216 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 972 



place in the new university buildings. 

 Besides British men of science a consid- 

 erable number of foreign men of science 

 are expected to be present, among others 

 who have accepted invitations being Pro- 

 fessor Svante Arrhenius, of Stockholm, 

 M. Lallemand, Professor Keibel, Professor 

 Eeinke and Professor Pringsheim. As 

 usual, there will be various garden parties 

 and other social functions for the enter- 

 tainment of the visitors, as well as excur- 

 sions on the Saturday to places within easy 

 reach of Birmingham, including Stratford- 

 on-Avon, Kenilworth, "Worcester, Malvern 

 and the Forest of Arden. A novel feature 

 has been introduced into the program of 

 entertainments in the shape of special per- 

 formances at the Prince of Wales 's Theater 

 (opera), the Repertory Theater (modern 

 drama) and the Kinemacolor Theater. 



These festivities, of course, will be 

 merely incidental to the serious work of 

 the meeting, a permanent and valuable 

 memento of which will be the handbook to 

 the Birmingham district which is being 

 prepared under the editorship of Dr. Au- 

 den. Mr. Neville Chamberlain is contrib- 

 uting to this handbook a section on town- 

 planning, and a new and ingenious series 

 of maps is being prepared for it under the 

 direction of Professor Lapworth, P.R.S. 

 Two evening discourses will be delivered 

 on Friday, September 12, and Tuesday, 

 September 16, the lecturer on the first occa- 

 sion being Sir Henry H. Cunynghame, 

 K.C.B., who will take for his subject "Ex- 

 plosions in Mines and the Means of pre- 

 venting them"; while the lecturer on the 

 second occasion will be Dr. A. Smith Wood- 

 ward, F.R.S., who will treat of "Missing 

 Links among Extinct Animals." Five lec- 

 tures have been arranged by the council at 

 the Digbeth Institute for citizens who are 

 not members of the association. The first 

 of these, "The Decorative Art of Sav- 



ages, ' ' will be given by Dr. A. C. Haddon, 

 F.R.S., on Thursday, September 11, at 

 8 P.M. Other lectures will be "The Pan- 

 ama Canal," by Dr. Vaughan Cornish; 

 "Heredity in Relation to Man," by Dr. 

 Leonard Doncaster; "The Microscopic 

 Structure of Metals," by Dr. W. Rosen- 

 hain, and "Radio-activity," by Dr. F. 

 Soddy, F.R.S. For the following partic- 

 ulars of the sectional proceedings we are 

 indebted to the sectional presidents and 

 recorders. 



THE WORK OF THE SECTIONS 



Section A (Mathematical and Physical 

 Science) will have for its president Dr. H. 

 F. Baker, F.R.S. He will probably speak 

 of the relations of pure mathematics to the 

 ordinary activities of life, trying to indi- 

 cate what seem to him the justifications of 

 a serious study of the subject, and thence 

 proceeding to an attempt to set before 

 those who have some mathematical knowl- 

 edge an idea of the extent and present 

 promise of the subject, by referring to 

 some of the leading problems and their 

 interconnection. During the week of the 

 meeting the section will engage in several 

 important discussions. Professor A. B. H. 

 Love, Professor E. Rutherford and Pro- 

 fessor Pringsheim have promised contribu- 

 tions to a discussion on radiation; mathe- 

 matical geography will be the subject of a 

 joint discussion with the geographical sec- 

 tion; the investigation of complex stress 

 distribution will be discussed with the 

 engineering section; and there will also be 

 a discussion on non-Euclidean geometry. 

 Among individual papers one on lightning 

 and protection from it will be presented by 

 Sir J. Larmor, another on atmospheric pol- 

 lution has been promised by Dr. J. S. 

 Owens, while the dynamics of evolution 

 will be discussed by Mr. A. J. Lotka. 



The president of Section B (Chemistry) 



