BRITISH ASSOCIATION NOTES. 
Professor Boyd Dawkins, during the discussion on ancient jaws, 
opined that talking did not necessarily imply intelligence. 
In addition to the Official Handbook, the local Committee issued a 
handy Guide to the neighbourhood, a Handbook of the geological excur- 
sions, etc, 
The attendance of members at Birmingham was not so large as was 
anticipated, being only a little above 2,600. This is not many more 
than the numbers at Dundee last year. 
This year the British Association again issued the Presidential Address 
and abstracts of papers read at each section, in one wrapper, for sixpence, 
and was again much appreciated by the members. 
Mme. Curie was among the recipients of honorary degrees at the 
University of Birmingham. Sir Oliver Lodge, in presenting her, said 
she was the discoverer of radium and the greatest woman of science of 
all times. 
Mr. Horwood has again made a discovery. Somehow he has ascertained 
that the rock-soil distribution of plants can aid the detection of geological 
boundaries, and he tells us that ecologists are finding this fact useful 
in their work. As it happens, it was one of the strong points of the 
ecologists from the very inception of their science, and has been familiar 
to the geological surveyors from the time of William Smith. We ex- 
pect that next year Mr. Horwood will tell the British Association that 
different geological strata can be identified by the fossils they contain. 
According to a leading article in one of the leading daily papers, 
“The man in the street, to whom the scientist attempts to demonstrate 
the existence of the soul by adducing the existence of a something of 
incomprehensible and apparently contradictory qualities called the «ther, 
will not be satisfied. If he wants to learn about the soul, about the life 
to come, he will go, not to science, which can tell him nothing, but to 
dogmatic religion, which tells him boldly what he wants to know in clear 
and intelligible language.’ We can only hope that our friend in the 
street is satisfied. 
In her address to the Botanical Section, Miss Ethel Sargent, the first 
lady to preside at a Section of the Association, stated :—‘ Section K 
(Botany) has made a great innovation in choosing a woman for its President 
this year, and I will not refrain from thanking you in the name of my 
sex because I happen to be the woman chosen. And, though I must 
and do feel very keenly the honour you have done me as a botanist, 
yet that feeling is less prominent than gratitude for the generosity shown 
to all women in that choice. Speaking in their name, I may venture 
to say that the highest form of generosity is that which dares to do an 
act of justice in the face of custom and prejudice.’ 
An idea of the variety of subjects discussed at the various Sections of 
the British Association may be gathered from the following titles, selected 
from many scores:—‘ A Development of the Theory of Errors with 
reference to the Economy of Time’; ‘ The Divisibility of 2p-2 by p2’; 
“A Temperature See-saw between England and Egypt’; ‘ The Sensitive- 
ness of the Human Skin as a Detector of low voltage alternating Electro- 
static Fields’; ‘A Study of the Degradation or Enhancement of Quality 
of commercial Copper by the presence of impurities’; ‘ Optical Rotatory 
Powers and Dispersions of the Members of Homologous Series’; ‘ A new 
Method for the Determination of Hydroxyl ion Concentration’; ‘On 
the place of Rhynchonella concinna in the Oolite Series’; ‘Some further 
Notes on Palaeoxyvis and other allied Fossils, with special reference to 
some New Features found in Vetacapsula’; ‘ Marriage by Capture by a 
1913 Oct. 1. 
