SCIENCE CONGRESS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 220, 11 January 1911, Page 5

SCIENCE CONGRESS

INTERESTING LECTURES. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright. Sydney, January 10. Professor Laby, of New Zealand, delivered the presidential address in the mathematics, physics, and astronomy section, his subject being "recent advances in physics." Professor Laby paid a high tribute to Professor Bragg, and declared that it was interesting to find that physicists trained in Australian universities are advancing science in all parts of the world. He enumerated a list of those prominent in recent discoveries.

Dealing with the antiquity of the earth, as measured by Professor Strutt's nelium theory, he said: "We may safely conclude that the antiquity of the earth is at least three million years, without doing violence to geologists' theories." The second part of the paper dealt with Einstein's new principle of the relativity of bodies.

Professor Sugden, of Melbourne, in an interesting paper on the importance of music as a means of education, declared that Australia would never become a musical country without a general diffusion of musical knowledge.

SCIENCE AND FARMERS AS COWORKERS. Sydney, January 10. At the Sydney Congress, Professor Angus, of Adelaide, in his presidential address to the agricultural section on the subject of "the relation of science to the further development of Australian agriculture," dealt with the great need for research work to meet the special problems of the country. Particularly, he said, should any farming as applicable to light rain areas be investigated. They did not want a Royal Commission to report on the various problems, but a body of trained workers to tackle the matter on systematic lines. The scientist and the farmer must become co-workers. He strongly praised the system of experiment farms, and suggested the establishment of central research stations.

SOME SOCIAL PROBLEMS. THE RESTRICTED BIRTH-RATE. Received 10, 8.50 p.m. Sydney, January 10. At the Science Congress, Professor E. Fowles, of Brisbane, read a paper on unemployment. He reviewed the history of legislation in different countries to deal with the question. He pointed out that as far as Australia was concerned, there was very little unemployment; on the contrary, there was scarcity of labor in a number of trades. Referring to New Zealand, he said the Dominion's Department of Labor had more than j justified itself, and the labor bureaux of Australia and New Zealand were of exceptional value in directing workless men to work. The past four years of prosperity had resulted in almost all the applicants finding permanent work. Mr. J. Stonham, of the Victorian Statistical Bureau, read a paper on "Statistical sidelights on Australian morality." The statistics showed that Australia was sharing what practically appeared'to be a world-wide tendency to restrict the birth-rate. The average number of children per married mother was between three and four, while the potential average was estimated to range from five to seven. Without further enquiry, however, he could not raise the cry of race suicide. After reviewing some of the causes usually associated with the restriction, he pointed out that the deathrate was rapidly declining, so that the problem of the world's food supply must, even at the present rate of natural increase, sooner or later become acute. Could it, therefore, be said that Nature herself was providing against a too rapid increase by limitation of productiveness?

Dr. Norris, Commonwealth Director of Quarantine, in the course of an exhaustive paper on the public health ideals, said that disease and death were the price man paid for his avoidance of natural laws and his preference of half truths instead of precise scientific truth. There was but one way out, a deeper and wider knowledge of the relation of nature to man, and a studied, deliberate and unswerving application of that knowledge to human problems. He strongly vrged the claims of the science of hygiene.

A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT. Received 11, 12.30 a.m. Sydney, January 10. Mr. Sutton, New South Wales wheat experimentalist, read a paper appreciative of the work of the late Mr. W. Farrer, wheat expert. As the result of Mr. Farrer's efforts, Australian growers could now grow strong as well as white wheat, and need not fear disastrous ravages of a rusty season as they did before Mr. Farrer's success was achieved.