1894. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 89 



apart from the exhibition rooms. It is to be a home not only of art, 

 but of artists ; not only of ' bugs,' but of bug-hunters ; not only 

 of fossils, but of those who are qualifying for fossilhood." But will 

 so admirable an ideal, which would render this Museum a true 

 temple of the Muses, ever be attained? We sadly doubt. We leave 

 Wykehamists themselves to settle the question of site, as to which 

 they have already begun to quarrel ; but we would fain once more 

 express our surprise at the scanty support this memorial of their 

 great founder has met with. WiUiam of Wykeham was a scholar and 

 an ecclesiastic, but he was, above all things, a practical man; we can, 

 therefore, imagine no more fitting way of carrying on the very spirit 

 of Wykeham into the centuries to come than by the introduction of 

 this practical intercourse with nature and art into the educational 

 methods of a school that has adhered somewhat too closely to the 

 scholastic traditions of the Middle Ages. ^4,319 i6s. 2d. is not a 

 large sum for such an object— is, indeed, miserably inadequate; but 

 what is worse is that it has been subscribed by only 402 people, a 

 number barely equal to that of the boys at present in the school. 

 In the interests of Winchester itself, no less than those of modern 

 education, we trust that a few more Wykehamists will come out of 

 the holes into which they have, like the traditional college spider, for 

 the time retired. 



Science and Nature. 

 In our opening paragraph we spoke of the relation that daily 

 grows more intimate between the scientific specialist in his laboratory 

 and the ordinary man in the street or in the field. Here is an example 

 appropriate to the season. For these are the days when tired and 

 thirsty mortals crave above all things the refreshing charms of fruity 

 acids. Were this a Saturday column of the Pall Mall Gazette, we 

 would seek the choice word and the apt phrase to do worship before 

 the dear delights of " lemon squash " or those more humble, prepared 

 drinks that owe their flavour and their fragrance to commercial citric 

 acid. An article in the Kezv Bulletin, published some months ago (1894, 

 pp. 103-108), spread dire consternation among those who grow the 

 Hme and the lemon in the south of Europe and in the West Indies ; 

 for it related a direct method of producing citric acid from sugar 

 solution by growing therein a peculiar mould. But by the July number 

 of the same periodical the fears of fruit-growers are, for the time, 

 set at rest. On the authority of a distinguished firm of pharmacists, 

 it is said that the practical difficulties of turning a laboratory experi- 

 ment into a commercial process are so great, that for a long while to 

 come we must continue to look to Nature for our supplies of the 

 fragrant acid. Her Majesty's Ambassador at Berlin writes in the same 

 strain, but with less confidence. The Director at the Manufactory of 

 Chemical Products at Thann, in Alsace, assures her Majesty's 

 representative, through the German Foreign Office, that "certain 



