PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 15 



solva the question by means of drilling. Some coals, such as 

 cannel coal, will yield about 20 gallons of petroleum to the 

 ton, which may prove a valuable asset in our resources. 

 A Report on a recent re-levelling of a line from the English 

 Channel to the Bristol Channel shows very slight dis- 

 crepancies from the former levelling which was carried 

 out in 1838. In one length of 57 miles the difference 

 is only .92in. The final conclusion arrived at is that 

 there is no evidence of any change in the relative levels 

 of the marks on the shores of the two channels in the 

 past 80 years. A manufacture which has greatly developed 

 in this country since the war is that of glass, in regard 

 to which for some of the finer kinds, especially optical glass, 

 we were to a great extent dependent on Germany. A new 

 department of Technical optics has also been established at 

 the Imperial College of Science and Technology to encourage 

 and help forward this undertaking, and it is stated that samples 

 of English optical glass have stood certain tests applied to 

 them better even than that made at Jena. At the present 

 time it is desirable to utilize all waste products as far as 

 possible, and a patent has been taken out for making roads 

 with a mixture of old boots, asphalt, and stone of some kind, 

 the leather being said to make an excellent and lasting road- 

 way, about 89,000 pairs of boots being required for a mile of 

 road 8 yards wide. 



GEOGRAPHY. 



Little has been done in the way of exploration owing to- 

 the war, but news has been received of the American Crocker 

 Land Arctic expedition, by the arrival of one of its members 

 from N. Greenland, a sledge journey of 1,400 miles. The 

 expedition had been doing geological and other scientific 

 work and taken seismological observations. The only other 

 expedition of which I have a note was along the Nile-Congo 

 watershed in 1915, on which a paper has recently been pub- 

 lished in the Geographical Journal, together with a map of 

 the district, which forms a fairly level strip of high country , 



