22 



NATURE 



{May I, 1879 



yet they cannot naturally be moral. Thus, e.g., f elf -interest is 

 all in all with animals, but it can never lapse into selfishness, 

 which is the (-(JWJfwaj- abuse of self-interest. We "punish" a 

 dog, but we never look upon it as a criminal. So, too, no 

 animal can ever act unjustly towards another, because it 

 cannot be conscious either of justice or injustice. The ab- 

 stract conceptions of righteousness and justice are only 

 applicable to acts done under a sense of righteousness and 

 justice. The same remark applies to personal immoralities ; 

 to that no animal can be immoral. That animals cannot 

 entertain abstract ideas is not at all surprising, seeing how slow 

 children are to do the same. A somewhat grotesque illustration 

 will show this. A class of boys was asked what conscience was. 

 None could explain it, so the teacher defined it as "something 

 within you that tells you when you have done wrong." A boy 

 at once exclaimed it was a stomach-ache. On inquiry it turned 

 out that he had stolen and eaten some unripe fruit, and doubtless 

 felt tiit remorse of conscience accordingly ! If, then, my former 

 position be qunlified, I would restate it as corrected by the cases 

 recorded as follows : — Animals reason as we do, but always in 

 connection with concrete phenomena whether immediately appre- 

 hended by the senses, or present to consciousness through 

 memory ; but like children they are slow to perceive the sugges- 

 tivenes s of things. They have, morever, no power of conceiv- 

 ing truly abstract ideas. Hence they cannot be self-conscious, 

 cannot conceive of God, and can'neither be moral nor immoral, 

 but are simply non-moral automata. On the other hand, that 

 which rescues man from being an automaton pure and simple, is 

 his power of conceiving of ab-tract ideas, which enables him to 

 be self conscious ; consequently he can conceive of a personal, 

 i.e. self-conscious Deity, so that he at once becomes a responsible 

 being, and can be positively moral or immoral. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE 



At a recent meeting of the governors of Owens College, 

 Manchester, the Committee on the proposed University charter 

 presented a report. It appears that " negotiations have been 

 actively carried on with the Council of the Yorkshire College, 

 Leeds, partly by letter and partly by means of interviews be- 

 tween members of the respective committees. The suggestions 

 agreed to by the Council of the Yorkshire College, Leeds, pro- 

 vide that the Owens College shall be nampd in the charter 

 establishing the University as the first colleije in it; that the 

 president and the principal of the Owens C^ Ue^ce shall be the 

 first chancellor and vice-chancellor of the new University ; 

 that its locus shall be Manchester ; and that in the system of 

 proportionate representation proposed for the governing and the 

 executive bodies of the University, the Owens College shall in 

 either case begin with the maximum number of representatives 

 allowed by the scheme." To obviate objection to a local name, 

 that of Victoria University is suggested. The report and draft 

 memorial were approved of, and the Committee were requested 

 to make arrantrenients for the presentation of the memorial to 

 the Lord President of the Privy Council at as early a date as 

 possible, and for carrying out the other suggestions of the report, 

 which was passed. , 



The British Medical Association are getting up a memorial 

 to the House of Commons urging the immediate institution at 

 Oxford of a thorough medical curriculum, on the same basis as 

 the medical schools of other English towns, in the following 

 subjects at least : — Human anatomy, physiology of man, gene- 

 ral pathology, materia medica, clinical medicine and surgery 

 for beginners. State medicine, including jurisprudence and 

 public health. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



' American Journal of Science and Arts, April. — An opening 

 obituary notice of the distinguished botanist. Dr. Jacob Bigelow, 

 who died in January, aged 92, is here followed by a note in 

 which Prof. Marsh traces the connection between the two widely 

 divergent forms of vertebrse of the toothed birds Ichthyornis and 

 IJesperornis. In the former the articulation of the centrum is 

 cup-shaped ; in the latter the ends of the centrum are saddle- 

 shaped, as in ordinary birds. The third cervical vertebra of 

 Ichthyornis, however, has a transition form, affording a ready 

 solution of the development of the modern avian vertebra from 



the fish-like. The order of development of vertebrse seems this : 

 Biconcave vertebra (fishes and amphibians), plane vertebroe 

 (mammals), cupand-ball vertebrae (reptiles), saddle vertebra: 

