from the railway trucks to the lake steamers. was held at Port Arthur.

An informal reception

A geological party was conducted to Mount M'Kay and proceeded up the mountain, following the trail made by the Indians, and noting en route the water-worn pebbles of the old beach of Lake Algonquin. A pause was made to examine an excellent exposure in the Animikie slates and greywackés, and the generally unaltered character of the ancient sediments was a matter for comment. Curious markings were observed on some of the bedding planes, and these were considered as possibly due to mud flowage. A wall-like mass of diabase 30 ft. in thickness was observed running up the hill almost parallel with the trail, and shortly afterwards the contact of the Animikie beds with a thin sill (15 ft.) of diabase was passed. At the top of this sill there is a platform due, no doubt, to differential erosion of the Animikie and the igneous rock, and here the surface features of the sill and its effect on the overlying Animikie beds could be studied. These appeared to be hardened and occasionally showed traces of spots, but only in the immediate contact. Above these sediments, and crowning the hill, the director, Dr. Tarton, pointed out the great 200-ft. sill of diabase to which doubtless the mountain owes its preservation.

Various features were shown from this point of vantage, notably the old brickkilns (where formerly bricks had been made from the Animikie slates, an index of their plastic nature), and the great expanse of the old Lake Superior beach, 830 ft. above sea-level, the present level of the lake being at 600 ft.

The nature of the Animikie slates was discussed, and Dr. Tarton expressed his belief that their high content of potash and soda was indicative of a pyroclastic origin. A quarry was next visited, where the iron formation below the Animikie slates was well seen. These beds consist largely of chert, together with some iron-bearing rock, either silicate or carbonate. A vein of silver ore occurs at this point along a line of fault which brings the Animikie slates against the iron formation. There has been considerable mineralisation here, and amethyst, quartz, barytes, and pyrites were all present in abundance, as was also the highly carbonaceous anthraxolite.

Leaving this quarry the party next visited a road exposure at the junction of John Street and Winnipeg Avenue. The rocks seen here were at a still lower horizon in the Animikie, and showed crystalline limestones, calcareous conglomerates and chert beds, the relation of which to each other appeared to be much confused. The chert could clearly be seen running both vertically and horizontally through the calcareous members.

Tuesday, September 2.-The trains, having lain overnight at Port Arthur, made short stops at some points on the north coast of Lake Superior, in order that members might see something of this beautiful but little visited district.

At Coldwell the geologists examined the famous exposures of nepheline syenite visible along the railway track.

Proceeding east, the normal syenite was first seen, then a rock containing abundant nepheline with some hydronephelite in places, and, continuing east, the rock seemed to take on gradually all the characters of an essexite. In places the red hydronephelite was most conspicuous. On the way back a camptonite (?) dyke was noticed cutting the nepheline syenite, and passing the station the coarse-grained rocks of the cutting west of it were studied. The rock here was seen to be of very coarse grain, the felspars often attaining a very large size; it seemed to approach a laurvigkite in general composition.

Wednesday, September 3.-At SUDBURY, Ont. (5185 m., 857 ft.), a stop was made in order to visit some of the mines in the vicinity: from this area comes the greatest output of nickel in the world and an important output of copper.

The three companies operating in the Sudbury area, in order of seniority, are the International Nickel Company, with offices at Copper Cliff; the Mond Nickel Company, at Coniston, and the British America Nickel Corporation, at Nickelton. The ores, which consist essentially of pyrrhotite and copper pyrites, are reduced to a matte containing approximately 80 per cent. of the metals, nickel and copper. The International Nickel Company refines its matte at Port Colborne, Ont., not far

The

from Niagara Falls, with the exception of that which is used in the production of money metal at Huntington, W. Virginia, where malleable nickel is also made. The refinery of the Mond Company is at Clydach, near Swansea, in Wales. matte of the British America Corporation is refined at Deschenes, Quebec, not far from Ottawa, Ontario. Each company has its own refining process. These processes differ greatly. While the International Nickel Company produces electrolytic nickel, most of this metal is obtained from the matte by means of the well-known Orford process of smelting. In the Mond process the nickel is extracted from the roasted matte, in a state of fine division, by carbon-monoxide gas. The British America Corporation's refining process is an electrolytic one known as the Hybinette.

