272 



NATURE 



[January 23. 1896 



of artificial instead of natural selection further increases the 

 rapidity of the results. 



It must be borne in mind, too, that plants under cultivation 

 are not necessarily grown for successive generations under the 

 same conditions. While the change from the wild state to culti- 

 vation is as slight in some cases as it is profound in others, plants 

 under continued cultivation are frequently subject to a succession 

 of changes of environment as to soil, locality, water, manure, 

 &c. ; and we should therefore, according to well-known laws, 

 expect to obtain a greatly increased number of variations in 

 them. And these variations, as elsewhere, are coupled with a 

 strong hereditary tendency, thus producing many new varieties. 



Lastly, as regards the quotation from Mr. Herbert Spencer's 

 essay, its terms are not at all inimical to natural selection, but 

 apply to it equally well — a remark which, I cannot but feel, also 

 applies to the bulk of Prof. Henslow's work. C. A. B. 



A Remarkable Discharge of Lightning. 



[The following letter was sent to the Royal Society, and has 

 been forwarded to us by tlie Secretary. — En. Nature.] 



I THINK it may interest you to know that an extraordinary 

 flash of lightning was witnessed from this place, this evening, at 

 7.38 p.m. It has been raining in torrents nearly all day long ; 

 the heavens seem heavy and saturated with rain, but we have 

 had no thunder at all. 



Now the undersigned were seated round a table in a room in 

 Fife Street, and only one of us had his eyes turned in the direc- 

 tion of the door, which was open. Suddenly he exclaimed, 

 " Good heavens ! just look at that lightning ; it's standing still ! " 



All of us promptly went to the door, whence we witnessed a 

 truly extraordinary sight in the shape of three ribbons of a 

 greenish white lightning, which hung in the sky, motionless, for 

 what must have been fifteen to twenty seconds. It seemed to 

 be a long way off (in a north-westerly direction), as we heard 

 no report of thunder whatever. We put some questions to our 

 Makalaka boy, who said that he had never seen anything like 

 it in all his life. 



There could be no mistake about it — it was as distinct as 

 possible; and it must have lasted fifteen seconds at least (I 

 should say twenty myself). I can refer you (should you desire to 

 know more of me) to John Chumley, Esq., Manager of the 

 Standard Bank of South Africa, Limited, lo Clement's Lane, 

 London, E.G. ; Major W. E. Gilbert, Warleigh Lodge, Upper 

 Tulse Hill ; or John Heal, Esq., Hertford Lodge, Grouch End, 

 Finchley, London, N. Rob. Godlonton. 



The undersigned were witnesses of the stroke of forked 

 lightning described in the letter to you, written by Mr. God- 

 lonton, and consider his description accurate in every detail. 



Ghas. Honey (care of F. A. Purdon, Esq., Buluwayo). 



Otto Bertram (Standard Bank, Buluwayo). 



Rob. Godi.onton (Secretary Matebeleland Printing and 

 Publishing Gompany, Limited, Buluwayo). 



December 2, 1895. 



Lecture Experiments on the Nodes of a Bell. 



I was much interested in the communication from Mr. 

 Osborn on the above subject (see Nature, January 9). For 

 some years I have been in the habit of showing these nodes in 

 the following way. An ordinary glass bell-jar, eight or ten 

 inches high, with a moderately broad, flat, ground edge, is held 

 with the edge upright, and fine sand scattered all over the flat 

 edge. It is comparatively easy to excite the edge with a bow in 

 such a way that the sand will be driven off everywhere except at 

 the four nodes. I have never been able, however, to obtain 

 more than four nodes in this way. 



I have also employed a similar method for showing the nodes 

 of a tuning-fork. If the fork is a moderately large one, it is 

 held horizontally in the hand, and the upper prong is covered 

 with sand. By bowing sharply near the middle and near the 

 root of the prongs, two overtones can usually be obtained, the 

 nodes of which are clearly marked by the sand. 



Gentral School, Manchester. R, L. Taylor. 



