248 



NATURE 



[October 28, 19 15 



has never been given to it in tliis country as to other 

 branches of botany, and partly because if morphology 

 be conceived in this broader spirit it need not be said 

 that it has no practical bearing. I should not regard 

 it as a serious disability were the study of purely 

 scientific interest only, but this is not the case. 

 When, if ever, we penetrate into the secrets of organ- 

 isation so far as to be able to modify the organism at 

 will (and genetics has advanced in this direction), the 

 practical possibilities become incalculable. 



Probably all of us have reflected on what changes 

 the war may bring to botanical work. It is 

 impossible to forecast this, but I should like to 

 emphasise what my predecessor said in his address 

 last year as to pure science being the root from which 

 applied science must spring. Though results may 

 seem far off, we must not slacken, but redouble our 

 efforts towards the solution of the fundamental 

 problems of the organism. This can be done without 

 any antagonism between pure and applied botany ; 

 indeed, there is every advantage in conducting in- 

 vestigations on plants of economic importance. It 

 would be weir if every botanist made himself reallv 

 familiar with some limited portion of applied botany, 

 so as to be able to give useful assistance and advice 

 at need. The stimulus to investigation would amply 

 repay the time required. Even in continuing to 

 devote ourselves to pure botany we cannot afford to 

 waste time and energy in purposeless work. It is 

 written in "Alice in Wonderland" that "no wise fish 

 goes anywhere without a porpoise." and this might 

 hang as a text in every research laboratory. 



A plant is a very mysterious and wonderful thing, 

 and our business as botanists is to try to understand 

 and explain it as a whole and to avoid being bound 

 by any conventional views of the moment. We have 

 to think of the plant as at once a physico-chemical 

 mechanism and as a living being ; to avoid either 

 treating it as something essentially different from non- 

 living matter or forcibly explaining it by the physics 

 and chemistry of to-day. It is an advantage of the 

 study of causal morphology that it requires us to keep 

 the line between these two crudities, a line that may 

 some day lead us to a causal explanation of the 

 developing plant and the beginnings of a single 

 science of botany. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



London. — The course of six advanced lectures on 

 " Stelar Anatomy in Angiosperms," by Miss E. N. 

 Thomas, University reader in botany, announced to 

 begin at Bedford College on November i, has been 

 postponed until January next. 



Oxford. — On October 26 the honorary degree of 

 D.Sc. was conferred on Mr. Guy A. K. Marshall, 

 director of the Imperial Bureau of Entomology. The 

 Public Orator, in presenting Mr. Marshall, spoke of 

 the great services rendered by him to scientific ento- 

 mology during his residence in South Africa, mention- 

 ing in especial his work on Coleoptera and Lepi- 

 doptera. He also referred in appreciative terms to the 

 valuable researches being carried on under Mr. Mar- 

 shall's direction in the recently established Imperial 

 Bureau of Entomology. 



In moving Congregation for the grant of a pension 

 to Mr. Henry Walters, assistant for forty-five years in 

 the Clarendon Laboratory, Prof. E. B. Elliott made 

 a sympathetic reference to the retirement of Prof. 

 R. B. Clifton, after fifty years of devoted service to 

 the department of physics in the University. 



NO. 2400, VOL. 96] 



Prof. A. H. White has resigned the chair of 

 pathology in the school of the Royal College of Sur- 

 geons in Ireland, after a tenure of seventeen years. 



Dr. Michell Clarke will deliver the Bradshaw lec- 

 ture at the Royal College of Physicians of London 

 on November 2, taking as his subject "Nervous Affec- 

 tions of the Sixth and Seventh Decades of Life " ; the 

 FitzPatrick lectures will be given on November 4 j^.nd 

 9, by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, on "Medicine, Magic, 

 and Religion"; and the Goulstonian lectures by Dr. 

 Gordon Holmes, on November 16, 18, and 23, on 

 "Acute Spinal Lesions, with Special Reference to 

 those of Warfare." 



The arrangements announced in the calendar of the 

 University of Leeds for the current session follow the 

 same general lines of previous years. They are sub- 

 ject to modification in the event of rearrangements 

 being necessitated by circumstances arising in connec- 

 tion with the war. As has become usual in our more 

 modern universities, great prominence is given to the 

 work in applied science and technology. Students 

 may graduate in science and take for their principal 

 subject one of the following branches :- — Mechanical, 

 civil, electrical, mining, or gas engineering; fuel and 

 metallurgy ; agriculture ; colour chemistry and dyeing ; 

 and the chemistry of leather manufacture. Similarly 

 the needs of commerce have been recognised. Students 

 in the department of economics and commerce may 

 take a three years' course for the degree of Bachelor 

 of Commerce, a two years' course for the diploma 

 in commerce, or a one year's course for the diploma 

 in social organisation and public service. Side by side 

 with these courses, designed to meet the special needs 

 of the area served by the University, are others cover- 

 ing completely the requirements of students in arts, 

 science, law, medicine, and so on. Evening classes 

 in many subjects have been arranged and university 

 extension lectures are provided in a miscellany of sub- 

 jects. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 Manchester. 

 Literary and Philosophical Society, October 5.— Prof. 

 S. J. Hickson, president, in the chair. — W. J. Perry : 

 The relationship between the geographical distributions 

 of megalithic monuments and ancient mines. The 

 fact that the distribution of megalithic monu- 

 ments coincides with the centres of ancient 

 mining and coast-lines adjoining pearl-shell fisheries 

 suggests a genetic relationship between the 

 two kinds of activities. The megalithic monu- 

 ments that have been found in various places 

 beyond the limits of the ancient East are the tombs 

 and temples of the mining camps of the settlements 

 engaged in exploiting gold, silver, copper, tin, and 

 precious stones. The search for pearl-shell led the 

 Phoenicians, and their pupils, from the Red Sea and 

 the Persian Gulf to India and Ceylon, to Indonesia 

 and Japan, to the islands of the Pacific, and eventually 

 to America ; and in every spot where they settled to 

 work the mines or collect pearl-shell they planted the 

 germs of the Old World civilisation. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, October 18.— M. Ed. Perrier in 

 the chair.^The President announced the deaths of 

 Gaston Vasseur and Henri Fabre. — Louis Fabry and 

 Henri Blonde! : The identity of the new Comas Sola 

 planet with 193 Ambrosie. This planet proves to be 

 identical with that discovered in 1879 by M. Coggia. — 

 J. Dejust : The use of a Venturi tube for the direct 



