SCIENCE CONGRESS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 1 September 1923, Page 5

SCIENCE CONGRESS

(By Electric TeleeraDh—CoDvrieht} .

WORLD’S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

1 (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association). ’| . SYDNEY, August 31. j At the Science Congress, during a general discussion o n the economic re-

.1 sources of the world, Professor Nevin M. j Fennemari, a, member of the American National Research Council, said the I greatest economic fact of the nineteenth 1 century was the increase of the world’s population from one billion to a billion ; and a half. If the world had reached a ; point at which it- was mostly full it was ’of enormous significance economically and in every other way. There were future possibilities in science, but they ] I were something of a gamble. It will bei a matter of only a few centuries when a ; : large number of the resources on which i jwe count for our present civilization would be things,of the past-. If we continued to use coal at the present rate,

the supply would probably last for less than 3000 years. At the Science Congress, Dr. Tilyard described the fireblight disease and its serious ravages among fruit trees in some parts of New Zealand. Professor Macmillan Drown contributed a further interesting story regarding Easter Island, and humorously tcld how animals had been introduced—a rat, which was so valuable that the natives made it currency, while the ether was the fowl, introduced for the sake of the feathers, which were used ns head dress, j He could personally testify that the fowl consisted of nothing but skin, bones and feathers. These fowls vrre also; considered as extremely valuable and the j fowl houses were the strongest places ; ibout, being fortified against thieves, j