About fifty of the party left the special trains at Sudbury to travel by ordinary train direct to Montreal or Quebec, there joining steamers for England.

Thursday, September 4.-The arrival of the special trains at TORONTO (North Station) in the morning brought the excursion to an end, after a journey of 5396 miles by rail.

The foregoing notes cannot purport to indicate fully the manifold interests of the journey. For example, so numerous were the opportunities presented to all the members of the Association of observing what is being done to utilise the natural resources of the Dominion that it was unnecessary for the economist members to arrange a special series of visits or expeditions. At Cobalt, Kirkland Lake, Timmins, Iroquois Falls, and elsewhere, the conditions and types of labour attracted their attention; and they were also peculiarly interested in the grain elevators and in the whole mechanism of wheat transport from West to East. A special visit, however, was paid by some of them to a salmon cannery at Vancouver; while individual members were invited to address gatherings of business men at Winnipeg and Victoria, and were also shown the welfare institutions of Winnipeg. It is hardly necessary to add that all members interested in education had an unique opportunity of studying the remarkable developments in that direction which are taking place through the universities of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, as well as in the schools. Reverting to the special interests of the biologists, it may be observed that, in addition to their visits and side-excursions to which reference has been made, both botanists and entomologists used every halt, however brief, during waking hours, to descend from their train in order to collect in the vicinity of the track.

Members who went direct from the British Isles to Toronto and back, and made the western excursion, travelled in all a distance of approximately 11,700 miles.

NOTE. Further particulars regarding the engineering interests of the journeys will be found in Engineering, October 10, p. 506, and October 17, p. 539 (1924), and in The Engineer, September 5, p. 268. The last article refers in particular to the journey made before the meeting by some of the engineering members from Montreal up the St. Lawrence River, and to Brockville, Ont., when the locations of proposed hydroelectric schemes, subsequently discussed in Section G, were viewed. This party were guests of the Montreal Harbour Commission, and of the Ontario Hydro-electric Commission, whose consulting engineer, Mr. R. S. Lea, organised the journey.

CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES

OF CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES.

WEMBLEY, 1924.

THE Conference of Delegates of Corresponding Societies met on Tuesday, July 22, 1924, in the Conference Hall of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, on the invitation of the Museums Association, which was holding its annual meeting at that time.

The Conference was attended by thirty-four delegates of Corresponding Societies, in addition to members of the Museums Association.

The chair was taken by the Vice-Chairman of the Corresponding Societies Committee, Mr. T. Sheppard, M.Sc., who opened a brief discussion of the recommendations of the Zoological Publications Committee for more uniform size of scientific periodicals. Dr. F. A. Bather, F.R.S., explained the recommendations of the Committee, which are printed in its Report to the Liverpool Meeting of the Association in 1923.

The President of the Conference, Professor J. L. Myres, M.A., D.Sc., F.B.A., then delivered the following address :

The Conservation of Sites of Scientific Interest.

Les longs souvenirs font les grands peuples.' 'Public utility is not a purely material thing; national traditions, history and art itself—are they not, in truth, matters of public utility, as much as bridges and arsenals and roads? To make this feeling real is the task of the civic authorities. It is a matter of intimate duty,

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of conscience, on the part of city governors, to care for the older monuments, not in amateur fashion as a by-work, but of set purpose, as one of the most important objects of civic administration.' These three expressions of enlightened European opinion in the last century extracted from Professor Baldwin Brown's indispensable book The Care of Ancient Monuments,' hardly need supplement, even to-day, except in one particular. We have, as we have known for some while, to 'educate our masters; it is not so widely appreciated that we also have to educate our servants; that there is only one security that city governors' will govern intelligently; and that is an educated and watchful public opinion, a certain force of intelligent belief in the need for agency of the kind'; and moreover, some permanent agency representing the public mind at its best, and always kept in working order.'

