods traffic has to be dealt with that the problem becomes a serious
one from the point of view of working expenses and rates for transport
of goods. -

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tery

a wy es ee ok ee 7

SECTION H.—ANTHROPOLOGY.

THE STUDY OF MAN.

ADDRESS BY

H. J. E. PEAKE,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

In all sciences there comes a time when it is well to pause and to take
stock of our labours, to consider our position and to focus our attention
upon our ultimate goal. Such a time seems to have arrived in the
study of Anthropology, and, though it would have been better that the
agent had been one with more right to speak for the science, this
occasion seems not unfitting for the purpose.

During the last ten or twelve years a change has been creeping
over the science, and the outlook has altered. Twelve years ago anthro-
pologists in this country, with scarcely an exception, were devoting their
energies to tracing out the evolution of customs, institutions, and
material culture, assuming in all cases that, where similarities were
found in different parts of the world, they were due to independent
origins and development. It was assumed that the workings of the
human mind were everywhere similar, and that, given similar con-
ditions, similar customs and culture would originate and develop on
the same lines. The evolution of civilisation was looked upon as a
single line of advance, conditioned by the unalterable nature of the
human mind, and that barbarian and savage cultures were but forms
of arrested development, and indicated very closely past stages in the
history of civilised communities.

But during the last twelve years a fresh school of thought has come
into prominence. According to this new view discoveries are made
but once, and when resemblances are found between the cultures of
different communities, even though widely separated, this is due to
some connection between them, however indirect. According to the
new school of thought the development of civilisation has been pro
ceeding by many different paths, in response to as many types of
environment, but these various advances have frequently met, and
from the clash of two cultures has arisen another, often different, more
complex and usually more highly developed than either of its parents.

The old school looked upon the advance of culture as a single high-
way, along which different groups had been wandering at varying paces,
so that, while some had traversed long distances, others had progressed
but a shcrt way. The new school, on the other hand, conceives of
each group as traversing its own particular way, but that the paths
frequently meet, cross or coalesce, and that where the greatest number
of paths have joined, there the pace has been quickest.

The older school, basing its views of the development of civilisation
upon the doctrine of Evolution, has called itself the Evolutionary School.

BrritisuH Association : Hull, 1922.] H

ms SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

The newer, while believing no less in Evolution, feels it a duty to
trace out minutely the various stages through which each type of civilisa-
tion has passed by independent inquiry, rather than to assume that
these stages have followed the succession observable elsewhere; thus,
as historical factors form a large part of its inquiry, it has been termed
the Historical School.*

The first note announcing the coming change was sounded from
this chair eleven years ago,” and during the interval which has elapsed
since then the new school has gained many adherents. All of these
will not subscribe to the dictum that no discovery has been made twice,
for was not the safety-pin patented early in the nineteenth century by
someone who must have been ignorant that the same device had been
employed at the lake-dwelling of Peschiera about 1400 B.c.? Never-
theless, there is a tendency at present not to assume an independent
origin for any custom or device until it has been proved that such could
not have been introduced from some other area where such custom was
practised or such device known. ;

These tendencies have led the anthropologist to inquire more fully
into the history of the peoples whose civilisation he is studying, and
to note, too, minute points in their environment, which may have
suggested customs or modifications in practice in use elsewhere. At
the same time geography, which had been growing into a more living
study, and ceasing to be a mere record of places and statistics, began
in some centres to take special note of man and his doings. This
anthropogeography concerned itself mainly with inquiring into the
reactions between man and his environment, and though at first the
environment was the main object of the geographer’s attention, its
effect upon man has become more and more pronounced of late. Thus
anthropology and geography have been drawing closer together during
the last few years, and as the latter is a recognised and popular subject
in the curriculum of our schools, no small amount of anthropological
knowledge has been instilled into the minds of our boys and girls, and
with that knowledge a still greater measure of interest in the subject.

It might have been expected that before the geographers the his-
torians would have been attracted to the anthropological approach, but
recent political events have up to now engrossed the attention of most
historical students. Signs have not been lacking, however, especially
during the last year, that the study of peoples and their customs, rather
than of kings and politicians, is gaining ground, and we may, [ think,
look with confidence towards closer relations between the studies of
history and anthropology in the near future.

Again, we may notice an increasing interest in our subject among
sociologists and economists. These have rightly focused their atten-
tion upon the social organisation and economic well-being of highly
civilised communities such as our own, with a view to presenting an
orderly array of facts and principles before our political leaders. There

* Rivers, W. H. R., ‘ History and Ethnology.’ History, v. 65-7, London
(1920).

2 Rivers, W. H. R., ‘The Ethnological Analysis of Culture.’ Report of
Brit. Assoc., 1911, 490-2.

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H.—ANTHROPOLOGY, 3

has, however, been a tendency during the past few years to trace these
modern conditions back into the past, sometimes into the remote past,
and to use for purposes of comparison instances drawn from the social
organisation or economic conditions of communities living under simpler
conditions. While these studies must, to some extent, overlap those
of the anthropologist, their methods, and especially their points of view,
are different. We are working from the simple to the complex; they
begin with more highly developed conditions and thence work back to
the more primitive.

Lastly, we must not forget the students of the classical languages.
These studies have been severely attacked of late, and their value to
humanity disparaged. In spite of many advantages which they possess
at schools and universities, they have been losing in popularity, and
the reason is not far to seek. So long as there were fresh works to be
studied and commentated, and imperfect texts to be emended and
elucidated, there was no lack of devotees to classical literature. This
was the case in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Later
on comparative philology gave fresh life to such studies, and there was
work to be done in comparing Greek with Latin and both with other
Aryan tongues; certain views current among mid-nineteenth-century
philologists gave also an impetus to the re-study of Greek mythology.
But about 1890 such studies became unfashionable in this country, and
many classical scholars, at a loss for a line of research, turned to anthro-
pology with great advantage both to themselves and to us. This move-
ment was crystallised by the appearance of ‘ Anthropology and the
Classics ’ in 1908, and since that date the two studies have kept in the
closest touch.

It is doubtless as a result of these converging movements that the
general public is taking an intense interest in anthropological studies
at the present time, and that works of a general nature, summing up
the state of knowledge in its different branches, are in great request by
the general reader. The educated public, and many, too, whose oppor-
tunities for study have been more restricted, wish to know more of
the Science of Man, yet I fear they are too often perplexed by the dis-
cordant utterances of anthropologists, many of whom seem to be far
from certain as to the message they have to deliver.

In their turn not a few anthropologists feel a like uncertainty as
to the ultimate purpose of their studies, and are far from clear as to
how the results of their investigations can be of any benefit to humanity.
These are points well worthy of our serious consideration; for, as we
were reminded from this chair two years ago,* anthropology, if it is to
do its duty, must be useful to the State, or at least to humanity in
general. Even the scope of the science is by no means clear to all,
and would be differently defined by various students. It may not be
out of place, therefore, first of all to consider in detail the scope and
content of anthropology, then its aims and the services it may render
to mankind.

To the outside world anthropology seems to consist of the study of

’ Karl Pearson; Address to the Anthropological Section. Brit Assoc.
Report, 1920, 140-1.

H 2

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

flint implements, skeletons, and the ways of savage men, and to many
students of the subject its boundaries are scarcely more extensive.

Yet civilised people also are men, and if anthropology is the science of
man it should include these within its survey. That other
scientists, such as historians, geographers, sociologists, and economists,
study the doings of civilised man is no reason why the anthropologist
should fail to take them into account, for his point of view is in
many respects different from theirs. I would suggest, therefore, that
all types of men, from the most civilised to the most primitive, in all
times and in all places, come within the scope of anthropology.

That anthropology is the study of man is a commonplace, but we
need a more accurate definition. A former occupant of this chair has
declared that ‘ Anthropology is the whole history of man as fired by
the idea of Evolution. Man in evolution—that is the subject in its full
reach.’ He adds: ‘ Anthropology studies man as he occurs at all
known times. It studies him as he occurs in all known parts of the
world. It studies him body and soul together.’ *

Anthropology may, therefore, be defined as the study of the origin
and evolution of man and his works, provided that we realise that the
works of men’s brains are as important to the anthropologist, even
more important than the works of men’s hands. What, then, separates
anthropology from the other studies which are concerned with man and
his many activities is, that the anthropologist studies man from all
points of view—that his is a synthetic study; above all, that Evolution
is his watchword; that his study is, in fact, not static but dynamic.

If, then, we grant that anthropology is the synthetic study of the
evolution of man and his manifold activities, we are dealing with a
subject so vast that some subdivision becomes necessary if we are to
realise what the study involves. Such divisions or classification must,
to some extent at least, be arbitrary, but in the first instance we may
safely consider the subject as primarily divided into two main cate-
gories: ‘man’ and ‘ his works.’

But man himself, the human organism, cannot be considered from
one aspect only, and various partitions have been made by theologians
and philosophers. For his purpose it seems more fitting that the
anthropologist should consider the division as twofold, that man con-
sists of body and mind; the study of these is the special province of
the anatomist and physical anthropologist on the one hand and of the
psychologist on the other.

Here, again, it may be asserted that anatomy and psychology are
distinct sciences, and in no way to be considered as parts of anthro-
pology, and in a certain sense this is true. But anatomy, in so far as
it helps us to understand the evolution of man from his simian ancestor,
and again as it helps us to trace the variations in the human frame,
and so to follow the movements of different types of men as they
mingle with one another in successive ages, is and always has been
reckoned a definite branch of anthropology.

Again, in the case of psychology, which has made such immense
strides during the last few years, there is much which is not, strictly

“ Marett, R. R., Anthropology, p. 1.

-
H —ANTHROPOLOGY. 5

speaking, anthropological. On the other hand, in so far as psychology
enables us to trace the development of the human mind from that of
the animal, and in so far, too, as it can interpret the causes which
have led to the various forms of human activity which meet us in
different times and different places, so far is it a branch of our science.
If, too, it can help us to ascertain whether certain fundamental mental
traits, due perhaps to a long-continued environment in the far past,
are normally associated with certain physical types, psychology will
provide anthropologists with a means of interpreting many of the
phenomena which they have noted but cannot fully explain. Much,
therefore, which is included in the studies of anatomy and psychology
may justly be included within the scope of anthropological studies.

The works of man are so numerous and varied that it is by no
means an easy task to classify them. We may, however, first dis-
tinguish the work of man’s hands, his material culture, from his other
activities. Under this heading we should include his tools, weapons,
pottery, and textiles; his dwellings, tombs, and temples; his archi-
tecture and his art. Nor need we confine our attention to their primi-
tive stages alone, for as anthropologists we are concerned with their
evolution from the simplest to the most complex.

Next, we have the problems concerned with language, which we
may consider as dealing with the means whereby men hold intercourse
with one another and communicate their wishes and ideas. This head-
: ing might well include gesture at the one end and writing at the other,
for gesture, language, and writing all subserve the same end. Hitherto
. anthropologists have confined their attention too exclusively to the
7 tongues of backward tribes, and left the speech of more advanced peoples
i to the philologists. I would plead, however, that language is such an
;

;

essential element in human culture that comparative philologists might
well consider themselves as anthropologists, and their studies as an
important part of our science.
1 Lastly, we have social organisation and all that may be included
4 under the terms ‘customs ’ and ‘ institutions’; a varied group, leading
; on the one hand to the study of law, and on the other to that of compara-
tive religion. Here, again, we come in contact with other studies—
those of the lawyer, political economist, and theologian; but though
the anthropologist is to some extent studying the same series of facts,
his range is wider and his outlook more dynamic.
; Thus it will be seen that in the three divisions of men’s work,
‘as well as in the two aspects of man himself, the anthropologist finds
other workers in the field. But whereas these other sciences are con-
cerned only with some part of man and his works, and limited fre-
quently to recent times and civilised communities, it is the province
of the anthropologist to review them as a whole, in all times and in all
places, and to trace their evolution from the simplest to the most
complex.
If we accept the views of the Historical School, anthropology becomes
a new method of treating historical material. It is, in fact, the history
of man and his civilisation, drawn not so much from written docu-:
ments as from actual remains, whether of material objects or of customs

yo aa
4

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

and beliefs. It is concerned with wars only so far as these have pro-
duced a change in the population or language of a region. It is interested
in kings only when these functionaries have retained customs indicative
either of priesthood or divinity. It is interested less in legal enactments
than in customary institutions, less in official theology than in the
beliefs of the mass of the people; the acts of politicians and diplomats
concern it not so much as do the everyday habits of the humbler folk.

From some points of view anthropology may be considered as a
department of zoology, but whereas other branches, such as entomology
or ornithology, deal with classes containing innumerable species,
anthropology deals with one family only, and that containing but one
recent species; and, although this species has a number of varieties,
these are fertile inter se. Many aspects of his subject, which occupy
much of the attention of the zoologist, such as taxonomy and phylogeny,
form but a small part of the anthropologist’s inquiry; on the other
hand, though the zoologist, when dealing with the higher groups,
studies instinct, the nests and songs of birds, and the organisation of
bees and ants, such inquiries are slight as compared with the corre-
sponding problems which face the anthropologist.

A century ago zoologists were largely engaged in studying the higher
groups of animals—vertebrates, insects, and the like—and for a time
neglected the ‘radiate mob.’ Then there was a sudden change; all
interest was focused upon lowly forms, and the protozoa occupied a
disproportionate part of their attention. Lately, again, their work has
been more evenly distributed over the whole field, and attention has
been paid especially to those groups which most affect mankind for
good or ill.

This choice of groups for special study was by no means due to
mere caprice ; there was a sound reason behind it. The more obvious
forms of life were first studied; then, as microscopes improved, atten-
tion was focused for a time upon the simpler organisms; for, from the
study of these, the zoologist was better able to grasp the underlying
principles of life. These lessons learnt, he was able with greater
certainty to attack the problems affecting the welfare of mankind.

So with the student of man. For many centuries historians, philo-
sophers, and theologians have been studying the ways of civilised
humanity, though not always quite by the methods of the modern
anthropologist. For, just as they were attracted by the higher groups
of men, so were they also fascinated by the more conspicuous indi-
viduals in those groups rather than by the general mass. During the
nineteenth century students were attracted towards the backward types
of humanity, partly, perhaps, because of their very unlikeness to our-
selves, and of recent years largely because they felt that the customs
of these primitive peoples formed most important scientific evidence
which was fast disappearing. But from a scientific point of view the
paramount reason was because it was felt that in such simple societies
we should find the germ from which human civilisation had begun,
and that we should there discover the ancestral form from which our
modern culture had developed.

Much of the force of this last argument is disappearing as the

ee oe

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*
H.—ANTHROPOLOGY, x

Evolutionary School gives place to the Historical. By degrees we are
becoming aware that the civilisation of backward peoples is more com-
plex than was at first believed ; that they, too, have had as long a history
as ourselyes, even though it may have been less eventful. We are
giving up the belief that such people are human fossils, and that they
have preserved our ancestral types alive to the present day, for we are
realising that they represent not so much our ancestors as our poor
relations.

On the other hand, though, perhaps, we must abandon the ancestral
view, and cease to believe that these backward communities represent
accurately to-day the conditions under which we dwelt in long past
millennia, the customs and institutions of these folk are in many respects
less complex than our own, and it is possible to study them from every
aspect with far greater ease than we could do in the case of one of the
higher civilisations. Since it is one of the functions of anthropology
to study man synthetically, this is a great advantage. When dealing
with these simpler problems we can evolve a method and a discipline
to be applied in more complicated cases. Again, the backward peoples
have, as a rule, no written history, and we are forced in this case to
restore their past by other means. This has led to the development of
fresh methods of attacking the problems of the past, which may prove
of value in the case of more advanced communities, where written
evidence exists, it is true, but is, to some extent at least, faulty,
imperfect, or unreliable.

For these reasons the study of backward peoples still has great
value for the anthropologist. He has not yet solved all the problems
concerned with the dawn of civilisation, nor has he yet perfected his
methods and discipline. Although vast quantities of observations, good,
bad, and indifferent, by trained workers and dilettante travellers, have
been placed on record, especially during the last half-century, there is
much more to be collected from this fast disappearing mass. More
workers and expert workers are needed ia this field, and so it is that
our universities devote the greater part of their energies to training
students for this purpose.

But there are many students, equally interested in the evolution of
man and his works, who cannot, for one reason or another, visit wild
lands to study the ways of their inhabitants. Some of these, it is
true, may sift and arrange the vast mass of material collected by their
more fortunate colleagues, though they will be at considerable disadvan-
tage when undertaking this work if they have had no personal experience
of the lands and the people with which their material is dealing.

The time seems to have arrived when anthropologists should not
concentrate so exclusively upon these lowly cultures, but might carry
on their researches into those civilisations which have advanced further
in their evolution. Not that I wish to be understood as deprecating
in any way the study of backward peoples, or as discouraging students
from researches in that direction. But I would suggest that the time
has arrived when some anthropologists might initiate a closer inqui
into the conditions of more civilised peoples, not in the place of but
in addition to the studies already described.

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

Quite apart from such states of society as are neither wholly primi-
tive nor entirely advanced, we have in the Old World three great centres
of culture, each of which has in its turn been in the van of progress, and
each of which has contributed no little to the advance of the others.
These are the civilisations of China and the Far Kast, of the Peninsula
of Hindustan, and what, for lack of a better term, I must call the
European Region.

Though our relations with China and Japan have been intitanee
and on the whole friendly, for several generations, and many of our
compatriots are fairly familiar with both countries and their languages,
it is surprising how little we know of either of these people from the
strictly anthropological standpoint. This is the more to be regretted
since for more than half a century Japan has been undergoing a change
and adopting fresh features from Western civilisation, while there are
signs that the same movement is beginning to take place in China.
So far those who have had an opportunity of working in these countries,
and have made themselves familiar with the languages of the Far East,
have studied the art, literature, philosophy, and religion of these regions,
rather than those aspects which more properly belong to our subject-
I have no desire to minimise the value of such studies, but as part of
the science of man we need to know more of the physical form and
mental traits of these people, more, too, of their ordinary material culture
as it was before it came into contact with and borrowed from the West,
more of the dialects spoken in their provinces, and particularly more
about their social and territorial organisation, and about the beliefs and
superstitions which have survived alongside of their official religion.
Certain fragments of such information are, it is true, to be found
among the writings of Westerners who have lived long in the East, but
there are so many gaps in our knowledge that it is not easy to piece
them together into an intelligible whole.

What concerns us more nearly in this country: is the Indian Region.
Here we have a well-defined province, peopled by successive waves of
different races, speaking different languages, and with different customs
and beliefs—an apparently inextricable tangle of diverse elements in
‘various stages of cultural evolution. A vast amount of material has
been gathered in the past, though such collecting has not been pro-
ceeding so fast during the last generation; but basic problems are still
unsolved, and seem at times well-nigh insoluble. Perhaps it is this
superabundance of material, or it may be the apparent hopelessness of
the task, which has diminished the interest taken in these studies during
the past few years. This attitude is regrettable, and the only redeeming
feature is the extremely active and intelligent interest in these problems
now taken by various groups of Indian students, especially in the
University of Calcutta.

I have suggested that perhaps the lack of interest in such matters
among Anglo-Indians, and especially among members of the Indian
Civil Service, may be due to the apparent hopelessness of reaching a
solution of any of the problems involved. It may also be due to the
fact that they are sent out from this country to govern a population
with different cultures and beliefs, and traditions wholly unlike those

ie ee ee Oh dee te *

I i i le

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H.—ANTHROPOLOGY, 9

of this continent, without having received in most cases any pre-
paration which will enable them to study, appreciate, or under-
stand an alien civilisation. Thus, with the best of intentions, they
misunderstand those among whom they are sent, and are in turn mis-
understood. Guiltless of any evil intent, they offend the susceptibilities
of those among whom their lot is cast, and acts are put down to
indifference or ill-nature which are only the product of ignorance.
After making their initial mistakes the more intelligent and well-
meaning set to work to study the people committed to their charge,
but faced with problems of extreme intricacy, and without any previous
training, more often than not they give up the attempt as hopeless.

That candidates for the Indian Civil Service should receive a full
training in anthropology before leaving this country has been pleaded
time after time by this Section and by the Anthropological Institute,
and though I repeat the plea, which will probably be as useless as its
predecessors, I would add more. The problems confronting the anthro-
pologist and the administrator in India are of such extreme complexity
that it needs a very considerable amount of combined action and research
even to lay down the method and the lines along which future inquiries
should be made. Such a school of thought, such a nucleus around
which further research may be grouped, does not yet exist; the mate-
rials out of which it can be formed can scarcely yet be found. And
yet until such a nucleus has been created, and has gathered around it
a devoted band of researchers, no true understanding will be found of
the problems which daily confront both peoples, and the East and the
West will remain apart, subject to mutual recriminations, the natural
outcome of mutual misunderstanding.

One solution only do I see to this dilemma. For many years past
there have been institutions at Athens and Rome, where carefully chosen
students, with the best of qualifications, have spent several years
studying the ancient and modern conditions of those cities and their
people. By this means a small but well-selected group of Englishmen
have returned to this country well-informed, not only as to the ancient
but the modern conditions of Greece and Italy. Besides this we
have had in each of the capitals of those two States an institution,
subserving no political or diplomatic ends, which has acted as a centre
or focus of research into the civilisation of those countries. Although
the main objects in both cases have been the true understanding of the
cultures of the distant past, the constant intercourse of students of
both nationalities working for a common end has resulted in a better
understanding on the part of each of the aims and ideals of-the other.
I have no hesitation in saying that the existence of the British Schools
at Athens and Rome has been of enormous value in bringing about
and preserving friendly relations between the people of this country
and those of Greece and Italy.

I cannot help feeling that a similar institution in India, served by a
sympathetic and well-trained staff, to which carefully selected university
men might go for a few years of post-graduate study, would go far
towards removing many of the misunderstandings which are causing
friction between the British and Indian peoples. Such a British School

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

in India, if it is to be a success, should not be a Government institu-—

tion, but should be founded and endowed by private benefactors of both
nationalities. It would be a centre around which would gather all
anthropological work in the peninsula, while it would enable the British
students to arrive at a truer understanding of Indian ideals and help
Indians to grasp more fully the relations subsisting between the Indian
and European civilisations.

Lastly, we come to that great area which I have termed the Euro-
pean Region, extending southward from our continent to the southern
confines of the Sahara, and eastwards to Mesopotamia and beyond.
Throughout all this vast region the racial basis of the population is
similar, though the proportion of the elements varies. Also throughout
the region there has been, from the earliest days of which we have
evidence, free communication and no great barriers to trade and
migration.

Until the last fifteen hundred years the civilisation of this area
was fairly uniform, though its highest and earliest developments were
in the south-east, while the northern zones lagged behind and were
on the outer fringe. Still, with the possible exception of North Russia,
it formed from paleolithic times one cultural region, and this became
more marked and homogeneous during the flourishing days of the
Roman Empire. Two forces from without, coming from the outer
fringe of this region, destroyed that mighty empire and divided the
region into two halves; and as each of these forces adopted different
religious views, the Huropean cultural region became divided into two.
For many centuries these sections were at war with one another, and
their boundary oscillated; the East pushed westward until 1500 a.p.,
and since then has been in retreat. We have, therefore, during recent
centuries to treat the European cultural region as two, the civilisations
of Islam and Christendom.

Though the separation of these two halves is relatively recent, their
ideals have grown more and more divergent, while the inhabitants of

both zones, though no longer, in constant warfare, are no nearer to a ~

true understanding of one another. Political difficulties in the Near
East, which show no signs of diminishing but seem rather to be on the
increase, are the natural result of such misunderstandings, and the
remedy here, as elsewhere, is to achieve a truer appreciation of other
points of view, due to a divergence in the evolution of civilisation, due
in its turn to a different environment. A more thorough knowledge
of the anthropological faetors of the case seems to be a necessary pre-
liminary te such mutual understanding, and since the League of Nations
and the Versailles Treaty have seen fit to add to our responsibilities in
this area, it is an urgent necessity that some of our anthropologists
should pay a closer attention to the problems of the Near East.

And now with regard to Christendom. Are we to consider that our
duties as anthropologists end with alien cultures? Is Christendom so
united that misunderstandings cannot arise within its borders? At the
close of a great war, which divided this area into two hostile camps, we
can hardly claim that there is no room for our studies.

As we have seen, there has been a tendency hitherto to regard

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H —ANTHROPOLOGY, 11

anthropology as a science dealing with primitive and backward peoples,
and it has sometimes been felt that to apply its principles to neigh-
bouring peoples, enjoying as high a civilisation as our own, might be
looked upon as an insult, implying that their culture was sufficiently
primitive to warrant their inclusion in our inquiries. But if we agree
that all mankind, savage and civilised alike, are fit material for the
anthropologist’s investigations, we need have no hesitation in studying,

- not only the bodily and mental equipment of our neighbours, but their

material culture, social organisation, and religious beliefs, just as
already, for practical purposes, we study their languages.

To some extent this has been done by travellers, who describe
strange customs and ceremonies which take place in out-of-the-way
places. These are usually, however, selected because they are quaint
or rare, rather than for the scientific value which they possess, and
being recorded too often by untrained observers many details of the
utmost scientific importance are frequently omitted. In spite of the
comparative uniformity in customs and beliefs among the educated
classes throughout Christendom, a uniformity which is perhaps more
apparent than real, as soon as we get to the peasant or workman the
differences become more apparent. ‘There is not a country in Europe,
nor even a province, in which we may not find features of an anthro-
pological nature which separates its population, in some respects at
least, from the inhabitants of other areas. It is these differences,
unimportant as they may appear, which come to the front when trouble
is brewing, and these are the factors which, above all others, we need
to understand if we are to avoid treading on corns in moments of national
irritation.

It does not fall to the lot of everyone to spend part of their lives
among backward peoples, and only a small section of our compatriots
dwell amid the civilisations of the East. Many people, however, have
constant opportunities of travel throughout Christendom, and not a few
visit from time to time some of the lands in the Islamic zone. Here
they can, to some extent at least, obtain first-hand data of an anthro-
pological nature, and make themselves familiar with some aspects of
the life of the place. With minds trained to observe accurately and
to understand what they see, even a few weeks’ holiday in a foreign
land will enable them to appreciate better the ideals of their hosts.
Constant travel by people alive to the importance of such inquiries will
in time so influence the public opinion of many of the nations of Europe
that misunderstandings will be less frequent and national sensitiveness
less prone to take offence at words and actions which are not intended
to provoke.

But it is not only foreign countries and their inhabitants which the
anthropologist needs to study. In every country, especially in lands
which have been subject to successive invasions, there are different
strata in the population which have different customs and a different
outlook. The British Isles are no exception to this rule; history records
the successive arrivals of Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, and
the study of prehistoric remains shows us that these invasions have
been preceded by a greater number in earlier days. Just as the physical

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

type of the Briton is far from uniform, so is his mental outlook and
his ideals and beliefs. Quite apart from the differences observable in
the different countries which compose our group of islands, and the
different provinces into which they have been or may be divided, we
find also, in any given area, that the population insensibly divides
itself into groups or classes, differing but slightly except in name and
the absence of rigidity from what we know in India as castes. These
classes in the British Isles have had their origin not so much in economic
conditions as in the successive waves of conquest which these islands
have suffered. Individuals, it is true, have freely passed from one
class to another during the nine centuries which have elapsed since the
last conquest, but though the individuals have changed the classes
have remained. Owing to the constant interchange in blood the physical
characters of the different classes are much alike, as are their funda-
mental mental traits, but in material culture, language, social organisa-
tion, and to some extent religious beliefs, they differ widely.

Here then again, in our own country, there is work for the anthro-
pologist. Here are various groups, how many it is at present difficult
to say, not clearly distinguished from one another by a sharp dividing
line, and intermixed in the same areas, yet groups which are to the
anthropologist separate units which require distinct study. Hven
among the richer and better educated sections of the community, who
have mingled together in social intercourse for several generations and
whose families are allied by marriage, we may find differences of out-
look, according to the type of tradition handed down in the family.
The outlook and ideals of landed or territorial families differ from those
of the mercantile class, nay even the merchants and manufacturers
haye in many ways distinct traditions which are handed down from
one generation to another. So that even in such a group as we find
assembled at the meeting of the British Association, who have come
together with one end in view, the advancement of science, we shall
find, were we to analyse the feelings and opinions of the different
individuals, that owing to differing traditions, handed down through
many generations, their views on social and religious questions are
fundamentally unlike; that they belong, in fact, to many distinct
anthropological groups. There is work, then, for the anthropologist
who never leaves these shores.

Turning now to the aims of anthropology and to the means whereby
it may become utile to the State and to mankind in general, we see
that it is of the utmost importance that those who are sent to govern
or administer areas and districts mainly occupied by backward peoples
should have received sufficient training in the science to enable them,
in the shortest possible space of time and consequently with the fewest
possible initial mistakes, to govern a people whose customs, traditions,
and beliefs are very different from their own, without offending the
susceptibilities of their subjects.

We are an Imperial people, and during the last few centuries we
have taken upon ourselves a lion’s share of the white man’s self-
imposed burden, and the lives and well-being of millions of our back-
ward brethren have been entrusted to our charge. Recent events have,

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4S ae (A220 Cee OE eh he IG i inn

.
H.—ANTHROPOLOGY. 13

by means of Mandates, added largely to our responsibilities in this

respect. We, of all nations, cannot disregard this fundamental duty

of dispatching our pro-consuls fitted to undertake on our behalf these
at responsibilities.

But the burden we have undertaken extends not only to backward
peoples ; we have been called upon, in one form or another, to govern
or to advise the Governments of peoples who have, or have had in the
past, a civilisation little, if at all, inferior to our own, and to whom at
one time we have been indebted, directly or indirectly, for much of the
culture that we now enjoy. The civilisations of these regions are
infinitely more complex, and, as is always the case in civilised areas,
the people are not homogeneous, but are divided into numerous sections,
differing in language, religion, and social customs. In these regions
we meet with anthropological problems of infinite difficulty and com-
plexity, on the solution of which depends the peace and well-being of
the population. And yet our representatives go to take up their duties
in these lands with little or no previous training, and it is only a marvel
that errors of tact, due to ignorance, are not more common.

In these civilised regions race consciousness has been growing fast
during the last half-century, and errors of tact and manners, which
were submitted to in former times, though not with a good grace, are
now actively resented, and the old methods of government are dis-
credited. It may not yet be too late to remedy this evil, if no time is
lost in giving a full anthropological training to those who are sent to
administer these regions.

But we are not only an Imperial people, governing and administer-
ing these regions with alien populations; we are also a wandering and
adventurous people. The nomadic spirit of our ancestors is still alive
within us; our ships, like those of the Vikings of old, are to be seen
in every sea. So it comes that our people, whether travelling for
pleasure or for purposes of trade, or serving in the Army or Navy,
will be found in all lands and all climates from the Arctic circle to the
Equator. .

All these wandering Britons come in contact with the inhabitants
of the lands they visit, creating various impressions, sometimes good,
more often bad. Had they a fuller knowledge of the customs and
opinions of the people they visit, or even a truer appreciation of the
fact that diverse customs and opinions exist and should be respected,
we should not have to record the creation of so many bad impressions.
Luckily our people, as a rule, have much common sense, and often a
desire to please, so this trouble is thus to some extent mitigated; but
the difficulties that have arisen and are constantly arising from ignor-
ance of the ways of others, from too insular an outlook, in fact, from a
lack of appreciation of the anthropological standpoint, are making us
and our government heartily disliked in nearly every quarter of the
globe. It is to remedy these difficulties, and the danger to the peace of
the world which is threatened thereby, that I would advocate an
increased study of anthropology by all sections of the community.
Herein lies one of the chief means by which our science may become
utile to mankind.

