196 



NATURE 



\^yune 20, 1878 



of the satisfactory working of the Ladies' Educational Associa- 

 tion, recently decided to open the Faculties of Arts and Law 

 and of Science to women. 



Again, there is a very general demand for increased facilities 

 'of instruction in engineering and other branches of applied 

 science, which ca'n nowhere be so efficiently met as in connection 

 with a flourishing scientific school like that of University College, 

 Lastly, the numbers of the school have for some years been 

 steadily increasing, and it is not luireasonable to hope that it 

 may soon outgrow its present space. On all these grounds an 

 urgent necessity is now imposed upon the college to undertake a 

 considerable enlargement of its buildings. 



Application for tickets should be made to the Jubilee Celebra- 

 tion Committee as early as possible. Talfourd Ely, 



University College, London, June 18 Secretary 



Examination of Small Organisms in Water 



In order to examine the minute organisms that inhabit water, 

 such as rotifers, vorticellae, and kindred microzoons, the arrange- 

 ment I proposed some years ago in the Quart, yourn. of Micros. 

 Set. will, I believe, be found most convenient. This is to inclose 

 the objective in a brass or other metal tube having its lower end 

 closed by a piece of thin microscopic glass coming close up to 

 but not touching the object-glass. With this protection we can 

 plunge the end of the microscope into a small tank, filled with 

 water, containing the small living organisms, and examine them 

 at our leisure for days or even weeks. The thin glass plate im- 

 mersed in the water gives us a perfectly steady, flat water- 

 surface, which is not disturbed by any agitation of the surface- 

 water of the tank. Objectives of an inch, half an inch, a 

 quarter of an inch, and even an eighth of an inch focus, may be 

 thus used under water, and all the trouble of catching and 

 ensnaring the small animals is thus avoided. This invention I 

 first employed for the examination of morbid secretions, such as 

 urine. I have since employed it for watching the operations of 

 minute creatures thaf inhabit water, which may thus be seen in 

 their natural habitat and under normal conditions, which is not 

 the case when they are seen in the usual way, between the two 

 layers of glass on an ordinary microscopic slide. Any optician 

 can make such a tube to screw over the objective of any micro- 

 scope, and, though it can readily be removed and applied, its 

 presence does not interfere with the use of the microscope in air. 



53, Montagu Square, W. R. E. Dudgeon 



THE LATE MR. HEW ITS ON 



■nrHE memory of the warm-hearted gentleman above- 

 ^ named deserves a passing notice in these columns, 

 for the effect of his labours on at least one department 

 of natural history has been great. William Chapman 

 Hewitson, who died at Oatlands, near Walton-on-Thames, 

 -on May 28 last, aged seventy-two years, was by birth a 

 Northumbrian, and, after the somewhat rough education 

 of a Westmoreland school, took up the calling of a sur- 

 veyor. His passion for natural history was exhibited in 

 very early life, and, after some years' practice of his 

 profession, the fortunate inheritance of a competence, 

 and something more, from an uncle saved him the neces- 

 sity of pursuing a distasteful vocation, and enabled him 

 to indulge his fancy practically without stint. In 1831, 

 while still engaged in his professional duties, he projected 

 his '' British Oology," the first part of which appeared in 

 April, 1 83 1, and the last in 1838. As he himself subse- 

 quently wrote : — 



" The book was itself as migratory as the birds, the 

 eggs of which are depicted in its pages ; many of the 

 plates were drawn at night after a long day of railway 

 surveying in the fields, and the letter-press was printed 

 \yherever the author happened to be stationed at the 

 time. There were few collectors to aid him in those 

 days, and it is with a grateful feeling he remembers now 

 the helping hand which was then held out to him by his 

 friend Mr. Yarrell." 



