JULY 22, 1909] NATURE THE YERKES OBSERVATORY.-From the University of Chicago we have received a brochure in which Prof. E. B. Frost gives a brief, detailed account of the establishment, equipment, and work of the Yerkes Observatory. Fourteen excellent reproductions of photographs of instruments, spectroheliograms, nebulæ, &c., illustrate the twenty-four pages of the booklet, and give the reader a very fair idea our attention is Prof. of the enormous activities and possibilities of the institution. One point which attracts Frost's emphasis of the necessity for having, in a modern astronomical observatory, well-equipped workshops wherein repairs and modifications of existing instruments may be executed, and new instruments constructed. con PROMINENCE OBSERVATIONS.-No. 6, vol. xxxviii., of the Memorie della Società degli Spettroscopisti Italiani tains Prof. Ricco's periodical summary of the Catania prominence observations, dealing with the first six months of 1908. Prominences were observed on ninety-three days during the six months, and 170 in the northern, and 247 in the southern, hemisphere were measured. The mean latitude for the two hemispheres was 27.5°, but, dividing the latitude, N. and S., into 10° steps, there were two maxima (lat. 10°-20° and 50°-60°) in the northern hemisphere and only one (20°-30°) in the southern. SCIENTIFIC WORK IN INDIA. THE annual report of the Board of Scientific Advice for India for the year 1907-8 has lately been issued by the Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta. The Board was constituted in 1902, and consisted originally of the heads of the meteorological, geological, botanical, forest, survey, agricultural, and veterinary departments, but the Government of India invites from time to time to serve upon it other men of science in the service of the imperial and provincial Governments. The Board is a central authority for the coordination of official scientific inquiry, intended to ensure that the work of research is distributed to the best advantage and the prevention of useless duplication of inquiries and lack of interThe advice of the Board is departmental cooperation. given with the view of aiding the Government of India in prosecuting practical research into questions of economic on the solution of which the proand applied science gressive prosperity of the country depends. The Board discusses annually the proposals of the head of each of the great departments in regard to the programme of investigation in his department, and submits each year a general programme of research to the Government. and programines are communicated through the Secretary of State for India to the Royal Society, which appointed an advisory committee to consider them. Its reports has The present report opens with a summary of the pro- of the labours of the Board, some of the subjects discussed were The conclusions arrived at by the Board in these matters as follows-that, as regards the preparation of a hand-list of the flora of India, although its importance was recognised, lack of staff and the existence of more immediately necessary work precluded its preparation forthwith; that the consideration of economic and industrial chemistry and the work of the imperial mycologist should await the results of the discussion of the subjects by the Board of Agriculture for India; that reference should be made, so far as possible, to the zoological section of the Indian Museum by other departments engaged in zoological research; and that no officer was available for the increase of work that the preparation of a special report on the progress of the Geological Survey of India Dr. Very full reports upon the work of the various scientific The progra:nmes of work of the various scientific depart- The detailed programmes of work teem with particulars of investigations of great interest, but since the bare enumeration of the researches to be undertaken runs to twenty-seven large pages, it is possible here only to give In meteorological work, a special an example or two. endeavour is being made this year to secure meteorograph records of temperature and humidity up to great heights by means of small balloons. At four nearly equidistant periods between April and December batches of registering balloons have been, and are to be, liberated at some made to recover as many as possible on descent. Each batch was to comprise, perhaps, ten complete units, the place in the west of the Punjab, and organised efforts adjustment and liberation of which takes between a week and ten days. It was hoped to reach heights of 25,000 feet in the earlier experiments, and later in the year it is hoped to increase the heights at which the balloons are caused to descend until 50,000 feet has been reached. It is important to reach this height in order to see whether the isothermal zone, which has been almost invariably found at or near that level by sounding balloons in Europe, is to be encountered over India. The new work to be undertaken by the Geological Survey provides another typical instance of the activity of scientific workers in India. The mapping of previously unsurveyed areas in the Amherst district of Lower Burma is being proceeded with, the geological map of the