Fifty years ago this year, the British Association for the Advancement of Science met in Edinburgh. It was the sixth time that the annual meeting had been held here, a record which the city then shared with Birmingham. The prospectus made play of the fact that, as well as taking part in the arranged tours to Oban, the Western Highlands, Glencoe, Pitlochry, the Trossachs and the Border Country, delegates could stay on for the International Festival of Music and Drama which began a few days after the meeting. Maybe these were some of the reasons for what turned out to be a record attendance at a UK provincial meeting.

The British Association for the... okay, let us just call it the B.A., for that is what it has become known as, though for a while the name 'British Ass.' was in vogue! The B.A. was founded in 1831 and the previous meetings in Edinburgh were held in 1834, 1850, 1871, 1892 and 1921. It was founded:

to give a stronger impulse and more systematic direction to the objects of science, and a removal of those disadvantages which impede its progress, and to promote the intercourse of the cultivators of science with one another, and with foreign philosophers.

The driving force for the foundation of the B.A. was provided by the great Scottish physicist and natural philosopher, Sir David Brewster, whose statue still stands today outside the Chemistry Department at King's Buildings in Edinburgh, next to the Grant Institute. On 23rd February 1831, Brewster wrote to the geologist John Phillips, then Secretary of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, enquiring whether the Society and York itself could accommodate the setting up  of such a body as the British Association. Events moved fast and Phillips gave the first informal lecture on Monday 26th September that year on the Geology of Yorkshire, illustrated with specimens.

John Phillips, orphaned nephew of William Smith, the Father of English Geology, was to play a crucial rÙle as a Secretary of the Association for thirty years. Regularly corresponding with several of the leading scientists and engineers of the Nineteenth Century, John Phillips's own scientific interests covered much more than geology and he was especially active in astronomy. Phillips eventually became the first Professor of Geology at Oxford University and remained in that post until his death in April 1874 as a result of falling down stairs in All Souls College. By the way, Brewster had earlier, in 1821, founded the Society for the Encouragement of Useful Arts in Scotland, now known as the Royal Scottish Society of Arts.

From the start, the British Association was divided into a number of Sections, which, in 1832, were:

• Mathematical and physical science
• Chemistry
• Geology and physical geography
• Zoology, botany, physiology and anatomy

It had been an interesting meeting and a review of the lectures gives a very good indication of the issues of the day. At that time, the President of the Section was Roderick Impey Murchison, who gave a review of the labours of M. Barrande in his work in the Silurian of Bohemia and also on the discovery of PalÊozoic Fossils in the Crystalline Chain of the Forez in France. Anther renowned speaker were the Reverend Professor Sedgwick who spoke on the Geological Structure and Relations of the Frontier Chain of Scotland [For more on Murchison and Sedgwick, see article on page 8 of this issue -Ed.]. And there was a lecture on a Fossiliferous Deposit underlying Basalt in the Island of Mull given by no less than the Duke of Argyll.

But the main issue of the day was one referred to by Hugh Miller, who gave a talk on peculiar scratched Pebbles and Fossil Specimens from the Boulder Clay, and on the Chalk Flints and Oolitic Fossils from the Boulder Clay in Caithness, where he described the boulder clays and the underlying pavements as being scratched and polished. In the rather flowery language of the day, he concluded that:

the agent which produced such effects could not have been simply water, whether impelled by currents or by waves. No force of water could have scarred such distinct, well-marked lines on such small stones. The blacksmith, let him use what strength of arm he may, cannot bring his file to bear upon a minute pin or nail, until he has first locked it fast in his vice... the smaller stones must have been fastened ere they could have been scratched.

He then went on to imagine a submerged Scotland and discussed the currents in the  Atlantic Ocean and the interplay of the warm Gulf Stream and the iceberg-bearing Arctic Current:

the northern current would be deflected by the more powerful Gulf Stream into an easterly course, and would go sweeping over the submerged land in the direction indicated by the grooves and scratches, bearing with it every spring its many thousand gigantic icebergs, and its fields of sheet ice many hundreds of square miles in extent.

It may seem a rather fanciful explanation now, but at the time, the natural philosophers of the day were striving to explain what they saw. It had been only ten years since Agassiz had made his famous declaration in Blackford Glen: "This is the work of ice." At the same meeting, Charles MacLaren, co-founder and Editor of The Scotsman for twenty years, spoke on Traces of Ancient Glaciers in Glenmessan and described:

certain deposits of clay and gravel... resembling moraines of glaciers... [whose] position and appearance suggest the idea that they are remains of terminal moraines formed during the gradual and final retreat of glaciers from the valleys of the Grampians... It seems scarcely possible to account for the abraded and striated surfaces of the rocks and ridges and mounds of gravel, except upon the hypothesis that they have been produced by glaciers at an ancient epoch.

