338 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 296. 



G. Craigie, of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture. In his address he will probably dwell 

 on the care necessary for the properly scien- 

 tific use of statistics and, above all, on the 

 caution required in making international 

 comparisons, illustrating his text, probably, 

 with some of the better-proved figures which 

 enable us to measure the development or 

 retrogression of agriculture in difierent and 

 typical countries. Doubtless owing to the 

 fact of Major Craigie's being president. Sec- 

 tion F this year will receive an unusual 

 number of contributions relating to the 

 economics of agriculture. Professor James 

 W. Robertson, Dairy Commissioner of the 

 Agricultural Department of the Dominion 

 of Canada, and Professor William Saunders, 

 LL.D., director of the Dominion experi- 

 mental farms, will read papers, and Mr. A. 

 D. Hall, of the Agricultural College of "Wye, 

 will deal with the economic possibilities of 

 the growth of sugar beet in England, while 

 a committee of the Section will at length 

 present their report on the effect on prices 

 of options and dealings in futures. There 

 will be, as usual, a day devoted to what are 

 roughly described as municipal subjects, 

 and here Mr. Auberon Herbert is expected 

 to condemn root and branch all attempts of 

 local authorities to provide houses. Sev- 

 eral interesting papers will be forthcoming 

 on miscellaneous subjects. Mr. L. L. Price 

 will deal with some economic consequences 

 of the South African war, and the Hon. W. 

 P. Reeves, Agent-General for New Zealand, 

 will contribute a paper on the somewhat 

 novel subject of ' The Colonies as Money- 

 lenders.' Dr. Marcus Rubin, chief of the 

 Royal Statistical Bureau of Denmark, will 

 discuss some recent movements of popula- 

 tion. There will also be several papers on 

 questions of labor and wages. The his- 

 torical school will be represented by Dr. W. 

 Cunningham, who contributes a paper on 

 North American paper currencies during 

 the colonial period. 



Sir Alexander Binnie will preside over 

 Section G (Mechanical Science), and his 

 address will take the form of an inquiry 

 into the steps by which we have arrived at 

 our modern conception of nature, when re- 

 viewed from a scientific standpoint. He 

 will point out the reasons why the philoso- 

 phers of Greece missed the true interpreta- 

 tion of nature, and, passing on to the Roman 

 period and the dark ages, will show how 

 there has gradually grown up the concep- 

 tion with which we are all so well ac- 

 quainted and with which before us, when 

 studying natural phenomena, the mind is 

 freed from all preconceived notions derived 

 from other realms of studj\ The address 

 will be illustrated by a chronological chart 

 likely to prove useful to all scientific men. 

 It extends from 1550 to the present time, 

 and includes, collated with the births and 

 deaths of the many distinguished men to 

 whom we are indebted, the principal his- 

 torical, scientific, and other data which mark 

 the various periods, as well as the dates of 

 discoveries and of publications bearing upon 

 the subject. There is, as usual, a large 

 number of papers down for reading in this 

 Section. We can only refer to the more im- 

 portant. The very fine waterworks belong- 

 ing to Bradford will be described, on Thurs- 

 day, by Mr. Watson, a local engineer. On 

 Friday the papers will be mainly devoted 

 to civil engineering. Professor Hele Shaw 

 proposes to collect together, in his paper 

 on ' Resistance on Roads,' all the known 

 data on frictional resistance on common 

 roads, and will, it is believed, strongly 

 advocate the appointment of a committee 

 of the Association to carry on some fur- 

 ther experiments on rolling friction on 

 common roads. The immediate value of 

 the paper by Mr. J. H. Glass, on ' Pro- 

 posed Railway Construction in China,' is 

 likely to be lessened by the terrible events 

 which have happened there since his paper 

 was promised. His plan is to describe the 