Ranimittee appointed by the Mining and Geological Institute of ganj coalfield is being revised in conjunction with a comIndia, and the following pieces of work are in hand-a survey of the ossiferous deposits of the Siwaliks and the survey of certain Salt Range; an examination of copper-ore and associated sulphide-ore deposits in Sikkim; a glaciers in Sikkim; and a study of the palaeontology of (a) the Cretaceous rocks of Tibet, (b) the fossil fishes of the East Coast Gondwanas. POSITION FINDING WITHOUT AN HORIZON. WHEN about three years ago the first Gordon-Bennett If the observation is such that the error is as great as the diameter of the sun or moon, the resulting uncertainty of position will be a little more than thirty miles, and so in proportion. The observer will be, of course, on a circle on the earth described round the point where the star is in the zenith, the radius of which in nautical miles is equal to the zenith distance of the star expressed in minutes. A search at the Patent Office library showed that a large number of inventors had for nautical purposes, rather than for use in balloons, imagined instruments which, for various reasons, would be impracticable. In some an attempt has been made to combine a sextant and a pendulum, but even if the observer were not expected to watch the star and the pendulum at the same time, the pendulum was made so short and of such quick period that the inevitable trembling of the hand would give rise to angular relative movement of the pendulum represented by several diameters of the sun. The beauty of the sextant is the property it possesses of gluing the two objects, e.g. the sun and horizon or moon and star, which are being observed together, so that with all the spasmodic movements which the magnification of the telescope and the unsteadiness of the hand make inevitable, the eye, nevertheless, can follow them and see if there is continuous close contact or not, whereas if the apparent position of one of the objects only depended upon the steadiness of the hand, no observation worthy of the name would be possible. It is therefore essential, if any approach tc accuracy is required, that the star or sun should be seen in the same field with, and glued to, the mark, whatever form that may take, which determines the altitude, and also that the angular variation in the position of this mark should hardly be affected by the trembling of the hand. I tried at the time to interest one or two instrument makers, but unsuccessfully; now, however, that the subject is attracting attention in Germany, as shown by Dr. Lockyer's (vol. lxxx., p. 29) article in a recent number of NATURE, perhaps my design may be worth bringing forward. I would only remark that an instrument of the kind would be useful on board ship when the sun or stars may be visible while the sea horizon is obscured, provided only that, as is usual in fog, the ship is not rolling seriously. These worse conditions can only be met by the more complicated gyroscopic horizon perfected by Admiral Fleuriais. The instrument depends essentially upon the use of a vertical collimator suspended on gimbals, and top-weighted like a metronome, so as to have a period of swing either way of as much as one second. The collimator has at its focus a scale of, say, tenths of a degree in transparent divisions upon an opaque ground, and above its lens a clear or half-silvered glass mirror set at 45° with the axis of the collimator. The collimator is suspended in a tube, which is the handle of the instrument, and which carries also the parts of a small sextant. Figs. 1 and 2 are vertical sections through the axis of the instrument, the latter partly in elevation. a is a box frame to which are attached the tubular handle b, the telescope c, and other sextant parts. The telescope is carried by means of a slide d and pin e, so that it may be moved sideways or be hinged downwards when not in use. Inside the handle is mounted a gimbal ring f, on which the collimator g is supported on knife-edges h; i is the scale already described; k is the unsilvered mirror attached to the collimator, by means of which the scale i, illuminated by the mirror 7, may be seen in the telescope; 1 and n are the horizon and index glasses respectively of the sextant, but made as prisms for convenience, though, of course, the usual mirrors might be used; r is the top weight of the collimator; and ta correcting weight running on a screw to bring the zero of the scale i apparently on to the true horizon. A conical damper u, lined with velvet, is made to slide within the handle, being pressed upwards by a spring v so as to steady or even to lift the collimator off its v's and against the pins 1, and capable of being moved downwards by the thumb-lever x and fork y. An exterior sleeve 5 carries a cap 8, which serves as a protector to the translucent window at the base of the handle, and as a holder also for the illuminating mirror 7; 3 is a quadrant carrying three dark or tinted glasses. When the telescope is directly opposite the mirror k and the reflectors 1, m of the sextant, the star will be seen by double reflection projected upon the scale, of which one half is marked + and the other The arm of the sextant being therefore