SOUTH AFRICAN ASSOCIATION. 11 



What then can Africa give to Science ? In reply to that I can do no 

 more than suggest some of the lines along which Africa seems to be called 

 upon to make a distinctive contribution to Science. 



First there are the related fields of Astronomy and Meteorology. To 

 Astronomy I shall but make a passing reference. This continent of Africa, 

 more especially the highlands of its interior plateau, with its clear skies 

 and its cloudless nights, offers wonderful facilities to the astronomer. As 

 proof of the necessity of utilising those facilities, especially with a view to 

 the study of the Southern heavens, I need but quote the words used by 

 Professor Kapteyn on the occasion of the 1905 visit : ' In all researches 

 bearing on the construction of the universe of stars, the investigator is 

 hindered by our ignorance of the Southern heavens. Work is accimiulating 

 in the North, which is to a great extent useless, until similar work is done 

 in the South.' Africa has to its credit considerable achievements in the 

 past in the field of astronomical research. The increased equipment 

 now available should make it possible to increase greatly the amount of 

 systematic work now being done, and to offer important contributions 

 to astronomical science. 



But probably of greater importance is the work waiting to be done in 

 Meteorology. Few branches of Science have a more direct effect upon the 

 welfare of mankind — that is a lesson which we in South Africa should 

 have learnt only too well — but in few has less progress been made. And 

 in meteorological work Africa is probably the most backward of the 

 continents. It is not so long since Dr. Simpson of the London Meteoro- 

 logical Office declared that, save from Egypt, his office received practically 

 no meteorological information from the great continent of Africa. More- 

 over, the backwardness of Meteorology is in large measure due to the 

 intricacy of the problems involved, and the necessity of having world- 

 wide information made available. The problems of Meteorology are 

 emphatically not the problems of one country or of one region. The 

 South African meteorologist must see his problems sub specie Africae (the 

 seasonal changes in South Africa depend on the northward and southward 

 oscillations of the great atmospheric system overlying the continent as a 

 whole) ; and quite apart from what he can learn from the rest of Africa, 

 the Antarctic regions have much to teach him. But while the develop- 

 ment of meteorological research throughout Africa is of supreme economic 

 importance for Africa, Africa in its turn has its contributions to make to 

 other continents. In particular should we not forget the close inter- 

 relation of the meteorological problems of the lands of the Southern hemi- 



