96 
attractive and repulsive, link it to the electric force—its oxidation, 
yielding crystalline and colloid forms, are bound up with the 
mysteries of life and death in plants and animals, there is even 
a known micro-organism which in aerobic conditions will 
precipitate iron from its solutions and, upon the other hand, under 
anaerobic conditions, will dehydrate and mass iron precipitates as 
artificial bogochre. The ferruginous springs of our Bournemouth 
cliffs we have examined are like the handwriting on the wall, 
telling of Nature incessantly but obscurely at work along our fore¬ 
shores, using rainfall and sea water to remodel the land in contact. 
Can anything be done to direct or modify these slow changes? 
Well, that is a matter for the engineer, and in his hands the 
chemist leaves it. 
Flowers in Stone as applied to Church Architecture. 
By Miss Ida M. Boper, f.l.s. 
Delivered as a General Lecture at Trinity Hall, April 26th, 1913. 
mHE architecture of a people is an important part of their 
- 1 - history, and the condition of the art at different periods tells 
much about the influences at work amongst them, some making 
for a higher civilisation and others thrown back to lower tastes. 
In bur churches we have many examples to show the feelings of 
the skilled carvers of the time, and a study especially of the 
ornaments that were added to the main building help to make us 
familiar with their surroundings. 
Apart from mouldings and figures the ornamentation to be 
obtained by foliage was early recognised, in fact as soon as 
buildings of stone were erected for important public purposes. 
Going back to the period of the sculptured temples of Egypt and 
Assyria there survive amongst the ruins representations of trees 
and vines used in decorative scenes, while in the Bible the refer¬ 
ence to the ornaments, shaped after flowers and fruits, are too 
numerous to detail. Amongst the larger plants, we know that 
about the walls and doors of Solomon’s Temple were carvings 
of the Palm, with rows of Pomegranates on the capitals.* The 
Acanthus leaves crowning the columns in Greek buildings of the 
Corinthian Order are familiar to all, and these, with some leaves 
of water plants were copied by the Romans nearly as beautifully, 
* I. Kings vi., 29, and vii., 20. 
