Jmu 12, 1879] 



NATURE 



155 



excentricity of the solar orbit, and its result in producing 

 lunar acceleration." 



With reference to the practicability of reducing the 

 extent of the printed volume of "Greenwich Observa- 

 tions," the report concludes with some of the suggestions 

 that have been made by certain members of the Board. 

 The introduction, it has been suggested, might to some 

 extent be stereotyped. No reduction, it is thought, 

 should be made, in regard to the details of meridional 

 and altazimuth observations. 



To the strong appeal made for extension of the spectro- 

 scopic observation of stars, in reference to their motion in 

 the line of sight, the Astronomer-Royal has given a tacit 

 response by the modification of the S. E. Equatorial, 

 so as to facilitate that extension. "The tendency of 

 external scientific movement," he remarks, " is to give 

 great attention to the phenomena of the solar disk (in 

 which this observatory ought undoubtedly to bear its 

 part). And I personally am most unwilling to recede 

 from the existing course of magnetical and meteorological 

 observations. All these, however, are inferior in im- 

 portance, with regard to the question now before us, to 

 the extent of printing the original details of astronomical 

 observations." 



" The general tendency of these considerations is," the 

 report concludes, " to increase the annual expenses of 

 the Observatory. And so it has been, almost continuously, 

 for the last forty-two years. The annual ordinary ex- 

 penses are now between two and a half and three times as 

 great as in my first years at the Royal Observatory. I 

 would fain flatter myself that the value of its results has 

 increased in a greater degree." 



NATURAL SCIENCE DEGREES AT OXFORD 



■p\R. ODLING, replying in the Times to Canon 

 -•-^ Liddon's letter, referred to in Nature, vol. xx. 

 p. 132, maintains that unless some little Greek is con- 

 sidered absolutely essential to a liberal education, there 

 can be no ground for refusing a degree in arts to students 

 who, though unacquainted with Greek, are familiar with 

 such like studies as geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy, 

 which equally with grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric, 

 have been counted from time immemorial among the 

 hberal arts. And assuming the compulsory modicum of 

 Greek now brought up by mathematical and natural 

 science students to be a non-essential element of their 

 liberal education, as certified to by a degree in arts, how 

 can a degree in arts be hereafter refused to advanced 

 students of either of these subjects who, while still bringing 

 up Latin, shall in future offer a considerable amount of 

 German, together with some amount of both mathematics 

 and natural science as a substitute for the present 

 modicum of Greek ? 



Dr. Odling, rather than degrade science by awarding 

 its graduates an inferior degree, seems disposed to retain 

 the little modicum of Greek at present required for a 

 pass ; he would have been contented with Canon Liddon 

 f^the existing arrangements had been undisturbed. His 

 objection is not to the incubus of Greek, but to the slur 

 about to be put on natural science. 



Canon Liddon replies that, in speaking of the educa- 

 tional advantages of Greek, he was in part thinking of the 

 mimmum. He believes Dr. Odling mistaken in thinking 

 that the new degree was intended as anything but an 

 honourable distinction. No one could suppose, he be- 

 lieves, that the majority of the present Council could be 

 unfriendly to physical science. The statute appeared to 

 him to be drawn almost exclusively in the interests of 

 natural science students, and with a view to relieving 

 them of an uncongenial study. 



In a subsequent letter Dr. Odling quotes a passage 

 from a lecture delivered by Dr. Whewell some twenty-five 



years ago. In the course of showing that the great con- 

 tributions made to intellectual education by Greece, 

 Rome, and modern Europe in succession have been 

 geometry, jurisprudence, and physical science respectively, 

 he wrote as follows : — 



" Our intellectual education now, to be worthy of the 

 time, ought to include in its compass elements contributed 

 to it by every one of the great epochs of mental energy 

 which the world has seen. ... A mind well disciplined 

 in elementary geometry and in general jurisprudence 

 would be as well prepared as mere discipline can make a 

 mind for most trains of human speculation and reasoning. 

 . . . But however perfectly the habits of deduction may 

 be taught by these studies, such teaching cannot, accord- 

 ing to the enlarged views of modem times, compose a 

 complete intellectual culture. ... As the best sciences 

 which the ancient world framed supplied the best elements 

 of intellectual education up to modern times, so the grand 

 step by which, in modern times, science has sprung up 

 into a magnitude and majesty far superior to her ancient 

 dimensions should exercise its influence upon modern 

 education, and contribute its proper result to modern 

 intellectual culture." 



Happily the further discussion has been postponed 

 until Michaelmas Term; by that time it is hoped that 

 some method will be found by which natural science will 

 be honoured without hurting the feelings of any one. 

 We may state that the Council of the Cambridge Senate 

 recommend to the Commissioners that power be given in 

 the statute to recommend degrees in science (13. Sc, 

 M.Sc, D.Sc). 



ON SOME MARINE ALG^^ 



THE successor of Harvey in the Chair of Botany in 

 the University of Dublin has taken, as his eminent 

 predecessor did, the alga for the principal object of his 

 study. In 1877 Dr. E. P. Wright published in the Trans- 

 actions (vol. xxvi. Science) of the Royal Irish Academy 

 two memoirs, one on a green unicellular alga (Chlorochy- 

 irium Cohnii) parasitic in the mucous tubes of some 

 diatoms, in Polysiphotiia urceolata, and in Calothrix con- 

 fervicola; the other on a parasite deprived of chlorophyll 

 (Rhizophydium Dicksonii), which develops itself in the 

 cells of an Ectocarpus, and which has been taken, at least 

 in one case (E. crinitus, Harv.), for the fruit of an Ecto- 

 carpus. This present year the Transactions of the same 

 Academy contain two additional memoirs by the same 

 author, which are accompanied by three coloured plates 

 drawn by Tuffen West. The latter memoirs seem to me 

 to be conceived in a spirit, and executed after a manner, 

 which one does not always meet with in the writings of 

 the British algologists. Dr. Wright has studied the 

 living plants, an innovation on which he cannot be too 

 much congratulated. One would only wish that his exact 

 and minute observations on the development of organs, a 

 subject in which he has shown himself at home, had been 

 joined to an experimental determination of their functions, 

 a determination which morphology by itself is powerless to- 

 declare to us. It is easy to prove this latter statement 

 by a few instances taken from authors whose abilities have 

 been placed beyond all doubt. Thus it has been said over 

 and over again — Naegeli himself believes it (" Algen- 

 systeme," p. 134, PI. i, Fig. 34; 6) — that the heterocysts of 

 the Nostocs are reproductive bodies, while experiments 

 the most easily made prove that they are nothing of the 

 sort. Cramer (" Phys. syst. Untersuch. iiber die Cera- 

 micen," Heft i, p. 125) has mistaken the antheridia of 

 Bonnemaisonia for young cystocarps. Dr. Wright has, 

 as we will show further on, been himself the victim of a 

 similar error. Morphology is not like the spear of 

 Achilles ; it does not heal the wounds which it makes. 

 Criffithsia setacea is a pretty, red alga, well known to 



' From the French of Ed. Bornet. 



