xii. Proceedings. ^March \th, 1919. 



Ordinary Meeting, March 4th, 1919. 



The President, Mr. William Thomson, F.R.S.E., F.I.C., F.C.S., 

 in the Chair. 



The President exhibited a model of a Voltaic Pile — to be 

 presented to the Society by Mr. Edward Hardcastle. 



A paper by Mr. F. H. Cakr, B.Sc, F.I.C. entitled " The 

 Post-graduate Training of the Works Chemist,"was read. 



The author said that the comparative dearth in this country 

 of highly competent technical chemists had frequently given rise 

 to discussions, but these had as a rule been critical rather than 

 constructive. He suggested that there was scope for Institutions 

 devoted primarily to the post-graduate training of chemical 

 students who intended to specialise in the applied aspects of 

 their science. In such institutions, instruction would be given 

 not only on a wide variety of technical processes for the manu- 

 facture of chemicals, and in operations in each technical depart- 

 ment, from the drawing office and the power house to the special 

 chemical plants, but also in the whole question of economic and 

 statistical control of works processes. 



The chemicals produced should cover an extremely wide 

 range, and should be such as might be required in relatively small 

 quantities such as existing manufacturing firms would not find it 

 worth while to produce. In this way the Institutions in question 

 might, in course of time, accumulate stocks of chemicals com- 

 parable in variety with those in the possession of certain German 

 firms on whose resources research chemists in all parts of the 

 world have had to rely. 



Ordinary Meeting, March iSth, 19 19. 



The President, Mr. William Thomson, F.R.S.E.. F.I.C, F.C.S., 

 in the Chair. 



Professor G. Elliot Smith, M.A., M.I)., F.R.S., read a paper 

 entitled " The Bird's Brain." 



Professor G. Elliot Smith stated that it has always been an 

 enigma that, in spite of their very scanty ecjuipment of 

 obvious cerebral cortex, birds should display, in their powers of 

 tactile, visual, and acoustic discrimination, their associative 

 memory, and their ability to learn by individual experience, such 

 outstanding evidence of functions such as are intimately associated 

 in mammals with the activities of the cortex. The explanation 

 of this apparent discrepancy between the morphology of the brain 



