UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. Academical Year, 1920-21. FACULTIES OF SCIENCE AND MEDICINE. ESSEX EDUCATION COMMITTEE. EAST ANGLIAN INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE CHELMSFORD. Winter Session commences on Thursday, 14th October, 1920, and WANTED, an ASSISTANT ANALYST closes on Thursday, March, 1921. Summer Session commences on Tuesday, 19th April, 1921, and closes on Friday, 1st July, 1921. Engineering Field Agriculture Forestry Parasitology Work Forest Botany and Forest Zoology Rural Economics PROFESSORS. Charles Niven, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S. John Alex. Mac William, M.D., F.R.S. Robert William Reid, M.D., F.R.C.S. John Arthur Thomson, M.A., LL.D. Hector Munro Macdonald, James Hendrick, B.Sc. O.B.E., M.A., F.R.S. Alexander Findlay, M.A., D.Sc., Ph.D. LECTURERS. William Brown, M.R.C.V.S., F.R.P.S. Thos. A. W. Fulton, M.D. Alfred Wm. Gibb, M.A., D.Sc. Alex. R. Horne, B.Sc., A.M.I.C.E. Alex. S. Watt, M.A., B.Sc. (Agr.). The Degrees conferred by the University are:- Diplomas in Agriculture and Forestry are also granted. The Inclusive Fee for instruction for the B.Sc. in Pure Science is 60 Guineas, payable in three annual instalments of 20 Guineas. The Degree Fee is 6 Guineas, payable 3 Guineas for the first examination and 3 Guineas for the second examination. Practical work in agriculture is carried out in conjunction with the North of Scotland College of Agriculture, which has a demonstration estate a few miles out of Aberdeen. A number of Bursaries and Scholarships are awarded in Pure Science and in Agriculture. and LECTURER in AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY. Salary £250 per annum rising to £300. Applications must be made in accordance with the printed Application Form which can be obtained from the undersigned. These, together with copies of three recent testimonials must reach me by Monday, September 6th, 1920.-R. M. WILSON, Principal. THE TUTORIAL COLLEGE. CHEMISTRY DEPARTMEN TEACHER of Chemistry required immed iately. To a man with first-class qualifications a salary at the rate of £300 per annum will be given.-Write, stating qualifications and experience, THE PRINCIPAL, 30, Elmbank Crescent, Glasgow. ROLLER MILLS (new) by BOOTH, fitted with smooth chilled iron rolls 30in. x 12in., ditto 15in. x 8in., shaker sieve feeds, and spring adjustments. Suitable for crushing different materials. MILLSTONE HURSTS, self-contained. Iron 48in. Wood 48in. Wood 30in. Also vertical stone Mills 30in. by Blackstone, and Lister. DISINTEGRATOR. No. 1, equal to new, fitted with finger feed. CENTRIFUGAL SIFTING MACHINES. Barrels 6ft. 8in. long x 20in. Ditto, 8ft. 6in. long x 30in. diam., overhauled and equal to new. CYCLONE DUST COLLECTORS, different sizes. 4ft. 6in. and 4ft. in stock. TANGYE GAS ENGINE & SUCTION PLANT, 40 max. B.H.P. CROSSLEY ditto, 24 h.p. J. BOOTH & SON, Milling Engineers, Congleton, Cheshire. Phone: 114. FOR Sale. Small Benzol Distillation Plant, consisting of 2 Egg-ended Stills, 19ft. 6in. x 5ft. and 17ft. 6in. x 4ft. Ein. approx.; Goose Necks and Condensing Coils; 12 Cast-iron Tanks, 12ft. x 3ft. x 3ft.; 2 Lead-lined Washers, 12ft. x 6ft. x 3ft. 6in.; 2 large Open Tanks; 2in. Douglas Pump; Petrol Engine and Pump combined; Horizontal Double-acting Pump (2-in. delivery); 50-volt Dynamo and Switchboard; Pipes, Cocks, etc. To be sold complete or separate. Inspection invited.-Apply CROWN FOUNDRY Co., Far Cotton, Northampton. DR RYERS of the Simplex, Gnome, Invicta, National, and other Tray Dryers.-THOS. G. MARLOW, Drying Consultant and Dessication Expert, Drying Laboratories, Oldridge Road, London, S.W.12. CHEMICAL ENGINEER wanted with knowledge of Chamber Process and manufacture of heavá Chemicals, required for the East. Salary £1,000 to £1,200 per annum. Reply to VAPURO, 127, Gray's Inn Road, W.C 1. FOR SALE. Mixers by Werner Pfleiderer, 44 gallon capacity; steam jacketted, gunmetal and iron troughs, gunmetal blades. Hand tilting gear. ALL AS NEW. A. UNDERWOOD, 3, Queen Street, E.C. Published Weekly. Annual Subscription, free by post £1 12s. Entered at the New York Post Office as Second Class Mail Matter, Transmissible through the Post-United Kingdom, at Newspaper rate; Canada and Newfoundland at Magazine rate. WHATMAN Eigh Note a few of our later specialities: August 27, 1920 No. 42-"ASHLESS." Double Acid washed and extremely close of texture. For use with SOLE MANUFACTURERS: W. & R. BALSTON, LTD., MEDWAY MILL, MAIDSTONE, KENT. FIND OUT ALL ABOUT OUR COMPlete rangE FROM OUR REVISED BOOKLET AND FRICE LIST. In case of difficulty in obtaining Free Samples, write the Sole Mill Representatives- THE CHEMICAL NEWS. VOL. CXXI., No. 3150. BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. CARDIFF, 1920. INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. WILLIAM A. HERDMAN, C.B.E., D.Sc., Sc. D., LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Oceanography in the University of Liverpool. Oceanography and the Sea-Fisheries. IT has been customary, when occasion required, for the President to offer a brief tribute to the memory of distinguished members of the Association lost to Science during the preceding year. These, for the most part, have been men of advanced years and high reputation, who had completed their life-work and served well in their day the Association and the sciences which it represents. We have this year no such losses to record. But it seems fitting on the present occasion to pause for a moment and devote a grateful thought to that glorious band of fine young men of high promise in science who in the years since our Australian meeting in 1914, gave, it may be, in brief days and months of sacrifice, greater service to humanity and the advance of civilisation than