Yet the work was a great success. Such beautiful figures 

 of eggs- all drawn on stone by the author- had never 

 before been seen, for his touch was as delicate as his eye 



was correct, and great care was bestowed upon the 

 colouring. His zeal for the task he had undertaken, led 

 him with two friends, one of whom was Mr. John 

 Hancock — perhaps the best ornithologist now living — to 

 visit Norway and explore its coasts in quest of those 

 many British birds, of the nidification of which nothing 

 was known except that it was not carried on in these is- 

 lands. This expedition in 1833 to a country hitherto so little 

 explored by Englishmen as Norway, was no small proof 

 of enterprise, and, with the simultaneous attempt, with a 

 like intent, made in Iceland by Mr. G. C. Atkinson, bore 

 good fruit, not merely in its immediate results, but even 

 long afterwards ; for it was doubtless the example of these 

 gentlemen^ that prompted the subsequent exertions of 

 Wolley, Hudleston, Salrin, Tristram, and others ; while 

 the successes in recent years of Alston, Harvie Brown, 

 Danford, and Seebohm, may also be traced to the 

 same cause. The influence has even extended to the 

 United States, as witness the explorations conducted by 

 Kennicott, Macfarlane, and their indefatigable successors 

 under the authority of the Smithsonian Institution. The 

 result has been that the true home of almost every species 

 of bird which inhabits Europe at any time of the year 

 has been discovered, and the same with a large number 

 of those which inhabit North America, and thus, of 

 course, has accrued a great gain to ornithology. 



Mr. Hewitson, however, did not pretend to foresee 

 this sequel to his enterprise and that of his friends. His 

 aim was far humbler. In his own words : — 



" However unimportant in itself the branch of natural 

 history which I have attempted to elucidate, the beautiful 

 and varied objects which compose it are amongst the first 

 to excite the imagination and call forth in boyhood those 

 feelings, that love for nature, which are inherent in us 

 all ; and however the cares or the pleasures of after life 

 may have erased those earlier feelings, there are few who 

 have not one day derived pleasurable emotions from 

 their contemplation, and who do not remember those 

 joyous times when, at the first breaking loose from 

 school, they have hastened to the wood and the hedge- 

 row in search of their painted prize." 



The "British Oology" was soon out of print and a 

 second edition was called for, which, under the title of 

 " Coloured Illustrations of the Eggs of British Birds," 

 was begun in 1842 (when the author took the opportunity 

 of publishing a Supplement to his former issue) and 

 finished in 1846, while in 1853 — only eleven years later — 

 a third edition was demanded. This, completed in 1856, 

 remains unquestionably the best publication on the sub- 

 ject ; for, though the plates were not so carefully coloured 

 as in the second edition, the number of species repre- 

 sented, chiefly owing to the discoveries of Wolley, was 

 largely increased. But in the meanwhile Hewitson's 

 taste had turned towards another department. He had 

 begun with his usual energy that wonderful collection of 

 diurnal Lepidoptera, and v/orks in illustration of that 

 group, with which his name will be always associated, 

 and by which it will probably be most widely known. 

 His villa at Oatlands, with its beautiful view and charm- 

 ing garden, was a sight not to be forgotten, to say 

 nothing of the glorious contents of his cabinets. Here he 

 passed the last twenty-five years of his life, or more ; 

 seldom leaving home, always glad to welcome a visitor 

 whose tastes agreed with his own, and occasionally re- 

 turning to his old " flame," when he could thereby assist 

 a friend — as witness some of the plates in the earlier 

 volumes of The Ibis. The promulgation and subsequent 

 prevalence of the doctrines of evolution, however, greatly 

 disturbed him ; and perhaps the only thing that ruffled 

 his temper was to hear that one naturalist after another 

 had embraced what to him seemed a pestilent heresy. 



^ It is fair to mention that in 1830 Hoy began a series of tours into the 

 Netherlands with the same object, and in 1831 Salmon made an egg-collecting 

 voyage to Orkney and Shetland, but the places they visited bore no com- 

 parison in remoteness and difficulty of travelling to those above-mentioned. 



