November 3,1921] 



NATURE 



321 



also for Danes not officially connected with Green- 

 land, to obtain permission from the Danish Govern- 

 ment to go there. British applicants should submit 

 recommendations through the Foreign Office and 

 specify the purpose of their visit. There is at present . 

 iio fee for working at the station, and for board and ; 

 lodging the charge is at present only 8 kronen a day. 

 The North Greenland district is accessible to ships 

 from the latter part of May to the end of September, 

 but during that time there are usually only two oppor- 

 tunities of direct connection with Copenhagen. 



The director is an ideal man for the position ; he ' 

 is generally acknowledged to be the leading authority 

 not only on the natural history of West Greenland, 

 but on the history of Eskimo culture, and he is always 

 willing unreservedly to place his knowledge and the 

 results of his wide experience at the disposal of 

 fellow- workers . 



It was my privilege this summer, in company with 

 Mr. R. E. Holttum, of St. John's College, Cambridge, 

 to spend some weeks at the Arctic station, and I 

 cannot speak too highly of the hospitalit}- and 

 scientific assistance which we received. Unfor- ' 

 tunately for the cause of research, the director has 

 no paid assistant to relieve him of much of the 

 routine work of the station which makes serious in- 

 roads into the time available for investigations in his 

 own special fields. One of the director's sons, Mr. Erling 

 Porsild, who is not only a keen naturalist, but also is 

 able to speak the Eskimo's language with ease, took ; 

 us for a week's trip in the station's motor-boat to some ^ 

 localities where we wished* to collect fossil plants. 

 Our intention was to return to Godhavn in time for 

 the King's visit before visiting more remote places, 

 but the breaking of the boat's shaft and a spell of 

 ^>ad weather rendered this impossible, and threatened 

 eriously to interfere with our subsequent plans. Mr. 



Porsild at once approached the Director for Green- 

 land who accompanied the Royal party, and he very 

 kindly placed at our disposal for a month's trip his 

 official motor-boat — an act of generosity for which it 

 is difficult adequately to express my gratitude. 



The particularly favourable climatic conditions in 

 the Godhavn district have produced an exceptionally 

 rich and varied flora, including several southern types 

 not found elsewhere in North Greenland. TTiere is a 

 legend that Disco Island once lay much further south, 

 and as it was an obstacle to navigation a hunter 

 towed it behind his kayak to its present position. 



Mr. Porsild has taken steps to protect the vegeta- 

 tion in the immediate neighbourhood of the station 

 and at Englishman's Harbour, near the warm springs, 

 of which there are several on the south coast of Disco, 

 by putting up notices in the Eskimo language asking 

 the natives to abstain from gathering fuel or col- 

 lecting plants for food within certain protected areas — 

 a request which is almost invariably respected. 



The Danish Government by officially adopting the 

 .\rctic station showed its appreciation of the fore- 

 sight and determination of Mr. Porsild, and set an 

 example to other nations possessing territon.- within 

 the Arctic Circle. One may venture to express the 

 hope that the State will see its way to increase the 

 value of this pioneer station by augmenting the annual 

 grant sufficiently to provide an adequate stipend for 

 the director and for a trained assistant, by the provi- 

 sion of an additional and larger motor-boat, and by 

 expending the comparatively small sum required to 

 make certain much-needed extensions of the building 

 to relieve the present congestion in the rapidly growing 

 library, and to accommodate the ven,- valuable col- 

 lection of Eskimo implements and weapons obtained 

 bv the director in the course of excavations made by 

 him during several years on the mainland. 



Psychological Tests for Vocational Guidance.^ 



'T" HE newly-formed section of Psychology had, at 

 ■*• its first meeting in Edinburgh, a large and 

 enthusiastic attendance. It opened its sittings on the 

 morning of Thursday, September 8, being joined by 

 the sections of Education and Economics, under the 

 chairmanship of Sir Henr\- Hadow (president of the 

 Education Section), with a discussion upon " Voca- 

 tional Tests and Vocational Training." It appeared, 

 in the course of the several speeches, that economists, 

 educationists, and psychologists alike were agreed 

 upon one general and practical conclusion, namely, the 

 feasibility and the importance of diagnosing during 

 early childhood, whether by tests or other means, each 

 individual's special vocational aptitudes. 



Sir William Beveridge (director of the London 

 School of Economics), who spoke late in the dis- 

 cussion, summed up the arguments for this con- 

 clusion most clearly. With other speakers he wel- 

 comed cordially the progress of industrial psycholog}-, 

 and maintained that if boys could be selected with 

 greater care for the vocations they had to take up, 

 three distinct economic consequences might be pre- 

 dicted. In the first place, unemployment would be 

 appreciably diminished ; although it was impossible to 

 expect that lack of work would be altogether abolished 

 simply by right vocational selection, it would bevond 

 question be ver}- much reduced. Secondly, the tenure 

 of employment would be more nearly permanent : one 

 of the chief causes that prevented people from sticking 



1 Discnstionatajoint meeting of the -Sections of Psychology, Fducation 

 and Economics of the British Association at Edinburgh on September 8 



Ir NO. 2714, VOL. 108] 



to the jobs they had obtained would be largely elimi- 

 nated. Lastly, productivity w'ould be greatly increased. 

 Besides these more limited effects, economic in their 

 special nature, there would be a wider benefit to the 

 public at large— a general decrease m human misery, 

 and a general increase in human welfare. 



He proceeded with some severity to criticise the 

 method, or lack of method, now obtaining among 

 employers in their choice of persons for different kinds^ 

 of occupation. There were few things, he said, w'hich 

 employers handled more inefficiently than the selection 

 of their employees. It is true that the president of 

 the Economics Section later on disagreed with these 

 criticisms of the employers' method of choice. Mr. 

 Hichens considered that employers exercised an extra- 

 ordinary amount of care in choosing workers^ both 

 for higher and for lower positions. Indeed, they 

 showed some advance upon the methods hitherto 

 adopted by educationists. Instead of setting examina- 

 tion papers in which candidates were asked to name 

 the kings of Israel, they asked questions and used 

 trial tasks which had a definite bearing upon the trade 

 process concerned. 



In face of this slight disagreement among the 

 economists, the psychologists replied that, even if the 

 employers' methods were superior to the old-fashioned 

 methods of the educationists, they were still highly 

 unscientific and quite unstandardised. As an instance 

 of the work possible and necessar\' in this direction. 

 Dr. C. S. Myers (director of the Cambridge Psvcho- 

 logical Laboratories) described the work of the new 