It is not my business to draft a scheme for the furtherance of

14 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

anthropological studies. Two of our universities offer degrees in this
subject, and others a diploma; courses of instruction on some sections
of the subject are given there and elsewhere. Many teachers of
geography are introducing much anthropological matter into their
curricula, and there are signs that some historical teachers may follow
suit, so that the subject-matter, if not the name, is not unknown in
some of our schools. But we have much lost time to make up and
the matter is urgent.

We cannot, of course, expect all our people to be trained anthro-
pologists and to understand fully all the ways of the people they may
chance to meet in their wanderings. What matters far more is that
they should appreciate the fact that different peoples have had different
pasts and so act differently in response to the same stimuli. Further,
that all this diversity has its value; that we cannot be sure that one
culture is in all respects superior to another, still less that ours is the
best and the only one which is of consequence. It is not so much the
facts that matter as the spirit of anthropology; we need not so much
that our people should have anthropological knowledge as that they
should learn to think anthropologically.

It is needless for me to remind you that the world is in a state of
very unstable equilibrium—that the crust is, so to speak, cracked in
many places, and that the fissures are becoming wider and deeper, and
that fresh fissures are constantly appearing, not only in distant lands
but nearer home. Again, this crust, if I may continue the geological
metaphor, is stratified, and there are horizontal as well as vertical
cleavages, which are daily becoming more marked. It is to the interest
of humanity that these breaches should be healed and the cracks
stopped, or we may find the civilisation of the world, which has grown
up through long millennia at the cost of enormous struggles, break up
into a thousand fragments. Such a break in the culture of the Euro-
pean Region followed the dissolution of the Roman Empire, and more
than a thousand years were needed to heal it; nay, some of the cracks
then made have never yet been closed.

Anything that may help to avert such a disaster is important to
the human race, and there is no greater danger at present than the
alienation of the peoples of Asia and the Near East. Much of the ill-
feeling engendered in India, Egypt, and elsewhere is the product of
misunderstandings, due to a lack of appreciation on both sides of the
opinions and views of the other party, and there seems to be no better
method of removing such misunderstandings than a sympathetic study
of one another’s culture, and to this end anthropology offers the most
hopeful approach.

etie-**~

SECTION I.—PHYSIOLOGY.

THE EFFICIENCY OF MAN AND THE
FACTORS WHICH INFLUENCE IT.

ADDRESS BY

Proressor KE. P. CATHCART, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.S.
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

THe subject of my address—the efficiency of the human organism and
the factors which influence this efficiency—is, in my opinion, one of
the most important problems of the present day. It is a problem which
cannot, however, be considered only from its physiological aspect if it
is to receive adequate consideration; its implications are much wider,
reaching right down to the very basis of our daily lives. As I am no
expert in industry or economics, I shall confine my attention as far as
possible to the problem from the physiological side, and leave to others
the sociological application.

The term ‘ efficiency ’ has become a mere catchword, bandied about
by people who have not the faintest idea of what the word connotes.
Practically it has come to mean, to the average man in the street, the
mythical improvement which is to be anticipated from some change
in workshop or office organisation—a bigger and better result at a
smaller cost. The word has a very definite meaning in engineering
science, and this meaning has been transferred from the inanimate
machine to the living organism. In the case of the engine the problem
is relatively simple, as the number of interfering factors is not great,
but the solution of the problem in the case of the organism is beset
with many difficulties, as the interfering factors are numerous and
varied. Two types of efficiency are spoken of in connection with the
animal body. One type is the mechanical efficiency in the engineering
sense, i.e. the ratio which exists between the heat equivalent of the
external muscle work done and the energy output of the subject during
the performance of the work in question. This is a problem which
has attracted many workers, and there seems to be a general consensus
of opinion that the efficiency of man in the performance of external
work is about 20 per cent. gross and 25 per cent. net. (Gross efficiency
is obtained by dividing the actual heat equivalent of the external
work done by the total output of energy of the man during the time
occupied in the performance of the external work, and net efficiency is
obtained by dividing the heat equivalent of the external muscle work
done by the actual increase in the energy output of the subject over
the basal energy output during the performance of the work in

Britisn Assoctation ;: Hull, 1922.] I

2 - SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

question.) As A. VY. Hill has pointed out, this striking unanimity is in
all probability due to the fact that the maximum value of efficiency
remains more or less constant over a fairly wide variation in the mode
of the performance of the work. The work referred to here is wholly
concerned with muscle activity. The other type of efficiency is that
which is called industrial or productive efficiency, where the capacity
of the individual to perform effective work is dealt with, judging the
capacity of the individual by, for example, his output in unit time.
So far as the worker himself is concerned, the whole object in industrial
efficiency is undoubtedly to get the greatest output with the minimum
of effort. The determination of the mechanical efficiency is fairly
readily carried out, but it is very difficult to get an accurate gauge of
the industrial efficiency. At bottom they are closely related, and both
are physiological problems.

The leaders of industry have not been slow to accept and utilise the
gains of science in the realm of inanimate things, but they have been
slow to recognise the faci that there is a science of physiology which
deals with the man who controls the productive machinery. New
inventions may completely revolutionise-shop equipment, good machines
may be replaced by better, and better by still better, but man remains
almost as immutable as the ages. Physiological evolution is infinitely
slow. As Lee puts it, ‘Try as we will we cannot get away from the
fact that so long as machines need men, physiological laws must be-
reckoned with as a factor in industrialism.’ Butler in ‘ Erewhon ’ satir-
ised in his inimitable way this very problem of the industrial world as
follows: ‘ So that even now the machines will only serve on condition
of being served, and that upon their own terms ; the moment their terms
are not complied with they jib, and either smash both themselves and
all whom they can reach, or turn churlish and refuse to work at all.
How many men at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the
machines? How many spend their whole lives, from the cradle to the
grave, in tending them night and day? Is it not plain that the machines
are gaining ground upon us, when we reflect on the increasing number
of those who are bound down to them as slaves and of those who deyote
their whole souls to the advancement of the mechanical kingdom? . . .
May not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the machines?
An affectionate machine-tickling aphid ? °

It is a clever picture, and if one looks back on the rise of indus-
trialism it is not so very far-fetched. It is but a little more than a
hundred years since this country was industrialised, and we are still
reaping the aftermath of the terrible conditions which then reigned,
when the great centres of industry were swamped with country dwellers
who poured into the towns in the race for wealth. Few realise the hope-
lessly unphysiological conditions which developed in the methods of
work, the hours and conditions of work, the housing. Many talk now
of the hardship of the eight hours’ day under conditions which are
relatively civilised, where the place of labour and the methods and
machinery used are supervised by skilled and honest Home Office in-
spectors, where child labour is firmly controlled, and where practically
all abuses are checked. The following citation from Robert Owen, that

.
I.—PHYSIOLOGY 3

‘shrewd, gullible, high-minded, wrong-headed, illustrious and_pre-
posterous father of Socialism and Co-operation,’ as Lytton Strachey
calls him, gives a good idea of the conditions ruling in the early years
of last century in one of our staple industries. ‘In the manufacturing
districts it is common for parents to send their children of both sexes
at seven or eight years of age, in winter as well as summer, at six
o'clock in the morning, sometimes, of course, in the dark, and occa-
sionally amidst frost and snow, to enter the manufactories which are
often heated to a high temperature, and contain an atmosphere far
from being the most favourable to human life, and in which all those
employed in them very frequently continue until twelve o’clock at noon,
when an hour is allowed for dinner, after which they return to remain,
in a majority of cases, till eight o’clock at night.’ Six till eight, with ~
a break of one hour: a fourteen hours’ day, and fifteen was not un-
known. Owen, in the article from which I have quoted, was petition-
ing Parliament, asking what? That a twelve hours’ day be instituted,
to include one and a-half hours for meals, and that no child should be
employed until the age of ten was reached. He pointed out in the
course of the article that the results from the manufacturers’ point of
view would be better with a twelve hours’ day (i.e. that the industrial
efficiency, in modern words, would be improved),

Yet we wonder that the offspring of stock descended from workers
under these conditions, which certainly improved as the century ad-
vanced but were far from ideal, gave the high yield of C3 lads recorded
in the National Service Report. We might have been prepared for the
disclosure, as the pre-war records of countries with Conscription showed
that the number of rejections for the Army of town and factory workers
was far in excess of those for men drawn from country districts. But
evidence of the state of the national physique is not confined to these war
figures. Sir George Newman, in his valuable and interesting Report on
Preventive Medicine, has drawn attention to the enormous amount of
time which is annually lost through sickness. The minimum average
amounted to 14,295,724 weeks (or a period of upwards of 270,000 years)
of sickness per annum, and this figure did not include absence from
work due to maternity benefit, sanatorium treatment, or absence for
less than four days per patient. This is the evidence of the National
_ Health Insurance.

The design of the organism which has to stand the strain is not
at fault. It is an organism which, in the language of the
engineer, is abundantly supplied with factors of safety, and
has an over-all high factor of safety. |The body is not designed merely
to perform the minimum amount of work or to stand the minimum
strain; there is always a reserve. We have a_ circulatory

system which is beautifully balanced to meet a strain, a system of
_ vessels whose calibre can be increased or diminished so that the blood
may be mobilised at the tissues or organs which require it, and a heart
which has the capacity, provided it is normal and healthy, of responding
to work, whose rate may be trebled in a few seconds when oxygen
must be obtained and carbon dioxide got rid of. Not only can the
amount of blood which is passed through the lungs during hard work
12

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. oe

be increased some five times, but the amount of oxygen taken in may
rise ten times. Thus the subject studied by Benedict and myself had
a normal consumpt of about 200 ¢c.c. oxygen per minute, and in one
experiment he kept up an intake of nearly 2,000 ¢.c. per minute for
four hours and twenty-two minutes on end. Quite often the same
subject used 2,700 c.c. to 8,000 c.c. for ten minutes ata time. Again,
af rest less than a third of the oxygen present in the blood is required.
and even in the very hardest work the arterial blood is not depleted of
its oxygen; it probably still contains more than a fourth. Curiously
enough, the actual effectors, the muscles, do not of themselves seem —
to have a very high factor of safety. The structures, bones, and carti-
lage, to which they are attached, and which limit their action, and
the amount of strain to which they can be exposed or subjected, have
a very high factor of safety. A further protective mechanism for
muscle is the perfect co-ordination between the groups of muscles, the
elucidation of which problem we owe largely to our President, Sir
Charles S. Sherrington. We have another reserve of first-class im-
portance—viz., that when the strain on one group of muscles is be-
coming too severe, more and more groups of muscles are brought
into action to help in meeting the strain, until in the end, if need be,
practically the total musculature of the body is involved. And behind
all this there are final factors of safety such as fatigue, which is a
protective warning; and finally, if the latter be not heeded, collapse.

This perfect co-ordination of the different parts of the organism is
required, because the human being is capable of intense muscular exer-
tion for short periods. The intensity of the work is as a general rule
inversely proportional to the length of time during which it must be
carried out. The following table (Table I.) gives some idea of what is
probably about the maximum effective muscular work per minute
(modified from Blix) :—

TaBLE I,
j 4 ata vf
Nature ob Work puree of Effectiv : pee Work
Kilogrammétres Calories
Mountain climbing, moderate . | Many hours 500 1:16
Mountain climbing, severe 1 to 2 hours 750-1,000 1-74-2-33
| Mountain climbing, very severe 3:75 minutes 2,000 4-65
| Treadmill : : 30 seconds 2,400-3,600 5:58-8:37
_ Running upstairs, 10 Kg. load 15 seconds 3,700 8-61
| Running upstairs, no load 30 seconds 4,300 10-00
Running upstairs, no load 4 seconds 5,700-6,000 | 13-26-13-95

If, in the human organism, we were merely concerned with the co-

ordinated action of a series of effectors, with the capacity of a certain
group of muscles to perform a given amount of work, the solution
of the problem would be relatively simple. But we are dealing with
a living organism capable not only of doing work but of repairing the
worn-out parts, as and when required. Further, we are dealing with
an organism which varies not only in its capacity to perform work,
but in its ‘ will to work.’ We are dealing with a subtle organism which

é ad
1.—PHYSIOLOGY. 5

has a whole series of protective mechanisms at its command, an
organism which can be fatigued and rendered useless, as a working
unit, by an amount of work on a particular day which on another day
it can perform with the utmost ease and without apparent fatigue.
We are dealing with an organism which can and does perform real
hard muscular work with vigour and joy, and yet, if the nature of the
employment or the environment be distasteful, can be reduced to im-
potence by work capable of being done by a child.

Again, the efficiency of a man is not merely dependent on the
amount of work which can be performed by his muscles; the circulatory,
respiratory, and nervous systems are of equal importance, and all are
intimately related. The muscles must receive an abundant supply of
blood, not merely to bring nutriment but to remove waste; there must
be an efficient exchange of gases in the lungs, the rate of the respiratory
and cardiac movements must be adapted to the work in hand through
the co-ordinating agency of the central nervous system. Not only so,
but, if the man is to work with the minimum of waste energy, there »
must be proper co-ordination between the various groups of muscles.
A man does not walk, for instance, by the aid of his leg muscles alone,
his lumbar muscles are equally important. Further, it is not a mere
question of autonomic reflex adjustment, important though this may
be, for much of the work done the attention must also be invoked.
Yet, in spite of the many and varied stresses and strains to which the
organism is subjected in the course of life, as the result of the many
factors of safety, unless the overloading is excessive, too frequent or
too long continued, the organism, so long as it remains physiological,
is practically unaffected by ordinary hard work.

If we turn now to the consideration of the factors which influence
the efficiency, both in the mechanical and the industrial sense, we find
that the main controlling factor is undoubtedly the condition known as
fatigue. Fatigue is a word just as frequently used as efficiency, and
yet it is almost impossible to give an accurate definition of the term.
Generally speaking, it is to be regarded as the antithesis of efficiency.
As Vernon put it, “By so much as fatigue is avoided or eliminated in
industrial operations the efficiency of the worker is increased.’
Fatigue may be summarised as a diminished capacity for doing work.
The question of the site at which fatigue is first manifested, whether
it is a central or a peripheral phenomenon, whether it is a specific con-
dition, or whether, as Crile maintains, there is no ultimate difference
between the bloodless intangible causes of fatigue and exhaustion and
the bloody tangible causes of ‘ shock,’ lies without the scope of this
address. One of the great difficulties inthe solution of the question is
that no one has as yet devised a method which permits of a quantitative
determination of the degree of fatigue. Indeed, some workers, Muscio
for example, have definitely stated that such a test is an impossibility.

The study of the metabolism has given little or no clue so far.
Benedict and I carried out a certain amount of experimental work on
this phase of the question. Our results show that the subject may be
on the very verge of absolute collapse, and yet, so far as the metabolic
determination goes, there is no very marked evidence of diminished

a -

g.°* k SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

efficiency in a mechanical sense. In an experiment with M.A.M., who,
in the postabsorptive state, rode on a bicycle ergometer for nearly four
and a-half hours until on the verge of collapse, doing 208,000 kilo- —
grammeétres of external work during the time, the metabolism was ~
determined six times during the riding period with the following
result :—

TABLE IT,
|
Time Oxygen Consump- Rate of Work Net Efficiency in
ne permin.ine.c.| Revs. per min. per cent.
8.30 a.m. (start)
9.00 ,, ‘ A 1,967 91-3 23-1
945% 2. : ; Pa | 1,946 91-4 23°3
LOSOne: ; ; = 1,969 91-7 23-2
IMSS 35 é 5 cal 1,948 90-3 23-2
12.00 noon. ‘ : 2,003 89-0 21-7
12-45 p.m. . : : 1,899 78-2 21°3

lt will be noted, as might be expected, that there is some slowing
of the rate at which the work is done, but the diminution in the net
efficiency, in spite of the fact that the subject admitted he was com-
pletely done at the conclusion of the last determination, is not striking.

In other experiments where the type of muscle activity used was
marching, little apparent effect on the metabolic cost was noted until
extraneous muscle activity was introduced in the form of staggering
as the result of exhaustion.

Obviously, then, the capacity to carry on is limited by the genesis
of fatigue. But it is equally obvious in practice that a man may be
engaged in strenuous labour for many hours without acute signs of
impending exhaustion. How is this condition attained? There are
at least four factors which, to my mind, play predominant réles in the
attainment of maximum efficiency—viz., the rate of the performance
of work, the amount of rest offered or taken by the subject, the rhythm
with which the work is performed, and the work habits developed by
the worker. Although I shall attempt to examine each of these factors
separately, it is not to be inferred that they can really be considered
as independent phenomena. As a matter of fact, they are all intimately
related, and usually merge into one another.

Of these four factors probably most attention has been devoted
to the rate or speed at which work is carried out. The glorification of
that much misused half-truth, ‘ Time is money,’ is responsible for much
false physiology. Farmer, in a recent report to the Industrial Fatigue
Board, laid, I think, the correct stress on the relation of speed to
general industrial efficiency when he wrote: “No movement ean be com-
pared with another and said to be better than it merely on account
of its speed; it should only be compared in respect to ease and final
result.’ This is a good answer to those who believe that maximum
efficiency can be best obtained by mere speeding up. Goldmark also
stresses this aspect of the question. She writes: ‘Now just in pro-
portion as this function of speed is developed, subject to the capacities

-

1.—PHYSIOLOGY. 7

of the human agent instead of as a driver of these capacities, it counts
as a gain. Just so soon as the function of speed is dissociated from
its effects on the worker we revert to the old system of pace-making
and speeding.’

These are the observations of field workers. Can they be substan-
tiated by experimental work in the laboratory? Benedict and I found,
for example, working with a carefully calibrated bicycle ergometer, that
there was a very close connection between the speed at which work
was done and the mechanical efficiency. There was a very definite
falling off with increased speed, as the following table shows. Unfortu-
nately it was impossible to get our subject to pedal slower than 70 revo-
lutions per minute :—

TaBLe III.
Revolutions per min. _ Gross Efficiency (Revolutions per min.| Gross Efficiency
70 | 20-6 110 17-6
80 20-0 120 16-9

90 19-2 130 16-1
100 | 18-4 —_ —

We found further that if the amount of effective muscular work
done was kept constant, that the efficiency fell with an increase of
speed. Thus with effective work equivalent to 1.95 calories performed
at the rate of 90 and 124 revolutions per minute respectively with the
lower speed, the net efficiency was 22.6 per cent., whereas with the
higher speed it fell to 15.7 per cent. Or again, with effective work
of 1.58 calories at 71 and 108 revolutions per minute the efficiency was
24.5 per cent. and 15.6 per cent. respectively ; and finally, with effective
work of 1.35 calories at speeds of 71, 94, end 105, the efficiencies were
23.1, 20.4, and 17.0 per cent.

f A. VY. Hill has also recently dealt with this problem in a most
- interesting. piece of work, where the activity was strictly confined to
the biceps and the brachialis anticus. He demonstrated very clearly
that, in spite of the fact that the slower the contraction the greater was
the amount of work done, all the advantage thus gained was rapidly
_ neutralised and dissipated as the result of the slow contraction neces-
sarily causing an increased degradation of energy in the way of physio-
logical changes resulting from the maintenance of contraction. It thus
followed that a slow contraction, powerful though it might be, was
not necessarily one of high efficiency. The actual efficiency, i.é. the
- ratio of the external work done to the energy degraded in carrying it
out, was found to pass through a definite maximum value as the duration
of the contraction increased. ‘The maximum efficiency in his series of
- experiments was 26 per cent. He found that it was very rapidly
attained, the optimum for the muscles investigated being apparently just
under one second, but the fall which followed, as the duration of the
contraction increased, was a comparatively slow one. On account,
therefore, of the blunt nature of the curve the efficiency remained more
or less constant over a wide range of speeds.

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

The load has obviously a direct connection with the speed at which
work is done, but it has also a relation to efficiency. Benedict and I
found, for instance, that both the gross and net efficiencies within the
limits of our experiments increased with the load. The probable
explanation of this result is that when light work is carried out mainten-
ance or physiological requirements which have to be covered form a
large proportion of the total energy output, a balance which is steadily
altered as the amount of external effective work done increases. Inei-
dentally, Hill drew attention to a most important factor in the con-
sideration of the efficiency of muscle, viz., the relation between the
maximal and the submaximal effort. Hill suggested that the less power-
ful effort was the result of the maximal contraction of only a portion
of the muscle fibres, and that the fibres not directly involved in the
contraction changed passively, i.e. they were made to conform to the
shape of their active neighbours. This, of course, will automatically
lead to a considerable waste of energy in changing the form of the
muscle as a whole, therefcre the submaximal effort will be less efficient
than a maximal effort of the same duration in time, and further ‘ the
highest efficiency of a submaximal effort is obtained in a slower con-
traction than that of a maximal effort.’

On the other hand, when the loads become excessive there is a
definite falling off, both in gross and net efficiencies. Laulanié, who
also investigated this question, found that at voluntarily selected speeds,
with steadily increasing load, the external work done rose with decreas-
ing speed until the load became excessive. He maintained that there
were two optima, (a) an economic optimum at 4 kilo. load with high
efficiency and a low oxygen consumption per kilogrammétre, and (b) a
mechanical optimum between 8 and 12 kilo. load when the output in
unit time was highest. The following table from Laulanié makes his
point clear :—

TABLE IV. :
Resistance in kilos. ae 2 3 4 5 6 8° 107 Aza
Speed adopted, metres per
sec. . ; . 1:49 1:07 0°80 0°61 0:54 0:44 0:37 0:29 0-24 0-13

Work done, kilogram-

métres per 5 min. . 448 642 726 778 812 853 896 905 906 570
Oxygen intake in ¢.c. per

kgm. . ; ; . 3S 2:44 2:17 2:14 2:23 2-25 2-43 2-53 3:12 5-31
Efficiency per cent. - 14:1 20-4 22-9 23°3 22:3 22-1 20-4 19-7 17:0 94

It will be noted that when the load becomes excessive the efficiency
rapidly falls away. This means that, although the effort may be con-
tinued as strenuously as before, and although the physiological cost
of the effort remains at a very high level, the amount of external work
done is reduced to a very low figure. The static element in the muscular
effort has become dominant, and static expenditure is parasitic on
dynamic work. The more static the work becomes the greater is the
fall in the efficiency. Personally I am of the opinion that the severity
or hardness of muscular work, qua the organism as a whole, is a fune-
tion of the static component of the effort made. Fatigue, i.e. inability
to carry on, is more readily induced by static work than by either

-
I.—PHYSIOLOGY. 9
positive or negative work. The following figures from experiments
which | have carried out with Miss Bedale and G. McCallum show

clearly this diminution in efficiency as the static element in the work
is increased :—

TABLE V.

: Cost in grm. cals. per| Net Efficiency per
Pulls per min, * Kgm. per min. kgm. » “4, — oe |
32 | 40 16 8-0 |

12 15 17 7-5
6 | 1-5 20 6-0 |
3 3°75 38 3-0
2 2-5 68 2-0 — |

1 1-25 146 1-0

Another series of experiments ered out with Burnett in another
fashion led to the same conclusion,

Very closely allied with the rate of working is the rhythm with
which the work is performed. Although they are not identical] pheno-
mena, they are so. closely related that the habit of work may be con-
sidered along with rhythm. Sir Charles Sherrington and Graham
Brown have both shown very definitely, in connection with their work
on reciprocal innervation, that a rhythmic phenomenon may be evoked
in muscle by the appropriate balance of antagonistic stimuli. Graham
Brown holds that this rhythmic action is one of the most fundamental
properties of the nervous system.- Everyone is well aware that once
a rhythm, or the proper co-ordination in the play of a set of muscles
in the performance of some definite act, is mastered, not only is the
energy expenditure reduced by the exclusion of numerous extraneous
muscular activities, but there is an actual enhancement of the ease with
which we perform the specified act. | Willingly or unwillingly, those
who have to do much repetitive work, be it playing golf, a musical
instrument, or working a machine, soon appreciate the fact, when they
think about it at all, that their best and easiest results are obtained
under certain very definite conditions. To take a single example, the
work of forward progression or walking is performed most easily
when we adopt our own gait. It is not a mere question of rate. In
a series of experiments which I carried out with Burnett, the subject,
working on a specially geared ergometer, was allowed to select his own
rate of working, the load being varied from nothing to 4 kilos. At
each change of load the subject was directed either to work rapidly
or very slowly, and after a period of such work was told to adopt the
rate he liked best. As the following table (Table VI.) shows, the
rhythm of work was practically identical for all loads. This occurred
under all conditions, provided the working spells were not of too long
duration. If the work were continued over a long period the rhythm
tended to alter, to increase in speed, and if the subject became really
tired, periods of rapid movement alternated with periods of slow
movement.

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES;

Taste VI.
| Load in kilos.| Rate of Work per min. voluntarily selected
| Exp. L. Exp. IL. Exp. III. Exp. IV. (Immediately
0 78 80 83 — after 1 hour’s |
1 80 79 7) 7 work at rate
2 81 80 81 — of45 per min.)
3 80 78 83 73
4 82 77 78 a
|

The figures given are the averages of three or more observations made
at each load. None of the observations were made.in the order in
which they are recorded ; light and heavy loads were alternated.

This rhythm of work is simply a general example of the formation
of a conditioned reflex. ‘The rhythm adopted, although it may suit the
worker, is not of necessity the series of muscle movements which lead
to the least expenditure of energy. Most probably the rhythm selected
is only in small part due to the worker’s physical configuration; in
greater part it is evolved in imitation of some more experienced or older
Sashes. The average workman is not so much concerned with the
diminution of the physiological cost in the performance of a given
act as in the reduction of conscious effort. As Vernon states, ‘ Ex-
perienced industrial workers unconsciously adopt habits of work which
tend to the production of a maximum output with the minimum of
effort.’

This capacity of the organism to build up a series of conditioned
reflexes is one of the potent factors in the prevention of fatigue. The
organism is able not only to build up reflexes in response to the tactile
impressions of the material which he handles, of the tools, their shape,
weight, &c., with which he works, but even to the extent and duration
of the movements which he develops in the performance of his work.
The proper and effective linking up of a series of these stimuli lead to a
technical rhythm which will not necessarily be identical in the case of
each worker in the same shop performing the same oper? ation, but
which, viewed generally, will give a colourable representation of
uniformity.

It is not, of course, suggested that the methods adopted by workers
independently are the perfect methods, and that proper investigation
will not discover better and easier methods of performing certain given
operations. If newer and more economical methods are to be developed
and brought into operation, the only real chance will be to segregate
the newer young workers. Vernon gives an excellent example of the
necessity of doing so. ‘The output of a certain necessary stock article
had to be increased. <A factory concerned in the production turned out
5,000 per week, and this could not be increased—the regular workmen
had a certain rate and habit of work. A new factory was started,
staffed with hands new to the work, and after six months’ practice
they produced 13,000 articles per week.

There is good evidence, that of Muscio for example, that both
resting and w orking, i in addition to the individual muscle rhythm, there

e
1.—PHYSIOLOGY. 11

is a definite variation in the course of the day in the capacity to carry
out work; that, in other words, a diurnal rhythm exists. ‘There is a
certain amount of evidence also in favour of the view that a seasonal
rhythm exists. As Wilson has put it, ‘It is tempting to suppose that
human performance may be dependent on a number of superimposed
rhythms corresponding with the periods of work, beginning perhaps
with the rhythm corresponding with the periods of work, beginning
perhaps with the rhythm of the actual movement and ending with a
seasonal rhythm.’

Further, when efficiency is measured in terms of output it is found
that there is a definite rhythm in output during the course of the work-
ing day and of the working week. It is well known that it takes an
appreciable time each day to work up to full power, and this is shown
distinctly in the daily output curve, which rises and then drops sharply
at the end of the work period. This type of curve is not peculiar to
any one industry. ‘The rise is almost certainly due to the ‘ limbering
up,’ and it is probable that the fall towards the end is largely due to
voluntary slowing. The total weekly output curve with the low
Monday effect and the sharp fall on Saturday resembles in general
shape the daily output curve. The main point about these curves is
that they seem to demonstrate the absence of progressive fatigue from
overwork, which would have been deduced had there been a sharp rise
at the commencement of the week, followed by a steady fall.

The third of the potent factors in the control of fatigue is rest. If
work is done rest is ultimately imperative. Rest not merely relaxes
the muscle, allowing a more thorough and complete removal of the
_ waste products and a more abundant supply of oxygen, but it removes
the strain of attention. Rest is best obtained not by simple quiescence
but by change of posture; slow movement of another type to that which
produced the fatigue will, unless the organism is tired practically to
complete exhaustion, give the most beneficial results. It is common
knowledge that when the attention is concentrated, when our interest,
either in the work or in something cognate or even foreign to it, is
thoroughly aroused spells of work or intensity of effort in its perform-
ance may be borne, which under other circumstances might tax our
resources to the last degree.

Foreed work, i.e. work carried out at a pace other than that of the
performer’s own selection, is much more exhausting and destructive
than where the subject is permitted to work at a rate of his own
selection. Laulanié, assuming that fatigue had a purely physical
origin, went the length of maintaining that muscles spontaneously find
the optimum rate of work where the intervals of repose exactly suffice
for sufficient recuperation, so that long spells of work may be done.
Such a conclusion does gain a certain amount of support from the
consideration, for example, of the cardiac cycle.

So far, little attention has been paid to the duration of the rest
period in relation to the work done. As a general rule, it may be said that,
in the majority of occupations, although the hours of labour are con-
tinuous, the actual spells of hard manual work are discontinuous, either
due to the fact that certain operations are intermittent in their severity,

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

that supplies of material are not constant, or that, if these more or less
natural conditions do not operate, rests at irregular intervals are de-
liberately taken by the operative.

So far as I am aware there is only one type of hard work where
a definite rest period is laid down as part of the exercise, namely, in
Army route marching. Marching as a costly form of energy expendi-
ture 1s unique in that it is a continuous repetitive act carried on
frequently for hours on end. The Regulations lay down that a definite
rest period shall be taken every hour. Marching, too, is peculiar in
another way, namely, that the rate of marching is fixed, i.e. a certain
definite rate has to be constantly maintained throughout the marching
period.

It can be shown that if a certain distance has to be covered in a
definite time there is an optimum rate of forward progression. Cathcart,
Lothian, and Greenwood found, for example, that when the cost per
mile alone was considered, the minimum value was reached at a rate of
about three miles per hour, but when the question of time as well as
distance arose, i.e. if a distance of, let us say, one mile was to be covered
and sixty minutes were available to do it in, would it be more economical
to march the mile rapidly or slowly and have a longer or shorter period
of rest? Our experiments showed that the lowest hourly value was
obtained at a rate of a mile in about twenty-three minutes, i.e. marching
for twenty-three minutes in the hour and resting for thirty-seven minutes,
To spend thirty-two minutes on the march cost about 5 per cent. more,
and to reduce the marching time to sixteen minutes increased the cost
by about 15 per cent.

So much, then, for the ordinary effector factors. There are many
other factors directly concerned with the efficient action of the organism,
some directly influencing the internal economy of the body, others
acting more indirectly on the organism from the enyironment.