 (birds). — The doitble stars discovered by Mr. Alvan G. Clark, 

 which (except Sirius) have not been brought to the attention of 

 astronomers generally, are the subject of a paper by Mr. Burn- 

 ham. — Interesting details are furnished by Prof. Church of 

 underground temperatures in the Comstock lode in Nevada, 

 where are, apparently, the hottest mines in the world. (The 

 rock in the lower levels seems to have a pretty uniform tempera- 

 ture of 130° F.) — Prof. Lesquereux contributes a review of 

 Count Saporta's valuable work on the plants of the world before 

 man, taking occasion to compare the essential characters of cer- 

 tain tertiary groups of the North American continent, in order 

 to determine some points still under discussion as to their age.- — 

 Mr. Palsinger indicates a method of estimating the thickness of 

 Young's reversing layer ; and among other subjects dealt with 

 are, the lower jaw of Loxolophodon and the presence of chlorine 

 in scapolites, 



Journal of the Franklin Institute, April. — We note here the 

 following : — Reports of the Committee on Science and the Arts, 

 on Ainsworth's automatic switch for railroads, and a machine for 

 treating flax, hemp, &c. — Tests of a Baldwin locomotive, by 

 Mr. Hill. — The Franklin Institute standard screw thread. — The 

 Butler mine fire cut off, by Mr. Drinker. In the course of in- 

 vestigations described in this last paper, Mr. Drinker thought it 

 established that coal in situ cannot be burned en masse, but that 

 the w alls of carbonaceous slaty rock inclosing solid coal can be 

 burned or calcined in situ. The mining engineers who discussed 

 his paper seemed generally to be of opinion that the slates in the 

 old fire were not actually burned, but that the carbonaceous 

 matter in them w as rather subjected to a process of distillation. 



The fornal de Sciencias mathematicas physicas e naturaes (No. 

 xxiv. , December, 1878) contains the following papers: — On the 

 oblique projection of a circle, by L. P. da Motta Pegado. — Con- 

 tributiones ad floram mycologicam lusitanicam, by F. de Thue- 

 men. — Ornithological notes, by J. V. Barboza du Socage. — On 

 the birds of the Portuguese possessions in West Africa (continua- 

 tion), by the same. — On electrical condensation and the con- 

 densing force, by A. A. de Pina Vidal. — On a new densimeter, 

 by Virgilio Machado. 



The quarterly Revue des Sciences naturelles (tome yii. No. 4) 

 contains the following original papers : — Morphological researches 

 on the family of Graminece, by D. A. Gordon.— Note on the 

 genital organs and the propagation of some Limacidce, by S. 

 Jourdain. — Observations on the destruction and the development 

 of the ovigerous capsule oi Blatta orientalis, by G. Duchamp. — 

 Catalogue of the land and river molluscs of the Ilerault depart- 

 ment, by E. Dubrueil (continuation). — Note on the soil of Mont- 

 pellier, by P. de Rouville. — Note on the Pyrenees of the Aude, 

 by M. Leymerie. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 

 London 



Royal Society, March 6. — " On the Characters of the Pelvis 

 in the Mammalia, and the Conclusions respecting the Origin of 

 Mammals which may be iiased on them." By Prof. Huxley, 

 Sec. R.S., Professor of Natural History in the Royal School of 

 Mines. 



In the course of the following observations upon the typical 

 characters and the modifications of the pelvis in the mammalia, 

 it will be convenient to refer to certain straight lines, which may 

 be drawn through anatomically definable regions of the pelvis, 

 as axes. Of these I shall term a longitudinal l-ue traversing the 

 centre of the sacral vertebrae, the sacral axis ; a second, drawn 

 along the ilium, dorso-ventrally, through the middle of the 

 sacral articulation and the centre of the acetabulum, will be 

 termed the iliac axis ; a third, passing through the junctions of 

 the pubis and ischium above and below the obturator foramen, 

 will be the obturator axis ; while a fourth, traversing the union 

 of the ilium, in front with the pubis, and behind with the 

 ischium, will be the iliofectineal axis. 



The least modified form of mammalian pelvis is to be seen, as 

 might be expected, in the Monotremes, but there is a great 

 difference between Ornithorhynchus and Echidna in this respect, 

 the former .being much less characteristically mammalian than 

 the latter. 



The distinctive features of the mammalian pelvis have been 



