534 



NATURE 



[October i, 1903 



ChemicaHy, the meteorite is remarkable for its high per- 

 centage (6-3) of chromium sesquioxide. Dr. Farrington 

 suggests that a small portion may be present as a .con- 

 stituent of the olivine, and the rest as part of the chromite. 

 The author next enters into a discussion of the relations of 

 the various meteoric stones which have been found in Ness 

 County and other parts of north-western Kansas ; he infers 

 that Prairie Dog Creek, Long Island, Oakley, Jerome, and 

 Franklinville belong to distinct falls, and that Wellmanville 

 may be part of the Franklinville fall, and Kansada part 

 of either the Franklinville or the Jerome meteorite. Another 

 meteorite described is one from Los Reyes, forty miles from 

 Toluca ; this is an iron, and its characters are similar to 

 those of other masses found nearer Toluca ; there is no 

 .reason to believe that the mass has been transported by 

 man from the latter locality. The Los Reyes mass may 

 belong either to a distinct fall or indicate a wide spreading 

 of the Toluca shower. In the same paper an account is 



f:iven of the structure of the meteoric iron found in the 

 lopewell Mounds of Ohio ; one of these is a small, un- 

 wrought mass weighing about five ounces, the others are 

 worked specimens, namely, a part of a head and ear orna- 

 ment, some celts, and a number of beads ; they were all 

 found associated with a single human skeleton near an 

 altar of one of the mounds ; the iron, when etched, shows 

 Widmanstatten figures, which have been bent and distorted 

 by hammering. Finally, Dr. Farrington states that the 

 taenite extracted from the Kenton County meteorite was 

 found on analysis to consist of 803 parts of iron and 19-7 

 parts of nickel (and cobalt). 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

 SECTION F. 



ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 



Opening Address by Edward W. Brabrook, C.B., F.S.A., 

 V.P.S.S., President of the Section. 



It is a coincidence, which has great interest for me 

 personally, that the honour of being President of this 

 Section has fallen to me in the last year of my engagement 

 in the public service. I am now in the sixty-fifth year of 

 my age and the thirty-fifth of my connection with the 

 Registry of Friendly Societies, and in a few months the 

 guillotine of the Order in Council will fall, and the De- 

 partment and its present head will be severed. The con- 

 sequences are not so tragic as they sound, for the Depart- 

 ment will at once find a new head, and the old head will 

 contrive to. maintain a separate existence. I therefore meet 

 the stroke of fate with cheerfulness ; for I am strongly of 

 opinion that the arrangements for retirement from the Civil 

 Service of the country are as wise as they are liberal. It 

 is a good thing that the place of a man whose ideas have 

 grown old and become fixed, and whose long service in- 

 disposes him to entertain new ones, should be taken by a 

 younger man anxious to make his own mark on the 

 administration of his department. Again, the prospect of 

 promotion opened up by the limited term of service of the 

 older men is a distinct inducement to able and ambitious 

 young men to devote themselves to their country's service. 

 I have lately had occasion to give minute and careful atten- 

 tion to one branch of this important question, and the study 

 of the whole subject which has thus been rendered necessary 

 has strongly confirmed the conviction I previously, enter- 

 tained that the. system of retirement which now prevails 

 greatly tends to promote the efficiency of the Civil Service 

 and the interests of the country. I do not apologise for 

 saying this much on a subject into which I was led by 

 an observation that concerns me personally, for the means 

 of securing efficiency in the public service is an important 

 economic question. 



The coincidence to which I refer tempts me to choose 

 as the principal subject of the Address which I am per- 

 mitted and enjoined to deliver to the Section on this occasion 

 that small corner of the great field of Economics in which 

 I have been a day labourer for so long, and I am not able 

 to resist the temptation. My piece of allotment ground, 

 if I may so call it, is that which is devoted to the cultiva- 

 tion of thrift, or of economy in the popular rather than the 

 scientific sense. The temptation is strengthened by the 



NO. 1770, VOL. 68] 