set to any position to bring the star on to the scale, a series of scale readings may then be made, which, added to or subtracted from the vernier reading, give the series of altitudes. If the telescope is slid sideways so that half its field is to the right of the mirror k, it may be made to look into the object-glass end of a surveyor's level or even at the sea horizon with a known dip, and the zero of the scale tested and so adjusted by means of the moving weight 2. At any time when a sea or artificial horizon is available, observations may be made as with an ordinary sextant with the telescope laterally displaced, and by this means also the index-glass may be adjusted. I have experimented with a collimator and telescope mounted as described, and found that, without the top weight, the angular movement due to unsteadiness of the hand is far too great for accurate observation, but that when the period is increased to about one second by topweighting, the angular movement is so far reduced that, when sitting at a table and holding the instrument in the hand, an accuracy of 1' is possible. Of course, with the trembling of the hand the collimator turns about its centre of oscillation, and so with the period named a sudden movement of 1/100 inch will correspond to I' about, while if the period is two seconds the angular accuracy will be four times as great. If used on a ship with any appreciable rolling it would be best to get down to the neutral axis, and observe zenith stars through a hatchway, so as to avoid the horizontal acceleration which is so pronounced on the bridge, for, of course, the collimator will hang, not in the true vertical, horizontal acceleration but at an angle equal to tan-1 8 If this is small the star may be observed to move a corresponding degree upon the scale in time with the 1 THE POSITION OF HIGHER EDUCATION. THE higher education subcommittee of the education committee of the London County Council has had under consideration the relations which it is desirable should subsist between the University of London and other institutions of university rank in the metropolitan area and the London County Council. The subcommittee's report was presented to the education committee towards the end of May, and contains, not only a valuable résumé of the various steps taken by the late London Technical Education Board and by the Council itself to improve the supply of higher education in London, but also important collection of statistics concerning the financial aid given by municipal and other authorities in the great provincial centres of population. an The subcommittee's report includes tables of grants made by other local education authorities to university education, the grants made by the Treasury in London and the provinces, and those provided by the London County Council. In London the grant from the Council is 48.6 per cent. of the Treasury grant, and in other towns the grant from the local authorities is 75 per cent. of the Treasury grant. Grants made by Provincial Local Authorities to more than 256,000l. in this way; Leeds 380,000l.; Liverpool more than 188,000l.; Manchester more than 192,000l.; and Sheffield more than 229,000l.; while, in London, University College had received up to the date of the latest Government report 453,000l.; King's College 206,000l.; and Bedford College more than 29,000l. from private benefactions. The subcommittee has given careful and sympathetic consideration to the applications received from certain London institutions of university rank for grants during the present year, and has come to the conclusion that more might be done in London for university education in consideration of the amount of the grant received from the Treasury, and having regard to the rateable value of the county of London. In this connection the following table, abbreviated from one included in the report, is instructive: The table shows very clearly that if London made the same proportional provision for higher education that Cardiff does, the annual grant would be 181,840l. instead. of 25,220l.; or 158,360l. if it applied the same fraction of the rate as Nottingham does for higher education. It is of interest to pass from the comparison of rate-aid and State-aid for higher education in England and Wales made in this and the preceding tables to some facts relating to the position of the subject in other countries. By a fortunate circumstance, an exhaustive article by Prof. Guido H. Marx in the issue of Science for May 14 shows remarkable growth and spread of interest in higher education, and the consequent great increase in the number of young men and women pursuing advanced studies, and receiving higher scientific and other training, in various countries. It is natural to look to Germany for significant educational movements, and Prof. Marx, dealing with the combined attendance at the twenty-two German universities, shows that prior to 1870 this attendance was fairly uniform, keeping regular pace with the population. Immediately after 1870 the increase of attendance grew much more rapidly than the population, and there is not the slightest tendency for the increase to fall off. At the beginning of the period of rapid development in 1870 