October 20, 



NATURE 



611 



foundation, he observed that relatively little practical instruction 

 can be obtained from lectures alone, and that their utility is 

 greatly increased by a course of practical work. The drawing 

 office is an essential adjunct to academic instruction ; engineer- 

 ing is a high art, the art of applying the great sources of power 

 in nature to the use of man, and it is only to be acquired by 

 experience, practice, and observation. The course to be given 

 in municipal engineering will comprise lectures by Mr. R. 

 Middleton, on water works, sewage works, and the like. The 

 lectures on municipal hygiene will give elementary instruction as 

 to the cause of disease, methods of disinfection and bacteriology, 

 and other matters which strictly belong to medicine, but as to 

 which the engineer ought to have information in order that he 

 may be able to design municipal works with intelligence. The 

 Chadwick Laboratory will afford opportunities to the students 

 for practical work in the analysis of air, gas, water, and in other 

 branches of practical chemistry. The trustees have also founded 

 a Chadwick Scholarship, under which the sum of lOo/. will be 

 paid as an honorarium to a practising engineer taking the 

 student as pupil, or as an alternative the sum will be paid to the 

 student to augment the small salary he may receive as an 

 improver. 



A PLEA for increased instruction in geology is put forward by 

 Prof. Logan Lobley in the VLilume of Transactions of the South- 

 Eastern Union of Scientific Societies for 1898. He points out 

 that an elementary knowledge of geology could be given in our 

 secondary schools in part of the time usually allotted for 

 geography, a subject over which much time is worse than wasted 

 in burdening the youthful memory with names and statistics that 

 really mean nothing to the average pupil. At present the place 

 of geology in the early education of the people of this country, 

 whether it be that of the school, the technical college, or the 

 university, is an insignificant one, and unworthy of the general 

 educational importance of the subject. As a remedy. Prof. 

 Lobley proposes that geology should be made an obligatory 

 subject for university pass degrees. He remarks : The great 

 cause of the general absence of scientific teaching in England is 

 the example set by our two ancient Universities in not requiring 

 some knowledge of what are called the natural sciences for the 

 ordinary pass degree. A graduate of either of these two world- 

 renowned seats of learning may leave his Alma Mater, and with 

 honours, and yet be without even an elementary acquaintance 

 with any of these sciences. The consequence is that the great 

 public schools omit science from their obligatory curriculum, and 

 devote their attention to those subjects which are alone required 

 to fit their pupils for obtaining, when at the universities, the 

 pass degree. The practice and the curricula of the public schools 

 again are followed by less important schools, and by the pre- 

 paratory schools, and the standard of education so set up and 

 made fashionable dominates the teaching of schools generally. 

 Hence it is, in a great measure, that in England education in 

 science is so far behind that of Germany, and we look in vain 

 for geology in the curriculum of an ordinary middle-class school — 

 Prof. Lobley is justified in pleading for increased attention to be 

 paid to geology, but considering that in this country the ele- 

 mentary principles of the subject included under physical 

 geography, which should form the basis of all geographical 

 teaching, are almost entirely neglected in the average middle- 

 class school, there seems little hope at present that geology will 

 find a place in the school curriculum. 



On Friday last Mr. Long, M. P. , President of the Board of 

 Agriculture, performed the ceremony of opening the experi- 

 mental farm of Lledwigan, Anglesey, which is rented and 

 managed by the Agricultural Department of the University 

 College of North Wales, Bangor. This college was the first 

 in the kingdom to apply for and to make use of the grant voted 

 by Parliament for the promotion of agricultural education. The 

 area of the farm taken is 358 acres, and the farm is considered 

 one of the best in the county. The aim of the Agricultural 

 Department is to illustrate experimentally the theoretical teach- 

 ing given at the college. The farm will, therefore, be used as 

 a practisijig school for the in-coUege students, as a permanent 

 experimental station where experiments extending for a.series 

 of years can be made, and also as a dairy school for the counties 

 of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire. The Professor of Agriculture 

 at the Bangor University College will reside at the farm as the 

 head and manager. He will be assisted by a small committee 

 of practical farmers, who will be entrusted with the equipping, 

 stocking, and cropping of the farm, and with the control of the 

 finances. The Board of Agriculture make a special grant of 



NO. 15 I 2, VOL. 58] 