circumstance that that subject has rarely been treated by 

 my predecessors. Sir Robert Giffen in his Address of 1887 

 referred to it, and Sir Charles Fremantle in 1892 treated 

 it at somewhat greater length. In old times, when the 

 Chair of this Section was more frequently occupied by the 

 practical statesman than by the professed economist, there 

 were passing allusions to it by Henry Fawcett in 1872, 

 William Edward Forster in 1873, and Sir Richard Temple 

 in 1884 ; but in more recent years the accomplished 

 economists who have presided over this Section, notably my 

 immediate predecessor, have delivered luminous and memor- 

 able Addresses on the broad principles of Economics, the 

 application and potency of its doctrines, and their service- 

 ableness to mankind, with a comprehensiveness of view that 

 is only attainable as the result of deep study, and a 

 brilliancy of exposition that belongs to philosophic insight. 

 I may here, in passing, express the satisfaction we all feel 

 that at Cambridge, where we are to meet next year, pro- 

 ficitjncy in Economics and Political Science is now fully 

 recognised as qualifying for academical honours. 



I have spoken of the subject of Thrift as a small corner 

 of the great field of Economics ; and relatively to the broad 

 field itself it is so ; but it is a subject that deals with large 

 figures and intimately affects large numbers of people. The 

 2000 Building Societies in Great Britain and Ireland have 

 600,000 members and sixty-two millions of funds ; the 28,000 

 bodies registered under the Friendly Societies Act have 

 12,000,000 members and forty-three millions of funds; the 

 2000 co-operative societies have 2,000,000 members and forty 

 millions of funds; the 600 trade unions have more than a 

 million and a half members and nearly five millions of 

 funds ; in the 13,000 Post Office and other savings banks 

 there are more than 10,000,000 depositors and more than 

 200 millions invested ; so that upon the whole in nearly 

 50,000 thrift organisations with which the Registry of 

 Friendly Societies has, in one form or other, to deal there 

 are twenty-seven millions of persons interested and 360 

 millions of money engaged. These figures, however, possess 

 no significance other than that they are very big. Many 

 individuals are necessarily counted more than once, as be- 

 longing to more than one society in one class, or to more 

 than one class of societies. Some portion of the funds of 

 Friendly Societies is invested in savings banks, and there- 

 fore is counted twice over. Some of the _ co-operative 

 societies, as, for example, the wholesale societies, have for 

 capital the contributions of other societies, which thus are 

 also counted twice over. On the other hand, the aggregate, 

 large as it is, is necessarily defective. It includes only 

 bodies which are brought into relation with the Registry 

 of Friendly Societies in one or other of the functions 

 exercised by that department. It does not include, there- 

 fore, many co-operative and other bodies which are 

 registered under the Companies Act, nor the Industrial 

 Assurance Companies which are regulated by the Assurance 

 Companies Act, nor does it include the great body of 

 Friendly Societies which are not registered at all. Among 

 these shop clubs hold a prominent position, and these are 

 very numerous. The Royal Commissioners of thirty years 

 ago thought that the unregistered were then commensurate 

 with the registered bodies ; and as one result of the legisla- 

 tion which the Commissioners recommended has been to 

 diminish the applications for registry made by such societies 

 as are subjected by it to the necessity of a periodical valu- 

 ation of assets and liabilities, there seems no reason tc 

 think that unregistered societies are relatively now any 

 fewer than they were then. 



It would seem, then, that the figures we have cited are 

 well within the mark, and that, used for the mere purpose 

 of indicating the magnitude of the interests involved, they 

 may be relied upon as not over-estimating it. The observ- 

 ation just made leads to the question, why should there be 

 so many unregistered societies? Why, indeed, should there 

 be any unregistered societies? The National Conference 

 of Friendly Societies, which consists wholly of registered 

 bodies, has just passed a resolution recommending the enact- 

 ment of a law that all societies should be compelled to 

 register. Why not? I think it will not be difficult to find 

 the real answer to these questions. It was given as long 

 ago as 1825 by a Committee of the House of Commons in 

 these wise words : — " It is only in consideration of advan- 

 tages conferred by law that any restrictive interference can 

 be justified with voluntary associations established for lawful 



