172 NATURAL SCIENCE. March, 



psychologists. We welcome this new magazine heartily, and congratu- 

 late its editors on their excellent beginning. But an interesting if some- 

 what dolorous problem suggests itself here. A large part of modern 

 psychology concerns itself with laboratory work of the kind known as 

 experimental physiological psychology, the application of the exact 

 methods of science to the problems of memory, sensation and so forth. 

 Although this branch of science is comparatively recent, there are 

 well-equipped laboratories for it all over the continent, and the greater 

 colleges and universities of America are no whit beyond. We know 

 of none such in England. It is true that valuable work has been done 

 by Francis Galton, and others, and we may expect more from the new 

 Professor at Owens College. There was a rumour that Professor 

 Burdon Sanderson hoped to establish a new department in connection 

 with the Physiological Laboratory at Oxford, where already a good 

 deal of psychological work has been done under his auspices. But it 

 remains a rumour, and indeed we cannot see how Dr. Sanderson, 

 with a growing medical school and an increasing number of students 

 and graduates engaged on pure physiology, can spare either time or 

 space. England has the men; cannot it find the money? No 

 doubt it is an excellent thing for the race that the distribution of the 

 endowments of Oxford and Cambridge should promote early marriage 

 among those who have distinguished themselves in the classical 

 schools. But there are more excellent and directer methods of deal- 

 ing with endowments intended to promote learning. One of these, as 

 Natural Science has taken repeated occasion to say, is the assign- 

 ment of fellowships for branches of learning and research that are of" 

 themselves valuable, but open no direct avenues to lucrative employ- 

 ment. So much for Oxford and Cambridge. For other seats of 

 learning devoid of so many pious benefactors in the past, we must 

 hope for practical benefactors in the present. 



Theories and Facts in Biology. 

 Last month, under the heading " Mathematical Biology," we 

 referred to several interesting studies on variation as it actually occurs. 

 Professor Weldon's insistence on the necessity for accurate informa- 

 tion about variation might well be extended to various other chains of 

 facts that form the bases of theories of evolution. Books, papers, and 

 controversies on evolution abound, and in all of them variation, influence 

 of environment, heredity, effects of crossing are the tricks to be made 

 as the cards are dealt and shuffled, shuffled and redealt. The giraffe, 

 fancy pigeons, the tails of lizards, and neuter insects invariably are 

 the court cards, and it would not be difficult to assign equally well- 

 known examples to the plain cards. It is an excellent game, and, as 

 each player holds a fuU pack and may begin betting when he chooses; 

 the playing is as complicated as the rules are lax. But the giraffe i& 

 always the trump card. Lamarck first played it for use-inheritance,. 