One of these factors is the state of the nutrition. It may be
definitely stated that an insufficient intake of food or the consumption
of poor or inadequate food is one of the chief sources of general in-
efficiency. Our resistance to the effects of hard and continual work,
just as to the effects of an infection, is largely controlled by our re-
serves. The capacity of the body to store reserve food material which
will meet the daily demands for energy and leave a surplus is another
of the vital factors of safety. The body is undoubtedly capable of with-
standing complete deprivation of food for comparatively long periods,
but with a corresponding depression in its capacity to perform external
work. Complete starvation igs a state which is rare, and does not
affect the question at issue. The much more important problem is un-
fortunately only too common, the influence of chronic undernutrition,
a condition which lowers efficiency, not merely in the actual perform-
ance of muscular work, but by inducing an increased susceptibility to
disease. This is a question which has never received the attention
which its importance demands, largely on account of the immense
difficulties of carrying out the investigation in a practical manner. As
the direct result of the war we have the records of at least two sets
of observers. Benedict and his co-workers investigated the problem,

I. —PHYSIOLOGY, 13

using a group of twelve men, comparing them with a similar group
drawn from the same class. In the experimental group the food intake
was reduced, so that there was a loss of 12 per cent. of the body weight.
Although the experiment was carried on for over four months, and the
basal metabolism was reduced by 18 per cent., the diminution in muscle
power, so far as laboratory tests were concerned, was not great. The
subjective impression, however, of the subjects was that they felt
weaker and less capable.

The other recorded experiment is that of the condition in Germany
during the war years. A general statement of the effects of the blockade
is contained in a long document prepared by the German Government
(dated December 1918). | Admittedly the document was prepared for a
specific purpose; but, after making all allowances, the record of
the far-reaching effects of chronic underfeeding is valuable. It may
be remarked that many of the statements receive corroboration in the
report drawn up by Professor Starling on the food conditions in
Germany. Apart from the increased death rate, the increased liability
to disease, and the slow recovery from the attacks of disease, the docu-
ment definitely states that the working capacity of the people was
reduced by at least one-third. The following sentence gives probably
an accurate picture of acute undernutrition, associated, it is true, with
much emotional strain: ‘Everywhere in Germany it may now be
observed how, in the four years’ struggle for daily bread, the people
have lost all their vigour and capacity for work; how all spirit of enter-
prise is gone.’

Here, then, we have the actual record of an experiment on a
gigantic scale. Personally I believe that these results are much more
likely to be the ordinary sequence of underfeeding than the laboratory
results of Benedict. I do not doubt for a moment his records, they
are beyond reproach ; but I feel that many of the excellent results which
were obtained when the test subjects competed with subjects on ordinary
food were in part due to the quite natural desire of the men to demon-
strate to their friends and the onlookers that they were fit. In other
words, there was a strong psychic element which vitiated the test as a
real test for efficiency.

Evidence, much debated it is true, would indicate that it is not only
the quantity but the quality of the food consumed which plays a part
in the fitness of the individual to perform hard muscular work. All
modern work would seem to point to the conclusion that if the caloric
value of the food supplied is adequate the actual demand for protein
is very small. It is very difficult, however, to believe that the far-
reaching common belief in the efficacy of a high meat intake, despite
the scientific evidence to the contrary, is without some foundation.
It is possible that the value of meat (flesh) depends not merely on the
high biological value of its protein, but also on the fact that it can act:
as a stimulant of cellular activity; that, in other words, it is desired
for its stimulating effect, for giving, in that expressive transatlantic
word, ‘ pep.’

Another factor which plays an enormous réle in the general efficiency
is the response of the organism to the multiple psychic imponderabilia

14 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

which compose such a large part of the average environment. Although
for general purposes, such as the calculation of mean or average de-
mands, it may be both convenient and useful to assess the data on
an average man basis, yet it is the individual variation which controls
the actual operating conditions. When we are dealing with the efficiency
of the human organism, male and female, we are dealing with indi-
viduals whose performance is neither uniform throughout the year nor
from week to week, nor even from hour to hour. We have to deal
with an organism, as I have already mentioned, which is not only under
physical control, but is very responsive to psychic influences—an
organism which not only becomes in the course of the day physically
‘tired,’ but which unconsciously is influenced to an enormous extent
by its environment, by its ‘atmosphere.’ Man is, in the main, a
psychic chameleon.

In this connection monotony of work must be considered. The
Health of Munition Workers’ Committee stated that monotony is
‘analogous to, if it does not represent, a fatigue process in unrecognised
nerve centres.’ It is true that montonous work, be it light or heavy,
may be, as Goldmark maintains, ‘ more damaging to the organism than
heavier work which gives some chance of variety, some outlet for our
innate revolt against unrelieved repetitions.’ Still, although there may
be a close relationship between monotony and fatigue, as generally
recognised, they are not identical. The temperament of the operative
plays an enormous part in the determining whether or no any particular
operation is a monotonous one. ‘Thus a skilled engineer put on to
attend an automatic machine which requires the minimum of skilled
attention would soon be disgusted with the monotony of the operation
even if the pay were good, whereas an unskilled worker, especially if of ©
a lower degree of intelligence, could attend to such a machine without
strain. Munsterberg has recorded a number of most interesting
examples of this seeming imperviousness to monotony even on the part
of apparently intelligent individuals. Probably, indeed, if the opera-
tion is a slow one, or, if quick, one in which the movements are rela-
tively simple, the dull individual—the organism with few trained re-
ceptors—and the worker with intelligence above the average, who
readily masters the performance and can then let his mind free to
speculate on his own private interests, will stand the strain better than
the worker of average intelligence. As Munsterberg has shown, it is
extremely difficult, if not impossible, for an outsider to determine ‘what
a monotonous operation is. It is obvious that if A is interested, let us
say in epigraphy, he will judge that B, engaged in some simple routine
stamping or packing job, is employed on a monotonous operation,
whereas it would be equally likely that if B were asked his opinion he
would candidly state that he would not exchange his interesting work
for the dull and monotonous pursuit of A.

There are many other factors which play a definite and important
réle in the maintenance of efficiency, such as lighting, heating, ventila-
tion, the mode of life led by the worker outside his definite hours of
labour, his housing, &c. Many of these factors have been partially
examined. ‘Thus Leonard Hill has carried out a great deal of valuable

L.—PHYSIOLOGY, 15

_ work on the influence of the cooling power of the air. Vernon has col-
lected much interesting evidence which shows that there is a very definite
relation between the efficiency, as measured by output, and the tempera-
ture of the working place. The output in the hottest weather was
about 30 per cent. below that when the weather was coldest. He also
observed an apparent connection between the relative humidity of the
air and the efficiency of the worker. The efficiency, as might have
been expected, was apparently greatest when the relative humidity was
low. Elton has reported on the influence of lighting in silk weaving.
He found that the output was lowest when artificial light was used.
He stated that even when electric light of sufficient intensity was used
the output was about 10 per cent. below the daylight value. The
actual equipment of the factories, the provision of seats of suitable
size, height, &c., the design of the machines, and so on, all play their
part, as is shown by the many records, particularly from the United
States.

In other words, the real overall industrial efficiency of the worker
cannot be causally related to any single factor. It is not the mere
capacity of the individual to perform so many kilogrammétres of work
in a given time with the smallest expenditure of energy. The quest
of efficiency is one of the most intricate problems in its infinite ramifi-
eations throughout the physiological and sociological structure which
has ever called for solution, and it involves the whole welfare of our
race and nation. It calls for the closest and most intimate co-operation
between the scientific investigator, the employer and the employee, and
is no more capable of being settled on a communistic than on a capital-
istic basis. It can only be satisfactorily attacked when mutual distrust
of motives, capacities, and methods is stilled.

°
SECTION J.—PSYCHOLOGY.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE LATE W. H. R. RIVERS

(PRESIDENT ELECT OF SECTION J)

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
IN GREAT BRITAIN.

ADDRESS BY

CHARLES S. MYERS, C.B.E., M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.B.S.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

A moURNFUL gloom has been cast over the proceedings of our newly
born Section. Since its inauguration twelve months ago this Section,
as, indeed, Psychology in general, has suffered an irreparable loss
through the sudden death, on June 4 last, of him who was to have
presided here to-day. When, only a few weeks ago, it fell to me, as
. one of his first pupils, to oceupy Rivers’s place, I could think of little
else than of him to whom I have owed so much for nearly thirty years
of intimate friendship and invaluable advice; and I felt that it would
be impossible for me then to prepare a Presidential Address to this
Section on any other subject than on his life’s work in psychology.
William Halse Rivers Rivers was born on March 12, 1864, at Luton,

near Chatham, the eldest son of the Rev. H. F. Rivers, M.A., formerly
of Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards vicar of St. Faith’s,
Maidstone, and of Elizabeth, his wife, née Hunt. Many of his father’s
family had been officers in the Navy—a fact responsible, doubtless, for
- Rivers’s love of sea voyages. The father of his paternal grandfather,
Lieutenant W. T. Rivers, R.N., was that brave Lieutenant William.
Rivers, R.N., who as a midshipman in the Victory at Trafalgar, was
severely wounded in the mouth and had his left leg shot away at the
very beginning of the action, in defence of Nelson or in trying to
avenge the latter’s mortal wound. So at least runs the family tradi-
tion ; also according to which Nelson’s last words to his surgeon were:
‘Take care of young Rivers.’ A maternal uncle of Rivers was Dr.
James Hunt, who in 1863 founded and was the first President of the
Anthropological Society, a precursor of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, and from 1863 to 1866 at the meetings of this Association
strove to obtain that recognition for anthropology as a distinct Sub-
section or Section which was successfully won for Psychology by his
nephew, who presided over us at the Bournemouth meeting in 1919,
when we were merely a Sub-section of Physiology.

Our ‘ young Rivers ’ gave his first lecture at the age of twelve, at a
debating society of his father’s pupils. Its subject was ‘ Monkeys.’
He was educated first at a preparatory school at Brighton, and from
BRITISH ASSOCIATION : Hull, 1922.) 7

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

1877 to 1880 at Tonbridge School. Thence he had hoped to proceed to
Cambridge; but a severe attack of enteric fever compelled him to take

a year’s rest, and thus prevented him from competing for an entrance

scholarship at that University. He matriculated instead in the Univer-
sity of London, and entered St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 18832,
sharing the intention of one of his father’s pupils of becoming an Army
doctor. This idea, however, he soon relinquished; but, like his desire
to go to Cambridge, it was to be realised later in life.!

When he took his degree of Bachelor of Medicine in 1886 he was
accounted the youngest Bachelor ever known at his hospital. Two
years later he graduated as Doctor of Medicine, and he spent these two
and the two following years in resident appointments at Chichester
(1888) and at St. Bartholomew’s (1889) hospitals, in a brief period of
private medical practice (1890), and in travelling as ship’s surgeon to
America and Japan (1887), the first of numerous subsequent voyages.
In 1891 he became house-physician at the National Hospital, Queen
Square, where he first mnade the acquaintance of Dr. Henry Head,
whose collaborator he was to be some twenty years later in one of the
most striking neurological experiments ever made.

But before he began work at Queen Square, before he assisted
Horsley there in his then wonderful operations on the brain, before he
met Head fresh from his studies in Germany and enthusiastic over the
colour-vision work and novel physiological conceptions of Hering,
Rivers had already shown his interest in the study of the mind and the
nervous system. ‘Thus, in 1888, when he was twenty-four years of age,
we find in the St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports (Vol. xxiv., pp. 249-
251) his first published paper on ‘ A Case of Spasm of the Muscles of
Neck Causing Protrusion of the Head,’ and m the following year, in
the same Reports (Vol. xxv., pp. 279-280), an abstract of a paper read
by him before the Abernethian Society entitled ‘ Delirium and _ its
Allied Conditions.’ At this early date he pointed out the analogies
between delirium and mania, protested against the use of narcotics in
delirium, and condemned the wide separation—too wide even to-day—
between diseases of the mind and diseases of the body. In 1891 and
in 1893 he read papers to the Abernethian Society, abstracts of which
appear in the St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports (vol. xxvii., pp. 285-
286, vol. xxix., p. 350), on ‘ Hysteria’ and on ‘ Neurasthenia,’ to
which his interests were to return so fruitfully during and after the
Great War. |

In 1892 he spent the spring and early summer at Jena, attending
the lectures of Eucken, Ziehen, Binswanger, and others. In a diary
kept by him during this visit to Germany the following sentence occurs :
‘]T have during the last few weeks come to the conclusion that I should
go in for insanity when I return to England and work as much as
possible at psychology.’ Accordingly, in the same year he became
Clinical Assistant at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, and in 1893 he
assisted G. H. Savage in his lectures on mental diseases at Guy’s

‘For many of the above details of Rivers’s early life and antecedents I am
indebted to his sister, Miss K. E. Rivers.

a a ee

*
J,—PSYCHOLOGY, 3

Hospital, laying special stress on their psychological aspect. About
the same time, at the request of Professor Sully, he began to lecture on
experimental psychology at University College, London.

Meanwhile, at Cambridge Michael Foster was seeking someone who
would give instruction there in the physiology of the sense organs,
McKendrick having, as Examiner in Physiology, recently complained of
the inadequate training of the Cambridge students in this branch of the
subject. Foster’s choice fell on Rivers, and in 1893 he invited him to
the University for this purpose. For a few months Rivers taught
simultaneously at Cambridge and at Guy’s Hospital and at University
College, London. He went to Germany for a short period of study
under Professor Kripelin, then of Heidelberg, whose brilliant analysis
of the work curve and careful investigations into the effects of drugs
on bodily and mental work had aroused his intense interest. In colla-
boration with Kriapelin he carried out a brief investigation into mental
fatigue and recovery, published in 1896 (Journal of Mental Science,
vol. xlii., pp. 525-29, and Krapelin’s Psychologische Arbeiten, vol. 1.,
pp. 627-78), which indicated that even an hour’s rest is inadequate to
neutralise the fatigue of half-an-hour’s mental work, and paved the’
way for Rivers’s important researches some ten years later upon the
effects of drugs on muscular and mental fatigue.

At Cambridge Rivers set himself to plan one of the earliest systematic
practical courses in experimental psychology in the world, certainly the
first in this country. In 1897 he was officially recognised by the
University, being elected to the newly established Lectureship in Physio-
logical and Experimental Psychology. But the welcome and encourage-
ment he received from cognate branches of study at Cambridge could
hardly be called embarrassing. Even to-day practical work is not
deemed essential for Cambridge honours candidates in elementary
psychology; psychology is not admitted among the subjects of the
Natural Sciences Tripos; and no provision is made for teaching the
subject at Cambridge to medical students. Rivers first turned his
attention principally to the study of colour vision and visual space per-
ception. Between 1893 and 1901 he published experimental papers
*On Binocular Colour-mixture’ (Proc. Cambs, Philosoph. Soc.,
vol. viii., pp. 273-77), on ‘The Photometry of Coloured Papers ’
(J. of Physiol., vol. xxii., pp. 137-45), and ‘ On Erythropsia’ (Trans.
Ophthal. Soc., London, vol. xxi., pp. 296-305), and until 1908 he was
immersed in the task of mastering the entire literature of past experi-
mental work on vision, the outcome of which was published in 1900
as an article in the second volume of the important Text-book of
Physiology edited by Sir Edward Sharpey Schafer.

This exhaustive article of 123 pages on ‘ Vision’ by Rivers is still
regarded as the most accurate and careful account of the whole subject
in the English language. It is of special value not only as an encyclo-
peedic storehouse of references to the work of previous investigators—
although with characteristic modesty Rivers omits to mention himself
among them—but also for the unsurpassed critical account of the prin-
cipal theories of colour vision. In it he displayed the strength and the
weakness of Hering’s theory and the untenability of Helmholtz’s ex-

v2

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

planations of successive contrast. as due to fatigue, and of simultaneous
contrast as due to psychological factors. Rivers clearly showed that
the effect of psychological factors is not to create but to mask the
phenomena of simultaneous contrast, which are really dependent on
what he terms ‘ the physiological reciprocity of adjoining retinal areas.’
His enthusiasm for Hering’s theories led him to give by far the most
detailed presentation of them that had then or has since appeared in
our language. In classifying the phenomena of red-green colour-
blindness, on which Helmholtz largely based his trichromic theory,
Rivers proposed the useful terms ‘ scoterythrous ’ and ‘ photerythrous ’
in place of the terms ‘ protanopic’ and ‘ deuteranopic,’ so as to avoid,
in describing these phenomena, the use of names which implied the
acceptance of a particular theory of colour vision. These terms have
failed, however, to obtain general adoption. ;

In 1896 Rivers published an important paper ‘ On the Apparent Size
of Objects’ (Mind, N.S., vol. v., pp. 71-80), in which he described
his investigations into the effects of atropin and eserin on the size of
seen objects. He distinguished two kinds of micropsia which had
hitherto been confused—micropsia at the fixation-point due to irradia-
tion, and micropsia beyond the fixation-point, which is of special psy-
chological importance. Rivers came to the interesting conclusion that
the mere effort to carry out a movement of accommodation may produce
the same micropsia as when that effort is actually followed by movement.
In other words, an illusion of size may be dependent solely on central
factors. His later work, in conjunction with Professor Dawes Hicks,
on ‘ The Hlusion of Compared Horizontal and Vertical Lines,’ which
was published in 1908 (Brit. J. of Psychol., vol. i., pp. 241-60), led
him to trace this illusion to origins still less motor in nature. © Here
horizontal and vertical lines were compared under tachistoscopie and
under prolonged exposure. The momentary view of the lines in the
tachistoscope precluded any movement or effort of movement of the
eyes, which had been supposed by many to be responsible for the over-
estimation of vertical lines owing to the greater difficulty of eye move-
ment in the vertical as compared with the horizontal direction. The
amount of the illusion was found to be approximately the same for
tachistoscopic as for prolonged exposure of the lines, but in the tachisto-
scopic exposure the judgment was more definite and less hesitating—in
other words, more naive, more purely sensory, more ‘ physiological ’"—
than in prolonged exposure. This result, which led to further work
by Dr. E. O. Lewis at Cambridge under Rivers upon the Miller-Lyer
illusion and upon the comparison of ‘ filled’ and ‘ empty’ space, is of
fundamental psychological importance. Although it is not inconsistent
with the view that visual space perception depends for its genesis on
eye movement, it compels us to admit that visual space perception,
once acquired, can occur in the absence of eye movement; or, in more
general language, that changes in consciousness, originally arising in
connexion with muscular activity, may later occur in the absence of
that activity. The provision of experimental evidence in favour of
so fundamental and wide-reaching a yiew is obviously of the greatest
importance.

*
J.—PSYCHOLOGY, 5

In 1898, in which year he was given the degree of Hon. M.A. at
Cambridge, Rivers took a fresh path in his varied career by accepting
Dr. A. C. Haddon’s invitation to join the Cambridge Anthropological
Expedition to the Torres Straits. This was the first expedition in which
systematic work was carried out in the ethnological application of the
methods and apparatus of experimental psychology. His former pupils,
Prof. W. McDougall and I, assisted Rivers in this new field. Rivers
interested himself especially in investigating the vision of the natives—.
their visual acuity, their colour vision, their colour nomenclature, and
their susceptibility to certain visual geometric illusions. He continued
to carry out psychological work of the same comparative ethnological
character after his return from the Torres Straits in Scotland (where
he and I sought comparative data), during a visit to Egypt in the winter
of 1900, and from 1901-2 in his expedition to the Todas of Southern
India.

The Torres Straits expedition marked a turning-point in Rivers’s
life interests, as they were for the first time directed towards ethnological
studies, to which he became ardently devoted ever after, until his death
remoyed one who at the time was President of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, had in 1920-1 been President of the Folk Lore Society, and
had in 1911 been President of Section H (Anthropology) of this
Association. His-ethnological and sociological work during his expedi-
tion to the Todas and during his two subsequent expeditions to Melanesia
are too well known to need mention here. It was Rivers’s own view
that his most important contributions to science are to be found in the
two volumes of his ‘ History of Melanesian Society,’ published in 1914.

His psychological investigations among the Torres Straits islanders,
Egyptians and Todas (Reports of the Cambridge Anthrop. Exped. to
Torres Straits, vol. ii., Pt. I., pp. 1-182; J. of Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxxi..
pp. 229-47; Brit. J. of Psychol., vol. i., pp. 321-96) will ever stand
as models of precise, methodical observations in the field of ethnological
psychology. | Nowhere does he disclose more clearly the admirably
scientific bent of his mind—his insistence on scientific procedure, his
delight in scientific analysis, and his facility in adapting scientific
methods to novel experimental conditions. He reached the conclusion
that no substantial difference exists between the visual acuity of civilised

- and uncivilised peoples, and that the latter show a very definite diminu-
tion in sensibility to blue, which, as he suggested, is perhaps attributable
to the higher macular pigmentation among coloured peoples. He
observed a generally defective nomenclature. for blue, green, and brown
among primitive peoples, both white and coloured, and large differences
in the frequency of colour-blindness among the different uncivilised
peoples whom he examined. In his work on visual illusions he found
that the vertical-horizontal-line illusion was more marked, while the
Miiller-Lyer illusion was less marked, among uncivilised than among
civilised communities; and he concluded that the former illusion was
therefore dependent rather on physiological, the latter rather on psy-
chological factors, the former being counteracted, the latter being
favoured, by previous experience, e.g. of drawing lines or of appre-
hending complex figures as wholes.

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

In 1903, the year after his return from the Todas, and the year
of his election to a Fellowship at St. John’s College, Rivers began an
investigation, continued for five years, with Dr. Henry Head, in which
the latter, certain sensory nerves of whose arm had been experimentally
divided, acted as subject, and Rivers acted as experimenter, applying
various stimuli to the arm and recording the phenomena of returning
cutaneous sensibility. The results of this heroic and lengthy investiga-
tion are well known. ‘The discovery of a crude punctate protopathic
sensibility, distinct from a more refined epicritic sensibility, so deeply
impressed Rivers that a decade later his psychological views may be
said to have been centred round this distinction between the ungraded,
‘all-or-nothing,’ diffusely localising functions of the protopathic system,
and the delicately graded, discriminative, accurately localising functions
of the epicritic system. The exact inter pretation of this ‘ Human Ex-
periment in Nerve Division,’ published at length in 1908 (Brain,
vol. xxxi., pp. 323-450), has been disputed by subsequent workers,
whose divergent results, however, are at least partly due to their employ-
ment of different methods of procedure. - Head’s experiment has never
been identically repeated, and until this has been done we are probably
safe in trusting to the results reached by the imaginative genius and the
cautious critical insight of this rare combination of investigators. At a
far higher nervous level broad analogies to this peripheral analysis of
cutaneous sensibility were later found by Head when thalamic came
to be compared with cortical activity and sensibility.

While working with Head upon his arm Rivers’s indomitable
activity led him to simultaneous occupation in other fields. In 1904
he assisted Professor James Ward to found and to edit the British
Journal of Psychology, and in that year he also received an invitation
to deliver the Croonian Lectures in 1906 at the Royal College of Physi-
cians, of which in 1899 he had been elected a Fellow. The study of
drug effects had long interested him. In a paper on ‘ Experimental
Psychology in Relation to Insanity,’ read before the Medico-Psycho-
logical Society in 1895 (Lancet, vol. Ixxiii., p. 867), he had drawn the
attention of psychiatrists to the comparability of drug effects with the
early stages of mental disorders before they were seen by the physician.
And so, reverting to the work he had done under Krapelin many years

previously, he chose as his subject for the Croonian Lectures The-

Influence of Alcohol and other Drugs on Fatigue (Arnold, 1908). But
although he utilised Krapelin’s ergograph and many of Krapelin’s
methods, Rivers’s flair for discovering previous ‘ faulty methods of in-
vestigation ‘and his devotion to scientific methods and accuracy could
not fail to advance the subject. Of no one may it be more truly said
than of him,—nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. He felt instinctively that
many of the supposed effects of aleohol were really due to the suggestion,
interest, exciternent or sensory stimulation accompanying the taking of
the drug. Accordingly he disguised the drug, and prepared a control
mixture which was indistinguishable from it. On certain days the
drug mixture was taken, on other days the control mixture was taken,
the subject never knowing which he was drinking. Rivers engaged
Mr. H. N Webber as a subject who could devote himself to the investi-

ES

°
J.—PSYCHOLOGY, 7

gation so completely as to lead the necessarily uniform life while it was
being carried out. He found that the sudden cessation of all tea and
coffee necessary for the study of the effects of caffeine induced a loss
of energy, and that other mental disturbance might occur through giving
up all forms of alcoholic drink. Therefore most of his experiments
were carried out more than twelve months after the taking of these
drinks had been discontinued. Instead of recording a single ergograrm
Rivers took several sets of ergograms each day, each set consisting
usually of six ergograms taken at intervals of two minutes, and
separated from the next set by an interval of thirty or sixty minutes.
He arranged that the drug mixture or the control mixture should be
taken after obtaining the first,set of ergograms, which served as a
standard wherewith subsequent sets on the same day might be com-
pared. He worked with Mr. Webber on alcohol and caffeine, and
was followed by the similar work of Dr. P. C. V. Jones in 1908 on
strychnine, and of Dr. J. G. Slade in 1909 on Liebig extract.

With these vast improvements in method Rivers failed to confirm
the conclusions of nearly all earlier investigators on the effects of from
5 to 20 c.c. of absolute alcohol on muscular work. His results with
these doses, alike for muscular and mental work, were mainly negative,
and indeed with larger doses (40 ¢.c.) were variable and inconclusive ;
although an equivalent quantity of whisky gave an immediate increase
of muscular work—a result which strongly suggests the influence of
sensory stimulation rather than the direct effect of the drug on the
central nervous system or on the muscular tissues. Rivers concluded
that alcohol may in some conditions favourably act on muscular work
by increasing pleasurable emotion and by dulling sensations of fatigue,
but that probably its most important effect is to depress higher control,
thus tending to increase muscular and to diminish mental efficiency.
Working with caffeine, Rivers also obtained effects much less pro-
nounced than those recorded by several earlier observers. He adduced
evidence to indicate that (like alcohol) caffeine has a double action on
muscular activity, the one immediately increasing the height of the
contractions obtained and persisting, the other producing an.initial slow,
transitory increase in the number of the contractions, and then a fall.
Following Kripelin, he suggested that the former action represents a
peripheral, the latter a central effect.

He also put forward novel suggestions as to the true course of the
fatigue curve, and laid stress on the importance of carrying out ergo-
graphic work by peripheral electrical stimulation. These views are
certain to bear fruit in the future. Indeed, it may be safely said that
no one can henceforth afford to investigate the effect of drugs on the
intact organism without first mastering Rivers’s work on the subject.

From the concluding passages of these Croonian lectures the fol-
lowing sentences may be aptly cited: ‘The branch of psychology in
which I am chiefly interested is that to which the name of individual
psychology is usually given. It is that branch of psychology which
deals with the differences in the mental constitutions of different peoples,
and by an extension of the term to the differences which characterise
the members of different races. . . . These experiments leave little doubt

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

that variations in. the actions of drugs on different persons may have their
basis in deep-seated physiological variations, and I believe that the
study of these variations of susceptibility may do more than perhaps
any other line of work to enable us to understand the nature of tempera-
ment and the relation between the mental and physical characters which
form its two aspects.’

Riyers’s interests did not le in the collection of masses of hetero-
geneous data, in obtaining blurred averages from vast numbers of
individuals, in concocting mathematical devices, or in applying mathe-

matical formule to the numerical data thus accumulated; they lay ~

throughout his varied career in studying and analysing individual mental
differences, in getting to know the individual in his relation to his
environment. In ordinary circumstances, as he later said, ‘ There is
too little scope for the variations of conditions which is the essence of
experiment. . . . While the experimental method as applied to-the
normal adult has borne little fruit, it would be difficult to rate too
highly the importance of experiment in discovering and testing methods
to be used in other lines of psychological inquiry where a wider variation
of conditions is present ’ (Brit. J. of Psychol., vol. x., p. 185).

It was the importance of studying the play of the most variable
conditions that led Rivers to investigate, as we have seen, first racial

mental differences, then the differences produced in a given individual —

by nerve section, and finally those produced in different individuals by

different drugs. Throughout his life he was steadfast to the biological _

standpoint, correlating the psychological with the physiological, and
hoping to discover different mental levels corresponding to different
neural levels.

And so we approach the last phase of Rivers’s psychological work,
the outcome of his war experiences. In 1907 he had given up his
University teaching in experimental psychology ; for six years before the
war he had published nothing of psy chological or phy siological interest.
This was a period in which’ Rivers devoted himself wholly to the
ethnology and sociology of primitive peoples. The outbreak of war
found him for the phen time visiting Melanesia for ethnological field
work. Failing at first to get war w ork on his return to England, Rivers
set himself to prepare the Fitzpatrick Lectures on ‘ Medicine, Magic
- and Religion,’ which he had been invited to deliver to the Royal College
of Physicians of Londen in 1915 and 1916. In 1915 his psychological
and ethnological researches were recognised by the award to him of a
Royal Medal by the Royal Society, of which he had been elected a
Fellow in 1908. In July 1915 he went as medical officer to the Maghull
War Hospital, near Liverpool, and in 1916 to the Craiglockhart War
Hospital, Edinburgh, receiving a commission in the R.A.M.C. In
these hospitals he began the work on the psychoneuroses that led him
to his studies of the unconscious and of dreams, which resulted in
his well-known book, Instinct and the Unconscious, published first in
1920 (already in a second edition), and in a practically completed volume
on Conflict and Dream, which is to be published posthumously. From
1917 he acted as consulting psychologist to the Royal Air Force, being
attached to the Central Hospital at Hampstead.

5 .
J.—PSYCHOLOGY. . <9

This period not merely marks a new phase in Rivers’s work, but
is also characterised by a distinct change in his personality and writings.
In entering the Army and in investigating the psychoneuroses he was
fulfilling the desires of his youth. Whether through the realisation of
such long-discarded or suppressed wishes, or through other causes, e.g.
the gratified desire of an opportunity for more sympathetic insight into
the mental life of his fellows, he became another and a far happier
man. Diffidence gave place to confidence, hesitation to certainty,
reticence to outspokenness, a somewhat laboured literary style to one
remarkable for its ease and charm, Over forty publications can be
traced to these years, between 1916 and the date of his death. It
was a period in which his genius was released from its former shackles,
in which intuition was less controlled by intellectual doubt, in which
inspiration brought with it the usual accompaniment of emotional con-
viction—even an occasional impatience with those who failed to accept
his point of view. But his honest, generous character remained
unchanged to the last. Ever willing to devote himself unsparingly to a
cause he believed right, or to give of his best to help a fellow-being
in mental distress, he worked with an indomitable self-denying energy,
won the gratitude and affection of numberless nerve-shattered soldier-

_ patients, whom he treated with unsurpassed judgment and success, and

‘attracted all kinds of people to this new aspect of psychology.

Painters, poets, authors, artisans, all came to recognise the value of
his work, to seek, to win, and to appreciate his sympathy and his
friendship. It was characteristic of his thoroughness that while
attached to the Royal Air Force he took numerous flights, ‘ looping the
loop’ and performing other trying evolutions in the air, so that he

might gain adequate experience of flying and be able to treat his

patients and to test candidates satisfactorily. He had the courage to
defend much of Freud’s new teaching at a time when it was carelessly
condemned in toto by those in authority who were too ignorant or too

incompetent to form any just opinion of its undoubted merits and

undoubted defects. He was prepared to admit the importance of the
conflict of social factors with the sexual instincts in certain psycho-
neuroses of civil life, but in the psychoneuroses of warfare and of
occupations like mining he believed that the conflicting instincts were
not sexual, but were the danger instincts, related to the instinct of
self-preservation.

