NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 42. Vol VII. AUGUST. 1895. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



The New London University. 



•if. 



BY the time this is in the hands of our readers the fate of the new 

 Government will be practically decided. We hope, whichever 

 party come into power, that time will be found to set going a real 

 university for London. The delay in the matter is already prepos- 

 terous. After long and arduous conflicts a reasonable scheme has 

 been prepared, and is contained in the report of the " Gresham 

 Commissioners." AH the institutions concerned have approved the 

 scheme ; the majority of educated opinion regards it as a reasonable 

 and practicable scheme. It contains enough compromise to satisfy 

 even the most timid about the rights of minorities, and it must come 

 into operation. 



Here is our great London, the home of the chief scientific 

 societies in Great Britain, containing a population that would provide 

 innumerable students, the centre of the wealth and of the intellect of 

 the country, provided only with some dozen inchoate institutions full 

 of activity that is wasted because of senseless rivalry and complete 

 want of co-operation. Here is a scheme waiting that shall breathe 

 into them some corporate life : a scheme that has become possible 

 only by many generous and long-sighted concessions on the part of 

 bodies that have been building themselves up with much self-sacrifice 

 and vast unrecognised expenditure of energy. Factious opposition 

 and the exigencies of party conflict must now be overborne by strong 

 and swift action. There lies to the hand of the successful political 

 party a clamant opportunity, the embracing of which will be applauded 

 on all hands. 



Culture and Biology. 



One hears it said everywhere that Huxley was an example of 

 the cultured man of science, and that such an instance is conspicuous 

 by its rarity. Similarly it is frequently asserted that he was a man 

 naturally inclined to letters and culture, who had become a man of 

 science by the accident of events. We believe this to be a mis- 



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