Dec. 23, 1875] 



NATURE 



149 



time they may be submitted to the public, as we wish they 

 may be. 



In conclusion, we may remark that, with the exception 

 of a few descriptions of personal symptoms, which would 

 have been much better left out, Mr. Andersson's " Notes 

 on Travel in South Africa" forms an interesting and 

 instructive volume to the general reader, as well as the 

 student of geographical and natural science. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



\Tht Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return^ 

 or to correspond with the ivriters of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.] 



A New Cetacean from New Zealand 



I HAVE just received from Dr. Julius Von Haast of Canter- 

 bury, New Zealand, for presentation to the Zoological Society, 

 an account of what appears to be a new species of Ziphioid 

 Whale. 



As far as can be at present ascertained, for, unfortunately, the 

 heads only of three individuals, and these not in a perfect state, 

 were obtained, it is nearly allied to the genus Mesoplodon, 

 Gervais, but differs from the known species in the possession of 

 a row of small pointed, conical, recurved teeth, about twenty in 

 number, in the hinder part of the upper jaw, in addition to the 

 usual single large tooth, placed near the middle of the ramus of 

 the mandible. This is a very interesting circumstance as con- 

 necting the peculiar dentition of the ziphioids with that of the 

 ordinary dolphins. 



Another fact, new in the history of the Cetacea of this group, 

 is that they belonged to a shoal of twenty-eight, all stranded 

 together on one of the Chatham Islands, whereas all previously 

 recorded examples have been either solitary or in pairs. It is 

 evident that the attention which the naturalists of New Zealand 

 are paying to the Cetacea, will throw much light on the history 

 of the order, and it is to be hoped that they will persevere in 

 collecting and preserving every specimen which may come 

 within their reach. Dr. Haast's paper will be read at the next 

 meeting of the Zoological Society. W. H. Flower 



Evidences of Ancient Glaciers in Central France 



My attention has been recently called to a communication 

 on the above subject which appeared in Nature, vol. xiii. 

 p. 31, from Dr. Hooker. Not having myself observed any 

 traces of glacial action in the Mont Dore, and finding that | 

 M. I'Abbe Lecoq, whose examination of every portion of the i 

 district was most painstaking and exhaustive, has declared his i 

 conviction that no such traces exist, may I be permitted to j 

 remark that the evidence produced by Dr. Hooker does not 

 appear very conclusive on the question ? It consists of the occiu-- I 

 rence of some large fragments of trachyte in the floor of the ' 

 valley in which the Dordogne takes its rise, " the head of which \ 

 occupies a noble amphitheatre immediately under the highest \ 

 sommit of Mont Dore," which " seen from a height above, were ^ 

 presumably huts, haystacks, or glacially transported blocks." 

 The next day the doctor descended into the valley for a fidler 

 examination of these blocks, and found himself "amongst a 

 group of magnificent boulders that had evidently been deposited {?) 

 by an ancient glacier which had flowed from the rocky amphi- 

 theatre at the head of the valley ; " " others were seen further 

 down the valley, its stream meandering among the blocks," 



Now this description together with all that follows, and which 

 I need not quote, strongly reminded me of a large assemblage of 

 debris of trachytic rocks which on my last visit to the Mont Dore 

 in i860, I observed exactly in the position indicated by Dr. 

 Hooker in the valley of the Dordogne, and which had been the 

 result of a prodigious landslip or fall of a huge slice of the cliffs 

 above, nearly a thousand feet high, forming the left flack of the 

 valley as we look up it extending for upwards of half a mile. 

