266 DELEGATE'S REPORT OF BRITISH ASSOCIATION 



baildings, and engine beds. In this quarrying and dressing of stone 

 many thousands of men are employed, and their skill is often 

 appreciated, where a demand for the material springs np. 



The coal supply of the Wharfe Valley is derived from Halifax, 

 Pontefract, and Lancashire, within 50 miles of Bradford. The gas 

 of Lord Masham's Colliery, near Pontefract, ia brilliant, approaching 

 even the electric light, and is one of the sources from which London 

 derives its gas light. With a large party I visited these mines, on 

 the invitation of Lord Masham, and we descended one of the pits, 

 and, after a handsome luncheon, were conducted round the coal and 

 coke industries, the machine appliances for which comprised some of 

 the latest patents and most powerful generators of energy. 



Twenty-seven years ago I attended the British Association Congress 

 at Bradford, of the year 1873, and remember such eminent members 

 of the Society as the Eight Hon. W. E. Forster, M.P., Professors A. 

 and W. C. Williamson, Professor Clark Maxwell, Drs Huggins and 

 Hooker, Ray Lankester, and Professors Phillips and Ball. This year 

 the attendance — though affected by the war in South Africa, and the 

 Paris Exhibition, where a series of international scientific and political 

 meetings are being held through the summer months — was an average 

 one of 1915 members and associates. 



Favoured by perfect weather, an important adjunct to the creature 

 pleasure of these meetings, and receiving that cordial hospitality for 

 which Yorkshire is well known, the Congress was generally regarded 

 (by the ladies) a success. Scientifically speaking, originality in the 

 papers or sensational discoveries or explorations was not a feature 

 of the meeting of this year. And yet a large share of usefully 

 important work was gone into. 



The President, Sir William Turner, tactfully selected for the subject 

 of his address The Building up of the Animal and Vegetable Frame 

 hy a Development of the Cell, which is microscopical, and composed 

 of a nucleus and outer wall, within which protoplasm occupies 

 the space between wall and nucleus. The discovery was made by 

 Brown and Schleman with reference to plant life, and by 

 Theodor Schwann in its application to animal structure, in the 

 fourth decade of this century. " This discovery supplied the 

 physiologist and pathologist with the specific structures, through 

 the agency of which the functions of organisms are discharged, 

 in health and disease. It exerted an enormous influence on the 

 progress of practical medicine." Of the nine sections into which the 

 work of the Congress was divided, I was able to attend the opening 

 addresses of three. The most distinctly heard by the large audience 

 in the Hall of the Church Institute, and the most appreciated, was 

 that of Sir George Robertson, the defender of Chitral, of which he 

 has latterly been Commissioner, and the writer of an interesting 

 work on An Event in Indian History, and of the methods by which 



