80 NATURAL SCIENCE [February 



acres of lawns, 31- acres of ornamental borders, also ferneries and 

 orchid houses ; collections of roses, crotons, and palms ; plantations 

 covering 7 1 acres of sugar cane, Arabian and Liberian coffee, 

 oranges, ginger, tobacco, ramie, and 5 or 6 acres of teak. Two 

 and a half acres are given up to the nurseries, which contain about 

 70,000 plants, such as cocoa, nutmeg, clove, orange, vanilla, cinna-i 

 mon, Liberian coffee, rubber plants, &c. It is the distributing centre, 

 and on an average 40,000 plants are sent out all over the island 

 each year." 



Natural History in the School-room 



There has come into our hands a copy of The Kentish Mercury, 

 which contains an article on a Voluntary School at Lower Syden- 

 ham. The writer points out the good work being done among the 

 ladsof that school by the headmaster,Mr G. E. Dibley, who has laboured 

 unceasingly for the past fourteen years in combining general education 

 with a grounding in the Natural Sciences. We can endorse all the 

 writer says as to the value of including Science in the curriculum, 

 as inducing a cultivated memory, habits of close and accurate 

 observation, ability to give a definite and more complete description 

 of a given object, ability to handle delicate and fragile things 

 without damage, dexterity in manipulation, capacity to form 

 correct estimate of dimension, and general interest in life and 

 matters with which the eye comes in contact. Nothing but good 

 can come of such instruction, and school loses half its dryness if 

 object-lessons are combined with general learning. 



We have heard before of Mr Dibley, his collections, and his 

 school, and have admired his efforts to gain an insight into the 

 geographical and stratigraphical distribution of the fossils of the 

 Chalk — efforts made in the brief leisure of a schoolmaster's busy 

 life. There are many rewards for such a worker, but the chiefest 

 of all are those proud moments when an ' old boy ' is found still 

 patiently studying the workings of Nature, to which he was first 

 introduced in a ramble with his old master. 



A Great Work on Early Cartography 



Baron A. E. Nordenskiold, besides being a practical geographer 

 and explorer, takes an antiquarian interest in the beginnings and 

 development of geography. His researches in this direction, based 

 largely on material collected for his own library, have long been 

 known, especially the fine Facsimile Atlas to the early history of 

 Cartography, published eight years ago, and reproducing many of 