would have been possible in years of normal time and work. A few names stand out already known and highly honoured-Mosely, Jenkinson, Geofrey Smith, Keith Lucas, Gregory, and more recently Leonard Doncaster-all grievous losses; but there are also others, younger members of our Association, who had not yet had opportunity for showing accomplished work, but who equally gave up all for a great ideal. I prefer to offer a collective rather than an individual tribute. Other young men of science will arise and carry on their work-but the gap in our ranks remains. Let their successors remember that it serves as a reminder of a great example and of high endeavour worthy of our gratitude and of permanent record in the annals of Science. At the last Cardiff Meeting of the British Association in 1891 you had as your President the eminent astronomer Sir William Huggins, who discoursed upon the then recent discoveries of the spectroscope in relation to the chemical nature, density temperature, pressure and even the motions of the stars. From the sky to the sea is a long drop; but the sciences of both have this in common that they deal with fundamental principles and with vast numbers. Over three hundred years ago Spenser in the "Faerie Queene" compared "the seas abundant progeny" with "the starres on hy," and recent investigations show that a litre of sea-water may contain more than a hundred times as many living organisms as there are stars visible to the eye on a clear night. During the past quarter of a century great advances have been made in the science of the sea, and the aspects and prospects of sea-fisheries research have undergone changes which encourage the hope that a combination of the work now carried on by hydrographers and biologists in most civilised countries on fundamental problems of the ocean may result in a more rational exploitation and administration of the fishing industries. And yet even at your former Cardiff Meeting thirty years ago there were at least three papers of oceanographic interest-one by Professor Osborne Reynolds on the action of waves and currents, another by Dr. H. R. Mill on seasonal variation in the temperature of lochs and estuaries, and the third by our Honorary Local Secretary for the present meeting, Dr. Evans Hoyle, on a deep-sea tow-net capable of being opened and closed under water by the electric current. It was a notable meeting in several other respects, of which I shall merely mention two. In Section A, Sir Oliver Lodge gave the historic address in which he expounded the urgent need, in the interests of both science and the industries, of a national institution for the promotion of physical research on a large scale. Lodge's pregnant idea put forward at this Cardiff Meeting, supported and still further elaborated by Sir Douglas Galton as President of the Association at Ipswich, has since borne notable fruit in the establishment and rapid development of the National Physical Laboratory. The other outstanding event of that meeting is that you then appointed a committee of eminent geologists and naturalists to consider a project for boring through a coral reef, and that led during following years to the successive expeditions to the atoll of Funafuti in the Central Pacific, the results of which, reported upon eventually by the Royal Society were of great interest alike to geologists, biologists, and oceanographers. Dr. Huggins, on taking the Chair in 1891, remarked that it was over thirty years since the Association had honoured Astronomy in the selection of its President. It might be said that the case of Oceanography is harder, as the Association has never had an Oceanographer as President and the Association might well reply "Because until very recent years there has been no Oceanographer to have." If Astronomy is the oldest of the sciences, Oceanography is probably the youngest. Depending as it does upon the methods and results of other sciences, it was not until our knowledge of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology were relatively far advanced that it became possible to apply that knowledge to the investigation and explanation of the phenomena of the ocean. No one man has done more to apply such knowledge derived from various other subjects and to organise the results as a definite branch of science than the late Sir John Murray, who may therefore be regarded as the founder of modern Oceanography. It is, to me, a matter of regret that Sir John Murray was never President of the British Association. I am revealing no secret when I tell you that he might have been. On more than one occasion he was invited by the Council to accept nomination and he declined for reasons that were good and commanded our respect. He felt that the necessary duties of this post would interfere with what he regarded as his primary life-workoceanographical explorations already planned, and the last of which he actually carried out in the North Atlantic in 1912, when over seventy years of age, in the Norwegian steamer Michael Sars along with his friend Dr. Johan Hjort. or Anyone considering the subject-matter of this new science must be struck by its wide range overlapping as it does the borderlands of several other sciences and making use of their methods and facts in the solution of its problems. It is not only world-wide in its scope but extends beyond our globe and includes astronomical data in their relation to tidal and certain other oceanographical phenomena. No man in his work even thought, can attempt to cover the whole ground-although Sir John Murray, in his remarkably comprehensive "Summary" volumes of the Challenger Expedition and other writings, went far towards doing so. He, in his combination of physicist, chemist, geologist, and biologist, was the nearest approach we have had to an allround Oceanographer. The International Research Council probably acted wisely at the recent Brussels Conference in recommending the institution of two International Sections in our subject, the one of physical and the other of biological Oceanography—although the two overlap and are so interdependent that no investigator on the one side can afford to neglect the other.