Thus in the best sense of the term Rivers became a man of the
world and no longer a man of the laboratory and of the study. He
found time to serve on the Medical Research Council’s Air Medical
Investigation Committee, on its Mental Disorders Committee, on its
Miners’ Nystagmus Committee, and on the Psychological Committee
of its Industrial Fatigue Research Board. He served on a committee,
of ecclesiastical complexion, appointed to inquire into the new psycho-

_ therapy, and he had many close friends among the missionaries, to whom
he gave and from whom he received assistance in the social and

ethnological side of their work.
In 1919, in which year he received honorary degrees from the

Universities of St. Andrews and Manchester, he returned to Cambridge

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

as Prelector in Natural Sciences at St. John’s College, and began
immediately to exercise a wonderful influence over the younger members
of the University by his fascinating lectures, his ‘ Sunday evenings,’
and above all by his ever-ready interest and sympathy. As he himself
wrote, after the war work ‘ which brought me into contact with the
real problems of life... I felt that it was impossible for me fo
return to my life of detachment.’ And when a few months before his
death he was invited by the Labour Party to a still more public sphere
of work, viz., to become a Parliamentary candidate representing the
University of London, once again he gave himself unsparingly. He
wrote at the time: ‘To one whose life has been passed in scientific
research and education the prospect of entering practical politics can be
no light matter. But the times are so ominous, the outlook both for
our own country and the world so black, that if others think I can
be of service in political life I cannot refuse.’ On several occasions
subsequently he addressed interested London audiences, consisting
largely of his supporters, on the relations between Psychology .and
Politics. It was one of these very lectures—on the Herd Instinct—at
which it happened that I took the chair, which was to have formed
the basis of his Presidential Address to you here to-day.

Rivers’s views on the so-called herd instinct were the natural outcome
of those which he had put forward during the preceding five years and
collected together in his Instinct and the Unconscious. His aim in
writing this book was, as he says, ‘ to provide a biological theory for
the psychoneuroses,’ to view the psychological from the physiological
standpoint. He maintained that an exact correspondence holds
between the inhibition of the physiologist and the repression of the
psychologist. He regarded mental disorders as mainly dependent on
the coming to the surface of older activities which had been previously
controlled or suppressed by the later products of evolution. Here
Rivers went beyond adopting Hughlings Jackson’s celébrated explana-
tion of the phenomena of nervous diseases as arising largely from the
release of lower-level activities from higher-level controls. He further
supposed that these lower-level activities represent earlier racial
activities held more or less in abeyance by activities later acquired.
This conception he derived from his work with Henry Head on
cutaneous sensibility. Rivers could see but ‘ two chief possibilities ’
of interpreting the phenomena disclosed in the study of Head’s arm.
Either epicritic sensibility is protopathic sensibility in greater per-
fection, or else protopathic sensibility and epicritic sensibility represent
two distinct stages in the development of the nervous system. Failing
to see any other explanation, he adopted the second of these alternatives.
He supposed that at some period of evolution, when epicritic sensibility,
with its generally surface distribution, its high degree of discrimination,
and its power of accurate localisation, made its appearance, the
previously existing protopathic sensibility, with its punctate distribution,
its ‘ all-or-nothing’ character, and its broad radiating localisation,
became in part inhibited or ‘ suppressed,’ in part blended or ‘ fused ’
with the newly acquired sensibility so as to form a useful product.
He supposed that the suppressed portion persisted in a condition of

-
J.—PSYCHOLOGY, 11

unconscious existence, and he emphasised the biological importance cf
suppression, He considered at first that the pr otopathic sensibility ‘ has
all the characters we associate with instinct,’ whereas the later epicritic
sensibility has the characters of intelligence or reason. So he came to
hold that instinct ‘led the animal kingdom a certain distance in the
line of progress,’ whereupon ‘a new development began on different
lines,’ ‘ starting a new path, developing a new mechanism which
utilised such portions of the old as suited its purpose.’

Evolutio per saltus was thus the keynote of Rivers’s views on
mental development. Just as the experience of the caterpillar or
tadpole is for the most part suppressed in the experience cf the butterfly
or frog, so instinctive reactions tend to be suppressed in intelligent
experience whenever the immediate and unmodifiable nature of the one
becomes incompatible with the diametrically opposite characters of the
other. Just as parts of the protopathic fuse with the later acquired
epicritic sensibility, so parts of our early experience, of which other
parts are suppressed, fuse with later experience in affecting adult
character. ‘ Experience,’ he explained, ‘ becomes- unconscious because
instinct and intelligence run on different lines and are in many respects .
incompatible with one another.’

Rivers was compelled later to recognise ‘ epicritic ’’ characters in
certain instincts. He came to suppose that ‘ the instincts connected
with the needs of the individual’ and with the early preservation of
the race are mainly ‘of the protopathic kind,’ whereas the epicritic
group of instincts first appeared with the development of gregarious
life. He recognised the epicritic form of mental activity in the instincts
connected with the social life, especially of insects, and also in the
states of hypnosis and sleep. Finally, he doubted the validity of the
usual distinctions between instinct and intelligence.

Throughout his work on this wide subject Rivers endeavoured to
give a strict definition to words which had hitherto been ambiguously
or loosely used. He defined unconscious experience as that which
is incapable of being brought into the field of consciousness save under
such special conditions as ‘ sleep, hypnosis, the method of free associa-
tion and certain pathological states.’ He defined repression as the
self-active, ‘ witting’ expulsion of experience from consciousness, and
suppression as the ‘ unwitting’ process by which experience becomes
unconscious. Thus suppression may occur without repression. When

one refuses to consider an alternative path of action, one represses it;

when a memory becomes ‘of itself’ inaccessible to recall, it is
suppressed. When such a suppressed experience acquires an inde-
pendent activity which carries with it an independent consciousness, it
undergoes, according to Rivers’s usage of the term, dissociation. Thus
suppression may occur without dissociation. In its most perfect form,
according to Rivers, suppression is illustrated by the instinct of
immobility which forms one of the reactions to danger; the fugue (as
also somnambulism) is ‘a typical and characteristic instance of
dissociation.’

From his point of view Rivers was naturally led, wherever possible,
to interpret abnormal mental conditions in terms of regression to more

~!

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

primitive, hitherto suppressed activities. He held that the hysterias

are essentially ‘ substitution neuroses,’ connected with and modified by —

the gregarious instincts, and are primarily due to a regression to the
primitive instinctive danger reaction of immobility, greatly modified by
suggestion. So, too, he held that the anxiety neuroses, which are for
him essentially ‘ repression neuroses,’ also show regression, though less
complete, in the strength and frequency of emotional reaction, in the
failure during states of phantasy to appreciate reality, in the reversion
to the nightmares, and especially the terrifying animal dreams, charac-
teristic of childhood, in the occurence of compulsory acts, in the desire
for solitude, &c. Indeed, because he believed that suppression is
especially apt to occur, and to be relatively or absolutely perfect, in
infancy, Rivers suggested that the independent activity of suppressed
experience and the process of dissociation, as exemplified in fugues,
complexes, &c., are themselves examples of regression.

He criticised Freud’s conception of the censorship, substituting
in place of that anthropomorphically-coloured sociological parallel the
physiological and .non-teleological conception of regression. He
supposed the mimetic, fantastic, and symbolic forms in which hysterias
and dreams manifest themselves to be natural to the infantile stages
of human development, individual or collective. For him they were
examples of regression to low-level characters, and not, as Freud
supposes, ascribable to compromise formations to elude the vigilance
of an all-protective censor. He regarded nightmares.and war-dreams
as examples of infantile states. He believed the absence of affect in
many normal dreams to be natural to the infantile attitude, which
would treat the situation in question with indifference. That absence
of affect also arises from the harmless symbolic solution of the conflict.
The affect of dreams is only painful, Rivers supposed, when they fail
to provide a solution of the conflict, and is not due, as Freud holds, to the
activity of the censor. In the social behaviour: of primitive com-
munities Rivers was able to find striking analogies to the characteristics
of dreams, as described by Freud.

On the protopathic side he ranged the primitive instincts and
emotions, and the complexes, together with the activities of the optic
thalamus, and on the epicritic side intelligence and the sentiments,
together with the activities of the cerebral cortex. We are now in a

position to examine Rivers’s treatment of the gregarious behaviour of ~

animal and human life, on which he was still engaged at the time
cf his death. In the gregarious instinct he recognised a cognitive
aspect which he termed ‘ intuition,’ an affective aspect which he termed
‘sympathy,’ and a motor aspect which he termed ‘ mimesis.’ He
used ‘ mimesis ’ for the process of imitation so far as it was unwitting,
‘Sympathy’ he regarded as always unwitting. ‘ Intuition’ he defined
as the process whereby one person is unwittingly influenced by
another’s cognitive activity. But I feel sure that the term
‘unwittingly’ is not to be’ considered here as equivalent to
‘telepathically.’ All that Rivers meant was that the person is
influenced by certain stimuli without appreciating their nature and
meaning. "He preferred to employ the term ‘ suggestion’ as covering

4 ;
J. PSYCHOLOGY. 13

all the processes by which one mind acts on or is acted on by another
unwittingly. He supposed that in the course of mental evolution
epicritic characters displaced the early protopathic characters of
instinctive behaviour owing to the incidence of gregarious life,
_ especially among insects, and owing to the appearance and development
of intelligence, especially in man. The suggestion inherent in gre-
garious behaviour implies some graduation of mental and bodily activity
—an instinctive and unwitting discrimination distinct from the witting
discrimination of intelligence. Suggestion, in primitive gregarious
behaviour, as also in the dissociated state of hypnosis, and in its allied
form, ordinary sleep, is prevented if witting processes be active; it ‘ is
a process of the unconscious,’ said Rivers. Both within the herd and
during hypnosis, which he believed to be fundamentally of a collective
nature, sensibility is heightened, so that the organism may be able
to react to minute and almost imperceptible stimuli. Were he here
to-day Rivers would have carried this conception of the evolution of
gregarious life still further by distinguishing between the more lowly
leaderless herd and the herd which has acquired a definite leader. He
would have traced the development of the new affect of submission
and of the new behaviour of obedience to the leader, and he would
doubtless have accredited the leader with the higher affects of superiority
and felt prestige, with the higher cognition that comes of intuitive
foresight, and with the higher behaviour of intuitive adaptation,
initiative, and command. I expect, too, that he would have sketched
the development of still later forms of social activity, complicated by
the interaction and combination of intellectual and instinctive processes
—the witting deliberations and decisions on the part of the leader, and
the intellectual understanding of the reasons for their confidence in ‘him
and for their appropriate behaviour on the part of those who are led.
But it would be idle further to speculate on the ideas of which we
have been robbed by Rivers’s untimely death. Let us rather console
ourselves with the vast amount of valuable and suggestive material
which he has left behind and with the stimulating memories of one
who, despite the fact that his health was never robust, devoted himself
unsparingly to scientific work and to the claims of any deserving human
beings or of any deserving humane cause that were made upon him.
There are, no doubt, some who believe that Rivers’s earlier experimental
psychological work—on vision, on the effects of drugs, and on cutaneous
sensibility—is likely to be more lasting than his later speculations on the
nature of instinct, the unconscious, dreams, and the psychoneuroses. No
one can doubt the scientific permanence of his investigations in the
laboratory or in-the field; they are a standing monument to us of
thoroughness and accuracy combined with criticism and genius. But
even those who hesitate to suppose that at some definite period in mental
evolution intelligence suddenly made its appearance and was grafted on
to instinct, or that epicritic sensibility was suddenly added to a mental
life which had before enjoyed only protopathic sensibility—even those
who may not see eye to eye with Rivers on these and other fundamental
views on which much of his later work rested, will be foremost in
recognising the extraordinarily stimulating, suggestive, and fruitful

14 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES,

character of all that he poured forth with such astounding speed and
profusion during the closing years of his life. And above all we mourn
a teacher who was not merely a man of science devoted to abstract
problems, but who realised the value of and took a keen delight in
applying the knowledge gained in his special subject to more real and
living problems of a more concrete, practical, everyday character.
Rivers’s careful methods of investigating cutaneous sensibility and the
rationale of his successful treatment of the psychoneuroses were directly
due to his psychological training. So, too, his epoch-making discoveries
and his views in the field of anthropology on the spread and conflict of
cultures were largely due to the application of that training. Shortly
before his death he was developing, as a committee member of the
Industrial Fatigue Research Board, an intense interest in that youngest
application of psychology, viz., to the improvement of human conditions
in industrial and commercial work by the methods of experimental
psychology applied to fatigue study, motion study, and vocational
selection.

Unhappily, men of such wide sympathies and understanding as

Rivers, combined with a devotion to scientific work, are rare. He
himself recognised that ‘ specialisation has . . . in recent years reached
such a pitch that it has become a serious evil. There is even a

tendency,’ he rightly said, ‘ to regard with suspicion one who betrays
the possession of knowledge or attainments outside a narrow circle of
interests’ (Brit. J. of Psychol., vol. x., p. 184). Let his life, his
wisdom, his wide interests, sympathies and attainments, and the
generosity and honesty of his character, be an example to us in the
common object of our meeting this week—the Advancement of Science.

o

SECTION K.—BOTANY.

TRANSPORT OF ORGANIC SUBSTANCES
IN PLANTS.

ADDRESS BY

Proressor H. H. DIXON, Sc.D., F.R.S.
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Puant physiologists have not paid the attention to the transport of
organic substances which the importance of the subject appears to
deserve. The ascent of water in high trees in defiance of gravity strikes
the casual observer and forces him to speculation as to how it is
contrived; but the problem of the transmission of organic substances
throughout plants only forces itself on those who are more or less
conversant with some of the leading facts of vegetable physiology.

Among physiologists the usually accepted view is that organic sub-
stances are distributed throughout the plant by means of the bast.
The wood also acts as a channel of distribution for these substances
to opening buds and developing leaves, especially in spring when root-
pressure is active. The sap of bleeding contains appreciable quantities
of these substances, and their distribution to the developing buds in
spring by means of the wood was recognised by Hartig and Sachs.
Fischer showed that even in summer many woody plants contain
reducing sugars in their wood. The sugar content of the wood is at
a maximum in spring, diminishes in summer, and is at a minimum in
winter; at the end of February it rises rapidly. There is a second
crest on the curve at leaf-fall. Dr. Atkins and myself extended
Fischer’s observations, and showed that appreciable quantities of
soluble carbohydrates, sucrose, hexoses, and even maltose, are found
in the trachee of the stems and roots of many trees at all seasons of
the year. Being in the trachee they must be carried from the lower
parts to the upper growing regions, including the cambium of the stem.
Samples drawn from different levels during the spring were found to
have a greater concentration at higher levels. The inflow of water
below, and consequent dilution, is probably largely responsible for this
difference. Towards the end of the season there is no marked difference.

This upward transport of carbohydrates in the trachew seems to be
accompanied with smaller amounts of proteins. Thus Schroeder
showed that the quantity of proteins in the bleeding sap rises and falls
with the quantity of sugar.

This view that the rising current in the trachee carries organic
substances in it and distributes them to the growing regions has lately
_ been impugned. It was pointed out that in many cases ringing close
below the terminal bud prevents the development of that bud because

Britisu Association : Hull, 1922.] K

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

the wood is unable to transmit. sufficient supplies of organic substance.
As Strasburger has already pointed out, this interpretation rests upon
the fallacy of supposing that the removal of the bark as far as the
cambium leaves the wood uninjured. As a matter of fact, microscopic
examination of the wood, from which the outer tissues have been
stripped, shows that its tr achew soon become blocked with air-bubbles
and with substances probably exuded into them and their walls during
morbid changes in the cells of the cambium, in the cells of the medullary
rays, and in those of the wood-parenchyma. The blocking is accom-
panied with discoloration, and is most apparent in the outer layers
of the wood. It is only reasonable to suppose that the efficiency of
the tracheze as channels of transmission is seriously impaired even
before there is visible evidence of plugging.

It is evident that this clogging may act differentially on the water
and the substances it carries in it. In the first place, the whole cross-
section of the wood is available for the transport of water, while
probably the outer layers are mainly utilised by the organic substances.
Further, colloidal deposits in the walls, and especially in the pit-
membranes, would obstruct the passage of organic substances much
more than they would the water which carries them. These considera-
tions readily explain how it is that, while the water-supply to the buds
of ringed branches is adequate, the supply of organic substance may
be deficient.

Apart, then, from the very slow movement of organic substances
from cell to cell, there is very cogent evidence that their upward motion
is effected in the trachee of the wood. ‘There is no reason to believe
that during this transport the walls or pit-membranes of these trachéee
oppose the passage of the dissolved carbohydrates or of the simpler
proteins any more than the water which conveys them. Hence the
velocity of transport of these organic substances is that of the transpira-
tion current, and the amount conveyed i in a’given time depends on the
velocity and ‘concentration of the stream.

The transport of organic substances in an upward direction in plants
is secondary, for, as is well known, carbohydrates certainly, and pro-
teins most probably, are manufactured only in the upper green parts of
plants—principally in the leaves, and must be transported in the first
instance back from these to the stems to be distributed to the growing
regions and to the storage organs.

It is almost universally held that the channel for this backward or
downward motion of organic substances from the assimilating organs
is the bast of the conducting tracts. The orthodox position is summed
up by Strasburger as follows: In woody plants the carbohydrates manu-
factured by the leaves pass downwards in the bast. Movements of
carbohydrates in the opposite direction in this tissue only take place if
they are occasioned by local consumption. From the bast the carbo-
hydrates spread into the medullary rays and wood-parenchyma, and in
young branches fill these tissues and more or less of the pith. A down-
ward movement in the wood-parenchyma, such as was formerly held,
does not take place, and in those conifers in which there is no con-
tinuous wood-parenchyma is anatomically impossible. In spring and

- -
K.—BOTANY. 3

also during Summer-growth an upward transport of carbohydrates in
the water tracts occurs.

This view that the channel for the backward and downward move-
ment of organic substances is afforded by the bast received great sup-
port from Czapek’s work published in 1897. By section of the con-
ducting tracts in one half of the petiole he showed that depletion of
the corresponding half of the blade was delayed. He also showed
that only where vertical bridges connected the upper and lower portions
of bark in ringed stems were the effects of ringing nullified. Oblique
and zigzag bridges are ineffective. Thus transverse conyeyance in the
stem is negligible. The parallel and longitudinal arrangement of the
elongated elements in the bast seemed to him to provide adequately for
the observed longitudinal passage. Their narrowness and large colloid
content did not present themselves as difficulties.

He also recorded the observation that the blades of leaves, the
petioles of which had been killed by jacketing them with steam, did
not become emptied of starch. Similarly, when the petioles were killed
with chloroform-vapour, depletion was arrested. Again, anesthetisa-
tion of the petiole, by surrounding it with a watery solution of chloro-
form, greatly delayed the disappearance of starch. On the other hand,
depletion was not obstructed when the petiole was immersed in a 5 per
cent. solution of potassium nitrate. From this last observation he con-
cluded that plasmolysis of the translocating elements does not interfere
with their function as channels of transport.

Czapek formed no definite theory as to how organic substances were
moved in the bast. He was sure that the transport depends on living
protcplasm. He did not consider that the streaming of protoplasm
contributed materially to the motion, seeing that streaming does not
occur in mature sieve-tubes. He regarded the sieve-tubes as the most
important elements in the transmission of these substances, because the
deposition of callus in the sieve-plates synchronises with the stoppage
of transport. The transport, according to him, is not simply due to
diffusion. He supposed the protoplasm to take up the organic sub-
stances and pass them on. [If diffusion does not account for the passage
from one particle of protoplasm to the next, it would seem that we
must suppose the organic substance to be projected from one to the
other.

These observations and their interpretation by Czapek have
strengthened the opinion that the bast is the channel for the downward
transport of organic substances. It is remarkable how little weight has
been attached to the damaging criticism of Czapek’s views by Deleano,
especially as those views are so unsatisfactory fromm a physical stand-
point.

The latter author showed that it is inadmissible to compare externally
similar leaves, which often behave, so far as depletion is concerned,
very dissimilarly. He also pointed out that without any export a
leaf may be depleted of all its starch within thirty-five hours, and
partially anticipated an extremely interesting recent observation of
~ Molisch—namely, that transpiring leaves lose their carbohydrates much

more rapidly than those whose transpiration is checked by being sur-
K2

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

rounded with a saturated atmosphere. Neglect of these facts led Czapek
into error. Deleano also showed that organic substances continue to
leave the blades even after the petioles have been killed by heat or by
chloroform-vapour. The rate of depletion is reduced by the former
agent to about one-third, and by the latter to one-half. If this observa-
tion is substantiated it would show that the intervention of living
elements is not essential for the transport. He further found that the
blades attached to petioles which were surrounded by chloroform-water
Jost their starch more quickly than those immersed in water.

The contradictory conclusions of Czapek and Deleano urgently call
for a reinvestigation of the points at issue. It is not enough to assume,
as Schroeder does, a completely sceptical attitude towards the latter
investigator’s account of his experiments. If Czapek’s work holds good,
we will have to regard the bast, and especially the sieve-tubes, as the
channels for the transport of organic substances back from the leaf-
blades where they are manufactured, and we must look for some hitherto
undreamed-of method of transmission through these most unlikely-
looking conduits. On the other hand, if Deleano’s conclusions are
borne out, we should admit that protoplasm is not necessary for the
transport, and we would turn to a dead tissue as furnishing this channel.

So far as I am aware none of the earlier investigators made any
estimate either of the actual quantities of organic materia] which are
transported or of the velocities of flow in the channels which are
necessary to effect this transport.

We may approach this problem from two opposite directions—(1) by
dealing with the amount of organic substance accumulated in a given
time in a storage organ, or (2) by using the amount exported from an
assimilating organ. The cross-section of the supposed channels of
transport and the volume of the solution containing the substances in
each case will give us the other necessary data.

For the first method a potato-tuber will furnish an example. One
weighing 210g. was found attached to the base of a plant by a slender
branch about 0.16cm. in diameter. In this branch the bast had a
total cross-section of 0.0042cm.*. This figure is a maximum; no
allowance was made for the cross-section of the cell-walls, or for any
non-functional elements in the bast. The cell-walls would occupy
probably one-fifth of the cross-section of the bast. Now if the bast
exclusively furnished the channel of downward transport, all the
organic substance in the potato must have passed this cross-section
during the time oceupied in the growth of the potato. One hundred
days would be a liberal allowance. According to analyses more than
24 per cent. by weight of the potato is combustible. Therefore we must
assume that during this time more than 50g. of carbohydrate has
passed down a conduit having a cross-section of no more than
().0042cem.?.. The average concentration of the solution carrying this
substance could scarcely have been as much as 10 per cent. (2.5-5 per
cent. would be more probable. The concentration of sugar
in bleeding sap is much below this figure, and seems never to reach
4 per cent.). Assuming, however, this concentration, the volume of
liquid conveying 50g. must have been 500cm.*, and this quantity must

oe

-
K.—BOTANY, 5

have passed in 100 days. ‘Therefore the average velocity of flow through
this conduit, having a cross-section of 0.0042cm.?, must have been

500 ita a ‘ly 50¢ ay | .
0.0042 x 100 x a4 ,; '€. near \ JUCIN, pet mur.

By the second method we arrive at a different figure. Various
investigators, from Sachs onwards, have measured the rate of photo-
synthesis per square metre of leaf per hour. Under the most favour-
able conditions the amount may approach 2g., and it has been esti-
mated as low as 0.5g. Taking Brown and Morris’ determination for
Tropeolum majus, viz., 1g. per square metre per hour, and assuming
one-third of the carbohydrate formed is used in respiration in the leaf,
we find that a leaf of 46cm.* may form during ten hours’ sunshine
0.46g. ; during the twenty-four hours one-third of this will be respired,
leaving 0.3lg. to be transported from the leaf. The volume of the
solution (again assuming a concentration of 10 per cent.) will be
3.10em.*. The cross-section of the bast of the bundles in the petiole
was 0.0009cm.*, therefore the velocity of flow, if the bast was used as

3.10
0-0009 x 24

the channel of transport, must have been or 140cm. per

hour. ;

Similar figures to these were derived using measurements obtained
from a number of potato-tubers and from various leaves. The veloci-
ties indicated, even assuming a concentration of 10 per cent., lay in
all cases between 20cm. and 140cm. per hour. These figures are in
agreement with those arrived at by Luise Birch-Hirschfeld, as to the
weight of organic material transported from leaves.

A flow of this rate through the bast seems quite impossible. The
narrow transverse section of its elements, the frequent occurrence of
transverse walls, and the lining of protoplasm and large protein contents

ractically preclude the mass movement of liquid through this -tissue.
ii we imagine the flow restricted to the sieve-tubes the velocity must
be correspondingly increased, and the-excessively fine sieve-pores, more
or less completely occupied by colloidal proteins, must be reckoned
with. Simple diffusion, as Czapek recognised, cannot account for the
transport, and there is no reason to suppose that adsorption on the sur-
faces of the colloid contents of the sieve-tubes can increase the velocity
of diffusion, as Manghan suggests.

As soon as one realises the volume of the solution which has to
be transported, and the velocity of the flow that this necessitates, one
naturally turns to consider if the open capillary tubes of the wood may
not be utilised as channels of transport. -Deleano’s results, indicating
that the depletion of leaves continues even after the living elements of
their petioles have been killed. support this conjecture.

The emphasis which has been laid on the function of the wood
as providing a channel for the upward movement of water usually
obscures its function as a downward and backward channel also. Early
experimenters, however, fully recognised that,. under certain conditions,
the current in the wood may be reversed. Thus Hales quotes several
experiments of his own proving this point, and states that some of his

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

were but repetitions of Perault’s earlier work. In these experiments
Hales showed that water applied at the top of a branch, which is
severed from the tree, is drawn back into the branch and supplies its
leaves, and makes good their transpiration losses. A tree inarched into
two adjacent trees may continue to grow even after its connection with
the ground is severed, drawing its supplies from its neighbours. Finally,
a forked branch removed from a tree will remain fresh, and continue to
transpire water for many days if one limb of the fork with its leaves
is immersed in water. There is, of course, recent work also showing
this reversed current.

By means of an eosin solution this reversal of the transpiration
current may be very easily demonstrated. If the tip of a leaf of a
growing potato-plant is cut under eosin solution, the coloured solution
is very quickly drawn back into the tracheze of the conducting tracts
of the leaf; from there it passes into those of the petiole, and makes
its way not only into the upper branches and leaves, but also passing
down the supporting stem may completely inject the trachee of the
tuber, and from thence pass up into the wood of the remaining haulms
of the plant. Its passage is entirely in the trachee of the wood of the
conducting tracts.

Another very striking experiment may be carried out with the
“imparipinnate leaf of Sambucus nigra. Its petiole is split longitudinally
for a few centimetres and half removed. The remaining half is set in
a solution of eosin. The solution is rapidly drawn up .the wood-capil-
laries of the intact half-petiole, and soon appears in the veins of the
pinnge on the same side of the leaf, beginning with the lowest, and
gradually working up into the upper ones. Finally it appears in the
terminal pinna. All this while the veins of the pinne on the other
side remain uncoloured. Now, however, the eosin begins to debouch
into the base of the uppermost of these pinne and spreads through its
veins; finally it makes its way down the offside of the rachis to the
bases of the lower pinne, and from thence spreads into their veins.
In this case we see very clearly how transpiration actuates an upward
current on one side and a downward current on the other. It is
interesting to note that if the terminal pinna and its stalk is removed
the eosin does not appear in the pinne of the second side, or only
after a considerable time when the small anastomosing conducting
tracts are utilised.

Luise Birch-Hirschfeld recently also describes many experiments
with herbaceous and woody plants, tracing the path of the reversed
current by means of lithium nitrate and eosin,

In all these cases the tension of the sap determines the flow from
a source wherever situated, and transpiration from the leaves, or parts
of leaves, which are not supplied with liquid water from without draws
the water through the plant along the channels of least resistance. ~
Hence it is that if the cut vein of a lateral pinna provides the point of
entry, the solution may pass backwards in some of the conducting
trachee, leaving others quite uncoloured, so that some of the veins only
of the pinna are injected. The injected tracts bring the solution down
the rachis and petiole into the stem, while a few or many, as the case

.
K,—BOTANY, 7

may be, remain filled with colourless liquid, presumably the sap drawn
upward to supply the transpiring surfaces of the leaf. Generally the
coloured liquid descends an appreciable distance in the trachew of the
stem before it begins to rise in the ascending current, mounting to other
transpiring leaves. A's a rule after some time—depending on the rate
of transpiration and the amount of water supplied by the roots—the
presence of the coloured liquid may be demonstrated in certain con-
tinuous series, or filaments of trachez in several bundles of the lower
parts of the stems. Similarly, if tubers or rhizomes are present ex-
amination of these parts, after a suitable interval, will show that many
of their filaments of trachew are injected. Meanwhile the parts above
the supplying leaf become coloured, and it will be seen that the distribu-
tion of coloured trachee is decided by the anatomical connections of
those filaments of trachee which directly convey the coloured liquid
from the point of supply through the petiole to the stem. In tracing
the path of the solution one is impressed with the fact that the path
of least resistance is by no means always the shortest path in the wood.
Transverse motion across several trachezw seldom occurs, and the
separate linear series of conducting trachee are practically isolated from
each other laterally. Here we may recall Strasburger’s experiments
showing the very great resistance offered to the flow of water in a
transverse direction in the wood of trees. This isolation of the separate
filaments of trachee in the leaf and in the stem enables the tension
developed by the transpiring cells of the leaves, while it raises a column
of water in one series of trachew, to draw down a solution in a neigh-
bouring filament of tracheze terminating above in some local supply. If
the anatomical connection of the two series is located in a subterranean
organ the trachez of the subterranean organ may become filled from
that supply. ;

So far the evidence of reversed flow in the water-conducting tracts
which we have been considering has been derived from plants under
artificial conditions—plants whose conducting tracts have been cut into
and otherwise interfered with. Is there any evidence that reversal of
the transpiration-current normally occurs in uninjured plants?

Some recent work on the transmission of stimuli seems to me to
indicate that these reversals are continually occurring in normally
growing plants.

The first piece of work to which [ would direct your attention is that
of Ricca on Mimosa. It has long been known that the stimulus which
causes the folding of the pinnules and the bending of the petioles of
Mimosa could traverse portions of the petioles or stems which had
been raised to such a temperature as would kill the living elements in
these organs. Notwithstanding that observation, Haberlandt’s view,
that the stimulus is transmitted as a wave of pressure through certain
tubular elements of the bast, was generally accepted as the least objec-
tionable of any of the theories which had been put forward to explain this
transmission. Ricca saw that, among other difficulties, the slowness
of transmission—never more than 15mm. per second—was a grave
objection to this view. Accordingly working with a woody species of
Mimosa—Mimosa Spegazzinti—he removed the whole bast and outer

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

tissues of the stem for many centimetres—yviz., twenty-three—and was
able to show that the stimulus was still transmitted. Similarly he
found that the stimulus was transmitted through narrow strips of the
wood from which even the pith had been removed. These experiments
and others in which the transmitting organ had been killed for a con-
siderable length caused Ricca to recognise that the stimulus is trans-
mitted in the wood and not in the bast, as had been previously held.
Thus he was led to assign the transmission to the transpiration-current.
He was able to confirm this conjecture by showing that the transmission
to the various leaves of a plant is largely controlled by the rate of
the transpiration from the individual leaves. Thus, other things being
equal, a rapidly transpiring leaf receives the stimulus sooner than a
sluggishly transpiring one equidistant from the point of stimulation.
He further was able to show that the stimulus: may be transmitted
through a glass tube filled with water, just as it is transmitted through
a dead portion of the stem. Evidently a hormone set free into the
transpiration-stream is the long-sought-for mechanism by which the
stimulus is transmitted throughout Mimosa.

