480 CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES 
Mr. J. L. Hottanp.—The Land Utilisation Survey of Northamptonshire. 
This was the first survey of an area as large as a county to be carried 
out in Great Britain through the agency of the schools. It was made in 
1926 to 1928, and the map was published by the Ordnance Survey 
Department in 1929. It led directly to the National Survey described by 
Dr. Stamp and its methods were similar. The children worked on tracings 
taken by themselves from the 6-in. Ordnance maps. The work was 
done on the ground, the children taking their ‘ observer tracings’ out into 
- the fields and woods, verifying them and entering the land utilisation 
observed field by field. ‘The completed map is a valuable contribution 
to knowledge, but the underlying motive was purely educational. It was 
a practical study of one aspect of the local geography. The parish was 
taken as the unit area of study, and as there are some 305 parishes in North- 
amptonshire, it was a considerable task to keep the army of observers and 
teacher overseers moving in some kind of step. The work was entirely 
voluntary, no compulsion being put upon schools or teachers. The cate- 
gories used were those already enumerated by Dr. Stamp, except that 
gardens and allotments were not separated from tilled land. There are, 
therefore, none of the instructive purple patches so conspicuous in the 
National Survey maps on the Northamptonshire map. The controller of 
the survey was Dr. E. E. Field; he was entirely responsible for the 
scientific side of the work. He also undertook the drudgery of reproducing 
the schools’ maps in a form suitable for handling by the Ordnance Survey 
Department. For this purpose the distributions recorded on the 6-in. 
tracings were transferred to bromide prints which the Survey Depart- 
ment prepared specially by photographing the 6-in. map down to a I-in. 
scale. 
The children derived a good deal of pleasure from the enterprise ; to 
them it was not a school task at all. "They learned the lesson of co-operation 
ona scale which is not possible in the team work of a single school. They 
did their part in trust that other schools and children whom they did not 
know would do theirs. They got a firm hold on the geography of their 
several localities. And, best of all from the geographer’s point of view, 
they were able at the finish to read the map, to pass with confidence from 
the facts to the symbols. The map is an essential instrument of geo- 
graphical study ; the power to understand it is not easily acquired. Many 
educated people never do acquire it. Learned practically as these children 
learned it, it is never likely to be entirely lost. 
Dr. Sypney H. Lonc.—The Bird Sanctuaries in Norfolk. (Illustrated 
with cinematograph films of Norfolk nesting birds by Lord William 
Percy.) 
It was in 1888—forty-seven years ago—that the first Wild Birds’ Pro- 
tection Society, the Breydon Society, was formed in Norfolk. This date 
precedes by one year the foundation of the Royal Society for the Protection 
of Birds, so that Norfolk would seem to have been the pioneer county for 
employing bird watchers. At about the same time Charles Hamond, with 
the co-operation of Col. H. W. Feilden, formed the Wells Wild Birds’ 
Protection Society; and two years later a similar society came into 
existence for the protection of the nesting birds on Blakeney Point, with 
Mr, Q. E. Gurney as hon. secretary; and in or about 1905 the late 
Col. George Cresswell started a fourth society for protecting the ternery 
