644 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



weight in the Common Entrance Examination ; yet preparatory-school 

 masters are anxious to teach Science, and preparatory-school boys, like most 

 others, are eager to learn something, particularly about the mechanical 

 sciences. It is clear that some radical alteration ought to be made in the 

 syllabuses of these two examinations, but probably nothing less weighty 

 than a Royal Commission could bring about the change. 



Separation of Laboratory and Class-room Courses. — In the opinion of 

 many competent teachers, laboratory work has rather tended to become a 

 fetish, for there are some who go so far as to say that the only work of any 

 value in Science is that which is done in the laboratory by the boy himself. 

 This does not say much for the inspiration which the competent teacher 

 should be able to impart, but it does tend to relegate to the specialist part 

 of the curriculum sciences like Biology, which do not lend themselves to 

 practical work done by the younger pupils, while the simple facts of 

 Astronomy are for the same reason not included at all. Hence it comes 

 about that school Science of the day is practically confined to Chemistry 

 and Physics — useful and fundamental sciences, no doubt, but limited in 

 their outlook. The only remedy for this is the reinstatement of the lecture- 

 demonstration for those branches of Science which are best dealt with in 

 that way. There would still be ample opportunity for inculcating the 

 scientific method and habit of thought. 



Some New Botanical Memoirs (T. G. H.). 



Botanical Memoirs is the title of a new botanical publication initiated 

 and edited by Mr. A. H. Church, of the Botany School, Oxford. Published 

 by the Oxford University Press, the Memoirs are complete in themselves 

 and appear at irregular intervals. Such a mode of publication has much to 

 recommend it, the chief disadvantage being a possible restricted circulation 

 unless advertisement be employed. The following notes are little more 

 than an indication of the contents of each number : it is hoped to publish 

 reviews of the more important memoirs in the future. 



No. i. The Building of an Autotrophic Flagellate. A. H. Church, 1919. 

 (Pp. 27. 2s. net.) This is the most important of those memoirs which have 

 appeared. An essay in speculative biology : vigorous, deeply interesting, highly 

 suggestive. Problems concerned with the evolution of life from the point of 

 view of botany have not been better formulated. The author has achieved 

 no small measure of success in his attempt " to indicate the more obvious 

 requirements of the problems of the evolution of such an organism as an 

 autotrophic flagellate of pelagic plankton, comparable with that from which 

 the ancestral forms of the Phaeophyceae may have been derived." 



No. 2. Gossypium in Pre-Linnean Literature. H. J. Denham. (Pp. 24, 

 4 text figures. t.s. net.) An interesting account of the references to the 

 cotton plants in literature from Herodotus to Linnaeus. The tracing of the 

 literary history of a single genus has much to recommend it ; as the author 

 truly remarks with reference to his subject, " The history of Gossypium as a 

 genus epitomises the history of Botany." The text figures are not good ; 

 better reproductions of the woodcuts of Fuchs, Matthiolus and others 

 ought to have been possible. 



No. 3. Thalassiophyta and the Sub-aerial Transmigration. A. H. Church, 

 1 91 9. (Pp. 95. 3s. 6d. net.) In this memoir Mr. Church returns to an 

 earlier love, the Alga?. The essay is a consideration of the probable evolu- 

 tion of land vegetation from marine, and is a valuable contribution. Cer- 

 tain of the views put forward were held by the late Dr. Sarah Baker, who 

 derived them from her study of the brown seaweeds of the salt marsh. 



No. 4. Elementary Notes on Structural Botany. A. H. Church, 1919* 

 Twelve Lecture Schedules. (Pp. 27. 25. net.) 