As the stimulus travels both in a basipetal and acropetal direction
we may assume that movement of the transpiration-stream in a down-
ward direction is of normal occurrence in plants. .

Contemporaneously with, and subsequently to, Ricca’s important
work on Mimosa, experimental evidence has been accumulating to indi-
cate that the transmission of other stimuli—viz., phototropic, trauma-
totropic, thigmotropic, and geotropic—is effected by means of the passage
of a dissolved substance. | Boysen-Jensen appears to have been the
first to announce that phototropic and geotropic stimuli may be trans-
mitted across protoplasmic discontinuities. Pail emphasised this by
showing that these stimuli are able to pass a disc of the tissue of
Arundo donax impregnated with gelatine, which is interposed between
the receptive and responding regions. ‘These observations rendered the
view that the stimulus is transmitted in the form of a hormone extremely
probable; and later Stark showed that this hormone is thermostable,
just as Ricea had done in the case of the hormone of Mimosa. Another
very interesting point discovered by Stark—working with traumatic
stimuli—is that the hormones are to a certain extent specific. Thus
if the perceptive tip of a seedling is removed from one plant and affixed
in position on another, the certainty of the response depends on the
genetic affinity of the two plants.

In all these cases it seems certain that the perceptive tissues are
the point of origin, when stimulated, of a dissolved substance, the hor-
mone, which makes its way to the motile tissues and releases the
response.

In the case of Mimosa just alluded to, and of the labellum of Masde-
vallia examined by Oliver, there is direct evidence that the transmission
of the hormone is effected by the vascular bundles. In Mimosa the
channels are more precisely localised as being the trachez of the wood.
Furthermore, the rapidity of transmission renders it certain that simple
diffusion through the tissues of the plant will not account for the pro-
cess. Some recorded velocities of transmission are here enumerated
for the sake of comparison :—

K.—BOTANY. 9)
Plant Nature of Stimulus Transmission Time

in secs. per mm.

Mimosa Heat 0.07

Drosera Chemical 6.00
Seedling Light 180-300
re Gravity 300
Tendril Contact | L7
° Diffusion in tissue . ; . ° f 2250-3600

There is thus every reason to believe that the transmission of stimuli
generally through the tissues of the higher plants is effected by the
conveyance of a hormone in the wood of the vascular bundles from the
receptive to the motile regions, and whenever this transmission is in a
downward direction evidence is afforded of the downward movement
of water in the trache. It is reasonable to suppose that this downward
current is able to carry organic foodstuffs as well as hormones.

Thus the evidence for the existence of a backward flow of water in
the tracheze of wood, in addition to the more obvious upward stream,
is convincing. With regard, however, to the mechanism by which the
backward stream is supplied we have but scant information,

The volume-changes of leaves which Thoday has recorded are
suggestive in this connection. These changes he found of various
magnitudes, occurring simultaneously in different or in the same leaves.
They may cause a linear contraction amounting to 2.5 per cent. in
ten minutes, and may produce a volume contraction of 7 per cent. in
the same time. The water corresponding to this volume-change in the
cells of the leaf if transmitted into the trachese would produce a con-
siderable downward displacement, as may be seen from the following
figures :—

Volume of 1 per ‘Cross-section of Downward

Name of Plant cent. contraction trachee in movement |

in mm, petiole in mm?. | in em.
Aucuba japonica ... oe 22.8 0,05 45.6

Solanum tuberosum oa 28.0 0.07 40.0

Syringa vulgaris ... Eo 42.15 0.013 16.5 |

Acer macrophyllum 5 42.2 0.22 19.2

If these changes in volume are caused by, or accompanied with, a
development of permeability of the contracting cells, evidently a back-
ward movement of organic substance having a velocity of about 120em.
and more per hour would be produced.

It is possible that the tension which causes these contractions of the
leaf-cells at the same time acts as a stimulus to increase the permea-
bility of the plasmatic membranes of the cells; and so one might imagine
that the development of a certain tension would automatically release
organic substances from the cells and draw them through the tracheze
downwards. Direct experiment on this point presents difficulties, but
it may be worth recording that when the internal osmotic pressure of

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

the leaf-cells was overbalanced by an external gas-pressure, the water
pressed from the cells and forced out of the trachee of the supporting
stem was found to be practically pure, and if it contained carbohydrates
they were in such small quantities that no reduction could be detected
with Benedict’s solution either before or after inversion. This experi-
ment was repeated several times with branches of Sambucus nigra and
Tilia americana. The cut branch, well supplied with water, was first
exposed for several hours to conditions favourable to photosynthesis,
and then either immediately or after a sojourn in darkness subjected
to the gas-pressure. A pressure of thirteen atmospheres was found
sufficient to drive water back from the leaves out of the stem.

Of course the conditions of this experiment are not those obtaining
in the normal plant, where during transpiration the volume of a leaf,
or part of a leaf, changes. In the transpiring plant we can also imagine
the accumulation of a substance or an ion which would give rise to an
alteration of the permeability of the plasmatic membranes of the leaves.

When, in order to imitate these conditions, the cells of the leaves
in the foregoing experiment are rendered permeable by the introduction
of a little toluene into the pressure-chamber, the application of a
smaller pressure is sufficient to press the cell-contents into the water-
channels and liquid emerges from the base of the stem which readily
reduces Benedict’s solution.

In the same way, if a pinna of Sambucus nigra is surrounded with
toluene vapour, transpiration from the adjacent pinne draws back the
cell-contents of the toluened pinna, and afterwards their track in the
wood of the vascular bundles of the rachis may be traced by the
browning of this tissue. |

Another possibility presented itsel{—viz., that the direction of the
current might act as a stimulus regulating the permeability of the cells
in contact with the trachez. To test this, short lengths of stem set
in their normal position were supplied, first through their lower and
afterwards through their upper end, with distilled water. In neither
case could carbohydrates be detected in the issuing stream,

The foregoing short consideration of some recent physiological work
leads us, then, to the following conclusions :—

The transport of the organic substances needed in the distal growing
regions is effected through the trachee of the wood. The substances
travel dissolved in the water filling these channels, which is moved by
transpiration, expansion of the growing cells, or root pressure.

Physical considerations forbid us admitting that sufficiently rapid
transport can be afforded by the bast either for the observed upward
or downward distribution of organic substance.

The existence of downward as well as upward movement of water
in the trachew of the wood may be demonstrated by suitable experi-
mental means, and may be inferred by the transport of hormones in the
wood,

The occurrence of local contractions in leaves suggests that local
increases of permeability supply dissolved organic substances to the
distal ends of certain of the filaments of trachee. The tension de-
veloped by the transpiration of other regions draws these along down-
ward as well as upward channels in the wood.

s

I ee ae ee

4
4

aa _ ee
= K.—BOTANY. 11

In thus ruling out the participation of the bast in the longitudinal
transport of organic substances in plants one naturally is forced to
speculate on its probable function. Its distribution and conformation
are such that, while it possesses a very small cross-section, it appears
with the other living elements of the vascular bundles, medullary rays,
wood-parenchyma, &c., to present a maximum surface to the trachex.

This large surface may find explanation in the necessity of inter-
change between the living cells and dead conduits. The colloidal con-
tents of the former render this process slow, hence the necessity for the
large surface of interchange to enable sufficient quantities of organic
substances to be abstracted from and introduced into the trachee to
meet the needs of the plant.

Before concluding I would like to add that the experimental work
carried out on this matter would have been quite impossible for me were
it not for the assistance and ingenuity of Mr. N. G. Ball. He also
has contributed materially by his criticisms and suggestions.

,

SECTION L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE.

EDUCATIONAL AND SCHOOL
SCIENCE.

ADDRESS BY

Sir RICHARD GREGORY, F.R.A.S., F.Iyst.P.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

THE Educational Science Section of the British Association attains
its majority this year; and as a member privileged to assist in its birth,
and associated with it in one capacity or another throughout its life,
it is difficult to resist the temptation to survey its growth and manifold
activities with the object of making performance during the years of
adolescence the ground of promise for the future. But though this may
be an appropriate theme to expound when an organisation has passed
naturally through the various stages from infancy to maturity, it is not
so apt on the present occasion; for, trite as is the simile, it is true to
say that, like Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus, this section sprang
into being fully grown and clothed, and its form to-day is much the
same as it was twenty-one years ago.

Those of us who have been constant votaries at the new shrine then
erected can recall many offerings which the goddess of wisdom would
approve—seeds and flowers and fruits from the extensive and diversely
fertile fields in which educational work is carried on. We have also
seen a succession of distinguished presidents, too many of whom, how-
“ever, have taken only a transient part in the activities of the section,
coming before us for a single session and then passing from our view.
The other sections of the Association are schools in which scientific
workers graduate and from which they are never entirely separated,
whether they reach the dignity of the presidential chair or not.
For some reason it is, perhaps, to be regretted that our section has not
hitherto been so self-sufficing in the supply of presidents, but fertilisa-
tion from other fields has its advantages, and our visitors have always
brought us stimulating principles of growth, so that I follow them with
much diffidence, particularly as this is the first time on which one
who has been Secretary and Recorder of the section has attained to
the honour of the presidency.

The section was established to consolidate the claims staked out by
workers in different educational provinces, and promote common interest
in their development as a whole. As Professor H. E. Armstrong ex-
plained at the opening meeting, it was proposed to devote attention to
education in all its branches with the object of introducing scientific
conceptions into every sphere of educational activity; that is, concep-

Britiso Association : Hull, 1922.] iP

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. ;

tions which imply such exact and profitable treatment of a subject as
should come from full knowledge. Educational science signifies, how-
ever, much more than methods of teaching or the theory of the curri-
culum. It involves conditions of physical, mental, and moral health,
with their manifold types and variations, and the determination of the
most appropriate, and therefore most effective, factors of growth at
every stage of development. In its present stage educational science must
be largely empirical, but in this respect it does not differ from meteor-
ology, for example; and the laws which govern the perpetually varying
contents and conditions of a child’s mind are not much less precisely
known or applied than those by, which atmospheric changes are deter-
mined. The essential attribute of all scientific investigation is the spirit
of discovery, and the standards by which the results are judged are not
necessarily those of practical application. Teachers too often forget this
when contributions to knowledge of mental processes are brought before
them. Like engineers and medical practitioners, they expect science
to provide things which are directly useful, whereas their duty is to
discover possibilities in results achieved. Their own work is practical
or clinical, and as such may help to test structures or prescriptions, but
teaching is an art rather than a science, though like all arts its advances
are most secure when they are founded upon scientific principles,

It is not necessary, however, to discuss whether research in educa-
tion belongs to pure or to applied science, whether, to use the distinction
now adopted in other departments of progressive knowledge, it is scien-
tific or industrial. It is scientific in so far as it follows scientific
methods, reveals new facts, arrives at clear conclusions, and suggests
consequences which are afterwards confirmed in application. Fortu-
nately, it is possible to do these things without possessing complete
knowledge. Hipparchus was able to determine the periods of revolu-
tions of the planets with remarkable accuracy, and his values differ very
slightly from those accepted atthe present day, but it was not until
eighteen hundred years later that Newton discovered the law of gravita-
tion by which the movements of these and other bodies in the solar
system are governed. So Plato and Aristotle had conceptions of educa-
tion and the theory of conduct which are as true to-day as when they
were expounded, because, though the conditions are different, the funda-
mental human qualities which it is desired to stimulate and make
permanent for life are the same.

While, however, we very willingly pay tribute to the wisdom of the
intellectual giants of the past, we should not let it control present
thought or future policy.- The scheme of education outlined by Plato
in his ‘ Republic ’ was designed for the training of gentlemen of means
and leisure, and it left out of account altogether everything of the
nature of manual occupation or professional equipment. It was a class
education adapted to the needs and circumstances of the time, and its
interest to us is chiefly academic or historic. Plato and other Greek
thinkers were mostly concerned with education as a moral or civic pro-
cess throughout life, and the school was only one stage affecting con-
tinuous development. It was believed that to apprehend scientific
principles and laws, or appreciate philosophic reasoning, required mature

>
L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 3

minds; therefore the serious study of these subjects was reserved for
manhood and had no place in the school.

Modern science differs greatly from what was known to the Greeks,
particularly in the use of experimental methods of inquiry; and if Plato
‘were now constructing an educational system adapted to existing needs
he would no doubt readjust its position in the curriculum. Yet there
is sound psychology in the postponement of the consideration of laws
and systems to late stages of a school course. Knowledge begins with
sense perception, and intelligent appreciation of laws expressing general
relationships or affinities, or the recognition of the place of such laws
ina system, can be expected only from gifted pupils. It is the business
of education to promote the right adjustment between the developing
human organism and its surroundings, and this implies that the nourish-
ment provided at all stages of growth should be not only such as sup-
plies the needs of the moment, but also builds up strength to live a full
life under the conditions of the times. Whether we consider the prac-
tical education or training by which uncivilised man learns to supply his
needs, the humanistic conceptions of ancient Greece, medieval educa-
tion, or modern systems, the aim is the same, namely, to create worthy
_members of particular social fabrics—to adapt people to meet the
necessities of life and respond to the best influences of existing circum-
stances. It is true that Kant thought children should be educated not
for the present but for a possibly improved condition of man in the
future, yet he himself advocated the cultivation of natural ability to
meet practical needs of life.

Education may, therefore, be defined as deliberate adjustment of a
growing human being to its environment; and the scope and character
of the subjects of instruction should be determined by this biological
principle. What is best for one race or epoch need not be most appro-
priate for another, but always the aim should be to give the pupil as
many points of contact with the world around him as may be profitably
developed during his school career. This does not mean, of course,
that his vision is to be confined to contemporary necessities or his
thoughts to provincial or even national fields. The resources available
for his instruction and guidance comprise the wisdom and experience of
the past as well as the power of the present, and in their extensive and
varied character they now provide teachers with educational opportuni-
ties richer and fuller than those of any other period of the world’s
history. Literature and art form noble domains of the heritage into
which the child of to-day is born, but they were mostly planted long
ago, and their shapes have not been altered much in modern times.
Science has, however, transformed the whole landscape entrusted to it,
and the realm of its productivity is continually extending. It is a
kingdom potent with possibilities for good or evil—an inheritance which
cannot be renounced—and to let any of our children grow up unfamiliar
with their entailed possession is to neglect an obvious duty.

The essential mission of school science is thus to prepare pupils for
civilised citizenship by revealing to them something of the beauty and
the power of the world in which they live, as well as introducing them
to the methods by which the boundaries of natural knowledge have been

L 2

A SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

extended and Nature herself is being made subservient to her insurgent
son. We live in a different world to-day from that of medieval times,
when the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, with the quadrivium
of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, comprised the subjects
of a complete education in the sciences as well as in letters—different
indeed from what it was only a century ago. The influence of science
is now all-pervading, and is manifest in all aspects of human activity,
intellectual and material. | Acquaintance with scientific ideas and
methods and applications is forced upon everyone by existing circum-
stances of civilised life with its facilities for rapid transport by air, land,
or sea, ready communication by telephone or telegraph, and other means
by which space and time have been brought under control and man
has assumed the mastership of his physical and social destiny. Science
permeates the atmosphere in which we live, and those who cannot
breathe it are not in biological adjustment with their environment—are
not adapted to survive in the modern struggle for existence.

School instruction in science is not, therefore, intended to prepare
for vocations, but to equip pupils for life as it is and as it soon may be.
It is as essential for intelligent general reading as it is for everyday
practical needs; no education can be complete or liberal without some
knowledge of its aims, methods, and results, and no pupil in primary
or secondary schools should be deprived of the stimulating lessons it
affords. In such schools, however, the science to be taught should be
science for all, and not for embryonic engineers, chemists, or even
biologists; it should be science as part of a general education—un-
specialised, therefore, and without reference to prospective occupation
or profession, or direct connection with possible university courses to
follow. Less than three per cent. of the pupils from our State-aided
secondary schools proceed to universities, yet most of the science
courses in these schools are based upon syllabuses of the type of univer-
sity entrance examinations—syllabuses of sections of physics or chemis-
try, botany, zoology, and so forth—suitable enough as preliminary
studies of a professional type to be extended later, but in no sense
representing in scope or substance what should be placed before young
and receptive minds as the scientific portion of their general education.
Such teaching excuses the attitude of many modern Gallios among
schoolboys caring ‘ for none of those things.’ The needs of the many
are sacrificed to the interests of the few, with the result that much of
the instruction is inept and futile whether judged by standards of en-
lightenment or of stimulus. Exceptional pupils may profit by it, but
to others, and particularly to teachers of literary subjects in the school
curriculum, it often appears trivial or sordidly practical, and is usually
spiritless—a means by which man may gain the whole world, but will
lose his soul in the process.

This impression is not altogether unjust, and the teaching of recent
years has tended to accentuate it. The extent of school science is deter-

mined by what can be covered by personal observation and experiment— ~

a principle sound enough in itself for training in scientific method, but
altogether unsuitable to define the boundaries of science in general educa-
tion. Yet it is so used. Every science examination qualifying for the

. ‘ \
ee ee eee ee ae Se ee ee ee

+
L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE, 5

_ First School Certificate, which now represents subjects normally studied
up to about sixteen years of age, is mainly a test of practical acquaint-
ance with facts and principles encountered in particular limited fields,
but not a single one affords recognition of a broad and ample course of
instruction in science such as I believe is required in addition to labora-
tory work. I have not the slightest intention or desire to suggest that
practical work can be dispensed with in the teaching of any scientific
subject, but I do urge that it becomes a fetish when it controls the
range of view of the realm of natural knowledge capable of being opened
for the best educational ends during school life.

Advocates of both literary and scientific studies now agree that
science should be integrally and adequately represented in the educa-
tional course of all pupils up to the age of sixteen, and the Headmasters’
Conference has subscribed to this view, as well as suggested th> scope
of the course, in the following resolutions :—

(1) That it is essential to a boy’s generat education that he should
have some knowledge of the natural laws underlying the phenomena
of daily life, and some training in their experimental investigation.

(2) That, in the opinion of this Conference, this can best be ensured
by giving to all boys adequate courses of generalised science work,
which would normally be completed for the ordinary boy at the age of
sixteen.

(3) That, after this stage, boys who require it should take up science
work of a more specialised type, while the others should for some time
continue to do some science work of a more general character.

As indicated in these resolutions, it is now generally recognised by
educationists that up to the age of about sixteen years there should
be no specialisation in school studies. The First School Examination
was organised with this end in view, and seven examining bodies have
been approved by the Board of Education to test the results of instruc-
tion given in (1) English subjects, (2) languages, (3) mathematics and
science, which constitute the three main groups in which candidates
are expected to show a reasonable amount of attainment. The number
of candidates who presented themselves at examinations of the standard
of First School Certificates last year was about 42,000; and of this
-number, 12,500 took papers in sections of physics, 13,000 in chemistry,
11,400 in botany, 5,000 physics and chemistry combined under experi-
mental science, 113 natural history of animals, 31 geology, and
3 zoology.

These numbers maybe taken as a fair representation of the science
subjects studied in most of our secondary schools, and they suggest
that general scientific teaching is almost non-existent. Botany is a
common subject in girls’ schools, but the instruction in science for boys
is limited to parts of physics and chemistry. The former subject is
usually divided into mechanics and hydrostatics ; heat ; sound and light;
and electricity and magnetism; and candidates are expected to reach a
reasonable standard in two of these sections. They may, thereforé,
and often do, leave school when their only introduction to science is
_ that represented by the study of mechanics and heat, and without the
slightest knowledge of even such a common instrument as an electric

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

bell, while the ever-changing earth around them, and the place of man
in it, remain as pages of an unopened book. They ask for bread, and
are given a stone. General science covering a wide field is practically
unknown as a school subject, and even general physics rarely finds a
place in the curriculum because questions set in examinations are, to
quote from the Cambridge Locals Regulations, ‘ principally such as
will test the candidate’s knowledge of the subject as gaimed from a
course of experimental instruction.’ This condition reduces the range
of instruction in such a subject as physics to what can be covered in
the laboratory, and makes a general course impossible; for time and
equipment will not permit every pupil to learn everything through
practical experiment. Reading or teaching for interest, or to learn how
physical science is daily extending the power of man, receives little
attention because no credit for knowledge thus gained is given in
examinations. .

One or two examining bodies have introduced general science sylla-
buses covering the)rudiments of physics and chemistry as well as of plant
and animal life, but even in these cases most of the subjects must be
studied experimentally, and no place is found for any other means of
acquiring knowledge. The result is that few schools find it worth while
from the point of view of examination successes to attempt to cover such
schemes of work. Moreover, no clear principle can be discerned by
which the syllabuses are constructed. General science should be more
than an amorphous collection of topics from physics and chemistry,
with a little natural history thrown in as a sop to biologists. It should
provide for good reading as well as for educational observation and
experiment; should be humanistic as well as scientific. The subject
which above all others has this double aspect is geography; so truly,
indeed, is this the case that in the First School Examinations it may
be offered in either the English or the Science group. Practically all
the subjects of a broad course of general science are of geographical
significance, inasmuch as they are concerned with the earth as man’s
dwelling-place, and the scene of his activities. Rightly conceived,
geography can be made the earliest means of education as both Comenius
and Locke regarded it, and it can be used as the unifying principle of
all the generalised scientific instruction in schools. It is now much
more than travel stories of the type of Sir John Mandeville’s medizval
miscellany, or mere lists of capes and rivers, countries and cities. It
provides interesting subjects for laboratory exercises and field work, and
the results of observation and experiment are seen to be of use in under-
standing what is going on-in the earth as the result of both natural and
human agencies. A school course which would cover all the science
required for the study of geography conceived as a branch of knowledge
concerned with the natural environment of man and the inter-relations
between him and those circumstances would not only be educational
in the broadest sense, but would also be the best groundwork for
éffective teaching of geography, history, and other humanistic studies.
It would make science a natural part of a vertebrate educational course
instead of specialised and exclusive as it tends to be at present.

There is very present need for the reminder that science is not all

-
L.—EDUCATIONAL SCLENCE T

measurement, nor is all measurement science. Observation also is not
merely looking at things, but examining them with a seeing mind and
clear purpose. School science to-day, however, is almost entirely con-
cerned with measurement, and pupils will cheerfully record that they
observed what they could never possibly have seen (as, for example,
the production of an invisible gas), while they continually carry out
experiments which to them have no other purpose than that of occupy-
ing their time, or to provide them with details demanded by examination
questions. In the great majority of secondary schools science signifies
chiefly quantitative work in physics and chemistry—laboratory
exercises and lessons bearing upon them—and rarely is any attempt
made to show the pupils what a wonderful world we live in, or what
science has done, and is doing, for them in their everyday life. Much
of the work described as physics really belongs to mensuration, and has
no claim upon the time devoted to science, though it helps to fix in-
struction in arithmetic or other branches of school mathematics. There
is, indeed, no virtue in measuring and weighing in the absence of
intelligent appreciation of the objects for which such operations are
performed, or of interest in them.

In the usual course of physics, from fundamental measurements
and mechanics to heat, possibly with light and sound and magnetism
and electricity to follow, though relatively few pupils get beyond the
heat stage, natural or psychological needs are sacrificed to logical
sequence. It cannot be reasonably suggested that the order in which
these subjects are prescribed has any relation to mental growth, or that
the topics selected from them are such as appeal to early interests.
Few pupils of their own volition wish to determine specific gravities,
investigate the laws of motion, calculate specific and latent heats, and
so on, at the stage of instruction in science at which these matters are
usually studied, and from the point of view of educational value most
of them would be more profitably employed in becoming acquainted with
as wide a range as possible of common phenomena and everyday things
—all considered as qualities to stimulate attention instead of quantities
to be measured with an accuracy for which the need cannot be seen
and by methods which easily become wearisome. ‘The ‘ Investigators ’
appointed by the Board of Education in 1918 to report upon the papers
set in examinations for the First School Certificate were right when
they expressed their opinion ‘ that the early teaching of physics has .
suffered from too great insistence on more or less exact quantitative
work, to the neglect of qualitative or very roughly quantitative ex-
periments illustrating fundamental notions.’ By the prevailing obses-
sion in regard to quantitative work the pupil is made the slave of the
machine, and appliances become encumbrances to the development of
the human spirit.

The prime claim of science to a place in the school curriculum is
based upon the intellectual value of the subject matter and its application
to life. This conception of education through science as the best
preparation for complete living was Herbert Spencer’s contribution to
educational theory ; and to its influence the introduction of science into
the school is largely due. Spencer’s doctrine was in accord with the

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

principles of Pestalozzi as to the sequence in which facts and ideas
should be presented and be related to stages of development, in order
to be effective in creating or fostering natural interests in the mind of
the child. Scientific instruction imphes, therefore, not alone knowledge
that is best for use in life, but knowledge adapted to the normal course
of mental development. Both substance and method should be judged
by the criterion of what is of greatest immediate worth or nearest to the
pupil’s interests at the moment. When this standard of psychological
suitability is applied to the school science courses now usually followed,
it must be confessed that they rarely reach it, many topics and much
material being remote from the pupil’s natural interests and needs.

The truth is that in the design of science courses for schools ‘ trial-
and-error ’’ methods have been followed. In the absence of accurate
knowledge these are the only possible methods of construction, but
sufficient is now known of child psychology to produce a scheme of
scienetific instruction which represents not merely the views of advocates
of particular subjects, but is biologically sound because it is in accord
with the principles of mental growth, and, therefore, with those of
educational science. When instruction in science was first introduced
into schools its character was determined by insight and conviction
rather than by mental needs or interests; so later, when practical work
came to be regarded as an essential part of such instruction, its nature
and scope represented what certain authorities believed pupils should
do, instead of what they were capable of doing with intelligence and
purpose. Practical chemistry became drill in the test-tubing operations
of qualitative analysis, and the result was so unsatisfactory from the
points of view of both science and education that when Professor Arm-
strong put forward a scheme of instruction devised by him, in which
intelligent experimentation took the place of routine exercises, acknow-
ledgment of its superior educational value could not be withheld, and
for thirty years its principles have influenced the greater part of the
science teaching in our schools.

In its aims the ‘ heuristic ’ methods of studying science energetically
advocated by Professor Armstrong were much the same as those asso-
ciated with the names of other educational reformers. Education in
every age tends to a condition of scholasticism, and practical science
teaching is no exception to this general rule, its trend being towards
ritual, after which a revolt follows in the natural order of events.
Comenius, with his insistence upon sense perception as the foundation
of early training— Leave nothing,’ he said, ‘ until it has been impressed
by means of the ear, the eye, the tongue, the hand.’ John Dury
among the Commonwealth writers who urged that pupils should be
guided to observe all things and reflect upon them; Locke, with his
use of sciences not to bring about ‘a variety and stock of knowledge,
but a variety and freedom of thinking’; and Rousseau who would
‘measure, reason, weigh, compare,’ not in order to teach particular
sciences, but to develop methods of learning them—all these were in
different degrees apostles of the same gospel of education according to
Nature, and the development of a scientific habit of mind as the inten-
tion of instruction. What Rousseau persistently urged in this direction

_
L,—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE, 9

was clearly formulated by Spencer in the words, ‘ Children should be
led to make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences
They should be told as little as possible, and induced to discover as
much as possible ‘—principles which cover all thats implied in what
has since been termed ‘ heuristic ’ teaching.

Professor Armstrong’s particular contribution to educational science
consisted in the production of detailed schemes of work in which these
principles were put into practice. Ideas are relatively cheap, and it
needs a master mind to make a coherent story or useful structure from
them. ‘This was done in the courses in chemistry outlined in Reports
presented to the British Association in 1889 and 1890, and the effect
was a complete change in the methods of teaching that subject. ‘ The
great mistake,’ said Professor Armstrong, ‘ that has been made hitherto
is that of attempting to teach the elements of this or that special branch
of science; what we should seek to do is to impart the elements of
scientific method and inculeate wisdom, so choosing the material studied
as to develop an intelligent appreciation of what is going on in the
world.’ One feature of heuristic instruction emphasised by its modern
advocate, but often neglected, is that which it presents to the teaching
of English. Accounts of experiments had to be written out in literary
form describing the purpose of the inquiry and the bearing of the results
upon the questions raised, and wide reading of original works was
encouraged. A few years ago English composition was regarded as a
thing apart from written work in science, but this should not be so, and
most teachers would now agree with the view expressed by Sir J. J.
Thomson's Committee on the Position of Natural Science in the Educa-
tional System of Great Britain that ‘All through the science course
the greatest care should be taken to insist on the accurate use of the
English language, and the longer the time given to science the greater
becomes the responsibility of the teacher in this matter. . . . The con-
ventional jargon of laboratories, which is far too common in much that is
written on pure and applied science, is quite out of place in schools.’

When heuristic methods are followed in the spirit in which they
were conceived, namely, that of arousing interest in common occur-
rences, and leading pupils to follow clues as to their cause, as a detective
unravels a mystery, there is no doubt as to their success. No one sup-
poses that pupils must find out everything for themselves by practical
inquiry, but they can be trained to bring intelligent thought upon
simple facts and phenomena, and to devise experiments to test their
own explanations of what they themselves have observed. It is impos-
sible, however, to be true to heuristic methods in the teaching of science
and at the same time pay addresses to a syllabus. A single question
raised by a pupil may take a term or a year to arrive at a reasonable
answer, and the time may be well spent in forming habits of independent
thinking about evidence obtained at first-hand, but the work cannot also
embrace a prescribed range of scientific topics. Yet under existing
conditions, in which examinations are used to test attainments, this
double duty has to be attempted by even the most enlightened and pro-
gressive teachers of school science. There can, indeed, be no profit-
able training in research methods in school laboratories under the

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

shadow of examination syllabuses. Where there is freedom from-suck
restraint, and individual pupils can be permitted to proceed at their
own speeds in inquiries initiated on their own motives, success is
assured, but in fe schools are such conditions practicable; so that, in
the main, strict adherence to the heuristic method is a policy of perfec-
tion which may be aimed at but is rarely reached.

A necessary condition of the research method of teaching science is
that the pupils themselves must consider the problems presented to
them as worth solving, and not merely laboratory exercises. Moreover,
the inquiries undertaken must be such as can lead to clear conclusions
when the experimental work is accurately performed. It may be doubted
whether the rusting of iron or the study of germination of beans and the
growth of seedlings fulfils the first of these conditions, and the common
adoption of these subjects of inquiry is due to custom and convenience
rather than to recognition of what most pupils consider to be worth
their efforts. It needed a Priestley and a Layoisier to proceed from
the rusting of iron to the composition of air and water, and even such
an acute investigator as Galileo, though well aware that air has weight,
did not understand how this fact explained the working of the common
suction pump. If research methods are to be followed faithfully, and
what pupils want to discover about natural facts and phenomena is to
determine what they do, then teachers must be prepared to guide them
in scores of inquiries both in and out of the laboratory. Under the
exigencies of school work it is impracticable to contemplate such proce-
dure, and all that can be usefully attempted is to lead pupils to read
the book of Nature and to understand how difficult it is to obtain a
precise answer to what may seem the simplest question.