Robert Chambers also spoke on the Glacial PhÊnomena of the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and James Bryce on Striated and Polished Rocks and Roches MoutonÈes in the Lake District of Westmoreland.

We have stayed with the 1850 meeting largely because it was 150 years ago and, for some reason, round numbers always provoke attention. Dennis R. Dean, who wrote an article on Gideon Mantell for the Autumn 1998 issue of The Edinburgh Geologist, pointed this out and suggested that it would make an interesting article. But in fact, the 1951 meeting was no less interesting. A whole day was set aside for the subject of Controversial problems in Highland geology, with such speakers as H.H. Read, Sir Edward Bailey, Prof. W.Q. Kennedy, Dr. A.G. MacGregor, Dr. J.E. Richey and Prof. R.M. Shackleton.

But much of the controversy must have been on the theory of Continental Drift. It had been a quarter of century since Wegener published his ideas on the Origin of Continents and Oceans. At the previous year's gathering in Birmingham, there had been a joint meeting between four sections, Geology, Zoology, Geography and Biology to discuss this topic. The theory was still being hotly debated and the arguments were still raging. Prof. Harold Jeffreys had said:

This is the fourth time that I have taken part in a public discussion of this theory. In each previous one a distinguished biologist or geologist has presented the case for drift, and has been followed by equally distinguished ones who have pointed out facts that it would render more difficult to explain... The present impasse suggests that some important factor has been overlooked.

How prophetic! Prof. S.W. Wooldridge was of the latter persuasion and refers to the subject having been discussed at the B.A. in 1931:

The position as then set forth has undergone no very radical change in the years between. Then, as now, no demonstrably adequate mechanism for movement was in sight.

He did not have long to wait until the 'adequate mechanism' hove into view and all the pieces started fitting together (sorry).

The meetings that brought together three or four Sections of the Association were forever its strength. They were, after all, the meat of the 'intercourse of the cultivators of science with one another'. There had been a similar discussion in 1921 in Edinburgh linking mathematical and physical science, geology, zoology and botany, and this time the subject had been the Age of the Earth. The Right Honourable Lord Rayleigh had opened the meeting by showing the relevance of the discovery of radioactive minerals giving out heat and thus keeping the Earth's interior hot. His calculations had given a figure of 1000 million years as the time when the crust became suitable for the habitation of living beings. And it is nice to know that at that time, the more flowery speeches were not yet dead. To quote Prof. J.W. Gregory:

The claim that geological time must be restricted within a score or a few score million years was regarded by most geologists with incredulity, since a score million years was of little more use to geology than the seven days of the Pentateuch.

But of all the talks ever given at the B.A. in Edinburgh, the most relevant to the intercourse of the cultivators of science must have been at the meeting in 1871, when a Dr. Moffat spoke on Geological Systems and Endemic Disease. Dr. Moffat lived in northern England in an area underlain by Carboniferous Coal Measures and Permian New Red Sandstone. His researches showed that:

Anemia, with goitre, was very prevalent among those on the Carboniferous system, while it was almost unknown among those of the Cheshire Sandstone, and phthisis was also more prevalent among the former than the latter... Analysis showed that the wheat grown upon the Carboniferous system was deficient in phosphates and nutritive salts... [and that] the practical deductions [were that]... all young persons living on a Carboniferous formation having symptoms of incipient goitre and anÊmia, ought to be moved to a soil upon Red Sandstone, and persons of strumous habit ought to reside upon sandstone at an elevation of at least 800 ft or 1000 ft above the sea... Medical men could not too much impress upon the minds of the public the importance of flour made from the whole of the wheat, or "whole grain."

It has taken a long time for that latter message to get through, but modern nutritionists should be aware that the recommendation was first given in a geological lecture!

Norman is well-known to members of the Society and has been attending meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science since the meeting in Edinburgh in 1951, when he was among the delegates that stayed on for the Arts Festival! He has recently been researching the life and work of John Phillips, who played a pivotal role in the management of the B.A. in its early years.

Alan's interest is much more recent, having started when he first used his newly-acquired Edinburgh University Library Readerís pass. The Annual Reports of the B.A. are all held in the Library and they kept your Editor entertained for hours in thumbing through the accounts of lectures and other engaging miscellany.