THE STATUS OF LONDON UNIVERSITY. 

 pROF. S. P. THOMPSON'S lecture to the Society 

 ■*• of Arts on the 15th Inst, will greatly assist the 



scheme for the reform of the University of London. 



The statistics brought forward by him show how hope- 



NO. 1369, VOL. 53] 



lessly inadequate the equipment of the present University 

 appears when compared with that of almost any other 

 University in the world. It can hardly be believed that 

 while Strassburg receives State aid to the extent of ^44 

 per annum for each student, the University of London 

 actually pays the State ten shillings for each student. As 

 the lecturer remarked, a University which has no pro- 

 fessors, no museums, no laboratories for research, whose 

 library is practically unused and unusable, and whose 

 sole function is to examine, cannot be called a great 

 University, if, indeed, it be rightly entitled to be called 

 a University at all. Limits of space prevent us from 

 reprinting Prof Thompson's paper, but we give, on the 

 following page, a table prepared by him to exhibit the 

 material and financial aspects of different Universities. 

 This -^^information, and Lord Reay's remarks upon the 

 paper, should do much to controvert dialectic denuncia- 

 tions, and to show the true position of London University 

 among the Universities of the world. 



Prof. Thompson considered in succession the points upon 

 which information is given in the different columns of his tabu- 

 lated statement. He showed that not only is the educational 

 position of the existing University entirely anomalous, but the 

 financial position is still more extraordinary. 



In closing the discussion which followed the reading of Prof. 

 Thompson's paper, the Ghairman, Lord Reay, remarked that 

 the statistics which it included could not be too much impressed 

 on the public mind, as an indictment against the country for 

 leaving waste resources unparalleled in the civilised world. He 

 was quite convinced that, if there were in any other country the 

 treasures we had in London, both in the way of museums and 

 libraries, and of men who were prepared to teach, it would not 

 take ten, twelve, or twenty years to bring about the result 

 required ; but that whoever was the director of public instruc- 

 tion in that country would at once say to the Minister that it was 

 his duty to lay on the table of the Legislature a Bill for the 

 establishment of a teaching university. Among the many extra- 

 ordinary symptoms which this controversy had brought to the 

 surface, there was one of a very curious nature. Whenever they 

 read an argument against the creation of such a university they 

 found, either outspoken or in a latent form, this accusation: "Such 

 a scheme will hand us over to the tender mercies of the London 

 teachers." Now to the tender mercies of the teachers higher 

 education was left in all the countries of Europe. He was not 

 yet acquainted with the constitution of the University of Tokio, 

 but he should be much surprised if they found there the slightest 

 jealousy of leaving to the teachers the management of that which 

 they must understand better than others. As a member of the 

 Gowper Gommission, he had been agreeably surprised to find 

 that amongst all those on whose opinion the Gommission 

 set most store, there had been hardly a dissentient 

 voice. In the case of every former report or scheme, 

 those who would have had to put it in operation, and 

 on whose labours its success depended, were in doubt, not about 

 details, but about some leading feature ; but this last scheme 

 had been accepted not only by the teachers in London, but by 

 the staffs of those very provincial schools whose students, they 

 were told, in some questions had not been sufficiently considered. 

 The best answer to the difficulty about external students was 

 that given by Prof. Thompson when he said that learning, not 

 teaching or examining, was the primary essential. That meant 

 that, in a teaching university, the individuality of the teacher 

 should be allowed its full scope, and also that each individual 

 student should be allowed to work for the sake of learning, not 

 for the sake of the examination. There might be as much dif- 

 ference between two internal students as between an internal 

 student and an external, and in the examination the individual 

 character of each student would be allowed for. The external 

 students would not only have the same guarantees of a fair 

 examination as at present, but perhaps even better ; but if 

 further guarantees were wanted, by all means let them be given. 

 The great point was that internal students of London should, 

 at least, have that to which they had a right — a 

 teaching university of their own. It was nothing less 

 than a scandal that London, with a greater population than 

 Scotland, or than many of the countries of Europe, which had 

 two or three universitie , should not have a university of its own. 