there was in Germany one student in the institutions of higher education for every two thousand inhabitants, while in 1907 there was one such student to every thousand inhabitants. In the case of the United States of America, the combined attendance at all the colleges, universities, scientific, technical, and professional schools-omitting preparatory departments-up to the year 1885 showed a condition of practical stability, but beginning with that year the ratio of these students to the population increased year by year, and at present indicates no signs of falling off. In 1885 there was one such student for every seven hundred inhabitants, and twenty years later one for every four hundred of population. Several important deductions can be made from the following table, drawn up by Prof. Marx:— 1 The Bristol Town Courcil has decided to devote the produce of id. rate (about 7 cool. a year) to university education. 114 Number of Students in Higher Educational Institutions in different Countries. Total number Italy Population per student 400 530 1,000 1,060 1,200 1,200 1,400 Belgium ... Holland Austria-Hungary 47,000,000 19,000,000 Great Britain ... 66 6,000,000 33,000,000 7,100,000 5,600,000 5,000 32,000 5,000 24,000 of pimIn sever T G. H. F. Nuttall and Dr. S. Hadwen, who gave account of their successful curative treatment plasmosis. This "tick-fever" is very fatal. cases 80 per cent. to 85 per cent. of the red blood-corpuscles are infected, and the escape of the parasites into the blar gives rise to the characteristic hæmoglobinurea. The cycle, which was described, bears a definite relation to th treatment, and the double pyriform and large rounded form of the parasite are dominant in the blood. It was four that if trypanblau was injected subcutaneously or inte venously all the pyriform parasites disappeared, and the remaining parasites degenerated two hours later. 1,400 animals (dogs) showed no symptoms. The parasites re turned in very small numbers after about ten days, but the animals appear to be quite well, and the One injection was sufficient, and parasites disappear. nearly all the animals injected were cured, while the urinjected controls all died; a 100 per cent. mortality whẩn occurred in this disease in dogs was converted into a 85 per cent. recovery. The drug has the same effect o "red-water disease" the Piroplasma causing Further investigations of a thorough character are sary before the drug can be put to practical use, but t discovery is of the greatest importance. 1,400 is the only western country of Russia, it is seen, prominence which has not passed Germany's figure of the thousand year 1870, namely, "the most inhabitants. Perhaps,' says Prof. Marx, striking fact displayed by this table is the way Great Britain has lagged in this vast movement of the democratisation of the advantages of higher education-and, scarcely less significant, the strong leading position of the United States. Too much importance must not, however, be attached to the table here reprinted with slight modifications, or to Prof. Marx's conclusions. The total number of students of higher education in the case of the United States includes students of both sexes in colleges, universities, technical and professional schools (exclusive of preparatory departments), in the session 1905-6, and in the case of Germany, too, the students of technical and professional schools above gymnasial rank are included in the total. But Great Britain's 25.000, and the totals assigned to all the remaining countries except Russia, deal only with their universities; their technical colleges and professional schools being ignored, apparently. It is not by any means contended that higher instruction in science and letters receives anything like the consideration it should in this country, but it is desirable, in making a comparison such as that Prof. Marx has instituted, to eliminate as many sources of error as possible, and to confine attention rigidly to matters which are really comparable. The article upon "The Supply of Secondary Education in England and Elsewhere," which appeared in NATURE of June 17, supplements to some extent the information brought together by Prof. Marx and summarised in the foregoing tables. ASSOCIATION OF ECONOMIC BIOLOGISTS. association was held in the new School of Forestry at Oxford on July 13-15. The outstanding features of the meetings were the extremely interesting, and in many cases important, papers that were read and the discussions which followed, signs alike of the increasing importance of the application of biological science. In the case The president, Dr. A. E. Shipley, F.R.S., opened the meeting with a paper on the relations of certain cestodes He argued and nematode parasites to bacterial disease. that the piercing of the wall of the alimentary canal by parasites carries with it bacterial infection. of the disease of the grouse, the piercing of the wall of the cæcum by the tapeworm Trichostrongylus pergracilis was followed by an intrusion of bacteria into the submucous layers. It is found that there is a definite relation between the number of worms in the alimentary canal and the number of bacteria in the body of the host. This perforation of the intestinal