102 



NATURE 



[October 2, 1919 



there was spent 473,583!., on the professional colleges 

 239,961!., on the training schools 190,920!., on all 

 other special schools 298,474!., on the secondary 

 schools 2,128,612!., and on the' primary schools 

 1,954,236!. There was a total income from fees in 

 1916-17 of universities, professional colleges, and 

 special technical schools of 107,453!., and of secondary 

 schools of 242,620!. In 1917 14,799 students matricu- 

 lated, 4209 qualified for the ii.k. examination, 440 

 for B.Sc, 555 for M..'\., and 152 for M.Sc. An 

 elaborate census of education such as this for the 

 United Kingdom would be a welcome contribution to 

 our knowledge of educational affairs. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT 



BOURNEMOUTH. 



SECTION C. 



GEOLOGY. 



Opening Address (Abridged) by J. VV. Evans, D.Sc, 

 LL.B., F.R.S., President of the Section. 



One of the most striking features of our science 

 is the need in which it stands of a large and 

 widely distributed body of workers, and the oppor- 

 tunities it affords to every one of them of making 

 important contributions to scientific knowledge. 



Everywhere someone is needed who will devote his 

 spare time to the examination of the quarries and 

 cliffs, where the materials that build up the solid 

 earth are exposed to view, and who will record the 

 changes that occur in them from time to time ; for 

 a quarry that is in work, or a cliff that is being 

 undermined by the sea, constantly presents new faces, 

 affording new information, which must be recorded if 

 important links in the chain of evidence are not to 

 be lost. It is equally important thait someone should 

 alwavs be on the look-out for new exposures, road 

 or railway cuttings, for instance, or excavations for 

 culverts or foundations, which in too many instances 

 are overgrown or covered up without receiving 

 adequate attention. It is, again, only the man on 

 the spot who can obtain even an approximately com- 

 plete collection of the fossils of each stratum, and 

 thus enable us to obtain as full a knowledge as is 

 possible of the life that existed in the far-oif days in 

 which it was laid down. In his absence, many of 

 the rarer forms which are of unique importance in 

 tracing out the long story of the development of 

 plants and animals, and even of man himself, never 

 reach the hands of the specialist who is capable of 

 interpretinj? them. It was an amateur geologist, a 

 countrv solicitor, who saved from the road-mender's 

 hammer the Piltdown skull, that in its main features 

 appears to represent an early human type, from which 

 the present races of man are in all probability 

 descended. .Another amateur, who was engaged in 

 the brick-making industry near Peterborough, has 

 provided our museums with their finest collections of 

 Jurassic reptiles. A third, a hard-worked medical 

 man, was the first to reveal the oldest relics of life 

 that had at that time been recognised in the British 

 Isles; and many more examples could be instanced 

 of the services to geological science by those whose 

 principal life-task lay in other directions. 



Such workers are, unfortunately, all too few — 

 fewer, I fancy, now than they were before the pur- 

 suit of sport, and especially of golf, had taken such 

 a hold upon the middle classes and occupied so con- 

 siderable a portion of their leisure hours and thous?hts. 

 One might hope that the extended hours now assured 

 to the working classes for recreation would lead to a 

 general increase of interest in science among them, 

 if it were not that the students of that admirable 



NO. 2605, VOL. 104] 



organisation, the Workers' Educational Association, 

 seern almost invariably to prefer economic or political 

 subjects to the study of Nature. In a large countv 

 in which I am interested the number of those in every 

 condition of life who are able and willing to take part 

 in geological research might be told almost on the 

 fingers of one hand, and, so far as I am aware, there 

 has not bee'n a single recruit in recent years from the 

 ranks of the younger inen or women. 



It might be suggested that the prevailing indiffer- 

 ence to the attraction of geological research was due 

 to a conviction that after eighty years of work bv the 

 Geological Suivey, as well as by universitv teachers 

 and amateurs, there was little feft to be done, and 

 that all the information that could be desired was 

 to be found in the Survey publications. Such a belief 

 can scarcely be very widespread, for, as a matter of 

 fact, comparatively few of the general public realise 

 the value of the work of the Geological Sur\-ev, and 

 still fewer make use of its publications. Municipal 

 libraries, other than those of our largest provincial 

 centres, are rarely provided with the official maps 

 and memoirs relating to the surrounding areas, and 

 in the absence of any demand the local booksellers do 

 not stock them. This cannot be attributed to fhe 

 cost, for, though most of the older maps are hand- 

 coloured and therefore expensive, the later maps — at 

 least, those on the smaller scales ' — are remarkablv 

 cheap, and the memoirs are also issued at low prices. 

 Thq true explanation appears to be that a geologicaS 

 map conveys very little information to the average 

 man of fair education who has received no geological 

 instruction. This is certainly not the fault of the 

 Survey maps, which compare very favourablv with 

 those of other countries, and have been greatlv im- 

 proved in recent years. In particular, the introduc- 

 tion of a longitudinal section on each map and the 

 substitution of the vertical section drawn to scale 

 for the old colour index must greatlv assist those into 

 whose hands it comes in obtaining a correct view 

 of the succession of the strata and the structure of 

 the country. Some of the maps are, it is true, so 

 crowded with information — topographical and geo- 

 logical — that it is frequently difficult, even for the 

 trained geologist, to read them without a lens. This 

 is largely due to the fact that thev are printed over 

 the ordinary topographical maps in which there is a 

 groat amount of detail that is not required in geo- 

 logical maps. In India the Trigonometrical Survey 

 are always ready to supply, as a basis for special 

 maps, copies of their own maps printed off plates 

 from which a portion of the topographical features 

 have been erased. 



The best remedv. however, would be to extend the 

 publication of the maps on a scale of 6 in. to a mile 

 (i : 10,560). For manv years all geological survey 

 work has been, in the first place, carried out en 

 maps of this scale, but they have not been published 

 except in coal-mining areas. There the geological 

 boundaries are printed, but the colouring is added by 

 hand, which makes the maps comparatively expen- 

 sive. In other localities manuscript copies of 'the 

 geological lines and colouring on the Ordnance 

 Survey maps can be obtained at the cost of produc- 

 tion, which is necessarily considerable. There is, I 

 believe, a wide snhere of usefulness for cheap colour- 

 printed 6-in. geological maps, especially in the case 

 of agricultural and building land, for which the 6-in. 

 Ordnance maos are already in demand. They afford 

 ample room for geological information, and, accom- 

 panied bv longitudinal sections on the same scale 

 without vertical exaggeration, their significance would 



1 I in. to the mile, i : 63,360; J in. to the mile, 1 ; 253,440, .ind i in. to 25 

 miles, r ; 1,584,000. 



1 



