July 31, 1890] 



NATURE 



327 



The National Association for the Promotion of Technical 

 ind Secondary Education has issued its third annual report. It 

 ^peaks of the past year as the most eventful one of its existence, 

 Mj far as the actual realization of the objects of the Association 

 are concerned. The report will be of great interest to anyone 

 who may wish to obtain a general view of the progress which 



^ being made towards the establishment of a proper national 



ystem of technical and secondary education. 



Attempts have been made in Parliament this week to secure 

 ;hat the money to be raised from the new tax on spirits shall 

 be applied in Scotland to the establishment of a perfectly free 

 system of elementary education. The Government declines to 

 accept the proposal, which has, therefore, for the present been 

 rejected. On Tuesday evening Mr. Goschen said the matter 

 had been spoken of as a small one, but he thought the decision 

 whether or not the standards above the compulsory standards as 

 well as the compulsory standards themselves should be freed 

 was by no means a very small question. The argument had 

 been put forward that the Government would be justified in 

 freeing parents from the duty (which hon. members now entirely 

 discarded) of educating or contributing to the education of their 

 children. They had relieved parents from that duty where the 

 State had enacted compulsion, but the Government were 

 not prepared to sanction the principle that beyond the 

 compulsory standards education must necessarily be free. 

 Mr. Mundella strongly supported the scheme. He pointed out 

 that the compulsory standard varied in different districts from 

 the third to the sixth. The compulsory standard had been fixed 

 as a minimum, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer would tend 

 to stereotype it, and in many places make it the maximum. 

 Children were passing out of school at an earlier age year by 

 year. In other countries the standard was not one of class, but 

 of age. In Scotland children were passing the fifth standard as 

 early as lo or 1 1 years old. The payment of fees had been a 

 great hindrance to the attendance of children at schools. That 

 was why they were dealing with the question now. No doubt 

 the child's wages were a great temptation, but the fee might 

 just make the difference to a poor parent in deciding whether to 

 keep his child at school or not. The present system was a great 

 hardship on precocious children who passed the fifth standard at 

 an early age. 



The Board of Agriculture announce that they have received 

 information reporting the presence of the Hessian fly in the 

 counties of Lincoln, Suffolk, and Herts slightly, and badly near 

 Errol, in Perthshire. Owing to the twisted condition of much 

 of the corn, it is more than usually difficult to detect the presence 

 of the insect. Information is being prepared, and will at once 

 be circulated by the Board. 



The returns presented to the Middlesex County Council by 

 the various inspectors under the muzzling order show that during 

 ilie quarter ending June last five dogs were seized with rabies in 

 t!ie county, as against seven in the previous quarter. But for 

 the number of cases of rabies the Board of Agriculture would 

 have been asked to withdraw the order. During the same 

 period 526 dogs were seized, 87 of which were claimed and the 

 remainder slaughtered. These figures compare with 1039, 108, 

 and 946 respectively for the March quarter. The total number 

 of dogs seized in the year was 3250, of which 488 were claimed 

 and 2634 slaughtered. In the same period there were 49 cases 

 of rabies, as against 22 in the previous year. 



The trustees of the South African Museum, in their Report 

 for the year ended December 31, 1889, say that in the course of 

 tills period valuable assistance was rendered in the palaeonto- 

 ' ,'ical section by Prof. H. G. Seeley, F.R.S., who, during his 



lef visit to the colony, examined the South African fossils in 

 NO. 1083, VOL. 42] 



the Museum, and determined and labelled a considerable number 

 of them. The trustees were glad to learn that Prof. Seeley dis- 

 covered in the Museum series an apparently new genus, and they 

 had much pleasure in intrusting to his care some of the most 

 interesting specimens for further investigation in England. 



We learn from the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 

 that, through the cordial co-operation of the officers of the New 

 York State Fish Commission, and the great personal interest of 

 its President, Mr. Eugene Blackford, the Brooklyn Institute has 

 been enabled to open a sea-side laboratory for teaching and 

 research in zoology and botany, under the direction of Dr. 

 Bashford Dean. The laboratory is located at Cold Spring 

 Harbour, Long Island, 32 miles from New York, reached by 

 the Long Island Railway. The session opened on July 7, and 

 was to extend over eight weeks ; the fee is 24 dollars. The 

 location is described as a capital one, and an extensive corps of 

 lecturers on special subjects has been secured, those on the 

 botanical side being Dr. W. G. Farlow, Dr. N. L. Britton, and 

 Prof. Byron D. Halsted. 



The death is announced of Dr. Alexander von Bunge, the 

 veteran Professor of Botany at the University of Dorpat, at the 

 age of 87. Dr. von Bunge was engaged, in the year 1830, in a 

 scientific expedition in China, and subsequently in Khorassan 

 and Afghanistan. His speciality of recent years was the flora 

 of Russia and of Northern Asia. He was a foreign member of 

 the Linnean Society of London. 



Shocks of earthquake have lately been felt in different parts 

 of Austria-Hungary. On July 23 two violent though short shocks 

 took place in the Muehl district, in Upper Austria, and on July 

 25 a violent shock occurred in the valley of the Tscherna, in 

 Moravia. A telegram received at Budapest from Mehadja on 

 July 25 announced that two violent shocks of earthquake had 

 been felt at the Hercules Baths, near that place, at half-past 

 II on the previous night. The direction of the disturbance was 

 from east to west. 



The Paris Museum of Natural History received recently from 

 M. J. Bretonniere an interesting sample of limestone (from the 

 suburbs of the town of Constantine in Algeria) in which there 

 are a number of excavations, due apparently to HelicidiS. M. 

 Stanislas Meunier thinks that land-snails are enabled to penetrate 

 the rock through the agency of the siliceous particles which were 

 shown by Hancock in 1848 to be the instruments used for similar 

 work by some marine moUusks. 



In his recent thesis on the influence of the sea-shore on leaves 

 M. Pierre Lesage shows by conclusive evidence that a marine, 

 habitat leads to a thickening of the leaves. The palissade-cells 

 are more numerous and larger than in the leaves of the same 

 plants grown inland. Apparently the sea-salt is the cause of this 

 alteration, as plants cultivated in artificially salted soil yield 

 thicker leaves. The observations of M. Lesage bear on some 

 ninety species of plants which are in their natural state found 

 near the sea (in Brittany) as well as inland. 



An excellent paper on the Peabody Museum of American 

 Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, U.S., by Frederick 

 W. Putnam, has been reprinted from the Proceedings of the 

 American Antiquarian Society, October 23, 1889. Mr. Putnam, 

 dealing with the problems suggested by the collections of the 

 Museum, ihinks that the following are the elements to be taken 

 into consideration in any endeavour to trace the present North 

 American tribes and nations back to their origin. First, small 

 oval-headed Palaeolithic man. Second, the long-headed Eskimo. 

 Third, the long-headed people south of the Eskimo. Fourth, 

 the short-headed race of the south-west. Fifth, the Carib 

 element of the south-east. All these elements, Mr. Putnam 



