April 17, 1919] 



NATURE 



127 



to take part in South African warfare (the fact 

 that he did so twice with conspicuous success and 

 usefulness, both as officer and negotiator-inter- 

 preter, renders more fatuous than ever the 

 attempt of Mr. H. J, Tennant, then Under- 

 Secretary for War, and Lord Kitchener to deter 

 him from going out to German East Africa in 

 1914). After the second Matebele War was over 

 Selous and his wife returned to England and made 

 their home in Surrey. Although — according to his 

 biographer — Selous was treated shabbily by Cecil 

 Rhodes and the Chartered Company, other South 

 Africans endeavoured in some way to recompense 

 him for his noteworthy services to British South 

 Africa ; so that with the remains of the capital he 

 had put together during his many years of 

 elephant-hunting, book-writing, and lecturing, he 

 had by 1897 acquired a modest competence; 

 enough to permit of his living quietly in Englaind 

 and making hunting trips and egg-collecting 

 journeys in America, Asia Minor, and East Africa. 



He was not made use of by Mr. Chamberlain 

 or the Colonial Office in any advisory capacity 

 because, it is said, of his plain speaking over the 

 Boer War, mainly as to the causes that led up to 

 that war ; and despite the fact that he spoke South 

 African Dutch and was immensely respected by 

 both Dutch and British in South Africa, he was 

 not employed by the War Office during the long- 

 drawn-out campaigns of 1899-1902. A lingering 

 prejudice seems to have actuated the War Office 

 in 191 4 in declining his services as a volunteer in 

 any capacity to defend British East Africa in 1914 

 or to attack German East Africa in 191 5. Simi- 

 larly the Colonial Office and War Office — Lord 

 Kitchener being most to blame — refused to employ 

 other great African pioneers in the East African 

 campaign, with the result that during the first 

 twelve months of the war it was characterised by 

 blunders and disasters, nearly all of them due to 

 complete lack of local knowledge — knowledge of 

 the geography, climate, people — which men like 

 Selous and Sir Alfred Sharpe would have been able 

 to supply. 



When Selous was allowed — grudgingly — to go 

 in the middle of 191 5, he did some very effective 

 soldiering until he was killed in an attack at the 

 head of his men on a little German fort at 

 Behobeho on January 4, 1917. (Behobeho is the 

 place where another African pioneer, Alexander 

 Keith Johnston, lies buried — 1879.) 



Selous, between the later 'seventies and 1914, 

 enormously enriched the national collections at 

 the British Museum of Natural History, for which, 

 of course, he received no recognition from a 

 science-ignoring (rather than -disliking) Govern- 

 ment. Readers of Nature will chiefly value Mr. 

 Millais's book for the careful way the author has 

 skimmed the published and private writings of 

 Selous and his correspondents, such as Theodore 

 Roosevelt, for notes on the life-history of the 

 mammals of Africa and North .'Vmerica, and on the 

 bird-life of the eastern Mediterranean countries. 

 H. H. Johnston. 



NO. 2581, VOL. 103] 



PART-TIME EDUCATION IN THE 

 UNITED STATES. 



"T"HE sixty-fourth Congress of the United 

 ■'' States approved on February 23, 1917, an 

 Act to provide for the promotion of vocational 

 education ; for co-operation with the several States 

 of the Union not only in the promotion of such 

 education in agriculture and the trades and indus- 

 tries, but also in the preparation of teachers of 

 vocational subjects ; and to appropriate money and 

 regulate its expenditure. There was thereupon 

 set aside from Federal funds, first to aid in pay- 

 ing the salaries of teachers and directors of agri- 

 cultural subjects sums of money annually, begin- 

 ning with ioo,oooZ. in 1918, and rising by 

 annual increments to 6oo,oooL in 1926; and 

 secondly, a like subsidy to aid in payment of the 

 salaries of the teachers and directors of trade, 

 home economics, and industrial subjects, to be 

 distributed to the several States, as regards agri- 

 cultural subjects according to the ratio which 

 the rural population bears to the total rural popu- 

 lation of the United States, and as regards the 

 other subjects before-named in the proportion 

 which the urban population bears to the total 

 urban population of the United States. The Act 

 further provides funds for the training of teachers 

 and directors of agricultural subjects and also of 

 the other subjects before-mentioned to the extent of 

 ioo,oooi. in 1918, increasing to 200,oooZ. in 

 192 1 and thereafter. 



The Act is mandatory upon all the States of 

 the Union, each of which must appoint either its 

 existing Board of Education or a special State 

 Board comprised of not fewer than three members 

 to administer the Act in co-operation with the 

 Federal Board for Vocational Education, which 

 consists of seven persons — namely, the Secretary 

 of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, the 

 Secretary of Labour, and the U.S. Commissioner 

 of Education, together with three other persons 

 representing the respective interests of agri- 

 culture, manufactures and industry, and labour, 

 and assigns to each of these three a salary of 

 600I. They are to co-operate with the State 

 Boards, and are empowered to make, or cause to 

 be made, studies, investigations, and reports 

 thereon with particular reference to their use in 

 aiding the States in the establishment of voca- 

 tional schools and classes, and in giving instruc- 

 tion in the various vocations — the inquiries to 

 include processes and requirements affecting the 

 various pursuits and those who follow them, as 

 well as problems of administration of vocational 

 schools, and the Act assigns for these purposes 

 the annual sum of 40,000/. 



The several State Boards are to submit plans 

 for giving eflfect to the Act to the Federal Board, 

 which, so far as they are in conformity with its 

 provisions, wilt be approved. All vocational edu- 

 cation aided by Federal funds shall be under 

 public supervision and control, and moneys 

 assigned in aid of the salaries of teachers and 



