296 



NATURE 



\yan. 26, I 



I was quite unable at first to account for the fact that some 

 drops were frozen while others were not ; it occurred to me later, 

 however, that the drops which reached the ground as pellets of 

 ice had been derived from the topmost branches, while those 

 remaining uncongealed had fallen from the lower ones. 



I based my conclusion on the assumption that the drops from 

 the top of the tree in falling a greater distance, and in travelling 

 more rapidly, than those beneath them, consequently suffered a 

 greater loss of heat by more rapid evaporation, and hence were 

 converted into ice before reaching the ground ; but it seems to 

 me nevertheless a most remarkable thing that such a re-^ult 

 should depend upon so small a difference in altitude (10 ft. at 

 the most), and the atmospheric conditions favourable for the 

 production of such a phenomenon must have been so unusual as 

 to make its recurrence very unlikely. 



I have heard of a railway train becoming coated with ice 

 after travelling through an atmosphere above freezing-point and 

 laden with mist, but we can easily grasp the phenomenon when 

 occurring on so large a scale. 



Cecil Carus-Wilson. 



Bournemouth, January 14. 



" British and Irish Salmonidae." 



Although calling in question statements made by reviewers 

 is eenerally a thankless task, still, when an author believes him- 

 self to have been misquoted as well as erroneously corrected, a 

 deviation from the usual course may sometimes be excusable. 

 Acting under such an impression, and feeling sure that the 

 Editor of Nature, and the reviewer of my "British and 

 Irish Salmonidse," would be equally unwilling to promulgate 

 errors to the public, I must a^k for a small space with 

 reference to the review of my work which appeared in your last 

 issue. 



Purporting to quote a sentence of mine (p. 31) as an example 

 of my "originality in sentence construction," the reviewer has 

 rendered it misleading by omitting five words which I have here 

 re-inserted in italics and within brackets. Alluding to the water 

 containing the recently expressed eggs and milt, he makes me 

 say as follows: — "This is gently stirred with the \\2iiiA.{and then 

 allowed to stand) until the eggs harden, or ' frees ' as it is termed, 

 being a period from one-quarter to three-quarters of an hour, " &c. 

 If newly expressed eggs and milt were thus stirred up from 

 fifteen to forty-five minutes they could not "set," and would 

 therefore have no occasion to "free," as the Americans have 

 termed it, but such misplaced energy in the operator (which I 

 never proposed) would assuredly destroy their vitality. 



The reviewer says, " the description in the text of the mode of 

 packing eggs which has been perfected at Howietoun seems to 

 be erroneous, . . . while in a quotation in a footnote the correct 

 account is given — namely, that the ova lie in direct contact with 

 the damp moss, and are covered by another layer of the same, 

 the muslin being only used in order that the layer of moss may 

 be lifted and moved." The reviewer has here confused the text, 

 or general principles as laid down, with the note (p. 42) of the 

 mode pursued at Howietoun, which he asserts to be "the 

 correct account " ; but had he read the quotation to the end he 

 would have seen that, besides the plan adopted at Howietoun 

 for packing eggs going long distances when no muslin is used, a 

 second mode is employed for those going lesser Journeys, and 

 was described as follows: "For shorter journeys eggs are 

 thrown off the frames on to swans' down, which takes little 

 more than half the time, and greatly facilitates the unj^acking at 

 the end of the journey." 



The reviewer observes that "no reference is given to any 

 work where the correct description of 6". namaycus/t as a char 

 can be found." If this remark is seriously made under the im- 

 pression that the fish is not a char or a Salvelinus, I would 

 refer among others to Salvelinus namaycush, Jordan, Bull. 16, 

 U.S. Mus. 1883, p. 317; Bean, "Fish Com. Report," 1884, 

 p. 1042; Garman on the "American Salmon and Trout," 

 Boston, 1885, p. 5 ; to Brown Goode in his "Game Fishes of 

 the United States," and his more recently published account in 

 the "Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States," 

 1884, p. 485, &c. In this last work he observed of the namaycush 

 that " the Lake trout is in fact a member of the same group of 

 the salmon family with the chars," while I referred to his 

 statements at p. 249. 



Francis Day. 

 Cheltenham, January 14. 



PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND THE WOOLWICH 



LXA MINA TIONS. 

 T N June 1884 we called the attention of those who are 

 interested in science and in the science-teaching in 

 otir public schools to some new regulations for admission 

 to Sandhurst which had lately been announced, and to 

 efforts that had been made by the President of the 

 Royal Society, and others, to induce the authorities at 

 the War OfBce to reconsider their scheme, which ap- 

 peared likely to seriously handicap those public schools 

 in which real attention to science is given in the regular 

 school work, and to be unjust to young men of scientific 

 ability. 



Whilst we wrote, those regulations were already under- 

 going revision, and they were subsequently replaced by 

 others in which certain improvements had been made, but 

 in which the mark value of science was still so low as to 

 be likely to do harm. In a second notice of the subject 

 in August of the same year, whilst admitting that im- 

 provements had been effected, we expressed our opinion 

 that even in their new form the regulations would tend 

 to check freedom and progress in education, and act un- 

 favourably on the work of those public schools which 

 have aimed at widening the basis of education by intro- 

 ducing the study of physical science into the regular 

 school work of all, or nearly all, their pupils. 



We regret to add that this view has proved to be, to a 

 considerable degree, correct. We hear, for example, that 

 almost directly after the issue of the amended regulations 

 at least one large school decided to omit all work in 

 science from the instruction given to boys at once upon 

 their deciding to become candidates for Sandhurst. In 

 the interests of the subsequent career of the boys this was, 

 and is still, considered to be almost invariably necessary. 

 And we find that at the last four examinations only about 

 2 per cent, of successful Sandhurst candidates have 

 offered a knowledge of some branch of physical science 

 (" experimental science " in the regulations), whereas 

 formerly the very moderate but much larger proportion of 

 8 per cent, did so. In the case of physical geography and 

 geology the corresponding proportions are 19 per cent, 

 during the four years that preceded the date of our 

 article, and about 8 per cent, during the last two years. 



No doubt the candidates for Sandhurst are not, as a rule, 

 drawn from the class of boys to whom the study of science 

 is particularly attractive, and it is not impossible that to 

 some extent the present regulations for admission to 

 Sandhurst may have had the effect of inducing scien- 

 tific boys to enter more freely for the scientific branches 

 of the army, to which admission is gained through 

 Woolwich. 



In the examinations for Woolwich, science has hitherto 

 met with more liberal treatment than at Sandhurst, and 

 has been taken up by a fair, but not excessive, proportion 

 of the successful candidates, which has lately tended to 

 increase in the case of chemistry and physics. It is 

 therefore with the greatest regret that we learn that 

 new regulations for admission to Woolwich are to 

 come into effect in November, which will be likely 

 to seriously further discourage the teaching of physical 

 science. These regulations correspond pretty closely 

 to those for Sandhurst, which we have previously 

 discussed ; it will be sufficient, therefore, to say that 

 compulsory mathematics, optional mathematics, Latin, 

 P rench, and German, form Class I., have each of them 

 an allotment of 3000 marks ; that Greek, English history, 

 chemistry, physics, physical geography and geology, form 

 a second class, to each of which 2000 marks are allotted ; 

 and that candidates may take all the subjects of Group 

 1,1 or may substitute one subject from Group II. in place 

 of one of those in Group I. 



' They may ,^lso take any or all of Group III., viz. English composition, 

 freehand :ind geometrical drawing, to each of which 500 marks are allotted. 



