BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIP 

 OF MINERALS. 



BY 



Sir THOMAS HOLLAND, K.C.S.I., K.C.LE., LL.D., D.Sc, F.R.S., 



PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION. 



A FEW years ago Members of this Association looked forward annually 

 to a generalised statement of the results of their President's own research 

 work in science. The rapid specialisation of science, with its consequent 

 terminology,, has, however, made it increasingly more difficult in recent 

 years for any worker to express himself to his fellow-members. 



Last year at Glasgow most of us expected that the hidden secrets of 

 crystals would be revealed by one whose capacity for popular exposition 

 accompanies a recognised power for extending the boundaries of science. 

 Instead, Sir William Bragg released his store of accumulated thought on 

 the relationship of science to craftsmanship in a way which gave each 

 specialised worker an opportunity to adjust his sense of relativity and 

 proportion. 



If I attempted now to summarise my scattered ideas on the outstanding 

 problems of micro-petrology, I might possibly find half-a-dozen members 

 charitably disposed to listen, and of them perhaps one might partly agree 

 with my theoretical speculations. We have indeed to admit that the 

 science of petrology, which vitalised geological thought at the end of the 

 last century, has since passed into the chrysalid stage, but, we hope, only 

 to emerge as a more perfect imago in the near future. 



Coincident with the excessive degree of specialisation which has 

 developed with embarrassing rapidity within the present century, the 

 problems of the Great War drew scientific workers from their laboratories 

 and forced them to face problems of applied science of wider human 

 interest. And the atmosphere of this great mining field' stirs ideas of 

 this wider sort — ideas concerning a field of human activity which, in 

 recent years, has affected the course of civilised evolution more profoundly 



^ The Witwatersrand. 



