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OcToBER 5, 1916] 
NATURE 
gr 
. 
Mr. Carnegie in 1901 gave a million pounds to pro- 
vide funds ‘“for improving and extending the oppor- 
banigieagipeneentific study and research in the Univer- 
sities of Scotland, my native land,”’ to quote from his 
trust deed. In the University of Aberdeen, of which 
I have the honour to be a member, out of 132,000l. 
allocated from this benefaction in the period of 15% 
years, a bare one-quarter has gone to science; 52,1151. 
has gone to endow one professorship in history and 
five lectureships in French, political economy, German, 
education, and constitutional law and history; 24,750l. 
has-been assigned to provide new buildings for teach- 
ing arts subjects, a new ‘examination hall, and an 
extension of the library; 26,7501. has gone, 15,750l. 
to maintenance of the library and r1,o00l. for pro- 
visional assistance in teaching, science being repre- 
sented in this to an indefinite extent. The remaining 
28,3521. has gone to science, 15,750l. for the equipment 
of laboratories, and 12,6321. as an endowment for a 
lectureship in geology. With reference to the latter, 
the Geological Department, taking the figures for the 
year before the war, was entirely supported by the 
fees paid by the students, and geology got the interest 
of the 12,6321. in the same sense as the Postmaster- 
General gets the sovereign when you purchase a 20s. 
postal order. Personally I think calling science what 
is not science needs to be watched and checkmated. 
FREDERICK SODDy. 
University of Aberdeen, September 30. 
_AN IMPERIAL DEPARTMENT OF MINERAL 
PRODUCTION. 
Ts presidents of the technical institutes most 
closely connected with the production and 
utilisation of our mineral resources have addressed 
to the Advisory Council for Scientific Research 
a memorandum advocating the establishment of a 
central Government Department, the duty of 
which should be to foster the development of the 
mineral resources of the British Empire. What- 
ever form such a department may take, the need 
for its creation is very obvious. In Great Britain 
no such department exists. The Geological 
Survey, under the Board of Education, records 
the existence of mineral deposits, but always from 
the point of view of the geologist, whose main 
interest lies in their mode of occurrence and not 
in their exploitation. The Inspectorate of Mines 
under the Home Office is concerned only with the 
due policing of mines from the point of view of 
safety; its ideal would be a state of affairs in 
which mining accidents were reduced to zero; and 
even though this were brought about by the cessa- 
tion of all mining, the Inspectorate of Mines would 
have fulfilled the object for which it exists. The 
Board of Trade, the Imperial Institute, and many 
other departments of the Government take a more 
or less desultory interest in mineral production, but 
there is no one department the special duty of 
which it is to watch over the development and 
proper utilisation of our mineral resources. 
What is needed is a Ministry of Production, 
or something equivalent thereto, which should 
have for its particular object the care of develop- 
ing all the natural resources of the Empire. All 
natural. products may be divided into three 
groups: they are produced by the cultivator, by 
the hunter or fisherman, or by the miner. Of 
NO. 2449, VOL. 98] 
all these the last-named needs the most careful 
attention, because minerals alone constitute a wast- 
ing asset; unlike the other products, they are not 
renewed, and, once exhausted, are gone for 
ever. The cultivation of a field on wrong prin- 
ciples will entail losses for a year or two, but 
these are quite remediable, and the application of 
proper methods will restore it to fruitfulness; but 
a mine worked on wrong principles is ruined for 
ever, and mineral not properly wrought is in the 
vast majority of cases lost irrecoverably. ‘ 
It is this consideration that renders the need for 
a Ministry or Department devoted to the adminis- 
tration of our mineral resources so very urgent. 
In most Continental countries the minerals have 
remained the property of the State, and the State 
has therefore a direct pecuniary interest in seeing 
to their development as an integral part of the 
national revenue. In this country and in America 
the State has found it advantageous to relinquish 
the State ownership of minerals, it being held that 
the development of the national mineral resources 
is thus facilitated, and that such free development 
is of more benefit to the nation than the revenue 
which might be derived from its mineral conces- 
sions. As regards purely fiscal reasons, these 
two nations are accordingly not directly concerned 
in the development of their mineral wealth, but it 
by no means follows that they should treat the 
subject with indifference. In the United States 
there is a Department of Mines that takes a very 
active interest in encouraging the mineral output. 
In Canada there is a Department of Mines upon 
somewhat similar lines, which is doing excellent 
work, and under the fostering care of which the 
mineral output of Canada is making rapid 
advances. 
There was a time when Great Britain stood at 
the head of all nations as a mineral producer, at 
any rate as regards a considerable number of 
important minerals and metals; that we have 
fallen far behind to-day is due no doubt in great 
measure to natural causes, but their effect has 
been and is being accelerated by the fact that it 
has been nobody’s business to see to it that our 
mineral resources were worked to best advantage ; 
whenever legislation has touched mining, it has 
been to hinder, not to help, mining operations, 
mainly because there was no great Department 
of State to look after our mineral interests. 
Wastefulness in the production and utilisation of 
our mineral resources has gone on and is going 
on unheeded and unchecked, mainly again for the 
same reason. The need for a State Department 
administered on sound economic lines, as free from 
political bias as our national methods admit of, is 
perhaps more urgent for the British Isles in the 
first instance, but together with this and above 
this, there should be an organisation for protecting 
the mineral industries of our whole world-wide 
Empire, for consolidating the resources of the 
Empire, and for rendering it impossible that in 
the future the control of any portion of the 
Empire’s mineral production should ever pass into 
alien hands. Henry Louis. 
