to ensure a provision of higher agricultural education for farmers in all parts of the country, a national system that is not dependent on the caprice or the poverty of any county council.

The novel feature in the memorandum besides the Inter-Departmental Committee is a proposal to create a Rural Education Conference, consisting of representatives of the County Councils' Association, the Agricultural Education Association, and other agricultural organisations, with certain officers of the two Boards. Such a consultative committee seems to smack of the Board of Agriculture's favourite attitude of asking the farmers what it can do for them, but perhaps the influence of the Board of Education, which takes a less humble view of its own expert qualifications and powers to give a lead, will supply the stiffening and find a means of translating the suggestions of the conference into practice.

THE

SCIENCE TEACHING IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. HE habit of self-depreciation, or at any rate the latest manifestation of it, which is now so prominent a feature of our national life, can be traced to its beginning in a general dissatisfaction with our system of education. At a time when there was no misgiving as to the superiority of our navy, when our commercial supremacy was still unchallenged, , and when no foreigner dared to be our rival in the world of sport, it was nevertheless felt that in the science of education we had much to learn from abroad. If our secondary schools, especially the great "public schools," were allowed to have been successful in the formation of character, yet the intellectual equipment of those who passed through them was, and still is, held by many to be miserably inadequate. Germany, on the other hand, is regarded as the land, par excellence, where not only the schoolmaster knows and does his business, but where a parental Government has elaborated an almost ideal system of mental training. It is interesting, therefore, to hear that in one important province of school work-the teaching of natural science-there is another side to the picture.

Dr. Erich Leick 1 finds it necessary to bring before the minds of the German public certain points that with us for some years have been received as axiomatic, and are no longer discussed. In England we believe and act on the doctrine that no scheme of education, even for the children of well-to-do classes, should omit all reference to the living world of nature. It is, moreover, generally agreed that courses of practical lessons where common objects are studied by each pupil form the best means whereby the power of observation, clearness of expression, and the inductive methods of science can best be acquired, let alone a general interest and love for living things. Yet in Germany up till now, so we learn from Dr. Leick, natural-history lessons, if given at all in the secondary schools, have been of the old didactic kind, in which the teacher lectures almost entirely for one, or at most two, school hours in the week, and practical work is conspicuous for its absence. This seems to hold good for other branches of science, especially in the classical gymnasia, where, as Dr. Hoppe 2 tells us, practical work in physics is not insisted on, and is done only by Freiwillige." His pamphlet, in fact, is written to ;show that some boys will do laboratory work out of school if allowed, and he gives hints as to the best exercises for such volunteers.

1

46

"Die biologischen Schülerübungen." By Erich Leick. (Leipzig: Quelle and Meyer, 1909.)

2 4 Freiwillige Schülerübungen in Physik in humanistischen Gymnasien." By Prof. Dr. Edmund Hoppe. (Leipzig: Quelle and Meyer, 1909.)

It need scarcely be said that thoughtful teachers in Germany are dissatisfied with this state of things, and it is gratifying to read in Dr. Leick's account that the example of England is gradually affecting German science teaching. In fact, anyone who has read Mr. O. H. Latter's article on the teaching of science in secondary schools, recently published as an educational pamphlet by the Board of Education (see NATURE, August 12, p. 192), may well rub his eyes with astonishment at the antiquated systems still prevailing in many of the German Gymnasien and Realgymnasien compared to those of our own schools. Is it too much to hope that our improved methods of teaching may bring forth fruit in the next generation, and do much to remove the reproach we are constantly hurling at ourselves that we are an unscientific nation?

The limits of this notice forbid a discussion of either of these interesting pamphlets. Suffice it to say that Dr. Leick, after a review of the gradual introduction of inductive methods into the study of natural science, describes the ups and downs that biological teaching has met with in Germany, and acknowledges the part played by the authorities of Hamburg and Bremen in insisting on natural history being taught in their schools. He shows clearly enough the kind of mental training that biology alone can give, although he is no revolutionary who would sweep away humane letters out of the field. Especially noteworthy is his tactful reference to the problem of sex, how it can best be dealt with by natural-history lessons in the hands of a sympathetic teacher. Doubtless the details of his scheme invite criticism, especially the use of the compound microscope by young pupils, but they offer food for thought to all who have to teach his subjects.