The mission of school science should not, indeed, be only to proyide
training in scientific method—valuable as this is to everyone. Such
training does cultivate painstaking and observant habits, and encourages
independent and intelligent reasoning, but it cannot be held in these
days that any one subject may be used for the general nourishment of
faculties which are thereby rendered more capable of assimilating other
subjects. Modern psychology, as well as everyday experience, has
disposed of this belief. If the doctrine of transfer of power were
psychologically sound, then as good a case could be made out for the
classical languages as for science, because they also may be taught so as
to develop the power of solving problems and of acquiring knowledge
at the same time. When, therefore, advocates of particular courses
of instruction state that they do not pretend to teach science, but are
concerned solely with, method, they show unwise indifference to what
is known about educational values. Locke’s disciplinary theory—that
the process of learning trains faculties for use in any fields, and that
the nature of the subject is of little consequence—can no longer be
entertained. It has now to be acknowledged that information obtained
in the years of school life is as important as the process of obtaining it ;
that, in other words, subject matter as well as the doctrine of formal
discipline must be taken into consideration in designing courses of
scientific. instruction which will conform to the best educational
principles.

.
L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 11

So long ago as 1867 the distinction between subject and method was
clearly stated by a Committee of the British Association, which included
among its members Professor Huxley, Professor Tyndall, and Canon
Wilson. It was pointed out that general literary acquaintance with
scientific things in actual life, and knowledge relating to common facts
and phenomena of Nature, were as desirable as the habits of mind aimed
at in scientific training through ‘experimental physics, elementary
chemistry, and botany.’ The subjects which the Committee recom-
mended for scientific information, as distinguished from training, com-
prehended ‘a general description of the solar system; of the form
and physical geography of the earth, and such natural phenomena as
tides, currents, winds, and the causes that influence climate; of the
broad facts of geology; of elementary natural history with especial
reference to the useful plants and animals; and of the rudiments of
physiology.’ If we add to this outline a few suitable topics illustrating
applications of science to everyday life, we have a course of instruction
much more suitable for all pupils as a part of their general education
than what is now commonly followed in secondary schools. It will be
a course which will excite wonder and stimulate the imagination, will
promote active interest in the beauty and order of Nature, and the
extension of the Kingdom of Man, and provide guidance in the laws
of healthy life.

The purpose of this kind of instruction is, of course, altogether
different from that of practical experiment in the laboratory. One of
the functions is to provide pupils with a knowledge of the nature of
everyday phenomena and applications of science, and of the meaning of
scientific words in common use. Instead of aiming at creating appre-
ciation of scientific method by an intensive study of a narrow field, a
wide range of subjects should be presented in order to give extensive
views which cannot possibly be obtained through experimental work
alone. The object is indeed almost as much literary as scientific, and
the early lessons necessary for its attainment ought to be within the
capacity of every qualified teacher of English. Without acquaintance
with the common vocabulary of natural science a large and increasing
body of current literature is unintelligible, and there are classical
scientific works which are just as worthy of study in both style and
substance as many of the English texts prescribed for use in schools.
We all now accept the view that science students should be taught to
express themselves in good English, but little is heard of the equal
necessity for students of the English language to possess even an
elementary knowledge of the ideas and terminology of everyday science,
which are vital elements in the modern world, and which it is the
business of literature to present and interpret.

So much has been, and can be, said in favour of broad courses of
general informative science in addition to laboratory instruction and
lessons which follow closely upon it, that the rarity of such courses in
our secondary schools is a little surprising at first sight. Their absence
seems to be due to several reasons. In the first place, the teachers
themselves are specialists in physics, chemistry, biology, or some other
department of science, and they occupy their own territory in school

-

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

as definitely as Mr. Eliot Howard has shown to be the behaviour-
routine of birds in woods and fields. You may, therefore, have a
teacher of physics who has taken an honours degree and yet know
less of plant or animal life than a child in an elementary school where
Nature Study is wisely taught; and, on the other hand, there are
teachers of natural history altogether unacquainted with the influence of
physical and chemical conditions upon the observations they describe
or the conclusions they reach. Natural science as a single subject no
longer exists either in school or university, and with its division and
sub-division has come a corresponding limitation of interest. No man
can now be considered as having received a liberal education if he knows
nothing of the scientific thought around him, but it is equally true that
no man of science is scientifically educated unless his range of intel-
lectual vision embraces the outstanding facts and principles of all the
main branches of natural knowledge. It cannot reasonably be sug-
gested that this general knowledge of science should be acquired by
all if teachers of science themselves do not possess it. During the past
thirty years or so there has been far too much boundary-marking ‘of
science teaching in school on account of the specialised qualifications
of the teachers. What is wanted is less attention to the conventional
division of science into separate compartments designed by examining
bodies, and more to the whole field of Nature and the scientific activities
by which man has transformed the world; and no teacher of school
science should be unwilling or unqualified to impart such instruction
to his pupils.

Where such teachers do exist, however, they are compelled by the
exigencies of examinations to conform to syllabuses of which the
boundary lines are no more natural than those which mark political
divisions of countries on a map of the world. All that can be said in
favour of the delimitation of territory is that it is convenient; the
examiner knows what the scope of his questions may be, and teachers
the limits of the field they are expected to survey with their pupils.
While, therefore, it may be believed that a general course of science is
best suited to the needs of pupils up to the age of about sixteen years,
examining authorities recognise no course of this character, and very
few schools include it in the curriculum. Expressed in other words,
the proximate or ultimate end of the instruction is not education but
examination, not the revealing of wide prospects because of the stimulus
and interest to be derived from them, but the study of an arbitrary
group of topics prescribed becausé knowledge of them can be readily
tested. It may be urged that this is the only practicable plan to adopt
if a science course is to have a defined shape, and not, like much that
passes for Nature Study, merely odds and ends about Nature, without
articulation or purpose. Acceptance of this view, however, carries
with it the acknowledgment that expediency rather than principle has
to determine the scope and character of school science, which is equiva-
lent to saying that science has no secure place in educational theory.
I prefer to believe that a school course of general science can be
constructed which is largely informative and at the same time truly
educational, but it must provide what is best adapted to enlarge the

— a eae

s ‘
L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 15

outlook and develop the capacity of the minds which receive it, and
not be determined by the facilities it offers for examinational tests.

A third reason for the relative absence of general scientific education
in schools is the demands which the teaching might make upon appa-
ratus and equipment. Simple quantitative work in physics, chemistry,
or botany can be done in the laboratory with little apparatus, and a
single experiment may occupy a pupil for several teaching periods.
To attempt to provide the means by which all pupils can observe for
themselves a wide range of unrelated facts and phenomena belonging
to the biological as well as to the physical sciences is obviously
impracticable, and would be educationally ineffective. | Experi-
ments carried out in the laboratory should chiefly serve to train
and test capacity of attacking problems and arriving at precise results
just as definitely as do exercises in mathematical teaching. But
knowledge by itself, whether of quantitative or qualitative character, is
not sufficient, and it becomes power only when it is expressed or used.
Every observation or experiment carries with it, therefore, the duty of
recording it clearly and fully in words or computations, or both, and
if this is faithfully done laboratory work of any kind may be made an
aid to English composition as well as an incentive to independent inquiry
and intelligent thought.

It is very difficult, however, to devise a laboratory course of general
science which shall be both coherent and educative; shall be, in other
words, both extensive in scope and intensive in method. — I doubt,
indeed, whether any practical course can perform this double function
successfully. Probably the best working plan is to keep the descriptive
lessons and the experimental problems separate, using demonstrations
in the class-room as illustrations, and leaving the laboratory work to
itself as a means of training in scientific method or of giving a practical
acquaintance with a selected series of facts and principles. The main
thing to avoid is the limitation of the science teaching ta what can be
done practically ; for no general survey is possible under such condi-
tions. Even if two-thirds of the time available for scientific instruction
be devoted to laboratory experiment and questions provoked by it, the
remaining third should be used to reveal the wonder and the power and
the poetry of scientific work and thought; to be am introduction to the
rainbow-tinted world of Nature as well as provide notes and a vocabulary
which will make classical and contemporary scientific literature intel-
ligible. If there must be a test of attention and understanding in con-
nection with such descriptive lessons, because of the spirit of indifference
inherent in many minds—young as well as old—let it be such as will
show comprehension of the main facts and ideas presented and know-
ledge of the meaning of the words and terms used. In this way
descriptive lessons may be used to provide material for work and active
thought, and light dalliance with scientific subjects avoided.

It may be urged that no knowledge of this kind has any scientific
reality unless it is derived from first-hand experience, and this is no
doubt right in one sense ; yet it is well to remember that science, like art,
is long while school life is short, and that though practical familiarity
with scientific things must be limited, much pleasure and profit can be

14 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

derived from becoming acquainted with what others have seen or
thought. It is true that we learn from personal experience, but a wise
man learns also from the experience of others, and one purpose of a de-
scriptive science course should be to cultivate this capacity of under-
standing what others have described. As in art, or in music, or in
literature, the intention of school teaching should be mainly to promote
appreciation of what is best in them rather than to train artists, musi-
cians, or men of letters, so in science the most appropriate instruction for
a class as an entity must be that which expands the vision and creates a
spirit of reverence for Nature and the power of man, and not that which
aims solely at training scientific investigators. It should conform with
Kant’s view that the ultimate ideal of education is nothing less than
the perfection of human nature, and not merely a goal to be obtained
by the select few.

The sum and substance of this address is a plea for the expansion
of scientific instruction in this humanising spirit, for widening the gate-
way into the land of promise where the destinies of the human race
are shaped. It is the privilege of a president to be to some extent
pontificial—to express opinions which in other circumstances would
demand qualification—and to leave others to determine how far the
doctrines pronounced can be put into practice in daily life. I do not,
therefore, attempt to suggest the outlines of courses of science teaching
for pupils of different ages, or for schools of different types; this has
been done already in a number of books and reports, among the latter
being the Report of Sir J. J. Thomson’s Committee on the Position
of Natural Science, the Report of the British Association Committee
on Science Teaching in Secondary Schools, Mr. O, H. Latter’s Report
to the Board of Education on Science Teaching in Public Schoois, the
‘ Science for All’ Report and Syllabus issued by the Science Masters’
Association, a Board of Education Report on ‘ Some Experiments in the
Teaching of Science and Handwork in certain Elementary Schools in
London,’ and one prepared for the Board by Mr. J. Dover Wilson on
‘Humanism in the Continuation School.’ What has been said in this
address as to the need for extending the outlook of customary scientific
instruction beyond the narrow range of manual exercises, manipulative
dexterity, experimental ritual, or incipient research, can be both amph-
fied and justified from these Reports. I want science not only to be
a means of stimulating real and careful thinking through doing things,
but also a means of creating interest and enlarging the working vocabu-
lary of the pupils and thus truly increasing their range of intelligence.
So may scientific instruction be made a power and an inspiration by
giving, in the words of the Book of Wisdom (vii. 16-20) :—

‘an unerring knowledge of the things that are,
To know the constitution of the world and the operation of the elements ;
The beginning and end and middle of times,
The alternations of the solstices and the changes of seasons,
The circuits of years and the positions of stars ;
The nature of living creatures and the raging of wild beasts,
The violences of winds and the thoughts of men,
The diversities of plants and the virtues of roots.’

OE

ee ee ee ee

L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 15

When school science has this outlook it will lie closer to the human
heart than it does at present, and a common bond of sympathy will be
formed between all who are guiding the growth of young minds for both
beauty and strength. So will the community of educational aims be
established and the place of science in modern life be understood by a
generation which will be entrusted with the task of making a new
heaven and a new earth. If these trustees for the future learn to know
science in spirit as well as in truth we may look forward with happy
confidence to the social structure they will build, in which knowledge
will be the bedrock of springs of action and wisdom will make man the
worthy monarch of the world.

es

ee |!

SECTION M.—AGRICULTURE.

THE PROPER POSITION OF THE
LANDOWNER IN RELATION TO
THE AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY.

ADDRESS BY
THe Riaot Hon. Lorp BLEDISLOE, K.B.E.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

Av a critical period in the history of British agriculture you have
invited one who is not an expert scientist but an ordinary country squire,
intensely proud of the traditions and deeply conscious of the poten-
tialities of the class to which he belongs, to preside over the Agricultural
Section of the British Association. If in my address I fail to carry
persuasion, it will not be through lack of strong convictions or of a
sense of responsibility in giving utterance to them. This meeting
marks the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of this Section of the
Association. It may with reason be asked whether it has so far justi-
fied itself. It can only do soif the teachings of science not merely tinge
but permeate ordinary British farm practice to the commercial advan-
tage of the whole agricultural industry. It is not sufficient for scientists
to preach only to the converted. | Whether in the realm of animal
husbandry, or in that of arable cultivation, the pursuit of scientific
method must not be confined to the favoured few possessing abnormal
wealth or an exceptional combination of intellectual zeal with business
aptitude, but must for its full justification result in an improved general
standard of farming and a largely increased output of agricultural pro-
duce at a reasonable margin of profit, in which the whole rural com-
munity participates. Considering the wealth of discovery in almost
every branch of agricultural research during the last quarter of a
century, and the greatly enlarged scope of scientific investigation as
applied to agricultural problems during the last few years, the absdrp-
tion into ordinary British farm practice of the results of such investi-
gation is far from being commensurate with the labour or, indeed, the
expense of scientific effort.

Although there is amongst farmers a growing appreciation of the
value of science to their industry, there is far too wide a gap between
the most enlightened and commercially successful farm practice and
that of the average farmer in this country.

How is this gulf to be bridged?

My immediate predecessor in the Presidency of this Section, Mr.
C. S. Orwin, in his carefully reasoned and suggestive address last year
at Edinburgh, pointed out that a study of economics and the constant

British Assoctation : Hull, 1922.]
M

2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

recognition of dominant economic force must go hand in hand with
agricultural research and education in the various branches of science
upon which agriculture is based, if the latter are to receive their full
fruition, and if the business of farming is to be profitably conducted.
The highest skill in the task of actual production may, in the absence of
efficient business management and of the organisation in the interests of
the agricultural producer of the conversion, transport, distribution and
sale of his produce, fail to prevent the bankruptcy court being his ultimate
destination. A good recent illustration of the anomalous and unfor-
tunate result of lack of such organisation is the sale to millers by
thousands of farmers last autumn of exceptionally high quality
wheat at a relatively low value, and the subsequent purchase by the
same farmers, in many cases from the same source, of residual wheat
offals for the feeding of their pigs or cattle at considerably higher prices
than those paid to them for the whole grain; or again, the crisis among
dairy farmers last spring arising out of the attempt on the part of a power-
ful combination of milk distributors to compel them to enter into
summer milk contracts at prices which left them no prospective margin
of profit, while retailing the same commodity to the public in the towns
at nearly three times the price paid to the producer, thus incidentally
putting a premium upon the increased importation from abroad of milk
powder and other milk substitutes.

The crying need of such organisation is admitted. But how is it
to be supplied? Numerous public-spirited efforts have been made for
at least thirty years by the Agricultural Organisation Society and other
like bodies, with Government encouragement, to develop co-operative
effort among British farmers, comparable to that which has attended
the same movement in Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy,
Hungary and (in more recent years) Ireland, but without any very
marked or persistent success, largely owing to the somewhat obstinate
individuality and mutual suspicion of our agricultural population, and
partly and chiefly owing to the lack of the initiative and control in such
enterprises of outstanding and universally acknowledged leaders of
indisputable integrity and business capacity.

If efficient organisation is the chief desideratum of British rural
industry, and if its availability depends upon trained leadership, where
is such leadership to be found ?

Let us glance at the other side of the picture. There is a strong
political movement in favour of Land Nationalisation. It is part of the
accepted creed of organised labour in this country; it is, significantly,
the chief political tenet of the two national groups of agricultural
workers. It implies no hostility amongst its adherents to agricultural
landowners, either individually or as a class. In fact, the country
squire, especially one who is, so to speak, ‘ ascriptus glebe "—whose
family has become deep-rooted for several generations in the soil of the
locality as well as in honourable traditions of public service and philan-
thropic utility—is, or at least, speaking generally, was (until post-War
impoverishment threatened his continuing stability) an object of respect,
and often of affection, among the local working population, more soa
very often than the farm tenants upon his estate. Every reputable

:
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Le ee ee

.
M.—AGRICULTURE, 3

landowner who has faced the ordeal of a political contest in a purely

rural constituency is conscious of the almost pathetic confidence evoked,
not so much by the professions of his political faith as by the fact
of his land-ownership, and the assumption of well-informed sympathy
which is deemed to be associated with it. He may be stupid or re-
actionary, but he inspires respect for his honesty, patriotism, and un-
selfish devotion to duty. Yet to the advocates of Land Nationalisation
in the mass he appears as an industrial parasite, a mere rent-receiver,
who ‘reaps where he has not sown, who gathers where he has not
strawed.’ He owns, it is true—in the form of land, buildings, and other
farm equipment—at least two-thirds of the capital embarked in the
industry of agriculture. He may derive 2 per cent. or less from his
capital so invested, and live an inconspicuous life of comparative
poverty, while the sale (especially in recent years) of his estate and the
investment of the proceeds of sale in Government securities might treble
his income and raise him to a condition of comparative affluence. But
unless he is himself a farmer (which is seldom the case) he lives a
life detached from the industry carried on upon his estate, and often
ineffectually seeks relief from his growing poverty by attaching himself
to a Property Defence League. He becomes, in fact, a mere property
defender, which in a highly democratic State carries little conviction to
a preponderantly urban proletariat, and tends to stimulate the activities
of revolutionary propagandists. If, on the other hand, he were to stand
out in the body politic as a producer, trained for his task as such, and
prepared to accept the position of managing director of the great and,
if well organised and directed, potentially profitable industry conducted
upon his property, his position as a landowner would be far less
vulnerable and his utility to the State indisputable.

The agricultural community in Britain to-day above all else needs
enlightened leadership, just as agriculture needs efficient organisation ;
and the landowner, if, after due training, he would but take his proper
position, should be both leader and chief organiser.

During the last half-century, when the financial resources of the
average landowner, even during the great depression of the ‘eighties
and ‘nineties, sufficed to furnish a competence for himself and his
family, and before the growing burden of estate duty (against which
he often secured the devolution of an undiminished inheritance by the
annual payment of an insurance premium) threatened the dissolution
of his estate, he was wont, at least in his youth, to serve his country
in the Navy, the Army, or some other financially unremunerative
branch of the public service, or to participate unpaid in the conduct
of local government. He employed an estate agent (often a person of
no agricultural training), who stood between him and the agricultural
activities of his estate, in respect of which he was himself often
deplorably ignorant, unbusinesslike, and unprogressive.

The War has naturally altered his outlook. It is estimated that
the present rate of estate duty as levied upon a form of property of
which (if adequately maintained) the net income is relatively low and
the capital value disproportionately high, will, unless hereafter materi-
ally reduced, permit of no landed estate of average size and rental,

mM 2

4 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

unbuttressed by external financial resources, remaining in one family
for more than two generations. Effective insurance against the burden
_ of death duties is in such cases no longer practicable. The continued
employment of an estate agent who is not also an experienced farm
manager is to many a luxury, of which the estate income will no longer
admit. The sale of the estate is one of two alternatives: its owner-
management and industrial development constitute the other. The
second alternative is possible under a system either of Landlord and
Tenant or of Occupying Ownership.

The relation of landlord and tenant necessarily depends for its
success upon the leadership and initiative of the owner, based upon
sound knowledge. It operated as a stimulant to English agriculture
during the latter part of the eighteenth and the first half of the
nineteenth century, because, following the example of George III.,
Lord Townshend, Lord Leicester, and other enlightened territorial mag-
nates, it had become the fashion for the owner to interest himself in
farming, and he consequently knew what the land was capable of,
and gave a lead to his tenants. With the growing importations of
grain from abroad, the increasing prosperity of the industrial popula-
tion at the expense of the countryside, and especially in consequence
of the agricultural depression during the last two decades of the nine-
teenth century, the landowner lost faith in himself and in his true
vocation, and had neither the knowledge nor the inclination to give
his tenants the lead which they required. It became, in fact, easier
for him, by remitting rents and acquiescing in the farmer’s desire to
lay his land down to grass, to obtain the reputation of a ‘ good’ land-
lord, an expression which meant in all too many cases his abandonment
of leadership and his surrender to ignorant or indolent preju-
dice. Where neither leadership nor rent remission were forthcoming
his old tenants were ruined. The prime condition under which farm
tenancy can prosper is the owner's knowledge and management of his
estate, similar to that exercised by the manager of an industrial com-
pany in relation to his business. The owner, in fact, if he carried out
to the full the possibilities of his position, ought constantly, with the
knowledge and experience which would render intervention acceptable,
to be guiding his tenants in the way of improving their business by the
constant application of science to farm practice, the employment of
labour-saving machinery, the discovery of new markets, and, above
all, by the development of co-operation. If he had but the knowledge
and the faith he could have done much during the last half-century by
insisting upon the proper. education of his tenants’ sons before they in
their turn became occupiers of his estate holdings, or even by looking
to the agricultural colleges for the provision of fresh blood and enter-
prise among his tenantry, himself selecting at times a likely youth
from the human output of such institutions.

Whereas at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century certain progressive English landowners were
definitely and admittedly the leaders of the industry, to-day, and for
the past sixty years, landowners have ceased to lead. Coke of Norfolk
and his contemporaries in introducing developments which benefited

o
M.—AGRICULTURE. 5

the whole industry also benefited themselves and their whole environ-
ment, because these improvements were introduced on sound business
lines. Land to-day in the hands of British landowners is more than
ever an amenity, and although there are many whose serious impoverish-
ment operates as an inducement to put their estates upon a business
footing, they are sadly conscious that they have not the knowledge
todo so. The excessive development of urban and industrial interests,
coupled with the relatively severe neglect of all rural development, is
the fundamental cause of the present unpromising state of British agri-
culture, which is affecting adversely the prosperity and security of the
whole nation.

One drawback to the English estate system is the size and character
of the home farm. It is in but few cases that this has been conducted
on business lines, and it has, therefore, proved unconvincing to the
tenant farmers. Even where a high standard of live-stock or of cultiva-
tion has been obtained, the working farmer has assumed that such
methods are uneconomic, and therefore unworthy of imitation by one
who has ‘ to make a living out of his farm.’ In this respect Germany
has shown a pleasing contrast. The great estate of the typical East
Prussian landowner was only in part farmed by his small
tenants. He himself had a large demesne. With the agrarian
revival, which dated from about 1870, these owners commenced
farming their demesnes more intensively instead of finding more
estate tenants. They realised the importance of the application
of science to farming, and sought skilled scientific managers, and
obtained them from the German agricultural colleges, notably from
Bonn. This developed a valuable organisation, under which the well-
trained young agriculturist could obtain his practical experience as an
under-manager before he was selected to control the business of farming
commercially a large area of land. In this country, where for many
years science and practice have, in spite of the motto of the Royal
Agricultural Society of England, existed largely in separate watertight
compartments, with a tendency on the part of many of the more
influential landowners (at their rent audit dinners and on other like
occasions) to disparage the value of the former and evoke applause by
so doing, such a development has been impracticable. If, for instance,
at the present time an English landowner proposed to farm his 5,000
or 10,000 acres as an industrial undertaking, he would have considerable
difficulty in finding a trustworthy manager fully equipped for the post.
Every year for many years past suitable men have been leaving the
agricultural colleges, but they have found it impossible to obtain the
necessary practical experience for the full commercial utilisation of their
scientific equipment, owing to their inability to enter the business of
industrial farming in a subordinate capacity. Experience on a single
farm of average size does not fit a potentially capable man for the
management of a big highly organised farming business. He has not
developed the right outlook.

A good illustration of the weakness of ownership detached from
occupation when the landlord ceases to have-the necessary knowledge
and experience may be seen in Italy at the present time. The metayer

M3

6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

system, which is many centuries old, has of late years been breaking
‘down, and the War has accelerated its downfall. The landowner, who

was originally its creator and main source of its stability, was too far __

detached from the soil to know how the system from time to time
had to be modified. The result was that his tenants revolted, and have
in many cases obtained for themselves conditions of tenancy to which
they were not properly entitled, on the strength of their temporary
prosperity resulting from the War. Throughout Eastern Europe, too,
and particularly in Rumania and Czecho-Slovakia, there has been a
land revolution. Great estates have been forfeited and their land sub-
divided, solely because the owners have not during the last generation
been active participators in the work of production.

The absentee landlord, a rara avis in all Continental countries except
Italy, is another example of the baneful effects of his non-industrial
character in this country. Oblivious of the true meaning of ‘ manor ’ 4
and ‘mansion,’ he often separates himself entirely, not merely from
the industry, but from the locality, in which he comes to be regarded as
an unsympathetic stranger.

The plight of the Irish landowner, and indeed of Ireland itself, might
to-day be far less serious if, during the last fifty years, the landowners
of that unfortunate country had as a class made their homes amongst
the rural population and identified themselves closely with their
industrial welfare.

Tt has come, perhaps unfortunately, to be assumed in this country
that there are three classes or sections of the agricultural community,
whose interests are distinct and largely divergent, and for whose partici-
pation in the proceeds of the industry separate provision must be made.
But the divorce of landownership from land cultivation is unnatural ; it
is not to be found universally prevalent in other countries, nor indeed
has it always existed in our own. Its very existence is a deterrent to
the full industrial development of agricultural land. It may be (and
it is unfortunately the case to-day among many new occupying-owners)
that the producer’s monetary resources do not suffice to provide him
both with the land itself and with adequate capital for the business of
farming it. If, therefore, he can obtain his land, buildings and per-
manent equipment at a moderate rent, representing to the owner only
2 or 8 per cent. on his capital, and without the added burden of mainten-
ance and repairs, it is undoubtedly attractive as a commercial proposi-
tion. | But whatever provision may be made by the Legislature for
securing to the cultivator fair compensation as the reward of his enter-
prise, the latter must necessarily be restricted in respect of the full
development of the property of another, and an adequate return for
such full development (even if wise and prudent) can never be provided
for by the State without imposing upon the owner of the land a pro-
spective financial burden admittedly too heavy for him to bear or too
risky for him to face. In fact, the unification of the réles of the land-
owner and farm tenant is a condition precedent to the full, confident
and enterprising development of the agricultural industry on economic
lines. Moreover, although eighteenth-century economists laid stress

1¥rom Latin manere, to remain.

EE ee Te ee ee eee

j
a ee

°
M.—AGRICULTURE.,. 7

upon the increase of rents as a factor in the enhancement of agricultura!
_ prosperity, it cannot be gainsaid, as an abstract economic truth, that
an increase in the productivity of agricultural land as the result of the
producer’s enterprise redounds ultimately to the benefit of its owner
or his successor. Also, the difficulties of ‘ tenant right ’ inherent in the
relation of landlord and tenant are apt to increase in direct ratio with
a tenant’s enterprise exercised on another’s land, and must almost
inevitably eventuate in dual ownership and the domestic antagonism
of agricultural interests.

Great, however, as are the advantages of occupying ownership to
the nation and to the industry, it must be recognised that such a system,
although capable of wide extension, cannot exist in this country to the
entire exclusion of that of landlord and tenant, nor is it desirable.
Some of the most skilled, progressive, and deservedly influential farmers
in Great Britain are, and will continue to be, farm tenants. Their
knowledge of their holdings and their productive capacity is a valuable
asset, and promotes output and economy of administration. Although
many men of this type have, under the pressure of circumstances,
recently purchased their farms, the majority have not. Even if their
farms were purchasable the diversion to land purchase of capital use-
fully employed in its full exploitation would probably be imprudent and
uneconomic. From these men their landlords can learn much; with
such men they should strive to establish a relationship of friendly and
mutually trustful co-operation in all measures which make for the
enhanced prosperity of the farmers’ business on the estate or in the ,
district. They should also seek to create and maintain a similar entente
cordiale between the various sectional organisations of the agricultural
community wherever these exist locally. On the other hand, where the
tenant is an obviously inefficient farmer, depreciating his landlord's
property, and steadily impoverishing himself and his family, the land-
lord, with the moral backing of his more efficient tenants and of the
whole lccal working population, should boldly assume the responsibility
of terminating his occupancy. The fact that County Agricultural
Committees are now charged with the statutory duty of assisting land-
lords in this process should accelerate the dispossession of the indus-
trially incompetent. The Agricultural Holdings Acts, while excellent
in theory, have in practice operated to afford security of tenure to the
bad tenant equally with the good, and have thereby tended to lower
the standard of husbandry throughout England and Wales. The stand-
point of the public welfare evolved by war conditions has created,
fortunately, a saner outlook upon such matters, even among politicians.
The trend of legislation has been in the past, and is even now, all
against the active landlord. The tide, however, will assuredly turn when
he makes it evident that his welfare and that of the State are identical.

The land is unsparing of her faithful devotees. So multifarious are
the daily pre-occupations of the successful arable farmer, involving
constant personal attention to detail and a readiness to meet unforeseen
contingencies, that he can seldom devote time and attention to the
work of organisation of the industry and of those engaged in it. This
imposes all the deeper obligation upon the more leisured and probably

8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

more highly educated landowner who is not himself a farmer to take
his full share in the execution of this indispensable task. In fact, the
landowner’s duty as an organiser increases in inverse ratio with his
activity as an actual producer.

No agent, however competent, can fully discharge the whole duties
of the agricultural landowner. Still less can one who is incompetent,
whose training is defective, or whose vision is myopic. Just as in
Switzerland, where the conservation of forests is essential for the check
of avalanches, the State compels a landowner to employ a State-trained
forester for the management of his woodlands, so it might be in the
national interest here to enact that either the landowner himself or the
agent or factor whom he employs shall have passed some test ol
efficiency as an estate manager.

English law and custom in relation both to the settlement of estates
and to the letting of farms have obstructed the full utility of the English
landlord as a producer and as an agricultural organiser. The Settled
Land Acts, while in the public interest extending the power of a tenant
for life under a strict settlement to sell the whole or part of a settled
estate, have provided that all moneys realised by such alienation shall
be held by trustees and applied for certain purposes only (for the
assumed benefit of the inheritance), specifically prescribed either by the
settlement or by these Statutes. They do not admit of the proceeds
of sale of a part of a settled estate being applied to capitalise farming
operations conducted on strictly commercial lines on another part of it.
.If, subject to proper safeguards concerning the capacity and trained
experience of the life tenant, the Settled Land Acts could be amended
in this direction, a considerable impetus would be given to farming
enterprise on the part of limited owners, especially those who have
no monetary resources outside their estates. Had such enterprise been
thus stimulated in the past, the capital value of many an estate passing
to a subsequent life tenant or to a remainderman would have been
not merely maintained, but greatly enhanced—as was that of Coke of
Norfolk—and the true object of the settlement would have been achieved,
with immeasurable benefit to the nation at large. The Law of Property
Act, 1922, while possibly aiding agricultural enterprise by the destruction
of copyholds and customary tenures with their fines, heriots, and other
feudal dues, may, by the abolition of primogeniture on an intestacy,
stimulate and intensify the desire of many landowners to execute strict
settlements, and thereby, in the absence of a fresh statutory extension
of the powers of a limited owner, augment the difficulties of
their successors in the direction of industrial development. | The
settlement of landed estates has become so serious a hindrance
to their industrial (including their agricultural) development by their
owners that it is highly questionable whether legislation may not be
desirable forbidding the process altogether as being contrary alike to
public policy and to private advantage. The heavy burden of recurrent
death duties tends in any case to diminish, and possibly to neutralise
entirely, the effect of a transaction designed to ensure the continuous
devolution of an unimpaired heritage.

