TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 605 
4. On the Evils arising from the Pollution of Rivers. 
By General Sir J. E. Avexanper, K.0.B., F.R.S.E. 
The author belonged for a number of years to the Association for the Preserva- 
tion of the Rivers and Lochs of Scotland from Pollution, also to the Association for 
the Improvement of Scotch Fisheries. 
Mr. F. Buckland’s idea was to let the polluted water be evaporated in shallow 
tanks and to utilise the deposit. The great impediment to improvement was the 
want of co-operation, the proprietors of public works not finding it convenient to 
interfere with their tenants. The poor man cannot now afford salmon, which used 
to be 6d. a pound, and is now Is. and Is. 6d. the pound. 
The author expresses his opinion that members of both Houses of Parliament 
should energetically take up the question of pollution, and induce the Government 
to frame laws, and see them enforced, to preserve our valuable waters for the 
health of the people and the production of fish. 
Complaint is made in the paper of the loss of peoples’ health by pollution of rivers, 
and the loss of horses from the same cause. Mr. Smith, of Deanston, near Stirling, 
prevented the sewage of his cotton works spoiling the beautiful Teith—a fine salmon 
river. Allusion is made to the successful fish-hatching at Howietown, Stirling, by 
Sir James G. Maitland, Bart. 
There used to be only eels in the New Zealand rivers; now good baskets of 
trout may be caught in the colony from imported fish. Marine eel-catching is 
described. . 
5. On Free Libraries. By Professor Leone Levi, F.S.S. 
The PresipEent delivered the following Address :— 
Tue post of President of this Section is one which any man who is honoured by 
the choice of the Council of the Association must feel considerable diffidence in 
accepting. There are two main reasons which lead to this. First, he sees on the 
roll of your Presidents a long list of names of men whose distinction he cannot 
hope to equal; next, he finds in the growing scope of the subjects discussed at 
your meetings an ever-widening field of investigation, the whole of which he 
can never hope to master. The very name of the Section bears witness to this 
extension of its subject-matter for inquiry. Established originally as the Section 
for Statistics, it remained under this title for more than twenty years. Extending 
then, and rightly, its scope beyond the limits of Statistics alone, it undertook to 
deal with that branch of science to which Statistics are especially useful, and became 
the Section of Economic Science and Statistics, the title retained until the present 
day. This very difference in the designation marks out the development of thought 
on the subject, a development which I may remark has been greatly assisted by the 
labours of my distinguished predecessors in this chair. Their names suggest great 
variety of pursuits, great difference of study, but I find one common link uniting 
the modes of thought of all, a desire to promote the interest of Economic Science, 
and a desire also in practice to promote the best interests of the Empire, by the 
application, where possible, of the laws of that Science to the pursuits of ordinary 
life. Thus, among the names of earlier Presidents of this Section, there are those 
of Mr. Babbage and of Mr. Henry Hallam, the latter known to the present 
generation as an historian of the very highest rank, but known also in his own 
time as taking a warm interest in all matters which concerned the social well-being 
of the country. Among those former Presidents who have taken a prominent and 
valued share in public life, are the names of Mr. W. E. Forster and the present 
Postmaster-General, whose connection with Economic Science is marked by the 
fact that he is even better known throughout the country as Professor Fawcett, 
than as the holder of his high office. Considerations of space will not permit 
me to mention many other names, but I may refer to Mr. Tooke, who in his great 
work on the history of prices combined so admirably statistical method with a scien- 
