April 7, 1910J 



NATURE 



171 



samples giving positive results were inspected by the 

 council's veterinary inspector; 4997 cows in all were 

 examined, and of these 147 were found to present tuber- 

 culous udders. Provincial local authorities have shown 

 willingness to cooperate with the council in preventing the 

 sale of milk from cows which the council's veterinarj' 

 inspector has certified to be suffering from tubercular 

 disease of the udder, and in a few instances veterinary 

 inspectors have been appointed by the local authorities 

 to deal with this danger. 



The report by Dr. Kerr upon the medical work of the 

 council, as the education authority, deals with a period 

 for the twentj-one months ending December 31, 1908. 

 This period has been marked by great activitj' in all 

 matters concerning school hygiene and the physical care of 

 children. There are, in the opinion of the medical officer, 

 further and wide-reaching changes in prospect. He 

 states : — " .Any public provision for protecting and 

 aiding growth and development of children during the 

 years of school life — three to sixteen years of age — should 

 be entirely committed to the Education .Authority. This 

 would allow such matters as feeding, teaching, cleansing, 

 medical treatment, or social protection of school children, 

 when these duties become a public care, to be administered 

 by the one authority, and by bringing all the various 

 problems into a correct relation and perspective would also 

 effect considerable financial economy. On the other hand, 

 transient conditions in which the child bears the same 

 social relations as any other individual, as for instance 

 when affected with typhoid or scarlet fever, or when 

 '!ry of a crime, would still come under the same pro- 

 n by the Sanitary .Authority or Police respectively as 

 c». present. Fortunately this is the line taken by all the 

 recent legislation in matters concerning children." 



The educational work of the county council which falls 

 under the direction of a medical officer is very extensive, 

 embracing the examination of candidates for employment 

 and scholarships ; medical inspection of school children, 

 including the inspection and the hygienic condition of 

 school premises, &c. ; a large amount of work to promote 

 cleanliness and to prevent communicable disease ; and 

 prescribing the special school work amongst the scholars 

 in schools for the mental or physically defective, the blind 

 or deaf, &c. The medical staff at the end of 190** numbered 

 "' -two, and it has been decided to increase the staff by 

 addition of sixteen school doctors in the summer. The 

 5^..ool nursing staff consists of a superintendent, two 

 I assistants, and fifty-one school nurses ; these undertake the 

 I oversight of personal hygiene in both elementary and 

 I secondary schools. Upon the subject of underfed school 

 I children, the medical officer directs attention to the fact 

 I that there is no certain criterion of this condition, and it 

 I seems often quite impossible to distinguish between bad 

 ' feeding, improper feeding, and bad home conditions. The 

 treatment of those children in whom medical inspection 

 ! discovers defects has received a great deal of consideration 

 I at the hand of the county council. .A solution has not 

 ^•et been arrived at, but it is certain that visual troubles, 

 discharging ears, ringworm, and conservative dentistry are 

 matters on which neither the private practitioner nor the 

 hospitals can give sufficient or satisfactory relief, and the 

 establishment in London of school clinics to deal with these 

 conditions amongst school children will probably be the 

 .eventual solution. The work of the school nurses was 

 almost entirely directed to effecting the cleansing of 

 scholars' heads, bodies, and clothing. Nearly twenty 

 thousand children are known to the nurses as uncleanly in 

 these respects. That such conditions are tolerated gives 

 an idea of the conditions of the homes, which are 

 .often so dirty and dark, and wanting in the means of 

 .cleansing, that it would be an injustice to exclude such 

 children and prosecute the parents. It appears that the 

 municipal cleansing stations provided for cleansing 

 verminous persons are inadequate to deal with all these 

 cases. The Children's Act, 1908, gives power to the educa- 

 tion authority to examine and cleanse these children in 

 default of the parents, and it looks as if that authority- will 

 have to make some provision for dealing, with these cases, 

 at least in some parts of the metropolis. 



The open-air schools provided by the council (four in 

 number) are doubtless doing a great service, physically and | 

 NO. 2 no, VOL. 83] 



educationally, to children with aibnents which unfit them 

 to take their place in the school class-room with the 

 ordinary scholars. Children with scrofulous and tuber- 

 culous conditions, anasmia, adenoids and enlarged tonsils^ 

 heart disease, and certain bone, nervous, and eye diseases, 

 profit considerably by a few months in these open-air 

 schools. 



T 



PROBLEMS OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN 



HIGHLANDS.' 

 HE southern Highlands of Scotland consist of a com- 

 plex series of gneisses, schists, crystalfine limestones,, 

 and quartzites, trending across Scotland approximately 

 from south-w-est to north-east. These metamorphic rocks 

 are bounded abruptly to the south by the Highland 

 boundary fault, which brings them against Upper Palaeo- 

 zoic rocks. Their northern boundary is less regular, and 

 is generally the junction with the Moine gneiss, the rock 

 which occupies so much of the Northern and Centraf 

 Highlands. The schists and the associated rocks between 

 the Moine gneiss and the boundary fault may be con- 

 veniently grouped together, under the name proposed by 

 Sir .Archibald Geikie, as the Dalradian system. 



The most important difficulty in the interpretation of 

 these rocks is the uncertainty as to which is the upper 

 and which the lower end of the succession. .According to 

 Nicol, the southern members are the youngest, and there 

 is a descending series to the north. This view is contra- 

 dicted by many obvious facts in the field geology, and 

 the view is therefore widely held that Nicol's order must 

 be reversed, and that the beds of the southern margin are 

 the oldest. One serious difficulty in the second view is 

 that the southern rocks are much less altered than the 

 northern, and this theory therefore involves some measure 

 of selective metamorphism. Several ingenious interpreta- 

 tions have been advanced to overcome this difficulty. The 

 author of the address, however, held that both views as 

 to the order of succession are correct in parts. For con- 

 venience of reference, the Dalradian system may be divided' 

 into five series, which, with their relatfons to the other 

 ore-Cambrian rocks, are shown in descending order, as 

 follows : — 



.A!gonkian I Toiridon Sandstone 



Dalradian 



Caledonian 



Main sequence 

 (5) Schichallion Quartzite 



/Blair AthoII Limestones 

 (4); and Black Schists and in- 



\ terbedded Quartzites 



(3) Ben Lawers series 



/Loch Tay Limestones and 

 (zK associated garnetiferous 



\ mica 5chUts 

 (i) Loch Lomond Gneiss 



On Southern Margin 



Age ? Upper 

 Dalradian or 

 later 



Aberfoil Slates 

 and Grits 



Ben Ledi 

 Schistose 

 Giits 



Moine Gneiss and associated 

 schists 



Lewisian 



Lewisian Gneiss 



This classification adopts Nicol's succession in part, as 

 it accepts the Aberfoil and Ben Ledi series as younger than 

 the Loch Lomond gneiss, against which they rest, and it 

 is consistent with the less altered condition of the southern 

 locks and the steady diminution in the metamorphism 

 of the rest of the rocks going northward, as, for example, 

 from the Loch Lomond Gneiss to the Loch .Awe Grits, and 

 from the garnetiferous mica schists of the Loch Tay series 

 to the black schists and unfoliated quartzites near Blair 

 Atholl. 



The evidence in some points of this succession is stilt 

 incomplete, especially as regards some of the rocks within 

 easy access of Gljisgow. The special points on whicfc 



I Abstract of the Presudential Address delivered to the Glasgow- 

 Geological Society, by Prof. J. W. Gregor>-, F.R.S. 