200/. towards the maintenance of the farm as an experimental 

 and educational centre. A capital sum of 4000/. was required 

 for the stocking of the farm. The Drapers' Company have 

 generously made a conditional grant of looo/., and the college 

 hope to secure the remainder in due time. In formally opening 

 the experimental farm Mr. Long remarked that for a long time 

 practical agriculturists had looked with suspicious apprehension, 

 even with something akin to contempt, upon scientific method 

 and procedure, but that feeling had to a large extent dis- 

 appeared, and farmers began to realise that, after all, science 

 meant nothing more than -accurate knowledge of the causes 

 which produced certain results, and that such knowledge could 

 not fail to be of use to those who had to produce the results as 

 a means of earning their living. In 1888, excepting three 

 agricultural colleges, certain scattered science and art classes, 

 and two local schools in Cumberland and Cheshire, nothing was 

 done for agricultural education. In 1889 Parliament gave a 

 grant of 1630/., and of that Bangor College received 200/. In 

 1889 the grant was increased to 2610/., out of which Bangor 

 received 400/. In 1890 Parliament voted 750,000/. to the 

 County Councils to be spent on technical education. The 

 Board of Agriculture thereupon took a new departure and 

 applied the Parliamentary grant to general as distinguished 

 from local projects. The amount of the grant has been in- 

 creased from 2610/. to 6800/., and of this sum 5900/. is paid to 

 collegiate centres. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Entomological Society, October 5.— Mr. R. Trimen, 

 F.R.S., President, in the chair. — The President announced 

 that the late Mrs. Stainton had bequeathed to the Society such 

 entomological works from her husband's library as were not 

 already in its possession. This bequest Was of great importance, 

 and would add to the library a large, number of works, many 

 of which, formerly in the library of J. F. Stephens, were old and 

 now scarce. — Mr. J. J. Walker exibited a black form of Clytus 

 f/iysticns, L. (var. hieroglyphiciis), taken by Mr. Newstead at 

 Chester, where about I per cent, of the specimens were of that 

 variety ; also a black variety of Leiopus nebnlosus, L. , from the 

 New Forest. — Mr. Tutt exhibited an example of Euchloe 

 cardamines, irregularly suffused with black markings, and a 

 series of local varieties of Lepidoptera from Wigtonshire. —Mr. 

 S. Image exhibited a specimen of Acidalia herbariata, taken in 

 Southampton Row. — Prof. Poulton showed and made remarks 

 on specimens of Precis octavia-natalensis and Precis sesamus. 

 These strikingly dissimilar insects had been shown by Mr. G. 

 A. K. Marshall to be seasonal forms of the same species ; from 

 two eggs laid by a female of the first-mentioned (summer) form 

 he had bred one imago resembling the parent, and one which 

 was of the blue sesamus form. — On behalf of Dr. Knaggs, Mr, 

 South exhibited a series of Dicrorhampha, the synonymy of 

 which was discussed by him and Mr. Barrett, D. Jlavidorsana, 

 Knaggs, being shown to be a good species. — Mr. Barrett 

 exhibited and made remarks on specimens of Lozopet a beatri- 

 cella, Wals., from Folkestone, and the allied species. — Mr. 

 Porritt showed examples of Arctia lubricipeda, obtained by 

 continued selection of the parents, and probably the darkest 

 ever bred in this country.— Mr. Adkin exhibited a long series 

 of Taniocampa gothic-i, to show the results of breeding by 

 continued selection, and some remarkable forms of Abraxas 

 grossulariata from Pitcaple. — Mr. F. Merrifield read a paper, 

 illustrated by a large number of specimens, on the colouring 

 of pup« of P. rnachaon and P. napi caused by exposing the 

 pupte to coloured surroundings. The pupjc of both species 

 were found to be modified by the surroundings of the larva, 

 the effect being extremely marked in the case of P. napi. 

 When the larva; of the latter species were kept in a cage half 

 orange-coloured and half black, all but four of the pupae on 

 the roof of the orange- coloured side were green with very little 

 dark spotting, and all the pupae on the roof of the black side were 

 bone-coloured with numerous dark-brown spots. He regarded 

 the phenomenon as protective. The exhibit was discussed by 

 Prof Poulton, who showed a similar series of specimens, and 

 observed that he found the rays near the D line of the spectrum 

 had the greatest influence upon the incipient pupie, the effect 

 diminishing towards either the red or the violet ends. The 

 effect, therefore, appeared to be one of luminosity. Mr. Bateson 