Dr. Hoppe's little work may be well offered to those classical masters in our public schools, if such there be, who still believe, like Darwin's headmaster, that natural science is a waste of time, and have forgotten in their zeal for grammar the true spirit of inquiry of the ancient Greeks. Teachers of practical physics may gain some useful hints from his list of exercises. But, as has already been suggested, the chief interest to British teachers in these pamphlets lies in the fact that they give us glimpses of what we should not have suspected in so scientific a country as Germany. They confirm the present writer's impression after hearing a science lesson in a German Realschule, that the boys were standing aside and watching rather than taking off their coats and joining in the work themselves. M. D. H

ANTON DOHRN.

HE whole biological world will feel a pang of

THE grief at the news of the death of Anton Dohrn, the founder and director of the Zoological Station of Naples. It is true that he had accomplished the great work which he set himself forty years ago, and had seen the projects and dreams of his youth fully realisedand more than realised. I met Dohrn first in 1870 at Liverpool, when Huxley was president of the British Association, and in May and June of the next year went, after a winter spent in Leipzig, to join him at Jena, where he was a "privat-docent" in zoology. He was then thirty years of age, and had done some excellent embryological work on the Crustacea, in furtherance of which he had passed some months at Naples and Messina. His father, with whom I later spent some weeks at Naples, was a very remarkable man, one of the iron-willed, somewhat grim type of North Germans, a handsome old gentleman, known throughout Europe as a great collector of Coleoptera,

Sat Janie, Arvon had *HỐNG NO GO something wally large ça al portat toa na pingia g moegaal same, * A***T www.bug vind i Mogharrataan in MACA W 2tudy 18 Bo Morina tik. he had felt the kulty of Kinkyung on such work in lodgings, with kuł wygpakalue, wollayak library, sand at the mercy of Whom It was Dessary to employ and Thx Pouch naturalist Coste had, elica Kimplyed by the Government of the Second Pompon to study komonde questions connected with the national fidiones, established a baboratory, with aquaria. Kundee, and trung bouts, at Concarneau, on ** $sullany kupat Hom de Lacaze-Duthiers had ala arramod a prominent marine biological laboraway four homself and his pupils. The plan took shape in Auton Doburn's mind of establishing a larger and mor complicly equipped laboratory than these on the Molterranean coast, and, but for the war between France and Gromany, he would probably have carried but his best intention and placed his laboratory on thur Conal mer Marscilles. When I knew him he had already thought out the scheme which he realised, and had determined to try to secure a site at Naples in the Villa Beale, which stretches along the shore. He had surrcrded with no le dimeulty in securing a certain sum of money from his father his heritage, in fact and he intended deliberately to risk this in his enterular His plan was to secure the cooperation of all ungem universities in building and maintaining the Naples laboratory, or "station," as he proposed to call it This mucant, in all cases but that of England, the Comperation of the State Governments. But in order toidutain this support and cooperation he realised that #t was Heressary, at whatever effort and rish, to make a plunge to start the "stazione," ་་ * Blue and imposing building. to demonstrate the conventence and excellence of Hangmnisation, and thus to secure approval and unhestratting financial assistance His plan was to sink his own fortune in that first step, and he did So He obratned help from friends both at home and to this country 4s the building grew, and by tactful apped and untiring effort involving years of work riven up to persuading statesmen, politicians, associas tiquus professors mullion iftes, and emperors of the Value and murrince of the great Naples. “Statione Sowkwipa he achieved for it a splendid and petDuring the two months which I passed in 181 at Joia. Dura. Klemenberg, Abbe and I used to dine m Deus XOVA vet meal being sent in from the NCA Bo Hotel We were sealy joined by the professor of physiology in our elrading wek ma the ཏིཨེཞེས ༢ཛིཝཱ ཏཐཱ which resembled Cist Church ungdom waves OY SCEN Lattended COCCONION Xerezes, and was knon given a nice by Maccact in his laborant where I was one day vidted by de toad Dãe Noel ener who told me cod ad Kissed Batootei w bod year 2çà 10-15% ANANA NYINGIN de geld volbgy or Nedtisco1, 100 EXACIALİN MacDuct Above, the Maent of Ne byurd ONE bee CAAN DE RÀNIA CH Roews

