36 



ASSOCIATIONS FOE THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. (BRITISH.) 



are already on their way in second attempts to 

 reach the long-hoped-for pole. 



Nansen expects to achieve his aim by follow- 

 ing certain currents. One of the most impor- 

 tant physical features of this polar basin is its 

 gigantic river systems. The Yenisei drains an 

 area of one half that drained by the Amazon. 

 The Yukon and Mackenzie are also enormous 

 rivers. The latter flows for more than 1,000 

 miles, with a width of one mile. The glaciers 

 are likewise large, those of southern Alaska be- 

 ing among the greatest in the world. Along 

 the shores of the Arctic Ocean is a fringe of bare 

 country, sometimes steep and rocky, abruptly 

 descending in more or less sharp cliffs and sites 

 of precipices to the sea, but more often sloping 

 gently down in mud banks and sand hills repre- 

 senting the accumulated spoils of countless ages 

 of annual floods. In Norway this belt is called 

 the Fjeld, in Russia the Tundra, and in America 

 Barren Grounds. It gradually stretches back 

 through bogs and swamp land until the forests 

 are reached. Its flora consists chiefly of the 

 lower orders of plants, and the fauna consists 

 largely of birds. The geology of the polar basin 

 needs more study, and students of the glacial 

 epochs in the more temperate climates may 

 acquire much information from the appearance 

 of the arctic regions. The succession of seasons 

 in these high latitudes deserves mention. The 

 approach of winter is slow, the flowers fade 

 and the birds migrate, but with the summer it 

 is different. It comes quickly. The sun shines 

 and the ice breaks ; then of a sudden the birds 

 are there and vegetation comes. There is no 

 spring, but a hot summer that begins toward the 

 end of May. The rapidity of the change is due 

 to the melting of the snow under the frozen crust. 



Twenty-seven papers were read and discussed 

 before this section, among which were the fol- 

 lowing : " A Journey across Australia," by Guy 

 Boothby ; " The Islands of Chiloe," by Mrs. Lilly 

 Grove ; The " Native Tribes of the Congo Basin, 

 by Herbert Ward ; " The Physical Geography of 

 the Sea between Scotland and the Faroe Islands," 

 by H. N. Dickson ; " The Physical Geography of 

 the Clyde Sea Area" and "A Bathymetrical 

 Survey of the English Lakes," by H. R. Mill ; 

 li Notes of an Antarctic Voyage," by W. S. Bruce ; 

 ' On the Bengal Duars," by Edward Deawood ; 

 " On Recent Exploration in Tibet," by E. Del- 

 mar Morgan ; and " Uganda and its People," by 

 Captain Williams. Also reports of the Commit- 

 tee on Scottish Place-Names, and Committee on 

 African Climatology, were read. An interest- 

 ing feature of the meetings of this section was 

 the discussion concerning the sending of a 

 purely scientific expedition to antarctic waters. 

 Mr. W. S. Bruce announced that he was pre- 

 pared to spend a year with an assistant who had 

 volunteered to accompany him on South Georgia 

 or on Graham's Land, if he could be landed 

 there, and to undertake systematic scientific 

 work during that time if his passage money and 

 maintenance were paid for. The proposition 

 was received with enthusiasm, and a subscription 

 list promptly started for that purpose. 



F. Economic Science and Statistics. The pre- 

 siding officer of this section was Prof. Joseph S. 

 Nicholson, D. So., who fills the chair of Political 

 Economy in the University of Edinburgh. 



He said : The so-called orthodox or classical 



Eolitical economy so far from being dead is in 

 all vigor, and that there is every sign of a 

 marked reaction in favor of its principles and 

 methods. The method practically adopted by 

 Adam Smith and Ricardo, and reduced to scien- 

 tific form by Mill and Cairnes, and quite re- 

 cently by Dr. Keynes, must still be regarded as 

 fundamental. Facts are the fossils of the his- 

 torian, and while impression may be good art, it 

 is bad science ; hence care must be taken to re- 

 strict political economy to its proper limits with- 

 out wandering off into speculation. The method 

 of the so-called orthodox English economists 

 has only been modified and supplemented, not 

 revolutionized and supplanted by the mathe- 

 matical methods of recent writers. According 

 to the traditional English view, it is not the busi- 

 ness of the economist to decide all the disputes 

 that may arise even regarding fundamental 

 questions in ethics, religion, fine art, education, 

 public law, administration to decide, in a word, 

 the first duty of man and the last duty of gov- 

 ernments. His sphere is much more limited, 

 and the limits have been indicated with tolera- 

 ble precision by the classical English economists. 

 In technical language, political economy is the 

 economy of utility. From the old inquiry " How 

 nations are made wealthy," to the new inquiry 

 ' How nations are made happy," it seems a nat- 

 ural and easy transition. For the essence of 

 wealth is to possess utility, to satisfy desires, to 

 create happiness. Accordingly it seems plausi- 

 ble to maintain that the economist ought to dis- 

 cover by his calculus of utility those principles 

 of production and distribution that will lead to 

 most happiness. In closing, he said : " Polit- 

 ical economy has a vast literature, and students 

 will not find all the good concentrated in the 

 last marginal increment. The old must be mas- 

 tered before the new can be appreciated. A 

 portion of truth just rediscovered for the hun- 

 dredth time is not of such value as a body of 

 doctrines that have been developed for more than 

 a century by economists of repute. Vaster than 

 the literature of political economy is the eco- 

 nomic experience of nations. The first duty of 

 the legislator is to take account of the natural 

 forces with which he must contend, and the 

 classical economists have made a survey and 

 estimate of these forces which, based as it is on 

 the facts of human nature and the experience of 

 nations, it would be willful folly to overlook." 



The following-named papers were read and 

 discussed before the section : " Poor Law and 

 Old Age," by Rev. J. Frome Wilkinson ; ' Not- 

 tingham Lace and Fashion," by J. S. Nicholson ; 

 and " Progress of the Newspaper Press, and the 

 Need of a Consolidation and Reform of the Laws 

 affecting Newspapers," by J. A. Strahan. Dis- 

 cussion on the subjects of " Agricultural Depres- 

 sion " and the " Currency Problem " occupied 

 much of the time at two sittings. 



G. Mechanical Science. This section was pre- 

 sided over by Jeremiah Head, F. C. S., past presi- 

 dent of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. 



Mechanical science, he said, had been built up 

 entirely upon observation and experiment, and 

 the natural laws which had been induced there- 

 from by man. After illustrating this fact by 

 citing instances from the animal kingdom, Mr. 



