B.A.A.S. in Gondwanaland

To the core of Gondwanaland went British scientists last week and met with Afrikanders. Gondwanaland is the hypothetical continent which ages and ages ago included South America, Africa and India. India drifted eastward. South America westward, leaving a continental core which civilized man only recently has gone to colonize and study.

Most modernly civilized part of Africa is the area of British dominion. South Africa. Native whites call themselves Afrikanders. Their language is Afrikaans, a modification of Dutch. They have a South African Association for the Advancement of Science. That Association last week began a fortnight's entertain-ment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Capetown, Johannesburg, Pretoria. If the British Association met in the Dominion of Canada, Canadian and U. S. newspapers would tersely refer to it as the B.A.A.S.. or "British Ass." South African papers last week avoided abbreviation, for a great part of the population there is Dutch and still hate their British conquerors and masters. In their tongue B.A.A.S. would spell revolting baas, "master," "boss."

Pride of South African scientists is their possession of fair proof that man originated in Africa, not in Asia as Manhattan's Henry Fairfield Osborn believes and as Manhattan's Roy Chapman Andrews has sought to prove by expeditions.

The South African evidence is the fossilized skull of a six-year-old beast. Professor Raymond Arthur Dart of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, found the skull five years ago at Taungs, Bechuanaland, near the west border of the Transvaal. He calls it Australopithecus (Southern Ape).

The Taungs skull resembles the skulls of both young boys and young chimpanzees. That is not surprising because baby humans, chimpanzees and gorillas resemble each other. That resemblance furnishes one of the presumptions of man's common origin with apes. The Southern boy-ape looked more like a chimpanzee than like any human race known today. But he carried his head and body higher. His milk teeth, brain and temple bones are closer to the human type than the ape. So Professor Dart boldly reasons that he belonged to a family intermediate between the higher apes and man, was in a way cousin to both. Professor Dart is now looking for an Australopithecus hind foot. If it is more human-like than apelike he will be reasonably certain that the Taung-creature was a late stage in man's evolution.

Other points brought up at the South African meeting included:

Nitrates. Ten thousand square miles of sodium nitrate, important fertilizer, have been discovered in southwest Africa on both sides of the Elephant and Nosob Rivers. Said Professor Smeath Thomas of Cape Town University who made the report: "There is a strong resemblance to the conditions prevalent in Chile. . . . Profits should be $15 to $20 a ton."

Child-training. To the U. S. praise was extended for its child guidance clinics. The Harkness Commonwealth Fund has recently started a clinic in London, which the scientists recommended as a model for British following.

Beer v. Tea & Coffee. Tea and coffee excite the brain and nerves. Beer depresses the higher mental faculties. It is soothing. Said Professor Walter Ernest Dixon, pharmacologist at Cambridge University: "To me it seems not unlikely that the substitution of tea for beer is not wholly unconnected with the tendency of higher civilization to become supersensitive and neurotic, for this is the groundwork on which drug addiction is built."

Theories v. Experiment. Because recent theoretical investigations in pure science have been successful, there was said to be a future danger that students will accept without question untested theories. But not a present danger. For no scientist is now revered so highly that his theories will not be discarded if experiment controverts them.

U. S. Surveying. Good news to many a U. S. taxpayer is that the Government has three important surveying organizations whose work the B.A.A.S. considers admirable--the Coast & Geodetic Survey (mapping of coastal waters), Geological Survey (geological and topographical mapping of the whole country), General Land Office (blocking out the public lands for the benefit of future land owners).

Gestalt Psychologic originated in Germany and has found acceptance in all countries. Its central principle is that human consciousness recognizes objects and ideas as parts of patterns, grasps the whole before the parts.