Similarly, the old forms of covenant in farm agreements, which

M.—AGRICULTURE, 9

date from the time when the owner had himself considerable knowledge
of the industry and its economic possibilities, represented a higher
standard of farming than the tenant would naturally adopt if left to his
own uncontrolled inclinations. They have been the subject from time to
time of well-merited criticism and of legislative interference on the part
of the State, because they became harmful to the industry in conse-
quence of their crystallisation by lawyers and their preservation when
the conditions had changed. It was not so much the stringency of
these farm agreements, but their lack of modification and adaptation, in
view of the opening up of new markets and the development of fresh
means of land fertilisation, which laid them open to censure. It was,
in fact, ignorance arising from the owner’s increasing detachment from
the processes of agricultural production which, by stereotyping the
conditions of his farm tenancies, retarded the enterprise of his tenants
and degraded the standard of their husbandry,

It may be suggested that present-day advocacy of the economic
activities of landowners, although they be admittedly beneficial to the
commonwealth, is inopportune in view of the growing impoverishment
by taxation of the landowning class and the sub-division of many large
estates which might have proved good units for effective industrial
organisation. On the other hand, it may be urged that the sale by many
landowners possessing small commercial experience or aptitude of por-
tions of their estates, and the investment of the proceeds in joint-stock
industrial undertakings yielding at least twice the amount of their rent,
has brought home to the minds of many of them that mere rent-
receiving proprietorship was not good business, and that by the indus-
trial or commercial development of their land more wealth was to be
won for themselves and their families. Moreover, the sale or sub-
division of estates has added to the landowning class many men
possessing not merely great wealth but business acumen and wide
commercial knowledge, some at least of whom are able to realise the
unprofitableness of undeveloped land, or the political unwisdom of land-
ownership detached from industry, and have acted accordingly. Con-
spicuous among these are men of the type of the late Lord Manton,
who with great foresight and public spirit have applied their surplus
wealth to the conduct of research, and to the personal application of
scientific discovery to the daily requirements of agricultural industry.
There are, however, unfortunately all too many of those who have
embarked in the purchase of landed estates wealth derived from urban
industries or from mining who are not prepared to employ in their
development those business methods which have led in the past to
their enrichment. They are the rather prone to treat their properties
as playgrounds, or as instruments for the enhancement of their social
position.

The process of territorial disintegration has largely augmented |
the number of those who combine within themselves the rdles of
occupier and owner—the functions of rent producer and rent receiver.
The number of agricultural landowners has thus been at least doubled
in several counties by recruits from the ranks of the tenant farmers,
and unless compelled by the current fall in prices to sell their pro-

10 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

perties, these new proprietors are likely to afford an appreciable —
accession of political stability to the whole landowning section
of the community. On the other hand, many country squires, in face
of financial stringency and even of domestic discomfort, have been
estopped by the ties of family sentiment and tradition from seeking, by
the alienation of their ancestral domains, a short cut to material pro-
sperity or enhanced comfort. In such cases desirable estate improve-
ments and sometimes necessary repairs have had to be abandoned, and
eleemosynary gifts reduced to a minimum, causing thereby much heart-
burning and compunction. How much better it would be, assuming
that the estate is not subject to a strict settlement, rendering such a
process ultra vires, if part of the estate were sold in order to provide
the necessary capital for the cultivation or industrial equipment of the
remainder of it.

It is here material to consider more closely to what extent the land-
dwner in Continental countries has been instrumental in advancing
the prosperity of agricultural industry, economically, politically,
and socially.

On the Continent, speaking generally, the landowner had to deriv
his livelihood from his land, and in a large measure from its actual
cultivation. | Landowners with large invested funds were relatively
scarce, and there was not any large influx of rich manufacturers whose
ambition it was to acquire such power and social distinction as might
be deemed to flow from territorial possessions. The Continental land-
owner was generally forced to regard his occupation as landowner as
the main business of his life, a business requiring proper training, a
business to be steadily developed, and just as steadily maintained, as
any commercial undertaking. From this personal and individual stand-
point arose his sound and intelligent attitude towards the whole rural
industry. | He realised that if his own individual business was to.
achieve the maximum of success, the industry of which it was a part
must be as highly organised as any other industry in the country.

Speaking generally, in all Continental countries (whether they have a —
definite agrarian party or not) the political power enjoyed by agriculture
is founded on the fact that agriculture is an organised industry. In
Great Britain itis not. Foreign agriculturists realised that the effective
and complete organisation of their industry was the surest path to
political power, and in every case landowners became the leaders in this
movement. Although in different countries its details may have varied,
its underlying principle was the same. The great incentive to this
development of agricultural organisation was the competition of the new
worlds. On the Continent such competition was strenuously fought,
and the aid of science was invoked in the contest. In Great Britain
the same competition was not effectively met because organisation was
wanting, and the landowner failed in the duty of leadership. As he
reduced his rents, so the tenant-farmer reduced the labour bestowed
upon the land, and reduced, instead of augmenting, what he put back
into the land with a view to its yielding an economic return. Agricul-
turists and Government were alike to blame.

In Denmark sixty years ago the landowners co-operated with the

ek

a Le ee, |

*
M.—AGRICULTURE. 11

clergy in improving the land and in organising rural industry. — Far-
sighted landowners realised that the day of the big estate was past,
and they joined forces with their Government to substitute, with all
proper safeguards for economic success, the occupying-owner for the
farm tenant. The success has been undoubted, and neither could the

' landowner complain of unfair treatment nor the tenant of having

imposed upon him an undue financial burden. When in recent
years force of circumstances compelled the disintegration of the
great estates in England, many farm tenants had no option but to
purchase their holdings, and the purchase was made under the
worst possible conditions. The system of land banks on the Con-
tinental model would have simplified the process of such transfer,
and would have obviated in a _ large measure its inevitable
risks. In Denmark the landowners have been the pioneers of all new
methods and processes in farming, and the farmers in their neighbour-
hood have followed their example. The fact that the standard of
Danish farming is to-day very high and very level is mainly due to the
Danish landowners. In the actual work of the co-operative movement
the clergy in Denmark, as in Belgium, have played an important part,
often acting as secretaries to the co-operative societies, and by precept
and example guiding the industrial activities of the smaller cultivators.
In strong contrast the English rural clergy are relatively valueless from
an economic standpoint, and thus lose much of the personal influence
which they might otherwise possess. This was not always the case
in English history. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the monks
in England were resident landowners, and initiated most of the im-
provements which were made in the practices of medieval farming.
It was their influence which was mainly instrumental in the improve-
ment of live-stock, drainage, reclamation, and the construction of roads
and bridges. Further, the Danish landowner, in common with the best
types of his class in all Western European countries, because he applies
business methods to the cultivation of his land, has been the means of
increasing the aggregate yield from the soil of his country for the benefit
of the nation, while as a reward for himself he has derived a profit from
the process which surpasses what is generally conceived as possible
throughout this country. Not only is his estate administered on the
soundest commercial lines, and made to yield a fair return to him as
proprietor, but because a considerable proportion, and often the whole,
of it is farmed according to up-to-date methods he receives a large profit
as a cultivator.

Denmark, however, it must be remembered, is a purely agricultural
country. An even better example for British comparison is Belgium,
because that country possesses an industrial development similar to but
even more intensive than that of the United Kingdom. Although its
factory output is greater per head of population than in this country,
its rural development has been considerable and progressive. The
landowners have been pioneers in this work, while the priests have co-
operated with a. knowledge and enthusiasm unsurpassed in any other
country. The result has been that poor and waste land has been
brought into high productivity, and Belgium, in spite of her urban

M4

12 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

developments, has excelled all countries of the world in her production
per acre of cultivated land. The landowners have taken a specially
active part in agricultural production of every description as well as
in stock breeding and dairying on their estates, and by championing the
interests of the rural community in the agricultural societies and in the
National Legislature. Many of them insist upon their sons making a
specialised study of agriculture, and a considerable number of land-—
owners’ wives are beginning to take an active interest in women’s insti-
tutes (Cercles de Fermiéres) and in the Institut Menager Agricole of
Laeken, in which prospective landowners’ wives are properly trained ~
to play an active part in the social life of the countryside. So well
have the whole agricultural community, led by the landowners, per-
formed their part that politicians and the general public alike in Belgium
recognise that the welfare of their country depends ultimately upon a
flourishing agricultural industry. Not only has considerable attention
been paid to agricultural education in all grades of Belgian schools,
but a certain modicum of instruction concerning the land and the national
importance of its proper development is, even in the urban schools,
inculcated in the minds of all future Belgian citizens, with the result
that there exists throughout Belgium a sound public opinion in relation
to agricultural problems. No such public opinion can be said to exist
at the present time in this country. Our landowners are not as a
class educational enthusiasts.

In Germany also, which contains to a large extent an urban and
industrial population, the Government has concentrated much attention
upon the proper development of land and of agriculture. From the
political point of view agriculture in Germany, as represented by the
agrarian party, is probably stronger in proportion to its urban population
than in any other country. It is, however, significant to note that
there agricultural organisation for industrial needs preceded its organisa-
tion for political purposes. There, too, prior to the War, the great
landowners took the lead, and although in some parts of Germany
the larger agricultural estates are administered more or less upon Eng-
lish lines, the owner is almost invariably also a farmer, who conducts his
farming operations on a strictly business footing. The first step in the
organisation of Germany’s agricultural industry may be said to have
been taken when, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the land-
owners founded the Landschaft as a means of providing credit for estate
purposes, recognising, as they did, that credit is the life-blood of the
industry, if available on easy and attractive terms, but that in the form
of a permanent mortgage it is apt to become a burden upon owner
and occupier alike. Out of this landowners’ bank, which in 1914 had a
capital of 150,000,0001., grew the provision of credit for current agricul-
tural needs through the medium of the Raiffeisen and Schulze-Delitzsch -
Banks, the former of which had a turnover in 1914 of over 300,000,0001.

In France most of the large landowners reside on their estates, which
they cultivate themselves, either wholly or in part. They take a
practical interest in all matters relating to the progress of agriculture,
and are everywhere the promoters of co-operation in all its forms.
In particular they are usually at the head of the important agricultural

Pera ave et ee are eae 8 re Sa

<=
‘

: e
| O|_; M—AGRICULTURE. 18

syndicates. Their influence is, however, essentially local; attached to

the land, they concern themselves for the most part only with the

interests of the population over which their influence directly extends,
Very often a large landowner is the maire of the commune, or a member
of the Arrondissement Council, or of the General Council of the Depart-
ment, but very rarely is he a Senator or Deputy, as such positions

‘necessitate prolonged periods of residence in Paris. The influence of

the large landowner is specially felt by the ‘ metayers ’ in those regions
where metayage exists. This influence takes the form of the choice
of their live-stock and fertilisers, and of advice as to the methods of
cultivation. This is only possible where mutual confidence and friendly
relations exist between the landowner and the ‘ metayers ’; in districts
where these relations are disappearing or weakening metayage tends to
give place to rent-paying tenancy.

In Italy, in those regions where large estates are the rule, the land-
lord, usually an absentee, often lets his land to intermediaries, who are
mere speculators, and who cultivate it extensively with a view to their
personal profit without regard to the interests of the community. Else-
where the landowners, where they themselves undertake the cultivation
of their own properties, usually seek to introduce increasingly scientific
methods of cultivation, and to draw advantage, in their own interests
and that of the public, from the latest teachings of chemistry, biology,
and agricultural mechanics. Even on the estate cultivated on the
metayer system the landlords, on whom falls the management of the
farms, have sought in the past to introduce all such improvements
as will increase the yield of the land and improve the economic condi-
tions of the metayers and their families. Latterly, however, the rela-
tions between the landowners and the peasantry have, as already men-
tioned, become somewhat strained; as thé demands of the peasants
threatened in many cases to exceed the limits of the productivity of the
farms the landowners have felt themselves compelled to combine in
association for the defence of their own proprietary interests. A close
network of such associations has been formed, and these are affiliated
to the General Confederation of Agriculture. This organisation, acting

on behalf of its affiliated associations, proposes not only to safeguard

the interests of the landowning class, but also to carry on propaganda
in favour of the technical progress of agriculture and for the betterment
of the conditions of the rural classes in general. Recently there has
also been formed an agricultural political party, to promote in Parlia-
ment the interests of agriculture.

The history of agriculture in the United Kingdom for the last
seventy years does not redound to the credit either of landowners or of
statesmen. The landowners, who should have given a lead to the
industry, failed to do so, largely because they have not as a class been
trained for their proper profession, and because in a greater or less
degree they have regarded the land as an amenity, but never as a great
national problem for the solution of which they were themselves
primarily responsible.

The British landowner, if he farms at all, being untrained to

the task, often farms indifferently, and generally at a loss. If

M5

14 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

he produces live-stock of special merit it is largely for the foreign |
and not for the home market. Often his farming operations are based
upon his ambition to gain public distinction by excelling as a profes-
sional exhibitor of prize stock at the leading agricultural shows, without
any effort on his part to make such stock a medium for the improve-
ment of the ordinary commercial stock of the country, or even of his
own locality. One result of this is a marked and growing gap between
the finest British live-stock, which may be reckoned as the best in the
world, and the average live-stock of the ordinary commercial farmer,
which is probably lagging behind the average standard now attained
in many Continental countries.

Although in soil and climate the land of Great Britain can com-
pare favourably with most of the cultivated land on the Continent,
the Continental landowner derives as a rule a net income of
from 31. to 4l. per acre, as compared with 11. per acre in the United
Kingdom. Moreover, the Continental landowner so manages his wood-
lands that they yield, generally speaking, an annual average net profit
at least equal to the rental of the agricultural land, and often very
much more.

Sir James Caird (the advocate of more liberal covenants in tenancy
agreements) more than sixty years ago sounded the trumpet of warning
in relation to the threatening decadence of British agriculture, which,
however, passed unheeded by the bulk of those best able to profit by
and act upon it. England’s period of greatest agricultural depression,
which followed twenty years later, synchronised with that of Germany’s
greatest agricultural enterprise. From that time the latter’s agricultural
progress, based on ascertained knowledge widely and wisely diffused, was
steady and continuous. Germany’s food-weapons during the late War
were at least as deadly as*her military weapons, and the fact that the
former did not ultimately triumph cannot be placed to the credit of
British landlordism. Fas est et ab hoste doceri. | Owing to lack of
enterprise and to the non-utilisation of scientific discovery the number
of persons fed from 100 acres of cultivated land in Great Britain prior
to the War fell far short of those fed from the same area in Germany,®
while the average crop yields of Great Britain have for a generation
been below those of Belgium and Denmark, although none of the three
can boast of a soil and climate more conducive to agricultural
productivity. The same British acreage could well be made to produce
at least twice the present output of human and animal food. That
England should have 55 per cent. of her cultivable land under pasture as
compared with only 18 per cent. in Germany is not creditable to the
former. In Germany. the occupier, if he is not also the owner, demands
and enjoys the benefits of a long lease. Moreover, game preserving there
is on a relatively small scale, and subservient to the paramount claims of

2 It is singular to note that Caird, in the preface to his exhaustive survey
of British farming, selects for special emphasis two defects, (1) the lack of land-
owners’ initiative, and (2) the non-utilisation of sewage in promoting fertility.
There is still room for land improvement from both sources.

3 ‘The Recent Development of German Agriculture, by Sir Thomas ~
Middleton [Cd. 8305] 1916.

‘
s

wiey*

pelewe>

i TE OE PE a a ae a ae

na
M.—AGRICULTURE. 15

food production. Here the claims of property as such have over-

ridden those of industry, which alone can in the last resort justify
property and at the same time enhance its value. The almost pathetic
cry on the part of so many landowners of * Property, property, property ’
is a significant indication of the at least temporary decay of the squire
of former days, who, although perhaps a feudal autocrat, was an
integral part of the industrial machine, and was recognised and respected
as such by the other parts.

And yet only sixty years ago English landowners were still the
acknowledged pioneers of agricultural improvement! The whole con-
tinent of Europe—including especially France, Germany, and Switzer-
land—were the confessed imitators of English agricultural methods as
initiated and perfected by ‘ Turnip Townshend,’ Coke of Norfolk, Lord
Somerville, and the Dukes of Bedford. In France De Saussure, in
Germany Thaer, and later Stockhardt (a disciple of Sir John Bennet
Lawes), and in Switzerland Von Fellenberg, had preached the advan-
tages of English methods, particularly in the matter of crop rotation.
The name of the Squire of Rothamsted was a household word through-
out rural Europe, and was stimulating more scientific treatment of the
soil, while his own bucolic fellow-countrymen, mostly blind to his
genius and to their own advantage, were sinking into a condition of
static somnolence and smug contentment with the progress of the past.
The Germans especially, unlike ourselves, thoroughly believed in the
advantages of education and research, and their farmers, unlike ours,
greedily absorbed the teachings of science as applied to agricultural
processes, notably in the economic employment of feeding-stuffs and
fertilisers.

The present-day poverty of the landowning class will, no doubt, be
urged, perhaps with some justification, in opposition to their adoption
of the rdle which I submit is properly theirs, and which is not capable
of vicarious fulfilment, either by the State or by any agent or tenant.
Their very impecuniosity, however, may best provide the much-needed
driving power, especially if it be associated with knowledge. Coke of
Norfolk derived his stimulus from the refusal of a farm tenant to pay
what he considered an economic rent. He could boast eventually of
having increased his estate income tenfold. His tenants applauded his
enterprise and copied his methods. The increase of his rents, reflecting
as it did increased national wealth, was even recognised by economists
and statesmen as beneficial alike to the agricultural industry and to the
State. Some of his improvements no doubt needed initial capital
outlay, and this many a modern landlord may be powerless to provide.
But co-operation has proved to be to a large extent a substitute for
capital in those countries which have most developed their agricultural
prosperity, and become our most formidable competitors, even in our
own markets. To co-operative methods agricultural landowners must
turn to promote the enhanced well-being of themselves and the whole
rural community. Moreover, by the establishment of a system, not of
State-imposed minimum wages but of friendly co-partnership, profit-
sharing and practical human sympathy, untarnished by patronage, and
coupled with greater simplicity of living, they must identify and unify

16 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

their material interests with those of the rural employees upon their —
estates. Thus, and only thus, will the economic and perhaps, too,
the political solidarity of presently diverse agricultural interests be
established, which can best promote on a permanent basis the maximum
prosperity of British agriculture. .s

The trained capacity to produce should be part of the equipment
of every agricultural landowner. But still more important for the
modern landowner, if he is to achieve his maximum utility, is the capa-
city to organise. Without it he will never become a true leader, and
British agriculture will become a prey to hostile competition from abroad
and successful exploitation at home.

The following are some of the methods by the adoption of which
British agriculture, under the enlightened direction of trained, far- —
sighted, and progressive landowners, might, in spite of the competition
of countries where labour is cheaper and taxation lower, be stabilised
on a remunerative basis :—

The organisation of credit facilities.

The co-operative purchase in bulk of farm requisites and the co-
operative sale and distribution of farm produce.

The utilisation of mechanical energy on the farm by means of
tractors, electric motors, oil-engines, potato diggers and planters and
other labour- saving devices.

The utilisation of water-power for generating electricity and the
employment of the latter for driving farm machinery.

The grinding of every variety of corn (including beans and peas)
and the substitution of concentrated foods grown on the estate for
purchased milling offals, cattle cakes and meals.

The mechanical mixing of foods for live-stock, and their conveyance
without handling into mangers and troughs.

The erection of silos, and the ensilage therein of bulky leguminous
crops, as well as of oats, ryegrass, and maize.

The utilisation of liquid manure from farm buildings after collection
in tanks. .

The elimination of scrub bulls and the provision in every locality
of live-stock sires of outstanding quality and good parentage.

The establishment of central ‘dairies and bacon factories either for
a single estate or for a larger area.

The utilisation of all whey from cheese factories in feeding pigs
or by conversion into lactose or lactalbumin

The preservation of milk or whey in times of glut by desiccation.

The centralised manufacture of concrete for farm and estate
buildings, and of lime and ground limestone for mortar and land
dressings.

The or ganised collection of orchard fruit, and its grading, packing,
consignment, and retail sale, or its conversion into cider with portable
cider- “making plant, or in properly equipped central factories.

The pulping of fruit and making of jam.

The preservation of fruit and vegetables by bottling, canning, and
desiccation.

The organised collection and preservation of eggs in the spring and

Re Tee ee ee eee ee ee en ae
; 7 :

*
M.—AGRICULTURE. ry.

summer, to place on the market in the late autumn and winter, when

their commercial value is highest.

The co-operative use of motor-lorries for carrying farm produce to
populous centres of distribution.

The co-operative ownership of portable timber-felling and centralised.
timber-seasoning plant.

The conversion of the timber of one or (by joint ownership of plant)
of several estates into planks, barrels, gates, fencing, mattock handles,
clogs, &c., and its preservation by creosote or other preservative.

The organisation of the cultivation of sugar-beet, and its conversion
into beet-sugar, alcohol, and cattle foods.

The establishment of co-operative central markets, auction marts,
and slaughter-houses.

The organisation of comprehensive schemes of local drainage.

The use of draining machines for excavating drains and laying drain-
pipes.

The utilisation of village sewage in the production of osiers, and
their conversion into baskets.

The erection of centralised waste-product plants for the utilisation
as pig and poultry foods of animal carcases of low commercial value.

The organisation of periodical pilgrimages of local farmers to centres
of research and demonstration, or to skilfully worked and wisely
equipped farms.

And, above all, the elimination of superfluous and unnecessary
middlemen.

There is probably no worse consequence of the lack of cohesion,
organisation, and leadership in British agriculture than the extent and
power of the middleman interest—unparalleled elsewhere in the civilised
world—whose parasitic tentacles have slowly yet surely fastened them-
selves upon the industry and are sucking out its life’s blood to the
detriment of producer and consumer alike. It is largely a ‘ horizontal ’
interest of useless speculators, and not a ‘ vertical’ interest of helpful
distributors. While it thrives the industry decays. Where it is itself
sufficiently organised it has even been known to dictate imperiously the
price of some essential farm product to producer and consumer alike—a
price which would have left no margin of profit to the former—and
thereby to compel Government intervention in order to avoid helpless
acquiescence, a dangerous departure and indicative of the inherent
weakness of the industry.

Apart from the heavy burden of local and Imperial taxation, the
toll levied by the middleman is the main cause of the poverty-stricken
condition of the English agricultural labourer. While companies whose
sole object and justification are the distribution of British agricultural
produce are paying 25 per cent. dividends, or issuing bonus shares to
their urban shareholders and to those who ‘ toil not neither do they
spin,’ the countryside is being slowly denuded of its physically and
mentally robust manhood owing to the indigence of the agricultural
producer, their emigration is being fostered by statutory enactment, and
foreign produce of the same or a like description is being sold in increas-
ing quantities in British markets. It is an unedifying spectacle which

18 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. ; |

agricultural solidarity and leadership alone can efface. In no sphere |
of action can the leadership of the landowner be more profitably .
exercised ; in none is it more urgently needed.

The disparity between the prices paid to the farmer for his produce
and those paid by the consumer for the same produce, or even by the
farmer himself for its by-products, may be illustrated by the following
official figures furnished to me by the Statistical Branch of the National
Farmers’ Union :—

WHEAT AND ITS PRODUCTS,*

Per Ton.
a Wheat Middlings Bran Flour
us |
He Fe £ sa d. £18 aud £ a8
Average pre-War seisy |e eels 612 0 5 0 TL: 0) 48
(1911-13) | (1911-13) | (1911-13) (1913)
1921 |
Suly. oh cal | hay eee | AO UIB ea 12° 40 30 8 3 0 oT 8.0
apastP Ase oe) eee eae eS 142.0 (10 0 0 | 26 450
September ets Geel Se 29 12 13° 0 9 1 0° | “94960
October ... a Boon PU is oy LT 20 8 8 0 23; 450
November bag = akieinl 10:10 2 0" "A ABS O 8 A700 20 12 0 j;
December... «. | 10.18 2 | 1014 0 (10 1 0 | 484600 t
1922 ’
January: is). Severs Selon, 2 9° $2.70 9 47 90 18 4 0 i
February sk. w | rk [818 0 | 8 1 :
March, icc - veer), aeralalen Ge 813 0 811. 0 *| 20am 2
April =< .).0. 9) Sate” oeaiilce O80 8 6 0 8 otcao 20 4 0
Mae lin cin-ccutwars Remueere eens a 819 0 8h 00 19 14 0 $
June: 4 shia beh ee a eo 813)10 613 0 18 12 0

* The price of wheat is based on the monthly average Gazette price published
by the Ministry of Agriculture.

‘he prices of English offals are those for the two varieties quoted officially
by the Ministry of Agriculture.

The price of flour is the average of the prices at the beginning and end
of the month for London Straights quoted by 7'he 7'imes and incorporated in
‘ts index-number of prices.

ey

a ti eat

M.— AGRICULTURE, 19

Expressing these prices as index-numbers, with the average pre- War
prices quoted above taken as 100 in each case :—

ee Wheat | Miadlinee Bran Flour |

1921 |
Sa 258 | 182 | 161 249
ES eee eee | 214 | 198 | 238
September... i. 180 | 192 |... 187 | 225 |
October ot Saas eee | 168 | 166 | ont
November = oe 138 164 175 | 187
December ae ae | 162 | 199 L, 454 |

1922 |
ee oy! 2. |' 398 |? Fae | 185 | 165
February oe as) ee i, hee I 1979 175
March ©... -. +. | 161 |; Wat | 169 185
April... “a Gees 157 126 159 | 184
ee... | 169° aS}. 179
BG) msn ios seu 167

131 132 169

The most striking comparison of prices is provided by the months
November and December 1921. In both these months the price of coarse
middlings was actually higher than the price of wheat. ‘The percentage
increases on the pre-War levels are also instructive, viz. :—

Percentage Increase
= ol
Nov. | Dec.
English wheat ... 2... «| 38 40
» coarse middling sce 64 | 62
| » bran ase a Bie 75 99
Straight-run flour cas wee | 87 71

Taking the respective food values of wheat, coarse middlings, and
brar. as represented by the figures 100, 85, and 65 respectively, the
relative values to the pig-feeder, apart from dietetic considerations,
would be as follows :—

Coarse
= Wheat Middlings Bran
£es. d. £s d £s. d.
Average pre-War... pes oe TAZ" 5 | 419 1
Nov. 1921 so “ss sas 10 10 0 818 6 616 6
Dec. 1921 aos see ae 1013 2 oe ae 618 7
MILK,
Summer Contracts, 1922 (London Supply).
Per Gallon.
To Farmer To Consumer
Prices originally proposed and agreed 8d. delivered London,
to (re } of supply) carriage paid, 1/8
Equivalent to (average) ... ae 6d. at. farm
Prices after Government intervention 104d. delivered London } 1/8
Equivalent to (average) age “aa 84d. at farm

20

SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

PIGS AND BACON.

Pigs.
Per Lb. deadweight (in pence).
ce | |
Ist quality | 2nd quality Average
| d. d. d,
*Average 1911-13 : 6.4 6.0 6.2
1921
July aoe 14.3 12.9 13.6
August 14.8 13.6 14,2
September 14.1 12.8 13.5
October 12.0 10.9 11.4
November... 11.0 ONG, 10.4
December 10.3 9.1 9.7
1922
January 10.3 9-1 9.7
February ... 11.4 10.2 10.8
March 11.9 10.7 11-3
April 12.1 11.0 11.6
May 12.3 10.9 11.6
June 11.7 10.5 iia

Index-number
of average

d,
100

219
229
218
184
168
156

156
174
182
187
187
179

* Average prices of bacon pigs as quoted officially by the Ministry of

Agriculture.

Retail Bacon Prices.t

Back Side
re, per Ib. per Ib.
8. d. 8. d.
Pre-War (1911-13) 1 33 0 11
1921
July 3 3} 2 63
August 3 2 2 54
September 3 14 2 44
October 2 11 2 1}
November... 2 5} 1 9
December 2 63 1 10}
1922
January 2 63 1 9%
February ... 2 64 1 10
March 2 64 1 9}
April 2 64 1 10
May 2 7 1 li}
June 2 74 1 112

~, 2 eet on

Average
per lb.

H &
—
al

t These figures are obtained from five of the largest multiple stores in

In the following table these prices are expressed as index-numbers
(the pre-War price in each case being taken as 100) and compared
with the corresponding index-number of prices of bacon as given

abave :—

*
M.—AGRICULTURE. 21

Index-Numbers,
; Retail Price of Bacon * .
tail Price of ta : : ary
wacen Figs Back / Side
Pre-Warj(1911-13) 100 100 | 100
tem. 1921
ae 219 253 | 277
August... ve Sid 229 245 268
September a AS: 218 242 259
October... ste nate 184 226 229
November ... bse dst 168 192 191
December oo wt 156 198 202 |
1922
January... =A mee 156 197 198
ts | 174 | 197 200
March aa wen as pyle bY 197 198
ae 187 195 200
May ‘ee 187 205 211
June are aoe ode 179 203 216

_* It is noteworthy that the disparity between the pre-War and post-War
prices is most marked in the cheaper cuts.

England greatly needs, on the part of those landowners whose
material resources admit, the provision of such factory or other equip-
ment as will make agricultural estates to a greater extent self-contained
industrial units depending less upon the outside world for the raw
materials of the rural industry * and for the absorption or conversion
of its output.

Such estates personally managed by their owners as_ business
concerns were to be found in many parts of the Continent, notably in
Hungary. In Belgium those of Baron Peers at Oostcamp and of the
Chevalier de Vriére at Bloemendael, and in France that of the Viscomte
Arthur de Chezelle (who introduced ensilage into England) at Le
Boulleaume, Oise, may be mentioned as examples deserving of English
imitation.

There are probably few directions in which landowners can more
usefully employ their salutary influence and organising capacity than
in that of finding profitable outlets for the agricultural produce of their
estates. As a good illustration of what can usefully be done in this
direction may be selected the enterprise of potato-growers in the Wash
district of Lincolnshire in catering for the special requirements of the
chip-potato trade in the North of England, and of the Evesham market
gardeners in satisfying the predilections of Lancashire mill hands in the
production of spring onions of a special description and flavour. Both
enterprises have resulted in the acquisition by their growers of.
considerable wealth and prosperity.

In all land policy it is difficult to reconcile, especially among 4
4M. Terentius Varro (s.c. 36) in his De Re Rusticé, Lib. I., Cap. XXII,
said : ‘ Quae e fundo sumi non poterunt, ea si empta erunt potius ad utilitatem,

quam ob speciem, sumptu fructum non extenuabnt. Eo magis, si inde empta
erunt potissimum, ubi ea et bona et proxime et vilissimo sint emi poterunt.’

