,3,,. NEWS OF UNIVERSITIES, ETC. 799 



Council include Professor Bayley Balfour, Mr. F. Du Cane Godman, Professor 

 J. G. McKendrick, Dr. \V. T. Blanford and Mr. Adam Sedgwick. The officers 

 remain as before. 



The Rev. Leonard Blomefield (formerly Jenyns) joined the Linnean Society on 

 November 19, 1S22, and at the meeting of the Society on November 17 an address 

 of congratulation to him was moved and heartily passed on the occasion of the 

 virtual completion of his seventy years' Fellowship of the Society — a period scarcely 

 likely to be matched in the annals of any other learned Society. Mr. Blomefield 

 was offered the appointment of naturalist to the " Beagle," and it was on his 

 finding himself unable to proceed on the voyage that Mr. Darwin's opportunity 

 came. He described, however, the fishes obtained on the voyage of the " Beagle " 

 in a book of very great value to students of fishes. He enjoys excellent health, and 

 we trust will long be spared as the oldest Fellow of the Society. 



The Norwich Science Gossip Club, which was founded in 1870 by Dr. J. E. 

 Taylor, F.L.S., consists of 74 ordinary and eight honorary members, and so far as 

 we know it fills a unique position among the learned societies. The object of this 

 Club is the promotion among its members of a spirit of enquiry and the investigation 

 of scientific and literary knowledge, by means of fortnightly] papers, and occasional 

 excursions. The evening meetings are held at the Royal Hotel, Norwich ; tea 

 coffee, and other beverages may be ordered before or after the reading of a paper, 

 and the proceedings are conducted amid a fragrant cloud of tobacco-smoke. To 

 this social feature the Club, no doubt, owes much of its long-continued success 

 but the papers read, to judge from the last published Report of Proceedings, are of 

 a varied and interesting nature, they are carefully prepared, and to them in 

 particular is to be attributed the^fact that " every evening has been pleasant and 

 instructive." Mr. M. P. Squirrell, of Norwich, has been elected President for the 

 Session 1892-93. 



The Royal Scottish Geographical Society has organised in connection with its 

 Education Scheme, two courses of lectures to be delivered this session in Edinburgh. 

 Before Christmas Mr. J. G. Goodchild, of the Geological Survey, treats of Volcanoes 

 in six lectures ; and after Christmas Mr. J. Arthur Thomson will undertake a course 

 on the Geographical Distribution of Plants and Animals. 



The Naturforschende Gesellschaft of Danzig celebrates its 150th anniversary 

 on January 2 and 3, 1893. Societies desiring to send representatives should com- 

 municate with Professor Dr. Conwentz, the Secretary. The naturalists of Danzig have 

 displayed much activity of late years, especially in geological researches, and many 

 valuable memoirs hail from the remote German city. 



The principal paper in the current number of the Proceedings of the Cottesivold 

 Field Club deals with "Some Laws of Inheritance, and their Application to Man." 

 The author, Mr. S. S. Buckman, is one of that numerous body of naturalists who 

 refuse to believe with Weismann in the non-heredity of " acquired characters " ; and 

 in applying his views (originally derived from a study of Ammonites) to man, 

 furnishes, incidentally, a considerable amount of very good reading. He extends 

 Dr. Louis Robinson's investigations upon the manners and customs of the newly 

 born child, and finds relics of monkeyhood everywhere ; it is even boldly suggested 

 that the lines, " Lu!l-a-by baby on the tree top," drew their inspiration from oral 

 tradition of a former arboreal existence. A baby, too, we are told, " seldom refuses 

 a bone, even after the very fullest meal"; this, perhaps, is not especially ape-like, 

 but, on the whole, the application of the term " young monkey " to children, is one 

 of those truths often said in jest. 



The Session of the tenth Congress of the American Ornithologists' Union was 

 opened at Washington on November 15. 



