FIR5T WINTER MEETING AND PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



"NXTUKKS RAPID BUT THOROIGII WORK. "- By Me. SIDNEY 

 HARVEY, F.I.C., F.C.S. 



The opening meeting of the wint*r session 

 of the Society was held in the Simon Langton 

 Schools on Wednesday, October 20, among those 

 present being the President (Mr. S. Harvey, I .I.C, 

 F C S 1 Messrs. J. H. Sharp, Walter dozens, H. M. 

 Chapman, W. T. Leeraing, f. A. Gardner Coun- 

 cUlor Johnson, Mr. F. Hooker, Mr. W^ [l°<^^<'''' 

 Miss Holmes. Miss PhiUpotts, Miss Abbott, Mrs. 

 Sharp Miss Mason, the Misses Brookfield, Miss 

 Fowler, Mrs. Lander, and Mr. A. Lander (hon. 



sccrctsrv ) • 



The report of the Committee was read and 

 approved and the balance sheet was then sub- 

 mitted by Mr Cozens,the trea.surer, who said they 

 had a balance in hand of £3 7s. 2d. at the eml of 

 their year, which concluded m October. They 

 now owed about ^9 8s. 6d., but with the balance 

 and the subscriptions to come in he thought the 

 Society would be quite solvent. 



The balance sheet was approved. 



The Librarian's report was approved, cne new 

 member. Miss G. Brookfield, was elected, and all 

 the officers of the Society were re-appointed. 



The President then gave his address. He said 

 he would like to take as his subject" The element 

 of time as applied to natural events : the part 

 played by time in nature." We lived at a period 

 of bustle and excitement. We were not satisfied 

 with coaching time or coaching distances. Every 

 thing must be quick. If we wanted to go to C.rn- 

 wall we must select a train and could select a 

 train where the first stopping place was Ply- 

 moutn, 250 miles from London. Other lines 

 might be cited as instances of rapidity. W'e must 

 have motor-cars and drive them at a very extrava- 

 gant speed and now we were investigating the 

 question of flying machines very literally indeed. 

 As regarded our Atlantic liners we had left oft 

 speaking of days and weess, and taken to regis- 

 tering in hours and minutes. So he might go 

 through a great variety of matters to show what a 

 hurry and hustle there was in regard to time when 

 we I'anted to get about. In London, for instance, 

 we had a choice of tubes and underground lines, 

 and there again was what he might call hustling. 

 We got into the first train that came to the plat- 

 form, seat or no seat. And then ctinie the delight- 

 ful pastime of strap hanging— (laughter)— a new 

 amusement, very acceptable, no doubt, to some 

 people, and a new word for the dictionary. The 

 question might be asked whether this bustle 

 and hurry' was alwa\ s the correct thing 

 and whether it was not trying to the 

 nervous system and exhausting to the indivi- 

 dual. The sight o: our great terminal rail- 

 way stations at the approach of the autumn 

 holidays, the huge mountains of luggage and the 

 turmoil and confusion surely could not be 

 altogether acceptable and pleasing, and one asked 



the question whether nature-and we always 

 went to nature when we were a little bit in doubt 

 as to what was right-justified this hurry^ What 

 did nature say to it ? He was bound to admit 

 that it set an example of an immense amount of 

 work done in a very small amount of time Here 

 came in some of the difficulties of defining his 

 subject Oiu- system of measuring, whether time 

 or anything else, was adapted to our faculties. 

 We could divide time into minutes or seconds, 

 but he doubted if anyone in that room could count 

 seconds or half-seconds without being left behind 

 if he took his watch in his hand and noted the 

 ticks Still it did not foUow that because we 

 could not appreciate it, nature does not do 

 so. Nature does appreciate it, and does 

 a ^eat deal in a very short time. This old 

 planet went around the sun at the rate of nine- 

 teen miles in a second. Nineteen mile^ in a 

 second would take us from one end of the United 

 Kingdom to the other in a fraction of a minute— 

 a very desirable thing perhaps m some persons 

 views— but we had to take into consideration that 

 we should need some thousands of miles in 

 which to get up speed, and when we got to our 

 destination, some thousands of mile^s in w^hich 

 to slow down, or else we should probably burst 

 into flame, through tho intense heat caused by 

 the friction. Nineteen miles was a pretty good 

 long measuring line. We could divide it into 

 yards or inches if we liked, and wo might he very 

 sure of this, that the earth, in traversing this 

 scale did an inch at a time. However contradict 

 ory it mi.'ht seem, one inch was done and finished 

 before another inch was begun. Yet the whole of 

 this oveiwhelming feat was accomplished in a 

 second. Here was a method of dividing 

 a second into many millions of parts and which 

 was practically kept by natiu-e. In all measure- 

 ments we had our disadvantages. Of course the 

 eye itself was capable of appreciating very small 

 distances. He supposed most of us could see the 

 hundredth part of an inch, which was as small a 

 division as we could see. The microscope had 

 now adopted milUmetie as its unit, and that was 

 the twenty-fifth of an inch. 'Ihat was much too 

 coarse, and we bad invented the micro-millimetre, 

 which was the thousandth part of a millimetre, 

 bnt now we had the micro-micro-millimetre, which 

 was a thoHsandtt part of the other measure ; in 

 other words a millionth of a millimetre. It was 

 n.it a bit too small, for there were many bodies 

 which required even more delicate measure than 

 that. There was no such thing in nature as al>out 

 or the term little or unimportant details. Nature 

 was perfect, and the whole of the details and 

 dimensions of aU natural objects and natural 

 phenomena were exactly connected up, whether our 

 feeble senses could appreciate them or not. He 



