SOCIOLOGY. 
115 
SOCIOLOGY.* 
[Continued from page 127.] 
Mr. Herbert Spencer has over and over again insisted on the 
necessity of scientific culture in general as a preparation for the study 
of Sociology, and above all culture of the Science of Life. He says : 
“ This IS more particularly requisite because the conceptions of 
continuity, complexity, and contingency of causation, as well as the 
conception of fructifying causation, are conceptions common to it 
and to the Science of Society. It affords a specially fit discipline, for 
the reason that it al'one among the sciences produces familiarity with 
these cardinal ideas—it alone presents the data for them in forms 
easily grasped, and so prepares the mind to recognise the data for 
them in the Social Science where they are less easily grasped though 
no less constantly presented.The Science of Life yields 
to the Science of Society certain great generalizations, without which 
there can be no Science of Society at all.”t 
It seems to me most appropriate that in Birmingham—whose motto 
is “ Forward” and whose progress has ever been in harmony with it— 
once the home of Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, one of the early 
pioneers of Evolution, and that in connection with a Natural History 
Society like ours, the oldest scientific society in the town, which has 
made Biology one of its principal studies, and which offers certain 
special facilities as regards its Library and appliances, there should be 
established a Section for the study of Sociology. 
(1.) As regards the town, I submit from numerous circumstances 
which I will proceed to set out: its special suitability as a centre for 
the study of a somewhat advanced type of Society. From its peculiar 
topographical position in almost the central part of England, situated 
on the New Red Sandstone, at an average altitude of 450ft. above the 
mean sea-level (a) of undulating surface, covering a large area, and not 
generally overcrowded (5), salubrious (c), and enjoying an immunity from 
(a.) According to Dr. Hill, F.I.C., the Medical Officer of Health for Biriiiingliam, 
in liis Keport of the Health of the Borough for 1881: — “ The elevation of the 
borough, that is its height above the mean level of the sea, varies between 310 
and 600 feet, the lowest point being at Saltley, and the highest at Edgbaston. 
This lofty position is in many respects a considerable advantage, especially 
when associated, as it is in the case of Birmingham, with a porous soil consisting 
of the upper division of the Bunter or Mottled Beds of the Trias or Upper New 
Bed Sandstone.” 
(6.) Mr. Hughes submitted a table showing the average number of persons per 
acre in four large towns, as follows, for the year 1881Birmingham, (incorporated 
1838) 47'78; Leeds, (16G1)14'33; Liverpool, (9th King John) 1()6'4: Manchester (1838), 
parliamentary limits, 61'90. Mean, 57'51. 
(c.) Mr. Hughes submitted a table, compiled from Dr. Hill’s Report above 
referred to, exhibiting the mean death-rate per 1,000 persons living in nine large 
* Abstract of an Address delivered to the Sociological Section of The 
Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society by W. R. Hughes, 
F.L.S., President of the Section, at its first meeting at the Mason College, 
Birmingham. — Thursday, 3rd May, 1883. 
t ” The Study of Sociology,” ninth edition, p. 322, 1880. 
