134 



NATURE 



[OCTOISKR 17. I918 



THE JOHANNESBURG MEETING OB THE 

 •i AFRICAN [SSOCIATION. 



Till eenth annual session of the South African 



.11 For the Advancement of s < ii ni e « as 

 held hannesburg from July 8 to 1.;, with Dr. 



C. F. [uritz as president. .Then n ptions and 



function's of the type inseparable from such occasions, 



- visits in municipal undertakings, to iron and 



steel works, to gold minis, to powei stations, and 



ie Zoological Gardens. Ol even greater interesl 



in mnn\ of the visitors were thi 1 nion Observatory, 



in South African fnstiti 1 Medical Research, and 



the Water Board barrage on thi Vaal River, the third 

 largest in Africa, thai of the Assouan Dam being 

 the largest. 



Nearly ninety papers were read at the various 

 ons, and the attendance was larger than it lias 

 been for main \ eat s past. 



Prof. |. I Morrison, as president of Section A, 

 discussed in its broad aspects the subject of the 

 internal structure of the earth. The discussion pro- 

 ceeded mainrj along geophysical lines, and it was 

 suggested that it is the function of the geophvsicist 

 to investigate the processes by which have been main- 

 tained those incessant movements whereof the geo- 

 logical record is a witness, at the same time so 

 indubitable and so perplexing. 



The address of Or. P. A. Wagner, president of 

 Section I!, had as its subject "The Mineral Industry 

 ..I the Union of South Africa and its Future." He 

 said that the recorded output of the Witwatersrand 



mines had exceeded a total value of 571,000,000/., 

 while for the single year iqi6 the value reached was 

 58,492,000?. He estimated the gold still capable ' of 

 being profitably recovered from the mines as worth 

 1,200,000,000/. The declared value of the country's 

 diamonds had attained an aggregate figure of more 

 than 21(1,000,000/. The coal industry was capable of 

 considerable expansion, and the 1911 estimate, which 

 placed the reserves at 56,000,000,000 tons, erred 

 greatly on the conservative side. The dimensions of 

 the country's future iron industry would depend on 

 tin rich titaniferous ores of the bushveld complex; of 

 these more than ^,000,000,000 tons are computed to be 

 available. 



Mr. C. E. Legal, Chief Conservator of Forests of 

 the" Union, was president of Section C, and in his 

 3S dealt with the subject of the Union's forestry 

 imber supplies. There were, he said, two million 

 ol Forest reserves in the Union, but only some- 

 what less than half a million acres of actual forest. 

 Whin once the forests were in a normal condition — 

 which would not be for a long time to come — the 

 annual output of yellow wood would not exceed 

 ft.— a mere fraction of the Union's 

 present requirements — and in fifty years' time these 

 requirei I probably have doubled. Afforesta- 



tion on a I ale is therefore essential; at least 



300,000 acn coniferous plantations should he 



established, and cres of hard woods. 



In Section I idential office was filled bv 



Dr. K. J. Goddai 11 of zoology in the Uni- 



versity of Stellenb and in Section F bv the Rev. 



W. A. Norton, lecturer in Greek in the University 

 of Cape Town. The latter ut <' the need of Further 

 research into thinfs native, especially in comparativi 

 philology, language being tin chief key to the psycho- 

 logy nf a race, and psychology ' tg necessary to their 

 ffective use, government, anil education. 

 Dr. Tims. M. Forsyth, prol philosophy in 



Grey University College, Bloemf ontein , in his pre- 

 address to Section F, discussed the relations 



NO. 2555, VOL. I02 _ | 



between philosophy and science, lie aimed at show- 

 ing that ii is the endeavour of philosophy, no less than 

 that of si 11 n,e, to a\ail itself of the experimental 

 method. I In- philosophical significance "i scientific 

 units and standards of measurement lies in tin truth 

 that only in our sense-impressions have we direct 

 nee "I 11. din the reality which science seeks 

 in interpret. ["hi waj to the union of scientific and 

 philosophic points ol view lies accordinglj in furthei 

 elucidation of the nature of immediate experience, 

 and the derivation thence of the conceptions by which 

 experienci 1- explained. Tin- feeling of our oneness 

 with Nature leads science to seek to reduce mind to 

 terms ol matter, and philosophy to reduce matter to 

 terms of mind. 



One cannot will do more than touch lightly here 

 and thin upon some of the salient points in the 

 many papers which occupied the attention of tin s, , . 

 tional meetings In Section \ a great deal of interest 

 was aroused b\ Prof. Schwarz's audacious scheme 

 for the conversion of the Kalahari into permanent 

 pasture-land by building two weirs at the Cunene and 

 Chobe rivers. The paper was discussed at gnat 

 length and severely criticised by engineers, meteoro- 

 logists, geologists, and botanists alike. Mr. J. A. 

 Vaughan, in the coursi ol a paper on safety in 

 winding operations, said that the four hundred main 

 winding plants regularly at work on the Rand made 



an aggregate ol 51,000,0 rips per annum, while 



the winding accidents amounted to sixty-two — equal 

 to a rate of mi' accident per half a million journeys 

 Dr. Moir gave the section a description of his method 

 of titling an equatorial sundial at small C( si so as to 

 introduce compensations tor the irregulai solar motion 

 and enable one to read correct time. 



In Section B Prof. Rindl made some additions to 

 his paper of last year on the subject of South African 

 medicinal springs. Amongst the springs newly 

 described some striking features were exhibited by 

 those of the South-West Protectorate, which are .if 

 deep-seated origin, and. apart from ^i\s,is, belong 

 to the hottest springs known. 



The Rev. Dr. F. C. Kolbe read a paper before 

 Section C on the function of experiment in the teach- 

 ing of botany in schools. The school-teaching of 

 botany, he considered, might very well do all it can 

 with direct obsi rvation, leaving the experimental stage 

 to the universitv. Some of the experiments usually 

 performed in schools are not logically valid, while 

 others usually failed, and so did more harm than 

 good. Dr. F. P. Phillips described a botanical col- 

 lecting trip in the French lloek district, and showed 

 how the character of the vegetation changed from the 

 strongly xerophytic types at the foot of the mountains 

 as one rose to a height of 4000 ft. On attaining a 

 height of 2000 ft. to 3000 ft. the trees are replaced by 

 dense, tall hush, which, 500 ft. to 1000 ft. higher, 

 is in turn succeeded by scrub. Miss A. M. King 

 gave a description of what may prove to he a new 

 sin mis of Balansia growing on Cynodon dactylon 

 about Pretoria. Dr. Ethel Doidge announced tin 

 appearance of Californiart walnut blight in the South 

 African walnut plantations, and described the charac- 

 teristics ol the disease {Bacterium ju$landis). In 

 another paper Dr. Doidge attributed tin- prevalence 

 of bean blight (Bacterium bhaseoli) to the excep- 

 tionally wet season in the Transvaal last summer. 

 Miss \. M. Bottomlev gave a preliminary account of 



a seven outbreak of fungoid disease which had 1 



to show itself among young express plants three years 

 ago; and Mi. \. A. Putterill described the morpho- 

 logy and life-history of the fungus which causes 

 ■•rust" in .do.s. M,-. \. O. D. Mogg discussed veld- 