ngt fngeles. Donen ant 1 vok ing value wooded hours of the Thuninger Walt and 1 eur and discussed fully with Dohrn his plan for the station.” He adored the name he hoped that, in the course of time equipped marine zoological laboratories would be up elsewhere on the same sort of international crocer tive basis as that which he intended to adope at Nobles Port Jackson was one point which we selected fra future station, and some favoured spot on the Japanev coast another. Already, before we left Jena and before he had opened any negotiations with the Neapolitan municipality, Dohrn had planned the series of monographs of the fauna and flora of the Gulf of Naples which has been so splendidly realised. Dyhrn was a profound student of Goethe, and had a saying of the great teacher for every occasion. He was what appeared to me, with my English upbringing, sin gularly introspective, and he puzzled, even occasionally alarmed, me by his self-conscious and systematic culti vation of his will-power. I have no doubt that he was fully endowed with this power, as his remarkable accomplishment of what he set out to do proves, and I do not suppose his anxiety to keep it at a high pitch of activity was really of any effect in the end. When we were at Jena he did not smoke and drank very little. It was not, I think, until he was past forty that he took to tobacco. I left him at the end of June. 1871, promising to join him at Naples in October. He arranged to take an unfurnished flat in the Palazzo Torlonia, where we were to have ample space, and to take down with him plans for the projected laboratory, and an architect. Whilst he negotiated with the municipality and the Italian Government, I was to set up a temporary laboratory in our flat and pursue embryological work. This plan was carried out. Dohrn had succeeded in obtaining the definite and effective support of the new German Imperial Government, and his path with the Naples municipality was smoothed. But there was a good deal of haggling and putting forward of the palm of the hand (which Dohrn ignored) before the site to be occupied by the Stazione " in the Villa Reale (or Nazionale as it is now called) was made over, with many queer and strenuous conditions, to Dohrn, and so to the bulding contractor. When I left Naples in May. šte an attack of typhoid fever, the walls of the brease were a couple of feet above ground. 1- -xocie the innumerable difficulties which Dehen bac mount is the challenge to a duel browse the representative of the Neapolitan ariner T he had agreed in order to corelate me to employ for the design of the elevazon.

considered himself insulted because こ refused to promise him a ten per cunt. instead of the five per cent, whien is usu ¤ Tire I Fureve I had to act as Dean's wert. ferred with the Neapolzin arctiner's Trung insisông that Deern was a scicier r ***e Emperor, and a very deadiv man with the decerm bed not to meid te ime TUTTETY WAS WONKAWI, and he mute meet is as very sisactorie PV gene. Dearn wis jebemos tr ANISSADOm be a Nepeütun va

awkward thing was that the young German architect who had come to Naples with Dohrn, and was living with us in the Palazzo Torlonia, suddenly went quite mad, and had to be sent home under escort. Happily he completely recovered. A great feature in our life at the Palazzo Torlonia was the occupation of one of the chief "flats" (ours was high up in a building against the Posilippo cliff) by the Baranowski family. Dohrn had made their friendship in Sicily a year before, and we spent nearly every evening with them. Baranowski had been governor of the Russian province of Orenburg, and was now employed by the Russian Government on important missions in China. His wife, a Polish lady, her sister, two daughters, and a son, took up their residence in the chief "suite " of Our Palazzo,

and in the late winter were joined by Baranowski himself, whose official business did not allow him to remain for long. All those dear friends of the Palazzo Torlonia are now dead and gone, with the exception of the elder of the two sisters, who three or four years later married Anton Dohrn, and is the mother of his four now grown-up sons. She nursed him in his last illness during the past six months at Munich. In 1874, when the Naples laboratory was built and its machinery at work, its rooms filled with professors and investigators from all parts of Europe, including the wonderfully gifted and beloved Frank Balfour and his friend Dew-Smith, I again spent three months at Naples. Dohrn was suffering from the labours he had gone through in securing the position of the laboratory, and also from the climate of Naples. He was engaged, but his marriage was delayed and his future wife's family were no longer at Naples. A very remarkable Englishman, Grant by name, who had been lecturer in English literature and a close friend of Dohrn's at Jena, was with him, and remained for some years in Naples. His delightful book, "Stories of Naples and the Camorra," is the memorial of the work Grant did there. He died some years ago. Later I made two short visits to Naples, and saw my friend with his family growing up around him. In the 'nineties he visited Oxford and received an honorary degree. For some years the University, following the example of Cambridge, had rented a table at the Naples station, and provided the travelling expenses of a graduate selected to pursue investigation there.