wall and subsequent invasion of the lesions by bacilli is of importance in such diseases as peritonitis and appendicitis. Such worms as Oxyuris, &c., are frequently associated with peritonitis, and other entozoa with appendicitis. He strongly advocated the greater use of vermifuges, which are used less than heretofore, and in this he was supported by Prof. Osler in the discussion that followed. One of the most important papers was that of Prof. Mr. C. Warburton gave a very interesting account of P. vestimenti laid 124 eggs in twenty-five days. The actual and possible applications of recent discoveries in heredity to biological problems of an economic character were discussed by Mr. A. D. Darbishire. He showed how important were such Mendelian principles as segregation and the breeding true of organisms bearing the recessive character. The recessive character may be a resistance to the rust fungus, as Prof. Biffen discovered in wheat. He was inclined to believe that resistance to the attacks of the beetle Bruchus might be dealt with according to Mendelian principles, and also the increase of the saccharine contents of peas by the selection of the absorptive character, which is different in round and wrinkled peas. It Mr. S. A. Neave gave an interesting account of his observations on the distribution and habits of the tsetse-fir Glossina palpalis, which were made in the Congo Free State and North-east Rhodesia in the years 1907-8. would appear that the high plateau country forming the watershed between the basins of the Congo and Zambezi rivers forms a barrier against the southward extension of He was of the opinion that, the distribution of the fly. on the whole, G. palpalis will not be found to occur in the Zambezi basin, an important fact in view of the possi bility of the spread of sleeping sickness into South Africa entertained by some authorities. The results of observations and investigations on other insects of economic importance were communicated to the association. Dr. C. Gordon Hewitt has continued his are increasing in investigations on the large larch saw-fly Nematus erichsoni, and finds that the natural enemies number. The percentage of parasitic ichneumons has increased, as also the attacks of the small vole Microtus agrestis. A parasitic fungus (Cordyceps) has been found attacking the pupal stage, and the insectivorous birds are being encouraged. In spite of all these he was of the opinion that the results of the attack would be of a grave character, an opinion which was shared by Prof. Somerville in the subsequent discussion. A number of successful experiments on the breeding of the house-fly during the winter months (February) under favourable conditions of JULY 22, 1909] NATURE confirm the temperature, &c., were described by Mr. F. P. Jepson, Mr. Walter E. who has thus been able successfully to observations of previous investigators. Collinge described the part played by the Collembola, or springtails," in the destruction of such plant life as was dedeveloping seeds, bulbs, orchids, and hops. The structure of the rose-aphid Siphonophora rosarum scribed by Mr. A. J. Grove, and Prof. E. B. Poulton exhibited a collection of predaceous insects and their prey. The disappearance of the fresh-water crayfish from the Thames valley and other localities in this and European plague" is a problem countries owing to the so-called " of great interest to biologists. Mr. Geoffrey Smith's paper on some of the work that he has been carrying on in cooperation with Prof. Dreyer on the pathogenic bacteria of Carcinus mocnas was of especial interest to economic biologists, as this work is connected with the question of the relation of the so-called plague bacillus to other pathogenic bacteria living on the outside of crabs, lobsters, and crayfishes. Prof. William Somerville exhibited an interesting collection of injurious fungi and the injuries caused by the same, and a paper on the blossoming and pollen of our hardy cultivated plants, by Mr. C. H. Hooper, was communicated to the association. On July 14 a very enjoyable excursion to the School of Forestry's arboretum at Tubney and to Bagley Woods was made. It was also resolved to accept the invitation to hold the meeting next year at the University of Manchester. THE MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION. THE twentieth annual conference of the Museums Association, which opened at Maidstone on July 13, attracted a fair number of members from the more southern towns, though the northern districts were not very generally represented. Preceding the conference there was a council meeting on the evening of Monday, July 12, when the secretary and editor, Mr. E. Howarth, resigned those offices, after being editor of the Museums Journal since its first issue in 1901, and secretary for many years prior to that date. The formation of the association was first advocated in an article written by Mr. Howarth and published in NATURE in 1877. From that time the idea gradually extended, and in 1889 the association was duly organised at York, where it will very fitly hold its twenty-first anniversary next year. The president, Mr. Henry Balfour, curator of the PittRivers Museum at Oxford, opened the proceedings with. an