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Such agencies are of several kinds, all resting on public opinion, which is the ultimate driving force behind them, and court of appeal-positive law, public enactment, or administrative decrees, to be obeyed under penalties; state-appointed commissions and conservators, with the authority of government and (it may be) legal powers to insist on conformity with the demands of public opinion; and private, unofficial agencies, such as our Societies for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings or for Controlling the Abuses of Public Advertising, or the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty. These last, being voluntary associations, can only make it one of their functions to influence public opinion in the direction of a proper respect for monuments or sites worthy of public regard.

It may be of use to delegates, and to the societies which they represent, to review the growth of such public opinion, and define the point which it has reached now. This, at all events, will show most clearly what remains to be done, and how local scientific societies may help to do it.

Four distinct categories of objects are in question here; ancient buildings and other monuments raised by the hand of man; sites of historic interest on account of some human achievement, such as a battle, or a treaty, which has occurred there;

districts of natural beauty, preserved for public enjoyment; and places of scientific interest, necessarily also often picturesque, such as haunts of wild life, or instructive geological sections.

Public opinion has moved at different pace in regard to each of these categories.

Ancient Monuments.—In regard to this class of objects, France took action earliest, partly because the Revolution, occurring as late as it did, prolonged a period of wilful revengeful destruction of buildings associated with the 'ancien régime' into the years of a romantic reaction, and of a new conception of the continuity of national historyof Montalembert's longs souvenirs. As early as 1810, there was passed a statute for expropriating what were described already as 'national monuments'; by 1830 there was an official inspector-general of such monuments; and in 1837 came Guizot's edict for a 'classement des monuments,' to be carried out by a Commission des Monuments Historiques. Proceeding thus by administrative methods, France had little need of legislative sanction, and her Ancient Monuments Act was not introduced till 1887. In the new kingdom of Greece, on the other hand, what was essential at the outset was a code, on the provisions of which administrative action might be taken; and Greek legislation accordingly begins as early as 1834.

In our own country, no less appropriately, the foundation of voluntary associations for the study and conservation of ancient remains begins early, with the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society and the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, both in 1839. A generation later, in 1869, comes the establishment of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, to facilitate the preservation of the most perishable class of antiquities, and very shortly after comes Sir John Lubbock's Ancient Monuments Bill, introduced for the first time in 1873, and carried by a second reading in 1875, but not placed on the Statute Book till 1882, and ranking therefore in point of date between the Hungarian Act of 1881 and the Turkish Law of Antiquities, enacted in 1884. In the British Act of 1882 provision was made (1) for a schedule of monuments, but it was to be compiled by voluntary advice; (2) for voluntary transfer of a monument by its owner to the guardianship of the Commissioners of Works, with right of access; and for voluntary contributions through the Commissioners, for its upkeep; (3) for purchase of monuments already scheduled, but the Commissioners were given no public funds for the purpose; (4) for an inspector of ancient monuments, but without salary or allowances. The last provision gave official recognition to the devoted labours of Lt.-Gen. A. L. F. Pitt Rivers, who held the office of inspector till 1900. All that this first Act really did was to recognise in principle the national duty of custody and supervision, while safeguarding the vested interests of the owners of monuments whether scheduled or not.

In 1884 the Chester Improvement Act, empowering the city council to veto private encroachments on the city walls, introduced a no less important principle, of local responsibility for the conservators of ancient remains; and in 1887 the formation of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings by William Morris and his friends initiated a phase of outspoken public criticism of some of the worst, because most well-meaning, devastators of ancient handiwork, the ecclesiastical' restorers of churches. On the other hand, it was the omission of elementary precautions by the disestablished Church of Ireland for the repair of its buildings-in spite of the liberal grant of £50,000 for this purpose, in the Disestablishment Act-that was the precedent for the Irish Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1892, which extended the authority of the Commissioners of Works to monuments other than churches, and assigned an annual grant of £1,000 for upkeep. What would have been intolerable extravagance on one side of the Irish Sea was prudent policy on the other.