During the thirty-six years of its existence, the Naples station has increased vastly in size and the perfection of its organisation. Its biological library is one of the best in the world, its staff of servants, assistants, and skilled workers of all kinds unrivalled. Having secured capable assistants in all departments and the funds for carrying on the now large and celebrated institution, Dohrn was able to pursue some of the problems of vertebrate morphology which had occupied his mind already in Jena days. I think that the most important of the general ideas which he had arrived at in those early times was, first, that degeneration or simplification of organic structure is a result of evolution as well as increase of complexity, and that the relatively simple or less complicated members of a group are not necessarily more primitive or archaic than the more elaborately structured members. Also of great value was his determination to take a free and unprejudiced view as to the lines of the animal pedigree, and he particularly objected to being tied in any way to the conclusions of Haeckel on this subject. He successfully resisted the notion that either Amphioxus or the Ascidians represent in any definite or complete way the lower phases of vertebrate ancestry. He held that they were specialised, and, in the sense of being simplified, degenerate. He sought himself to connect the verte

brate stock with that of the chatopod worms, but though this hypothesis led him into many interesting discoveries of detail-which are published in a series of papers in the Mittheilungen of the Zoological Station of Naples-it cannot be said to have been placed on a secure footing, and we are still specu| lating, with very little assurance, as to the nature and structure of the pre-vertebrate ancestors of Vertebrata. Dohrn was a great lover of classical music, like his father, and I think that music and philosophy were his chief relaxations from the severe labour of business correspondence and scientific discussion. He was very fortunate in having the opportunity, some fourteen years ago, of receiving the German Emperor at the Naples laboratory. He was able thoroughly to interest that able man in the work of the institution, who recognised that it was a real honour and glory to the German name, and accordingly gave to it his warm friendship and support. From that time forward large assistance has been given to the Naples laboratory from Berlin, and I believe that some definite responsibility in regard to the institution-involving possibly its ownership-now passes to certain authorities in Berlin.

It is a great and satisfactory thing which I have had to record here the success of a noble effort. Dohrn's example in founding a "station " for marine zoology has been followed in a modest way elsewhere. The Marine Biological Laboratory at Plymouth, which I joined with others in founding some twenty-five years ago, was, confessedly, an attempt to provide on our English coast an institution similar to, if less spacious than, that established by Anton Dohrn at Naples. The Plymouth laboratory has done good service to science and to fishery interests, but London is not Berlin, nor are the ways of British departments of Government in regard to science in any way similar to those of the German Imperial Government. The former are ignorant, envious, and destructive; the latter are intelligent, friendly, and helpful. E. RAY LANKESTER.

NOTES.

In reply to a question asked in the House of Commons on Thursday last, the Postmaster-General stated that

arrangements have been completed with the Marconi Company for the transfer to the Post Office of all their coast stations for communication with ships, including all plant, machinery, buildings, land, and leases, &c., and for the surrender of the rights which they enjoy under their agreement with the Post Office of August, 1904, for licences or facilities in respect of coast stations intended for such communication. In addition, the Post Office secures the right of using, free of royalty, the existing Marconi patents and any future patents or improvements, for a term of fourteen years, for the following purposes :-communication for all purposes between stations in the United Kingdom and ships, and between stations on the mainland of Great Britain and Ireland on the one hand and outlying islands between any two outlying islands; and (except for the transmission of public telegrams) between any two stations on the mainland; and on board Post Office cable ships. All the stations will, under the International Radio-telegraphic Convention, be open for communication equally to all ships, whatever system of wireless telegraphy they may carry, and the Post Office will be free to use or to experiment with any system of wireless telegraphy at its discretion. All inland communication of messages by wireless telegraphy will be entirely under the control of the Post Office. Arrange

on the other, or

ments have also been made with Lloyd's for the transfer

ploration in Bolivia and Brazil, by Major P. H. Fawcett ; exploration in the Kasai region of the Congo, by Mr. E. Torday; a journey in South-west Africa, by Prof. Pearson; geographical conditions affecting the development of Australia, by Prof. J. W. Gregory, F.R.S.; and geographical conditions affecting the development of Canada, by Mr. W. L. Grant.

ARRANGEMENTS have been completed whereby a standard clock at the Hamburg Observatory, Bergedorf, is connected to the trunk telephone system. A sounder automatically emits a siren-like note from the fifty-fifth to the sixtieth second of each minute-mid-European time and this goes automatically to all the receivers connected, at that time, with the special exchange number which has been allotted to the time signal. Thus Hamburg and neighbourhood and other towns of east Germany are supplied with a ready means of ascertaining the standard time.