~y 7
-

22 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

proletariat ignorant alike of economics and business, the social and
political aspect of the problem with sound economics, and the former
being generally more popular and lending itself to makeshift opportunism
is apt to dominate the counsels of Government, to the exclusion of those
which may appear hard and unsympathetic, but which are often
fraught with a wider and more continuous prosperity to the great masses
of the population. Thus it was that the enclosure of the commons,
which multiplied exceedingly the output of agricultural wealth, was
strenuously resisted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
only gained its great impetus and development in the latter half of the
eighteenth century, when its undoubted advantages had become realised
by many of those who most sympathetically championed the interests
of the poor. ‘Thus it is to-day with the artificial extension, under strong
Government pressure, of statutory small holdings beyond the area of
their possible absorption by experienced cultivators of sufficient capital,
in the absence of effective co-operation and during a period of falling
markets. But social and political prejudices, even when directed
against a class which on balance is an asset to the State, must be
taken into account in the balancing of economic advantage, and even
more so now than in those expansive days when George III. was king,
when agricultural landowners were the predominant political force, and
when Arthur Young preached his illuminating economic gospel, which,
in the practice of his disciples and with the assistance of scientific
discovery, carried the agriculture of Britain to its pre-eminent position
amongst the nations of the world.

It is often said of social revolutions, as it is being said of the post-
War Russian Revolution, that the cause is to be found in the monopoly
of land in the hands of a few great landowners. It is at least open
to doubt whether this has ever been the main cause of any revolution,
and certainly was not so in the case of that which has been recently
prevalent in Russia. In 1917, and for many decades previously, the
great Russian landowners only owned one-tenth of the land of Russia,
the other nine-tenths belonging to the peasants, or rather to their com-
munities. This land was managed by the Communal Council, or ‘ Mir,’
which periodically met to allot land for cultivation to members of the
commune, who, as a result, occupied individual holdings, enjoying
their use until another re-allotment took place. It is noteworthy,
however, that the one-tenth of the nation’s land under the control of
the large individual landowners was that upon which the most care
was bestowed and the most up-to-date methods were employed, with the
result that the output of food from this one-tenth exceeded the total
output of the other nine-tenths, which were under the control of the
peasant communes, and which were badly cultivated and managed.
It was when the Revolution drove out Russian landowners that the
production of food decreased so seriously as to threaten the nation
with the horrors of starvation.

Whereas a relative paucity of landed proprietors in a populous and
preponderantly urban country engenders political antipathy and an
unsympathetic Government attitude, a multiplication of small owners
lacking individual initiative and enterprise encourages, and indeed

a we ;

ee a

i i le ll

~~ se =o

M.—AGRICULTURE. 23

compels, Governmental guidance, interference, and control. In France,
for instance (a nation of peasant proprietors), the State to a great extent

takes the place and performs the economic functions of the large land-

owner. But the State can take no risks in developing a commercial
enterprise even when science points the way. It may encourage and
subsidise scientific investigation, but it cannot compel its application to
agricultural practice. In England it was private enterprise which re-
claimed wastes, drained marshes, consolidated uneconomic holdings,
enclosed commons, and raised at one period the quality of British live-
stock, and at another the standard of British cultivation, to a position
of unchallenged supremacy throughout the world.

The original ‘ Board of Agriculture,’ which was founded in 1793
on the initiative and inspiration of Arthur Young, was for a time the
chief agency by which a policy, dictated originally by the enlightened
self-interest of the larger landowners and fostered by the demands of a
growing manufacturing population, was extended to the public advan-
tage throughout the kingdom. It expired twenty-nine years later,
during a period of acute agricultural distress, because it had exhausted
its usefulness, and was found to be less efficacious in promoting
agricultural development than individual enterprise backed by the
employment of individual capital. The Royal Agricultural Society of
England, founded in 1838, became its legitimate and acknowledged
substitute, and, in fact, marked the revival of rural prosperity which
synchronised with the acceptance for a time by landlords of the duties
of their position. In every civilised country the necessity for State
guidance and State control is in direct ratio with the prevalence of
small landowners. This control, while necessitated in France by a
peasant proprietary, has there been kept within bounds by the powerful
and widely diffused political strength of the agricultural industry. In
England, in the absence of such strength, Government control as it
extends is bound to be subordinated to urban interests and urban, and
often ignorant, prejudices. In a country where the agricultural popula-
tion are in a small and diminishing minority Government leadership and
landowner leadership are mutually incompatible and mutually destruc-
tive. The abandonment of the latter by a failure to found power upon
the informed exercise of duty must ultimately lead to Land Nationalisa-
tion. There is no small danger to an industry involved in its exclusive

‘possession of a separate State Department necessarily swayed by in-

constant and incalculable political currents. If some other Department
of the State were to take over the administration of animal diseases
and of milk control, and assuming that considerations of national
economy were to result in the entire abolition of the Ministry of Agricul-
ture, or at least in the limitation of its activities to the organisation of
agricultural research, and if simultaneously landowners were to assume
enlightened leadership of the industry and the Royal Agricultural Society .
were to carry out to the full the original intentions of its founders,
British agriculture would probably acquire more permanent stability
and the nation consequentially enhanced security. Failing the simul-
taneous and improbable fulfilment of all these conditions, the growing
enterprise of landowners should, in the public interest, obviate the
necessity for ever-increasing Government intervention and control.

24 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

The long-continued divorce until comparatively recent times of
science and agriculture in Great Britain was somewhat remarkable, and
accounted to no small extent for the discontinuous progress and
prosperity of the latter. The landowner, who, with the dissolution of
the monasteries, alone governed the economic destinies of the country-
side, was seldom a farmer and never a scientist. His own education
fitted him for the profession of arms, court life, sport, politics, or
diplomacy. His personal association with industry or commerce would
have placed him outside the social pale. It was, it must be admitted,
the tenant farmer—and notably Robert Bakewell, of Dishley—who in
the Golden Age of agricultural progress was the pioneer of live-stock
improvement. But it was the landowner who was the pioneer of im-
provements in the cultivation and output of the soil. It was, however,
as educated thinkers, alive to the economic needs of their times, rather
than as agrarian experts, that men like John Evelyn and Sir Richard
Weston in the seventeenth century, and Jethro Tull, Charles, second
Viscount Townshend, Coke of Norfolk, and the fourth and fifth Dukes
of Bedford (the latter the founder of the Smithfield Club) in the eighteenth
century, advocated and carried through a veritable revolution in agricul-
tural practice. Jethro Tull, a briefless barrister, was the originator of
the horse-hoe, as well as of the drill for sowing wheat and oats. He
and Lord Townshend, the statesman, by popularising the cultivation
of turnips and of leguminous crops, led to the introduction of the four- |
course rotation as a normal agricultural practice, and established a
definite link between pastoral farming (conducted mainly for the pro-
duction of wool) and arable husbandry, rendering possible not merely
the winter feeding and consequent preservation of live-stock, but also
the largely augmented production of bread corn, meat, and milk. So,
too, Thomas Coke, the sportsman, society beau, and politician, by
adopting and extending the methods of his Norfolk neighbour, not
only multiplied exceedingly the agricultural wealth of a barren tract
of country, ‘ which was little better than a rabbit warren,’ and induced
his tenants at enhanced rents to copy his methods, but also by making
his annual ‘sheep shearings’ a fashionable rendezvous stimulated many
other landowners to follow his example. The progressive and profitable
activities of these pioneers were further advertised and contrasted with
less enlightened methods both at home and abroad by the brilliant and
indefatigable Arthur Young, who * was not so much instrumental in’
conveying knowledge to the common farmer as in becoming the vehicle
by which the latter’s want of knowledge was made known to experts.’ ®
The same gospel was subsequently preached by Cobbett and Caird.

None of these great men, whatever may have been their superficial
acquaintance with political economy, could be described as ‘scientists.
They knew nothing of chemistry, physics, or biology. They were, in
fact, mere empiricists. Strangely enough, concurrently with the rapid
advances in farming practice science was making giant strides in the
direction of assisting the agricultural industry w ‘ithout the knowledge
of its participants, and in providing the true explanation of the success

5 Russell Garnier’s History of the English Landed Interest, 1893.

M.—AGRICULTURE. 25

of many of their empirical processes. Wallarius, the Swede, about
1760 was demonstrating the value of humus in promoting soil fertility.
De Saussure, the Swiss, towards the end of the century was explaining
the nutrition of plants and their absorption of carbon from the air and
‘ascribing, somewhat inaccurately, their physical stability to the action of

_ phosphates. Thaer, the German (the Hanoverian physician of George

III.), in 1804 was founding the first agricultural college in Europe, and
pointing the way to Liebig in his discoveries of the ash constituents of
plants. Finally, Boussingault, the Frenchman, about 1820, covering
the whole range of agricultural chemistry and testing his theories on his
estate at Béchalbronn in Alsace, was bringing his influence to bear
directly upon the agriculture both of France and of England, and was
affording the chief inspiration to Lawes and Gilbert in the successful
conduct of their long and beneficent partnership, especially in the em-
ployment of the statistical method in calculating the effect of fertilisers
upon the growth of plants. It was not in fact until the time of Boussin-
gault and Lawes, and after Sir Humphry Davy had, with all his great
authority as a chemist, given, as it were, his imprimatur, that the two
separate and converging lines of scientific discovery and agricultural
practice may be said to have met, and the two methods—the scientific
and the empirical—to have become fused. What Davy, the chemist,
foreshadowed, Lawes, the landowner, consummated.

Throughout this period of agricultural enlightenment there were
eritics of the progressive but not unfashionable industrial tendencies
of the landowners of the day. As Lord Ernle recalls in his recent
book,* Dr. Edwards in 1783 wrote: ‘Gentlemen have no right to be
farmers, and their entering upon agriculture to follow it as a business
is perhaps a breach of their moral duty.’ Nevertheless, large numbers
of young men who were heirs to landed estates, as well as sometimes
. their younger brothers, began to go as pupils to farmers.

Thus too in the earlier days of the eighteenth century the appellation
of ‘ projectors’ was derisively applied to those enterprising amateur
farmers who became the pioneers of modern farming. The adoption of
any new system of husbandry, such as Jethro Tull’s turnip drilling, was
deprecated (especially in the Northern counties) by the rank and file
of the farming community, on the ground that a rent was payable by
the farmer to his landlord, and that the adoption of any innovation was
consequently accompanied by grave financial risks. It was the dogged
persistence of the ‘ projectors ’ and the obviously remunerative results
of their own improved methods which silenced the critics and compelled
imitation.

Fashion is an important factor in directing the activities of persons
of independent means, and fashion has frequently in the past been
dictated by Royal example. Thus in the days of Edward I., who was
‘a gardener, and in those of Edward II., who was a farmer and horse-
breeder, there was a temporary and healthy enthusiasm on the part
of successive Lords of Berkeley and other great territorial magnates to
increase the productiveness of their lands by marling, paring, and

6 Lnglish Farming, Past and Present, 3rd edition, 1922.

26 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. ~

burning, and such other methods of improvement as were recognised as
beneficial in those primitive times. Again, the great revival of agricultural
industry during the latter part of the eighteenth century was largely
due to the example set by George III., who, under the assumed name
of his shepherd, ‘ Ralph Robinson,’ contributed to the monthly publica-
tion known as the Annals of Agriculture, and who made no secret of
the fact that his interest in his farming operations exceeded that afforded
him by affairs of state. He revelled in the title of ‘ Farmer George ’ and
took a deep and personal interest in his flock of merino sheep and
his stall-fed oxen. So far as was practicable he turned Windsor Castle
into a huge farmhouse, and its grounds into an agricultural holding.
His maximum happiness was achieved when comparing notes with a
farming neighbour, quoting the dicta of Arthur Young, or personally
superintending the drainage or cultivation of his Flemish or his Norfolk
farm. Amongst those who followed the Royal example were Lord
Rockingham at Wentworth, Lord Egremont at Petworth, and Sir John
Sinclair, the President of the first Board of Agriculture. In more
recent times the same traditions have been maintained or revived by
men of outstanding enthusiasm and vision, such as Philip Pusey, Sir
Thomas Acland, Albert Pell, and Lord Rayleigh.

In the main, however, even the more enlightened and progressive
landowners have during the last century failed to achieve much for the
benefit of the industry through lack of a comprehensive and well-
thought-out plan, through discontinuity of effort, or through the con-
sciousness that they were failing to carry complete conviction to those
engaged therein as a source of livelihood,

It is worthy of note, and tends to confirm the cynical and
trite observation of Swift, that the duplication of a single
ear of corn or a single blade of grass ‘ does more essential service to
mankind than the whole race of politicians put together,’ that the fame
of the second Viscount Townshend, who was Secretary of State under
George I. and George IT., and subsequently Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
and Controller of the Foreign Policy of Great Britain, should have
passed down to posterity as that of an agriculturist rather than as that
of a statesman. As Arthur Young with prophetic vision says of him:
‘The importance of Embassies, Vice-Royalties and Seals is as transi-
tory as that of personal beauty, and the memory of this lord, though
a man of great ability, will in a few ages be lost as a Minister and
Statesman and preserved only as a farmer.’

It is an interesting fact that while during the eighteenth century
landowners like Townshend and Coke were the pioneers of improvements
in tillage, and tenant farmers of those in live-stock, the converse has
been the case during the last 80 to 100 years. Prominent among farm
tenants who in the former period established upon firm foundations
various breeds of cattle and of sheep were Bakewell, Charles and Robert
Colling, Matthew and George Culley, the Booths of Warlaby, Bates,
Benjamin Tompkins, Hewer, Quartly, and Ellman of Glynde. _ The
names of Treadwell, Hobbs, Prout, Dennis, Clare Sewell Read,
Jonas Webb, and James Hope of Dunbar, may be mentioned among
modern farm tenants who maintained a high standard of arable

M.—AGRICULTURE. 27

- husbandry (not unassociated with the maintenance of good flocks)

during an age when there was relatively little general progress in crop
cultivation. Concurrently, however, and especially during the last fifty
years, British live-stock of every description has steadily improved and

has attained a position of acknowledged superiority throughout the
world. This is largely attributable to the stock-breeding enterprise of
three successive sovereigns, including King George V., and to the

- enthusiastic efforts of such other landowners as the late Duke of Rich-

-mond and Gordon, Lord Rothschild, Lord Fitzhardinge, Sir Nigel
Kingscote, and Sir Walter Gilbey. But the enterprise of landowners
in this respect has not, as a rule, been conducted on strictly commercial
lines, and has often been dissociated from the nationally more important
task of land cultivation.

It is an unfortunate fact which emerges from the annals of the
English countryside throughout several centuries that the attainment by
the landed proprietor of such a measure of wealth, whether arising from
periods of agricultural prosperity or from external sources, as will leave
a fair margin over and above the reasonable requirements of family
comfort, has produced an inclination to exchange the position of wealth

_ producer for that of rent receiver, and to become progressively detached
in activity and interest from agricultural pursuits. Groping after
political power, clambering after social elevation, excessive indulgence
in sport and the adaptation or sacrifice of landed property to its demands,
and the pursuit of careers evoking a stronger appeal to national senti-
- ment or conspicuous achievement, have all operated to detach the
owners from the soil. Thoughtful patriots and economists of all ages
have commented upon this tendency with regret. ‘ Our gentry,’ -writes
Pepys during the agricultural depression of the latter part of the.
seventeenth century, ‘are grown ignorant in everything of good
husbandry,’ and he deplores the fact that without their initiative
progress is almost impossible.

John Stuart Mill surely enunciated sound economic truth, as well
as wise public policy, when, writing in 1848, he said: ‘The reasons
which form the justification . . . of property in land are valid only in
so far as the proprietor of land is its improver. . . . In no sound
theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor
of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered upon it.’

Whenever agriculture is depressed fiscal Protection is sought as the
remedy for its ills. Dependence upon Government is apt to destroy
initiative, self-reliance and resourcefulness, and to breed inertia. It is
at best a broken reed upon which to lean in an industrial country with
a teeming urban population. If the imminence of threatened starvation
in times of war evokes Government measures of artificial stimulation
to the process of food production they are necessarily ephemeral and
evanescent, and can afford no continuing stability. |The prospect of
relatively cheap seaborne food is sure to discredit among urban workers
any policy which raises artificially the cost of that raised at home or
extends its production by subsidies, provided mainly at the expense of
the non-agricultural population. German agriculture flourished in pre-
War days not in consequence of, but in spite of, its Protectionist policy.

28 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

It is not by increasing the cost of food, but by decreasing the cost
of its production and the Staté-imposed burdens upon cultivated land
that the economic salvation of British agriculture can best be secured.
The former course can but reduce demand and antagonise urban
interests, while the latter will have the contrary effect. .
The British agricultural landowner is to-day on his trial. Unless he
justifies himself as such the Nationalisation of the Land is inevitable.
Public opinion will demand his extinction, and Parliament will endorse
the demand. Most landowners have been for the last two generations
mere rent receivers, and have possessed neither the knowledge nor the
inclination personally to administer their own estates, still less to culti-
vate them on commercial lines for their own and the nation’s benefit.
So far as they have been organised as a class of the community they
have been organised, not as producers of wealth, but as defenders of
- property, and as such their organisation has, in a highly democratic
country, afforded them but a small and steadily decreasing measure
of security. They have thus lost their political power, because it had
no economic basis. As individuals they have, in the main, done good
service to the State. No class has consistently shown itself more
patriotic, unselfish, and philanthropic, or more imbued with a high sense
of public duty, inspired by lofty traditions unrivalled in any other .
country in the world. As statesmen and as local administrators they
have, while occupying the position of the governing class, set a standard
of political and commercial integrity which permeated the national life.
They have been stigmatised, not wholly without justification, as
ignorant, reactionary, and despotic. But at least it can be said that
during the period when their power and influence in the State were
greatest Britain attained to her outstanding position as the chief demo-
cracy of the world, and as the great champion of liberty, alike of person, '
of speech, and of Press. ;
Assuming that landowner organisation and landowner leadership as a —
condition precedent thereto, are urgently necessary on the one hand
for the welfare of the agricultural industry, and on the other for the
greater security of the nation, through the material increase of its food
and timber output, there would appear to be two alternative types of
landownership, and two only, likely to find justification in post-war
Britain, namely, individual proprietorship based upon agricultural
training and commercial experience, or the proprietorship of the State,
effected through the Nationalisation of the Land. The former alterna-
tive is still possible if landowners will but bestir themselves and take
upon their shoulders the responsibility which is pre-eminently theirs,
and which is incapable of effective delegation or vicarious execution.
The factors which give promise that in the future the British
landowner will once more take his proper place in affording an
enlightened lead to the agricultural industry, and will thus bring about
a rural renaissance comparable to that of 150 years ago, are, on the
one hand, his present impoverishment, and on the other his growing
desire to be suitably trained for his managerial duties. It was the
poverty of the landowner which, in Denmark, Germany and Belgium,
created the necessary impetus to agricultural progress in those countries
in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Oxford, Cambridge, and

a
M.—AGRICULTURE, 29

our other universities, as well as the agricultural colleges, are to-day
training large numbers of prospective landowners in the science and
practice of agriculture—a course which a generation ago would have

been deemed vulgarly utilitarian, and inconsistent with the traditions
_ of a liberal education—and many hundreds are flocking to avail them-
selves of the opportunities thus afforded. Some, too, of our public
schools, and notably Repton, Oundle, and Christ’s Hospital, alive to
the new demand, are including in their curriculum the study of agricul-
ture, while others, averse from early specialisation, are strengthening
their science teaching as a prelude to more specialised instruction else-
where. But such training, wherever acquired, to be really effective
must not be that of the mere well-informed onlooker and critic.
It must include personal acquaintance with the actual manual
processes of husbandry if the rural employer and organiser of
the future is to understand fully the daily tasks of the farm
worker, his difficulties, his mentality, and his potential output.
He should, if practicable, work as a labourer (as does many an enter-
prising young Danish landowner) for at least a year on a well-conducted
and well-organised arable farm, preferably before, and not after, he
studies the scientific or even the commercial side of the business. The
most efficient education is generally from the concrete to the abstract,
rather than the reverse. The lack of commercial training has ruined
many a hard-working ‘ gentleman farmer.’ He should learn the
rudiments of commerce and not be ashamed to do his own marketing.
If possible, too, he should by means of travel learn something of
the methods of husbandry practised on the Continent as well as in
other parts of the United Kingdom, as did Archbishop Morton (the
pioneer of the drainage of the Fens), Hartlib, and Sir Richard Weston
in Flanders, Jethro Tull both in Flanders and in France, Viscount
Townshend in Hanover and Holland, and Arthur Young throughout
France, Great Britain, and Ireland. He will ultimately embark upon
his life’s work—the pleasantest and niost engrossing of all pursuits—
with an equipment far exceeding that of Townshend or of Coke. They
were empiricists, groping by experiment and often disappointing ex-
perience towards the light, without the conscious aid of science. In
the landowner of to-day the association of practice with science, and
the capacity for leadership inherent in every healthy Briton, should
carry him to spheres of successful economic achievement to which they
could never haye aspired, and concurrently the reputation of British
farming once again to a pinnacle of undisputed superiority above all its
rivals.

A leading land agent, speaking recently at a large gathering of the
land agents’ profession in London, significantly said: ‘ Our principals
are getting even more difficult to manage than their estates.’ Surely
this intractability is a sign of grace, an evidence that the landowning
fraternity are at last awakening from the irresponsible torpor which
has for long benumbed their potential utility.

Perhaps, however, the greatest stimulus to enterprise, born of
increased confidence on the part of landowners, will prove to be their
consciousness of the numerical reinforcement of the class to which they

30 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

belong. The following tables, taken from the most recent official
statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture, show the differences between
the number of occupying owners and of their holdings in the years 1913
and 1921 respectively :—

Separate Occupations,

; es :
| Number of Holdin,
Showy | aie Ppa i MPR aia nee of
| aes owned by occupiers oldings owned
1913 435,677 48,760 11-19%
1921 | 420,133 70,469 16-77%
Acreage,
| ee a | :
Vise | - Total Area owned -| Total Area under Proportion of Total
| by occupiers | crops and grass Area under crops and
| | grass
| Acres Acres ;
1913 2,891,000 27,129,000 10-79%
1921 5,232,000 26,144,000 20 %

That the occupying owners should have increased during the last
eight years by 49 per cent. and the acreage which they occupy by
nearly 100 per cent. is indicative of the augmented strength, numerical
and geographical, of a class which was once deemed to be the backbone
of the nation. If many of the new occupying owners are to secure
permanent stability in their present position, it is urgently desirable that
the Government should afford them credit on easy terms in order to
enable them to discharge gradually and without undue embarrassment
the debts outstanding in respect of their recent purchases. The absence
in this country of Land Banks similar to those existing for this purpose
in several Continental countries is hampering alike to food output and
to financial security.

So, too, the long overdue revision of the present system of Local
Taxation has become a matter of urgent necessity. A system which
dates from a period when real estate was the almost exclusive source
of national wealth is indisputably inequitable at a time when, as now,
it comprises about one-tenth only of that assessable to income tax, and
especially so in the case of agricultural land which represents less than
one-eighth of the total property assessable to local rates, and upon which
the burden fails with particular severity, owing to the large area of
rateable property required for the purpose of a business yielding a
relatively small income (see Appendices I. and IT.).

The annual aggregate assessment to income tax in respect of the
ownership of land under Schedule A was by a curious coincidence almost
identical in the years 1814-15 and 1913-14—namely 37,000,0001. (It
rose gradually from the former year until if reached its maximum of
52,000,0001. in 1879-80) (see Appendix ITT.). .

_ The capacity of landowners as a class to direct the organisation of
agriculture must depend in some measure, as Continental experience
demonstrates, upon their capacity to organise themselves. Otherwise

EEE a OP ee Se

M,—AGRICULTURE. 81

_ their efforts will be not national in their scope, but isolated and sporadic.
In this connection the existence and growing strength of the Central
Landowners’ Association is a welcome augury of future corporate
efficiency. Composed exclusively of agricultural landowners, and rigidly
excluding even land agents and professional advisers from its ranks,
it already has local branches in all but two of the counties of England
and Wales, and is beginning to enter into friendly negotiations with
similar sectional organisations of farmers and agricultural workers for
the advancement of the interests, both national and local, of the
_ industry as a whole. While primarily a political (although a non-
partisan) association, its objects are not merely politically defensive,
but to a growing extent economic and constructive. In any agrarian
movement in the future it seems likely to play a conspicuous and useful
part, and to help in cementing the solidarity of agricultural forces,
without which continuous agricultural progress is difficult of attainment.

What is most needed in rural Britain to-day is pride on the part of
landowners, great and small, in their class, and a consciousness of
their beneficent and reconstructive power, coupled with stolid deter-
_ mination to play their part—the leading part—with knowledge and °
sympathy in the building up of a well-organised and mutually helpful
agricultural community, undeterred by transient difficulties, and un-
shaken by the temptation to evade their high responsibilities by the
entire alienation of their ancestral estates, or by evoking Government aid
in the solution of economic problems which they alone can best solve.
Their traditions are great, but their future destiny is greater, if they
have but the vision, the courage, and, above all, the will to press reso-
lutely forward towards the goal to which public duty and material
advantage alike point the way.

But no policy, however prudent, can gain public approbation and
endorsement in the twentieth century which discounts the human
factor—which in fact does not, in conformity with Jeremy Bentham’s
doctrine of ‘ Utilitarianism,’ conduce to ‘ the greatest happiness of the
greatest number.’ Upon the prosperity of the industry depends the
remuneration of the worker and his access to domestic comforts beyond
the bare necessaries of life. Upon it depends the maintenance of the
social and recreative side of village life. The disruption of landed estates
is often accompanied by social disorganisation of the village community
and stagnation of those activities and interests which afford an in-
_ vigorating alternative to the routine of the wage-earner’s toil, and tend
to enhance his occupational keenness and efficiency. If, then, the wel-
fare, economic and social, of the rural population rests ultimately upon
that of the industry which affords them employment, and if this in
turn depends upon the wise leadership of the landowning class, may not
the moral ‘ Utilitarianism ’ of Bentham be combined with the commer-
cial utilitarianism of the twentieth century, and the decadence of the
landowner be deemed to be synonymous with, or at least a prelude to,
that of thé rural worker? If so, it will not be untrue—but may it never
be necessary—(corrupting Goldsmith’s famous couplet) to say :—

‘Tll fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and squires decay.’

Year 1912-13.

SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

APPENDIX I.
Extracts from Reports of the Commissioners of His Majesty’s
Inland Revenue.

TaBLeE 105.—Details of the Gross Income from the Ownership of Lands, Houses,
etc., the deductions therefrom, and the Income on which Tax was received for the

— England Scotland Treland Rue :
| Gross Income :— £ £ £ £
1. Lands, including
Rent-charges under
Tithes Commutation
Act,. Farmhouses, |
Farm Buildings, etc. 36,813,122 5,730,311 | 9,694,780 | 52,238,213
2. Houses, Messuages, |
Tenements, etc. 199,647,729: 20,978,462 5,364,407 | 225,990,598
3. Other Property :— ; :
Manors, Fines, certain
Tithes, certain Sport- |
ing Rights, etc. 850,234 455,624 | 1,727 1,307,585
Total Gross Income 237,311,085 | 27,164,397 | 15,060,914 | 279,536,396

TABLE 65.—Income from the Ownership of Lands, Houses, etc. ; Details of the
Assessments made in the year 1918-19. :

| |

3 : United
— | England | Scotland | Ireland Kingdom
Gross Income _ brought | £ £ | L S
under the Review of | | |
the Department :— | | |
*1, Lands, including | |
Rent-charges under |
Tithes, Commutation |
Act, Farmhouses, | |
Farm Buildings, ete. . | 36,700,000 | 5,580,000 9,700,000 51,980,000
| 2. Houses, Messuages, | |
Tenements, etc. - | 207,648,080 | 21,967,071 5,807,606 | 235,422,757
| 3. Other Property :— | ;
| Manors, Fines, certain
Tithes, certain Sport- | |
ing Rights, etc. 835,000 | 460,000 | 1,300 1,296,300
ia 8 |
Total Gross Income . | 245,183,080 | 28,007,071 | 15,508,906 | 288,699,057

with mansions or houses in excess of one acre adjoining such properties.
of such gardens or pleasure grounds up to one acre in extent is excluded from this
head, and included under the second heading ‘* Houses, ete.”? ; farmhouses of annual
value of £20 or upwards not occupied (as above) by tenant farmers or farm bailiffs
are also excluded, and appear under head (2) ‘‘ Houses, ete.”

-
M.—AGRICULTURE., 33

APPENDIX II.

Rateable Property in England and Wales.
(Hansard, V. 151, No. 20, Col. 898.)

Value April 1920 eg 1921
1. Rateable Value of rateable henaditibearta-; ee £
i. Agricultural land . : 24,736,662 25,326,493
ii. Other rateable hereditaments . é 208,590,479 218,762,373
2. Annual Value of non-rateable Government
ees... 3 eee oes 2,697,297 2,594,882
Total. - ; a : 236,024,438 246,683,748

Income , Assessed in aie ane Wales for Income Tax Purposes,

+ Year 1919-20 Year 1920. o1
£ £
: (Estimated)
Gross Income brought under review 2,566,878, 147 2,590,000,000

Deductions for exemptions, repairs to pro-

perty, wear and tear, etc. . 350,183,094 415,000,000
Actual Income liable to tax before deduc-

tion of personal allowances, etc. . - 2,216,695,053 2,175,000,000

34 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES.

APPENDIX III.

*Income from the Ownership of Lands and Houses.

Year Lands Houses
£ £

1814-15 : ; mi 37,063,000 14,895,000
1842-43 : : : 42,127,000 | 35,556,000
1850-1 : : wh 42,790,000 | 39,354,000
1851-2 ‘ ; : 41,490,000 | 40,047,000
1857-8 : ; ; 42,895,000 | 47,439,000
1860-1 : ‘ 5; 43,036,000 49,505,000
1861-2 : E é 44,686,000 53,235,000
1864-5 : : : 46,462,000 59,286,000
1867-8 A : : 47,767,000 68,013,000
1870-1 : . : 49,011,000 75,307,000
1876-7 : ; : 52,016,000 | 90,451,000
1877-8 ; : ; 51,934,000 | 93,104,000
1879-80 : ; : 52,041,000 100,079,000
1880-1 : . s 51,847,000 102,417,000
1882-3 : : . 48,659,000 | 109,374,000
1884-5 : ; Kd 47,864,000 | 112,791,000
1885-6 f : =| 46,255,000 115,436,000
1886-7 ; : =a 45,635,000 | 117,183,000
1887-8 : ; val 44,732,000 | 118,524,000
1888-9 ; ( ve 42,534,000 | 120,514,000
1890-1 : : oo 41,635,000 123,721,000
1893-4 f d 3 _ 40,335,000 131,860,000
1894-5 : : ; 39,942,000 133,512,000
1897-8 ; ; : 38,378,000 | 142,128,000
1898-9 : ; : 37,526,000 149,632,000
1901-2 B ; : 37,017,000 | 162,263,000
1904-5 ; . ; 36,896,000 177,666,000
1910-11 : : : 37,044,000 196,196,000
1911-12 3 ‘ : 36,990,000 197,632,000
1912-13 f : ; 37,013,000 | 199,648,000
1913-14 . , ae 37,071,000 | 202,018,000
1915-16 : ; : 36,950,000 | 205,564,000
1917-18 : ; : 36,910,000 | 207,495,000

207,648,000

1918-19 : : sacl 36,900,000

ee Sere eee

* Extracted from ‘‘ British Incomes and Property,” by Sir Josiah Stamp,

K.B.E., D.Sc.

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