extremely interesting address, which dealt cogently with the question of a national folk-museum, one of the phases of museum work that has been strangely neglected in these islands. While the ethnology of most regions of with profusion, the world is illustrated in museums the mediæval and post-mediæval life of our own country has received quite inadequate attention. Even the British Museum is everything except British so far as ethnology is concerned. The president instanced two museums, however, where praiseworthy efforts were made to illustrate local folk-culture, viz. the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries in Edinburgh and the Guildhall Museum, London. "What is required is a national folk-museum dealing exclusively and exhaustively with the history of culture of the British nation within the historic period, and illustrating the growth of ideas and indigenous characterfolk-museum is a istics. Others have, indeed, a perfect right to criticise us, for in most European countries prominent and patriotic feature of very many of their cities and towns," Berlin, Budapest, Sarajevo, Moscow, Paris, Helsingfors, Copenhagen, Bergen, Christiania, and Stockholm being cited as a few examples. a Mr. Balfour then described with some detail the Nordiska museum in Stockholm as a model upon which to base a national folk-museum of our own, and said, "I feel sure that a well-organised and carefully arranged folk-museum standing in grounds which could be adapted for an openair exhibition would be as much appreciated by students and as popular with the masses as any institution in the If a strictly national collection develops as it country." should, and is treated upon broad scientific lines, there 66 which had It was rather singular that the special subject of the arrangement of mammalia in museums, been selected by the council, was completely ignored, not a single paper with any reference to it being submitted, while ethnology received a large amount of attention. Mr. H. L. Braekstad supported the president's plea with a Mr. F. W. Knocker discoursed on the practical improvebright, descriptive paper on open-air museums in Norway, ment of ethnographical collections in provincial museums, and Mr. W. Ruskin Butterfield offered some suggestions for dealt with in thoughtful papers by Benj. I. Gilman, of loan exhibitions of local antiquities. Art museums were the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Dr. A. H. Millar, of the Albert Institute, Dundee. Other papers comprised the Maidstone Museum, by J. H. Allchin; the relation by F. Woolnough between libraries and mounting and displaying coins, by R. Quick; life-history groups of injurious insects, by H. Bolton; and a serviceable description by Sir Martin Conway of his ingenious and convenient method of dealing with photographs. museums, verv The annual report, read at the business meeting on tion, which now possesses a cash balance of 250l., as well July 15, recorded the uninterrupted growth of the associaas a stock of publications that are constantly in demand. The ballot papers showed that Dr. Tempest Anderson had been elected president, Mr. E. E. Lowe secretary, and Mr. of all the museums in Great Britain and the colonies, the F. R. Rowley editor. It was decided to publish a directory work to be proceeded with at once by Mr. H. M. Platnauer and Mr. E. Howarth. ADAPTATION IN FOSSIL PLANTS.1 tion and natural selection only fulfils its role in so far as the distinctive characters of organisms are, or have the species. Purely THE Darwinian theory of the origin of species by variabeen, adaptive, i.e. beneficial to morphological" characters (if any such exist) and nonDarwinian theory (or only indirectly with the help of adaptive characters in general are not explained by the correlation). I therefore make no apology for having a good deal to say about adaptations in what follows. 64 That the great bulk, if not the whole, of organic structure is of the nature of an adaptive mechanism or device cannot be seriously doubted. The origin of species by means of natural selection does not, as has sometimes been imagined, involve a constantly Darwin expressed his belief" that course of evolution. increasing perfection of adaptation throughout the whole the period during which each species underwent modification, though long as measured by years, was probably short in comparison with that during which it remained without undergoing any change. During the long periods of rest, adaptation to the then existing condition of life must have been relatively perfect, for otherwise new variations would have had the advantage It thus appears that, as and change would have ensued. a rule, a state of equilibrium has existed in the relation of organisms to their environment, only disturbed when the conditions were changing. That such long periods of evolutionary stability have actually occurred is shown, for example, not only by the familiar case of the flora of Egypt, unaltered during a long historic period, but still more strikingly by the absence of any noticeable change 1 Abridged from the presidential address delivered before the Linnean Society on May 24. By Dr. D. H. Scott, F.R.S. 2 "Origin of Species," sixth edition, p. 279. |