THE past summer was characterised by cool and unsettled weather, and, with the exception of about a fortnight at the commencement of August, there was a peculiar absence of warm days. For the six months April to September the observations at Greenwich show that there were in all only fifty-three days with a temperature of 70° or above; of these, twenty occurred in August and eighteen in July, whilst there was only one instance in September. During the last quarter of a century the only years with as few warm days are 1888, 1894, and 1903. On the average of the last fifty years, there are seventyfour such warm days. There were nine days with a temperature of 80° or above, and in the last five years the number varies from two in 1907 to twenty in 1906. The absolutely highest temperature during the summer was 86°, on August 12 and 15. The aggregate rainfall at Greenwich for the six months is 14.04 inches, which is 1-75 inches more than the average summer fall of the last fifty years, the mean being 12-29 inches. With the exception of the summer of 1903, when the aggregate rainfall was 22.21 inches, there has been no summer as wet since 18S8. There was an excess of rain in all the summer months except May and August, and the wettest month was June, with a total of 3.65 inches, which is 1.65 inches above the average. The early summer months were exceptionally bright, and a record duration of sunshine for any month was established in May, with 326 hours, but most of the subsequent months had a deficiency of bright sunshine.

66

SOME remarkable experiments on the reproductive apparatus of insects have recently been conducted by Prof. J. Meisenheimer, and are recorded by him in a treatise ("Experimentelle Studien zur Soma- und GeschlechtsDifferenzierung ") published by Fischer at Jena. The results of this investigation have been summarised by the author in the Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift for August 29. The species selected for experiment was the well-known "gipsy moth," Lymantria dispar. The reproductive glands were removed from larvæ of both sexes, in some cases immediately after emergence from the egg. The difficulty of operating upon larvæ barely three millimetres long must have been great; it was, however, successfully overcome by aid of the galvanic cautery. In larvæ of a larger growth an actual transplantation was effected of testis into the female and ovary into the male. Details of much interest are given in the original paper; the main result is that, in strong contrast to the conditions obtaining in vertebrates, the removal of the primary sexual organs has no effect upon the development of the remainder of the sexual apparatus, or of the secondary

sexual characters whether somatic or psychic. This takes its normal course even in the presence of a successfully transplanted primary organ of the opposite sex.

To the August number of the National Geographic Magazine Mr. H. M. Smith, U.S. Deputy Commissioner of Fisheries, communicates a very graphic and interesting account of the herring-fisheries of the world, in which stress is laid on the importance and value of this industry, which has determined the position of cities and influenced the destiny of nations. In America large numbers of the smaller-sized herrings are tinned and sold as sardines. In place of the methods adopted on this side of the Atlantic, weirs of stakes and brushwood play an important part in the American herring-fishery. As the average tidal rise and fall is 20 feet, and in spring nearly 30 feet, the weirs are necessarily large and strongly built structures. These weirs are fished at low water, when the fishermen enter in boats, set a seine and haul its ends together, and proceed to take out the fish in huge dip-nets. Sometimes, however, the herring are left high and dry by the falling tide, when they are collected by hand or with pitchforks.

IN No. 29 of the "North American Fauna," published by the Biological Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Mr. E. W. Nelson gives an exhaustive account of the Leporidæ of North America, of which no fewer than ninety-seven species and races are recognised, against eighteen in 1887. Although in America all the members of the family are commonly termed rabbits, the author suggests that the name rabbit should be restricted to the so-called "cotton-tails," which produce blind and naked young in burrows or other concealed cavities, while the species related to the typical Lepus of the Old World should be designated hares. The fact that the cotton-tails resemble the European rabbit in the matter of habits and the condition of the young at birth goes far to justify their separation as Sylvilagus, although that term might perhaps be preferably employed in a subgeneric rather than in a generic sense. It is pointed out that both "jack-rabbits " and "cotton-tails " are serious pests to the agriculturist and horticulturist in the United States, although the former are considerably the worse of the two. On the other hand, these rodents form a valuable asset to the country as a source of food and of fur.

IN the annual report of the Natural History Section of the Indian Museum for 1908-9 the director states that the Museum Conference at Calcutta has done much to facilitate the interchange of opinions and specimens between the various museums of the country. At that conference it was agreed that the Calcutta establishment was to be the depository for all type-specimens, except such as, for climatic reasons, would be safer in London. Among recent additions attention is directed to a skeleton of the Mishmi takin (Budorcas taxicolor), which is alleged to be the only one in existence. If those of the living individuals of the species be excluded, this statement may be literally true, although it might have been added that the British Museum possesses skeletons of the Bhutan race (B. t. whitei) and of the Sze-chuen B. tibetanus.

IN the September number of the Zoologist Mr. G. B. Corbin states that the smooth snake (Coluber laevis, or austriaca) is still to be found in the New Forest and on the heath-lands on the opposite side of the Avon, where it was first recognised as a British species. Unfortunately, a portion of its habitat is slowly but steadily coming under the hand of the builder.

WE have received three parts (Nos. 1, 4, and 5) of a new Bulletin of Economic Biology, issued by the Depart