AUGUST 6. 1 903]' 



NATURE 



333 



barren stony tracts, with highly inclined slabs of rock and 

 a fring^e of fallen blocks, call to mind descriptions of kopjes. 



Prof. Watts, in an interesting essay {Geographical 

 Journal, June), shows clearly that here we have the 

 " veritable peaks and aretes " of a mountain system, formed 

 of slates, hornstones, and agglomerates, with intruded 

 syenites and granites, which jut out from a thick covering 

 of Triassic marls, with basement breccias and sandstones. 



Pre-Cambrian in age, these rocks have been subjected to 

 various earth-movements, producing cleavage and jointing, 

 and such intense induration that they appear to be equally 

 strong, and the structures probably were impressed upon 

 them in Cambrian times. Be this as it may, Prof. Watts 

 concludes that they must have formed a mountainous tract 

 in Old Red Sandstone times, and that then the mass was 

 ut up by rapid streams into fiord-like valleys with ever- 

 -harpening ridges. Some features are indicative of marine 

 .iction, and it is probable that these were formed when the 

 area was submerged in Lower Carboniferous times, and 

 the ridges appeared as islands. After re-elevation in 

 Permian times, subaerial waste contributed the materials of 

 the breccias, and the conditions led on to those of the Trias, 

 when salt-lake and desert, akin to the features of the Great 

 Salt Lake and of Baluchistan, characterised the scene. The 

 landscape which had been blocked out in Old Red Sandstone 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Camdridgb.— Mr. Howard Marsh, surgeon to St. 

 Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and formerly professor 

 of pathology and surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons 

 of EnglAnd, has been elected to the professorship of surgery, 

 i which has been vacant since the death of Sir G. M. 

 Humphry, F.R.S. . . . < . : . 



Prof. Ewing,. F.R.S., has sent in his resignation of the 

 chair of mechanism and applied mechanics, to take effect on 

 September 30.; 



Mr. C. <E. Inglis, King's, and Mr. A. H. Peake, St. 

 John's, have been appointed demonstrators in the engineer- 

 ing department.- ■ 



Mr. W. EX Hartley, Trinity, has been appointed assistant 

 observer at the observatory, vice Mr. A. Graham, retired. 



Park, Ci 



iwood Fureit. Crags uf Charnian Rock rising : 

 (From the Geographical Journal.') 



times, and modified in the Carboniferous period, was now 

 subjected to much weathering, and ultimately the thick 

 deposits of Keuper Marl buried up many, if not all, of the 

 summits, to be partially revealed again by later denuda- 

 tion. Not until the Glacial period is there any positive 

 evidence of the subsequent exposure of the ancient rocks, 

 but blocks from the higher summits do appear in the 

 Boulder-clay of the neighbourhood. 



Of the development of the present features Prof. Watts 

 gives an interesting sketch. The Trias appears to have 

 filled fiords which have been revealed by the present streams, 

 and although they have deepened and altered the character 

 of the older rocks when they e.Kcavated to them, the main 

 outlines of the old scenery, uncovered by the denudation of 

 the Keuper Marls, belong to the original Triassic land- 

 scape. As he points out, the granite of Mount Sorrel, when 

 unbared for quarrying, shows often a smoothed and terraced 

 surface, which was at first attributed to glaciation. More 

 recently these surfaces have been found to extend beneath 

 coverings of Keuper Marl, and the evidence is conclusive 

 that the rounding and terracing must have been due to 

 wind-erosion in the Triassic deserts before the peaks were 

 buried under the Keuper Marl. H. B. W. 



NO. 1762, VOL. 68] 



The eleventh summer meeting of university extension 

 students was opeaed. last Saturday at Oxford, when the 

 United States Ambassador, Mr. Choate, delivered the in- 

 augural address,, taking for his subject American university 

 education. After describing how Harvard was founded in 

 .1636, and. referring to the rise of the other older universities 

 in, the United States, such as Yale and 

 Columbia, Mr. Choate explained that it 

 was found at the beginning of last 

 century that, if American universities 

 were to hold their own, they must 

 greatly increase their numbers, change 

 their methods, and assume new and 

 closer relations with the people. At 

 that time there were only twenty-six 

 colleges and universities in the whole 

 territory of the United States, and many 

 of these were in an undeveloped state. 

 They are now numbered by hundreds, 

 many of them richly endowed, and most 

 of them furnishing an adequate train- 

 ing, adapted to qualify youths for busi- 

 ness and for any duty to which they 

 may be called. These new colleges are 

 not all on the same model, but afford 

 a wide choice of courses of study to suit 

 the varied necessities of a diversified 

 community. With the exception of a 

 few of the older States which are already 

 well provided with them by private 

 means, each State in the Union has, by 

 I he use of public funds and lands, 

 created a State university ; and it has 

 been the ambition of several of their 

 multi-millionaires to create universities 

 by the generous application of portions 

 of their fortunes. By this means 

 powerful institutions of learning have 

 been created in a few years. The Uni- 

 versity of Chicago, founded in 1892, and endowed chiefly by 

 the generosity of one man, now numbers more than 3000 

 students. By far the most signal advance in university ex- 

 tension yet made in America is the latest in date — the 

 creation of the Carnegie Institute at Washington — with an 

 endowment of ten million dollars to be devoted absolutely 

 to original research. Another reason for the success of the 

 efforts to improve university education in the United States 

 was brought out by Mr. Choate, who made it clear that 

 the work of the universities, colleges, and technical schools 

 rests on the broad and firm foundation of the common 

 schools, which from the beginning have been the peculiar 

 care of the people, and that educational authorities in 

 America adhere rigidly to the theory that special study 

 for professional or business life should be postponed until 

 a broad and general education has developed the faculties 

 and character. Referring to the Rhodes scholarship scheme, 

 Mr. Choate remarked that it provides that henceforth there 

 shall at all times be at Oxford 100 American youths selected 

 from all the States, there to receive the best fruits of her 

 nurture and instruction. " And now would not some rich 

 American respond to Mr. Rhodes 's challenge, and forthwith 

 in his lifetime make a similar and equal provision for 100 



Triassic ground. 