* On the present occasion I must restrict myself almost wholly to the latter division of the subject, and be content, after brief reference to the founders and pioneers of our science, to outline a few of those investigations and problems which have appeared to me to be of fundamental importance, of economic value, or of general interest. Although the name Oceanography was only given to this branch of science by Sir John Murray in 1880 and although according to that veteran oceanographer Mr. J. Y. Buchanan, the last surviving member of the civilian staff of the Challenger, the science of Oceanography was born at sea on February 5, 1873,† when, at the first official dredging station of the expedition, to the westward of Teneriffe, at 1525 fathoms, everything that came up in the dredge was new and led to fundamental discoveries as to the deposits forming on the floor of the ocean, still it may be claimed that the foundations of the science were laid by various explorers of the ocean at much earlier dates. Aristotle, who took all knowledge for his province, was an early oceanographer on the shores of Asia Minor. When Pytheas passed between the pillars of Hercules into the unknown The following classification of the primary divisions of the subject may possibly be found acceptable:-Physiography Hydrography Oceanography Metabolism Bionomics Geography Tidology (Physics, &c.) (Bio-Chemistry) (Biology) (Mathematics) + Others might put the date later. Significant publications are Sir John Murray's Summary Volumes of the Challenger (1895), the inauguration of the "Musée Oceanographique" at Monaco in 1910, the foundation of the "Institut Oceanographique" at Paris in 1906 (see the Prince of Monacs's letter to the Minister of Public Instruction), and Sir John Murray's little book "The Ocean" (1913), where the superiority of the term Oceanography to Thalassography (used by Alexander Agassiz) is discussed. Atlantic and penetrated to British seas in the fourth century B.C., and brought back reports of Ultima Thule and of a sea to the North thick and sluggish like a jelly-fish, he may have been recording an early planktonic observation. But passing over all such and many other early records of phenomena of the sea, we come to surer ground in claiming, as founders of Oceanography Count Marsili, an early investigator of the Mediterranean, and that truly scientific navigator Captain James Cook, who sailed to the South Pacific on a Transit of Venus expedition in 1769 with Sir Joseph Banks as naturalist, and by subsequently circumnavigating the South Sea about latitude 60° finally disproved the existence of a great southern continent; and Sir James Clerk Ross, who, with Sir Joseph Hooker as naturalist, first dredged the Antarctic in 1840. The use of the naturalist's dredge (introduced by O. F. Müller, the Dane, in 1799) for exploring the sea-bottom was brought into prominence almost simultaneously in several countries of North-West Europe-by Henri Milne-Edwards in France in 1830, Michael Sars in Norway in 1835, and our own Edward Forbes about 1832. The last-mentioned genial and many-sided genius was a notable figure in several sections of the British Association from about 1836 onwards, and may fairly be claimed as a pioneer of Oceanography. In 1839 he and his friend the anatomist, John Goodsir, were dredging in the Shetland seas with results which Forbes made known to the meeting of the British Association at Birmingham that summer, with such good effect that a "Dredging Committee" of the Association was formed to continue the good work. Valuable reports on the discoveries of that Committee appear in our volumes at intervals during the subsequent twenty-five years. It has happened over and over again in history that the British Association, by means of one of its research committees, has led the way in some important new research or development of science and has shown the Government or an industry what wants doing and how it can be done. We may fairly claim that the British Association has inspired and fostered that exploration of British seas which through marine biological investigations and deep-sea expeditions has led on to modern Oceanography. Edward Forbes and the British Association Dredging Committee, Wyville Thomson, Carpenter, Gwyn Jeffreys, Norman, and other naturalists of the pre-Challenger days-all these men in the quarter-century from 1840 onwards worked under research committees of the British Association, bringing their results before sucessive meetings; and some of our older volumes enshrine classic reports on dredging by Forbes, McAndrew, Norman, Brady, Alder, and other notable naturalists of that day. These local researches paved the way for the Challenger and other national deep-sea expeditions. Here as in other cases, it required private enterprise to precede and stimulate Government action. "For researches with the dredge, with a view to the investigation of the marine zoology of Great Britain, the illustration of the geographical distribution of marine animals, and the more accurate determination of the fossils of the pleistocene period: under the superintendence of Mr. Gray, Mr. Forbes, Mr. Goodsir, Mr. Patterson, Mr. Thomson of Belfast, Mr. Ball of Dublin, Dr. George Johnston, Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill, and Mr. A. Strickland, £60. Report for 1839, p. 26. |