 This landslip had occurred, if I remember rightly, in the pre- 

 vious winter, and was by no means an unprecedented occurrence, 

 as the ruins of several older " eboulements " along the same line 

 of cliffs attested. The summit of the cliffs consisted of a solid 

 bed of trachyte perhaps fifty feet in thickness, and the action of '< 

 firost on the waters infiltrated into the vertical joints of this rock 

 tended to detach occasionally blocks of it which in large num- 



bers, and many of them of enormous size, had evidently fallen 

 from above on the floor of the valley. Some of these bore 

 exactly the appearance of those described and figured by Dr, 

 Hooker, and with every deference to his high authority, I cannot 

 but suspect that they are the identical rocks which he, somewhat 

 hastily, perhaps, concluded could only have been transported by 

 " an ancient glacier descending from the neighbouring head of 

 the valley." Should this prove to be the case, as no other evi- 

 dence of the action of glaciers in the Mont Dore has been pro- 

 duced, it is presumable that M. Lecoq's view is correct, that 

 none such are to be fovmd. G. PotJLETT SCROPE 



Fairlawn, Cobham, Surrey 



Science Classes and Penny Lectures in Birmingham 



In Nature, voL xiii., p. 82, is an article on "The Man- 

 chester Science Lectures," in which it is stated that the popular 

 lectures at the Midland Institute Birmingham "are chiefly fre- 

 quented by the middle classes," while "at the Manchester lec- 

 tures the class of persons present was chiefly working men for 

 whom the lectures were designed. 



This statement, although net absolutely incorrect, conveys 

 quite a false impression respecting the Birmingham lectures ; the 

 fact being that the Midland Institute has two Departments, the 

 " General " and the " Industrial," the former being designed for 

 the middle classes, and the latter for artisans, &c. As the 

 history of the popular scientific teaching at this Institute in- 

 cludes some instructive practical experience, a few reminiscences 

 of the leading facts may be interesting. 



The Institute commenced its working existence in October 

 1854 with three classes, one for Ph3rsics meeting on two evenings 

 per week, one for Chemistry also on two evenings per week, and 

 one on Popular Physiology and the Laws of Health meeting c«l 

 one evening per week. These were all conducted by myself — 

 then the only teacher of the Institute — at the rooms of the old 

 Philosophical Institution, 7, Cannon Street. They were attended 

 by men and boys, for the most part artisans and bond fide students. 

 The first course on Chemistry comprised about 90 lectures, that 

 on Physics about 130, and that on Physiology about 30 lectures. 



The number of students and the general success of these lec- 

 tures exceeded the expectations of the promoters of the Institute, 

 and refuted the predictions of the large proportion of influential 

 Birmingham men who loudly expressed their anticipations of 

 failure. 



Such was the b^inning, but ere long we were threatened with 

 a' repetition of the old experience of the old Mechanics' Insti- 

 tution, and other similar efforts that had failed in Birmingham, and 

 upon which failures these gloomy predictions were founded. The 

 Chemistry class, which was the largest at first, sustained its num- 

 bers and attendance during what I may call the combustive stage 

 of its existence, that is, so long as the three oft-quoted essentiSs 

 of successful chemical lectures "the flash, the bang, and the 

 stink," were maintained ; but when we came to the metals, to 

 mere precipitates, equations, analysis, &c. , the numbers seriously 

 declined. 



The Physics class, which began more modestly, kept up its 

 numbers rather better ; there, the prepress was from the heavy 

 business of statics and dynamics, to the more wonderfiil pheno- 

 mena of heat, light, and electricity. The physiology class was 

 the smallest from the first, but held on pretty steadily to the end 

 of the course. 



On completing the first course of each subject we encountered 

 a check that threatened our very existence. The numbers 

 diminished, and this diminution became alarming with the third 

 course on Physiology (which commenced before that of the otha: 

 subjects) . The alarming element was not merely the diminish- 

 ing number of students, but the obvious cause of this diminution. 

 We were evidentiy exhausting our raw material. The total 

 number of Birmingham artisans who desired the amount of 

 scientific instruction we offered them was but limited, and the 

 majority of these had attended the first courses, and in the 

 ordinary prc^ess of normal generation they were not repro- 

 ducible with a rapidity at all corresponding to the repetition of 

 our counes of instruction. What was to be done ? 



This difficulty of course presented itself more forcibly to me 

 than to anybody else as the facts were more directly before my 

 eyes, and naturally led to serious reflections. To have shortened 

 the courses of instruction, to have made them lighter and more 

 popular, would have sacrificed our main object, seeing that I 

 had already gone as far in that direction as sound instruction 

 permitted. What then ? 



