SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
ROYAL SOCIETY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 
At the August meeting, the retiring President, Mr. Geo. L. Sutton, Agricul- 
tural Commissioner for the Wheat Belt, delivered the Presidential Address for 
the year. / 
During the course of the address it was pointed out that the war had 
created a tremendous demand for foodstuffs, and had emptied the world’s 
granary. The filling of the world’s empty granary was the dominant need of 
to-day, and this need was the opportunity for Western Australia’s developing 
her agricultural resources, as the result of bringing new lands of recognised 
agricultural value into cultivation, combined with the profitable reclamation 
and utilization of areas at present considered unprofitable for agricultural 
cultivation and increasing the productivity of lands already under cultivation. 
In order to develop the agricultural resources, business organization was neces- 
sary to settle the new lands. ‘The conduct of experiment work and the organi- 
zation of a liberal and comprehensive scheme of agricultural education was also 
necessary to develop the unproductive lands and increase the productivity of the 
agricultural lands already under cultivation. The establishment of an experi- 
ment farm on light land and one eastward of the present wheat line was recom- 
mended. The increased German agricultural production during the 25 years 
prior to 1914 was instanced as the direct and tangible value of experiment 
work and the organization of agricultural education; and, in order to achieve 
similar results, the elaboration and extension of the present local system of 
agricultural education, with special strengthening of the specialized phase, was 
advocated. The University was also urged to support the Chair of Agriculture 
hecause of its association with one of the principal industries of the State. 
It was finally pointed out that the means suggested for the development of 
the agricultural resources of the State required scientifically trained men. The 
great agricultural need of the day was for these men, facilities for training 
whom were available at the University. It was claimed to be reasonable to 
assume that the State, which had made such a signal success of its land settle- 
ment, would undertake the training of suitable men in order to fully and 
profitably develop the settled lands, 
ROYAL SOCIETY OF TASMANIA. 
At the August meeting, a paper, “ Nototherium mitchelli, its evolutionary 
trend—the skull and such structures as related to the nasal horn,” by H. H. 
Scott and Clive Lord, was read. F 
In their third contribution on the Smithton discovery, Messrs. Scott and 
Lord deal with a mass of data relating to the evolutionary trend of the 
Nototheria and the structure of the skull. They also deal with a reclassification 
of the genus. In the first section, they recapitulate their remarks as follows:— 
“In the Nototheria we thus find a group of animals that in Tasmania became 
extinct late in the Pleistocene times, that were generalized, and yet in part 
specialized. They retained the racial characteristics that can be relegated to five 
geological periods—that is from the pre-Hocene to the latest Pleistocene. They 
show similar developments to those of the perissodactyle ungulates, and without 
leaving a single modern representative to carry on their race in totality, they 
left many characters scattered through their marsupial allies—the kangaroos, 
wombats, and native bears—who still grace our woodlands to-day.” In dealing 
with the taxonomic data relating to the skull, the authors state:—‘* It appears 
to us that the interests of science will be better served by founding two well- 
marked groups than by exhaustively contending the claims of various species, 
and in this connexion we present the following:— 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE NOTOTHERIA. 
Group 1. Megacerathine Group. 
Group 2. Leptocerathine Group. 
Conspectus of Megacerathine Nototheria.—Animals of plaryrhine cranial 
morphology, with flat foreheads and parietal platforms. Nasals not quite 
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