The Irish precedent, however, had its influence in Great Britain as well. The establishment of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty in 1895, and the publication of Dr. David Murray's essay on the Preservation and Protection of our Ancient Monuments' in 1896, were quickly followed in 1897 by a formal Conference between the London County Council and representatives of archæological societies, with a view to an inventory of local buildings and monuments; in 1898, by the antiquarian clauses in the L.C.C. General Purposes Act, mainly the work of that distinguished administrator and antiquary, Sir Laurence Gomme; in 1899 by the Edinburgh Corporation Act empowering the city council to prohibit the disfigurement of important sites by advertisements; and in 1900 by the first acquisition of an ancient building-a Jacobean house in Fleet Street-under the London County Council's Act already mentioned; by the publication of the first

section of the London inventory, edited by Mr. C. R. Ashbee; and by the passing of the second Ancient Monuments Protection Act, largely based on suggestions from General Pitt Rivers and from the Council of the National Trust, whereby County Councils were given powers similar to those of the Commissioners of Works in Ireland, and empowered both to expend voluntary contributions and to make agreements with other bodies (such as the National Trust) for the maintenance of monuments, and to agree with an owner for public access to such monuments.

For the systematic registration of ancient buildings, the Historical Monuments Commission was established in 1908, and a third' Ancient Monuments Consolidation Act' was passed in 1913, still further enlarging the powers of the Commissioners of Works, and providing both for the inclusion of other classes of buildings, and for their conservation at the public expense.

Sites other than Buildings hardly needed protection until the spread of large towns and extensive mining and quarrying began to threaten some of them, and others were imperilled through mere inability of private owners to repair them or prevent defacement by trippers' and other kinds of hooligan. No systematic action seems to have been taken to preserve them until the National Trust, already mentioned, was incorporated in 1895. This was at first a private society, founded to acquire by voluntary contributions any sites or buildings which might be in danger of the kind here described. But its operations were so efficient and valuable that in 1907 it was incorporated under the National Trust Act, which makes its properties inalienable, and provided for representation of certain learned institutions on its council. At present it owns about seventy separate plots of land, some of considerable extent, eighteen old buildings of architectural or historical importance, and several commemorative monuments of recent date.

Some of the National Trust's properties belong to our last class of sites, the interest of which is neither historical nor artistic, but primarily scientific. They constitute. that is, part of the national wealth and irreplaceable store of scientific material, for advanced study, and for educational ends. Such are the haunts of rare animals and plants, as Wicken Fen; Burwell Fen; Leigh Woods, near Bristol, famous for their nightingales; Blakeney Point in Norfolk, accepted by the Trust under express conditions of preserving the natural flora and fauna; the Ruskin Reserve near Abingdon, 'to be kept for all time in its natural conditions'; and, acquired in the course of the present year 1924, the Farne Islands, a great breeding ground of sea birds, and the ancient deer-park of Hatfield Forest.

But there is still need for vigilance and prompt action wherever danger threatens. Neither private prospectors nor Government departments seem to have learned yet, with any security, that elementary consideration for national well-being of the kind from which our retrospect started. Only last year there was threefold provocation of this kind: the Marconi Company's project of installing, under licence from the Postmaster-General, a great wireless station in the midst of the megalithic site at Avebury; the risk to the amenities of Holmbury Hill through the proposal to instal there a part of the scientific equipment of the Admiralty; and the attempt of the War Office to exclude the public from the neighbourhood of Lulworth Cove, valuable no less for its exceptional beauty than for its classic exposure of jurassic strata. Fortunately, at Avebury and Holmbury Hill wiser counsels prevailed when the inevitable consequences of these plans were explained to the Ministries concerned; the fate of Lulworth, however, is still in suspense, in spite of vigorous representations from the British Association and other learned societies, and in the press.

Delegates will remember the part played in this necessary protest by last year's Conference during the Liverpool Meeting of this Association; and are referred to the Report of the Council to the Toronto Meeting for an account of the steps which are being taken to ensure concerted and immediate action in the event of other incidents of the same kind.

The sole effective remedy, so far as can be seen at present, would appear to be that learned societies even if not immediately concerned in a particular problem of conservation should take concerted steps to promote legislation wider in scope and more strictly worded than the Ancient Monuments Act now in force, for the protection of such sites. Such a Bill should be drafted on the lines of the present Act, but with the proviso that a site or monument once scheduled should be preserved against any kind of disturbance, either by a Government department or by any other person or body of persons, so long as it remains in the schedule; and that the removal of a site or monument from the schedule should only be effected by a deliberate decision of