The Bristol Meeting of the British Association Source: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Sep., 1930), pp. 280-282 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/14983 . Accessed: 03/05/2014 04:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Scientific Monthly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.132.123.28 on Sat, 3 May 2014 04:20:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Transcript
The Bristol Meeting of the British AssociationSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Sep., 1930), pp. 280-282Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/14983 .
Accessed: 03/05/2014 04:20
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE THE BRISTC)L MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION
WHEN the British Association meets in Bristol from September 3 to 10, it will do so for the fourth time in that city. At the first meeting there, in 1836, Lord Northampton, a vice-presi- dent, laid the foulndation stone of Clifton Suspension Bridge. It is a tribute to applied science in one direc- tion that the association has been inti- mately connected with the construction of two of the world 's famous bridges, for after the mneeting in South Africa in 1905 the then president, Sir George Darwin, opened the railway bridge over the Zambezi below Victoria Falls.
Bristol is an attractive center for a meeting of the association. Its own in- dustries are varied; its site, and the couLntry surrounding it, are full of geo- graphical, geological, archeological and historical interests. It is necessary only to mention the close proximity of Bath, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Glastonbury and Wells, the Mendip Hills with the well-known Cheddar Caves, the Forest of Dean, and the gorge of the river Avon which still gives access to the port of Bristol for the smaller ships, though the bigger ships must now lie at the out- ports of Avonmouth and Portishead where the river joins the Bristol Channel.
All the sections of the association will be in full activity as usual. There are associations "for the advancement of science" in other countries, which have formed a much larger number of sec- tions than the British Association, some mneeting only to deal with special topics. The British Association permits- its sec- tions to form, if they want, special de- partments to do this-on the present occasion there will be in session a de- partment of mathematics under the sec- tion of mathematical and physical sci-
enees, and a department of forestry nnder the section of botany. But other- wise the sections range widely within their own divisions of science: in the Bristol program, for instance, we find the chemical section (to take a single ex- ample) announcing suecessive discus- sions on chemotherapy and the British dyestuffs industry.
In reviewing a British Association program, with its three hundred lee- tnres, papers or discussions, there is a certain temptation to confine examples to those subjects of applied science which are intelligible to the layman and appropriate to the general interests of the day. Professor F. 0. Bower, how- ever, who will assnme the presidency of the association in snLecession to Sir Thomas Holland, will deal in his ad- over the whole advancement of science, which he has made his own, namely, "Size and Form in Plants." Those presidents who in the past used to range over the whole advancement of science and in doing so oceupy the rostrum far longer than the present generation wouLldendure, sometimes in spite of that left an impression of sketchiness which their own erudition could not wholly remove. The presidential address to the British Association nevertheless maintains its place as the year 's most important public pronouncement in sci- ence, and botany, which has not for some years been represented in the president, will now be so most properly and notably when Professor Bower de- tails, as he only can for the understand- ing of the general audience who will hear him, the resuLlts of his own pro- longed researches.
The sections of botanv and zoology will both be impressed by their re- speetive -resiclentAs Dr. W. T. (Clmnn
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of the British Museum of Natural His- tory, and Dr. A. W. Hill, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in their addresses, with the importance of the taxonomic outlook in those subjects. The agricultural section will hear an ad- dress on veterinary science from a South African president, Dr. P. J. du Toit, to whom at the meeting in South Africa last year the section owed much for its suecess. The facts that the section, among other topics, will discuss fer- tilizers and that one of the evening dis- courses to the whole association will be given by Dr. R. E. Slade on "The Nitro- gen Industry and our Food Supply," give rise to the recollection that it was at Bristol in 1898 that Sir William Crookes delivered his presidential ad- dress to the association which contained the classic prediction of a world-short- age of wheat unless agriculture should enlist the aid of chemistry. Geologists will find much field-work to interest them around Bristol. Their section will combine with those of geography and anthropology in a full discussion of the relations between past pluvial and gla- cial periods.
The anthropological section will dis- cuss the important topic of a national folk-museum; and it will hear Miss Caton-Thompson on the investigation which, undertaken last year at the in- stance of the association, demonstrated to all save the ineurable romanticists the medieval status of the ruins at Zim- babwe in Rhodesia. The educational section will receive an address from Lord Eustace Percy, a former president of the Board of Edducation, on "A Poliey of Higher Education," and, fol- lowing the customary arrangement of its program, will discuss groups of com- munications on outstanding current topics in education, such as the central schools. The section of economic science and statistics has as its president Pro-
fessor T. E. Gregory, whose address will deal with "Rationalization and Technological Unemployment," and it is understood that leading representatives of the section will take part in an after- noon meeting arranged during the asso- ciation 's week by the management research groups. The geographical section will consider a topical subject in receiving certain commnunications on town-planning. A similar and not un- related subject is that of national parks, which will be appropriately dealt with at a conference of delegates of corre- sponding societies, which are local sci- entific societies all over the country, whose interests and activities might well be used, and in some instances are used, in the direction of the preservation of rural beauty and scientific interest.
"Wireless" inevitably plays its part in the meeting: the British Broadcast- ing Corporation will stage an educa- tional exhibit; Professor E. V. Appleton will give an evening discourse on "Wire- less Echoes"; and the section of mathe- matical and physical sciences will dis- cuss the nmeteorological relations of at- mospherics. The section will have the advantage of meeting and witnessing demonstrations in one of the finest phys- ics laboratories in the country, that of the University of Bristol (in which most of the association 's work will be cen- tered).
Public lectures those, that is, to which the public and not only members of the association are admitted have been asked for with unusual and grati- fying freedom, not only in Bristol but also in neighboring towns. Among such lectures in Bristol, Sir Arthur Keith will speak on the debt which mnod- ern anthropology owes to a famous former citizen of Bristol-Dr. John Bed- doe, and Sir Daniel Hall will interest the local fruit-farming industry con- cerning research on apples.
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