August i6, 1906] 



NA TURE 



08; 



lii-l wheel ;ind the tliscovfrcr of lire. •|'he>.e exiimples pre- 

 pjicd the wav for a consideration of ihc conditions, other 

 ih;in those of the researches of the laboratory, lo which 

 industrial work is subject. The burden of the president's 

 remarks was that nothing is loo insignificant for careful 

 attention, and that qualified workmen require long 

 tr.iining. 



.\ well-instructed technical staff is indispensable to every 

 wirks ; the men may be prepared in special schools, but 

 llieir work must be learnt in the shop itself, lor it can 

 be learnt properly nowhere else. It is equally important 

 ih.ii the managers of the factory be properly trained and 

 be provided with research laboratories where trials should 

 bi' made with an automatic regularity. 



Hill even when all these things have been provided there 

 sliouM be no standing still. In industry, said Prof. Lipp- 

 mann, one is never tranquil. When everything has been 

 provided for, there is still the unforeseen, and the rivalry 

 of other producers at home and abroad has always lo be 

 reckoned with. " Industry is a struggle without end and 

 without truce." 



Ihc president then wont on to show how, as science made 

 new discoveries, technical experience became insufficient, 

 and without scientific assistance an industry .riust fall be- 

 liind. He insisted upon the value of mathematics, and 

 explained that all the resources of mathematical analysis 

 lan be brought into requisition in industrial undertakings, 

 instancing the way in which Lord Kelvin found by analysis 

 iho cause of the remarkable slowness with which electric 

 signals traversed the Transatlantic cable at the time it was 

 being laid. He then gave other instances of how men of 

 science have provided new resources to the industrial ex- 

 pert, and concluded by again urging the need at every 

 factory for a scientific staff provided with research labor- 

 atories. 



Such a procedure. Prof. Lippmann went on to point out, 

 is common in Germany and in America ; and Austria ano 

 Switzerland are, he added, adopting the same method. But 

 no mention was made of Great Britain. Evidently thi- 

 president felt that French disregard of the value of science 

 was reflected across the Channel, and no instance of British 

 enterprise seems to have presented itself to him. Ger- 

 many, however, has had the good sense lo set an example 

 lo the nations. The great German manufacturing houses 

 know the value of the man of science. In the Zeiss works 

 at Jena, fourteen Doctors of Science are employed, and 

 these include mathematicians as well as physicists. The 

 great German aniline colour works employ more " scien- 

 tific " than "technical" chemists. At one of them, for 

 instance, fifty-five scientific and thirty-one technical chemists 

 are engaged ; at a second, 145 scientific chemists and 175 

 technologists : at a third 14S scientific chemists for 75 

 technicists. The research laboratories of these works are 

 lavishly equipped ; one of them possesses a library of 

 14,000 volumes; a second spends 150,000 francs a year on 

 glass-ware. These things are no doubt expensive, but these 

 great factories still manage to pay a dividend of from 20 

 to 30 per cent. 



Every newly-discovered substance which is usable is 

 patented, and in this way Germany has managed to estab- 

 lish a monopoly. The house of Baeyer possesses a thousand 

 patents at home and 1200 in foreign countries. Germany 

 exported, in iqo4, 195 times as much aniline colours as 

 I'rance. The German plan, said Prof. Lippniiinn, is .a good 

 one : the French method is bad. 



.\merican procedure was then described, and a w-ord or 

 two said about the methods being adopted in .Austria and 

 Switzerland. 



French shortcomings were ne.xt passed in review and 

 condemned unreservedly. French manufacturers, said the 

 president, consider mathematicians, physicists, and chemists 

 as expensive luxuries, and engage very few of them. They 

 do not recognise the value and significance of the dis- 

 coveries of French men of science. The instance of 

 Carnot*s researches on heat-engines was cited, and the 

 value they had been in England as compared with the 

 extent to which they had been utilised in F'rance was 

 traced. The scientific spirit, continued the president, is 

 less developed in France than in other European countries, 

 less developed than in .America and Japan. The national 

 industries ha\"e suffered profoundlv from this weakness, and 



NO. 1920, VOL. 74] 



the lack of scientific spirit is felt in other directions. Ihe 

 cause of this deficiency is in no sense due to a want of 

 national abilitv. Prof. Lippmann put it down to an anti- 

 quated system of public education. French education, he 

 assured his audience, is Chinese in origin as well as in 

 character. 



The president in directing attention to higher education 

 in France saw in this direction cause for hope and the 

 remedy for the shortcomings he had previously enumerated. 

 In countries where the conditions of culture are normal, 

 every young man to whom it is desi-'ed to give a liberal 

 education is sent to a university, not for reasons of vanity, 

 but because it is necessary for the youth's professional 

 future. This necessity is not. Prof. Lippinann inaintained, 

 sufficientlv understood' in France. The young man should 

 go 10 the' university not only to learn law or medicine, but 

 in order to become a cultured man. 



The chief business of the university is to teach the art 

 of research, that is to say, .science, for scjence is the art 

 of research and nothing else ; and research is indis- 

 pensable to industry. At the same time, the university 

 must put men with no scientific ambitions, but who wish 

 to acquire a general culture worthy of the name, in touch 

 with science at first hand, for science in the making is 

 alone attractive and fruitful. The French universities at^e 

 at present too much under the influence of a bureaucratic 

 pedantrv to accomplish this double function, and the sooner 

 they are liberated from the yoke of the executive power the 

 better according to the president. So far as unfettered 

 universities are concerned, France is, in Prof. Lippmann's 

 view, behind the rest of the world except Spain. 



Prof. Lippmann concluded by expressing the devout hope, 

 in the name of industry and of national development, that 

 the teaching of science in France may be delivered soon 

 from all ancient fetters. 



THE HRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

 SECTION C. 



GEOLOGY. 



Opening Address by G. W. L.implugii, F.R.S., 

 President of the Section. 

 On British Drifts and the Intergl.\cial Proble.m. 

 If a personal reminiscence be pardonable, let me first 

 recall that twenty-five years ago, at a meeting of this 

 Section in this same room, I ventured, while still a youth, 

 to contribute my mite towards the right understanding of 

 the Yorkshire drifts. The occasion will always remain 

 memorable to me, for it was my first introduction to a 

 scientific audience, and the encouraging words spoken by 

 Ramsay from this chair impressed themselves upon me 

 and gave me confidence to persevere in the path of in- 

 vestigation. 



Finding myself again in these surroundings, it seems 

 fitting that with fuller experience and less diffidence I 

 should resume the subject by bringing before you some 

 further results of my study of the drifts. But it is w'ith 

 just a sigh that I recollect how on the former occasion 

 I was able to reach a definite conclusion on a simple 

 problem from direct observation, and had confidence that 

 all problems might be solved by the same method ; whereas 

 now I find confronting me an intractable mass of facts 

 and opinions, of my own and other people, terribly 

 entangled, out of which it seems to grow ever more difficult 

 to extract the true interpretation. 



That the glacial deposits possess some quality peculiarly 

 stimulating to the imagination will, I am sure, be recog- 

 nised by everyone who has acquaintance with glacialists 

 or with glacial literature. The diversity and strongly 

 localised characters of these deposits, together with their 

 aspect of superficial simplicity, offer boundless opportunity 

 to the ingenious interpreter ; and therefore it is not sur- 

 prising that along with the rapid accumulation of facts 

 relating to bygone glaciation there should have arisen 

 much divergent opinion on questions of interpretation. _ Xor 

 need we regret this result, since these differences of opinion 

 have again and again afforded the stimulus for research 

 that would not otherwise have been undertaken. 



