SOUTH AFRICAN ASSOCIATION. 9 



There, then, in brief outlines, all too imperfectly drawn, is a picture of 

 South African Science in 1929. Contrast it with the picture of 1905, and 

 you have the measure of the achievement of a great epoch. Science 

 consolidated, Science South Africanised, Science recognised as of great 

 national value, both in the spiritual and in the material spheres, Science 

 drawing to our country the eyes of the world — surely that is no unworthy 

 achievement. And as to-night, once again after the lapse of many days, 

 our Association makes its report to the parent body, to which it gladly 

 pays the tribute of filial reverence, it does so with pride and satisfaction 

 in the work of the intervening period, but also with grateful recognition 

 of the inspiration which that visit of 1905 brought to South Africa as one 

 of the constitutive factors in the progress of the last quarter of a century. 



And now it has been our privilege to welcome this second visit of the 

 British Association. Is it strange if we ask ourselves, as we gratefully 

 remember the stimulus of 1905, what will be the stimulus of 1929 ? That 

 visit had abiding results. What will be the results of this one ? That 

 visit inaugurated a new epoch. Are we not justified in believing that once 

 again we stand on the threshold of a great advance ? If that be so, what 

 are to be the characteristics of the period on which we are now entering, 

 what will be its achievement ? In the period that followed the first visit 

 of the British Association we South Africanised Science in South Africa. 

 Is it too much to hope that in the next we shall Africanise it ? Will not 

 this visit perhaps give us the impulse and the inspiration to a bigger and 

 a bolder enterprise ? One of the most significant tendencies evidenced 

 in South Africa in the last few years has been the growing consciousness 

 of our obligations in relation to the Continent of Africa. We have come 

 to realise that the position of this European civilisation of ours set upon 

 the verge of this great continent is a position of unique strategic import- 

 ance, that it presents us with at once an opportunity and a challenge. 

 While in the past we thought, as a nation, almost exclusively of our own 

 problems and difficulties, we are now ceasing to limit our horizon by 

 the Limpopo, we are beginning to envisage the task that awaits us beyond 

 our own borders. And in the mind of the nation there is being developed 

 a new conception of South Africa, of a South Africa that consciously 

 and deliberately seeks to play its part on the African continent, not aiming 

 at conquest or domination, but never failing in its readiness to give its 

 intellectual and material resources to aid all who are engaged in the task 

 of developing this great undeveloped area of the earth's surface, which 

 is so full of potentialities for the future welfare of the world. If then 



