December i 8, 1902] 



JVA 1URE 



16: 



We learn fro"n Science that at a r'cent rreeling of lh» 

 National Academy of Sciences, a grant of eight hundred dollars 

 was made from the income of the J. Lawrence Smith bequest 

 to Dr. 0. C. Farrington, of the Field Columbian Museum, 

 Chicago, to enable him to conduct certain investigations upon 

 American meteorites. 



Just as in this country there are gratifying signs that teachers 

 in secondary schools are making earnest efforts to acquaint 

 themselves with scientific methods of teaching the subjects of the 

 school curriculum, so in France there is a movement in the 

 same direction. We learn from the Revue gi'in'rale des Sciences 

 that M. Liard, vice-rector of the Academie de Paris, is organis- 

 ing conferences of teachers in secondary schools at which the 

 chief inspectors will explain to French schoolmasters the objects 

 it is desired they shall have in view in their teaching. The first 

 conference was confined to teachers of modern languages and 

 the second was devoted to a consideration of the teaching of 

 physical and natural science. 



Another instance of the large scale on which provision is made 

 for every grade of education in America is afforded by the post- 

 graduate medical school that has recently been incorpora'ed in 

 the city of Washington. There are to be, we learn from the 

 Lancet, 104 professorships established, as follows : — Six of 

 preventive medicine, two of medical zoology, one of protective 

 inoculation, serum-therapy and biochemistry, two of sanilary 

 chemistry, eight of bacteriology, seven of pathology, fourteen of 

 internal medicine and therapeutics, one of surgical anatomy, 

 fourteen of surgery, six of military medicine and surgery, two of 

 orthopaedic surgery, nine of gynecology, six of obstetrics, three 

 of tropical diseases, four of diseases of children, two ol mental 

 and nervous diseases and electrotherapeutics, two of diseases of 

 the stomach, eight of diseases of the eye, eight of diseases of the 

 nose, throat and ear, four of special diseases and four of diseases 

 of the skin. 



The examination of the calendars of different University 

 Colleges soon convinces the student of education that every class 

 of society in the city where the college is located must come 

 under its influence. In the case of the University College of 

 Nottingham, for example, we find from the new calendar that 

 for the twenty-second session of the college there are, in addition 

 to lectures for preparing to graduate in the various university 

 faculties, classes for artisans engaged in the engineering, build- 

 ing, and lace and hosiery trades. Students of the same college 

 may be studying subjects so far removed as Greek and plumb- 

 ing, Anglo-Saxon and pattern-making. While one student is 

 training to become a schoolmaster and is attending lectures on 

 psychology and pedagogics, another hopes to develop into an 

 electrical engineer, and spends his time at electrical measure- 

 ments in the physical laboratory. In such an institution, it 

 should be impossible for a student to obtain other than a broad, 

 catholic way of regarding the various branches of human 

 knowledge. 



It is a pertinent question whether we as a nation are incapable 

 of looking ahead or whether we are too apathetic to provide 

 for future contingencies. On all sides, warning voices proclaim 

 the deficiencies in our educational system, lack of enterprise and 

 antiquated methods. Prof. Bower availed himself of the oppor- 

 tunity afforded when he was delivering his inaugural address 

 before the North British branch of the Pharmaceutical Society 

 to point out how one practical side of botany, the study of 

 vegetable economics, is ignored in this country at the present 

 time. What is required is a well-equipped staff, including 

 specialists in botany, physics, chemistry and physiology, to pro- 

 vide training for students, to institute research and furnish expert 

 advice. Neither at Kew, which, as Prof. Bayley Balfour later 

 expressed it, acts as the clearing-house for the Empire, nor 

 elsewhere is such a staff to be found. The study of vegetable 

 economics might, in Prof. Bower's opinion, be advantageously 

 pursued in commercial centres such as Glasgow, Liverpool and 

 Belfast, and he has laid before the authorities of his University 

 the desirability of appointing a special lecturer in this subject. 



On December 3, a conference on " Nature-study " was held 

 with special reference to the development of the work of Stepney 

 Borough Museum with the schools. Mr. J. H. VVylie 

 presided over the meeting, which was held in the Art Gallery, 

 and Canon Barnett, in welcoming the audience, brought forward 

 a suggestion that the winter garden of the People's Palace should 

 be made into a Nature-study centre. Mr. A. D. Hall gave a 



NO. 1729, VOL. 67] 



general address and offered no explanation of Ihe meaning of 

 Nature-study, saying that as most of his audience were teachers 

 that difficulty was removed. He urged that living things should 

 be studied, not collections of dead things in boxes, and suggested 

 the growing of food plants in East-end schools. Bean seedlings, 

 he said, could be measured by the children, who could Ihen make 

 curves illustrating the growth on squared paper. His only 

 allusion to the Museum was in connection with a supposed 

 annual outing of the children, and he suggested that the 

 journey then undertaken might be illustrated in the institu- 

 tion. Prof. Farmer alluded to the help as regards material 

 to be obtained from the Chelsea Physic Garden. The Rev. 

 Claude Hinscliff stated that the object of the confereme 

 had been lost sight of, and showed the necessity ot opening 

 the eyes of the East-ender by means of the Museum to what he 

 might see when he did go into the country. Mr. F. C. Mills, the 

 chairman of the Museum committee, expressed his pleasure as 

 regards the interest taken in the conference, in spite of the (act 

 that its purpose had been unfulfilled. The School Board inspector 

 for the district alluded to work such as that suggested by Mr. 

 Hall and of an elementary biological nature having been cariied 

 on for years at the schools in which he was interested. Mr. 

 Wilfred Mark Webb urged the teachers not to introduce 

 formal and systematic lessons, and Miss Kate Hall, the curator 

 of the Museum, who had organised the conference, spoke of her 

 intentions and requirements. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, November 27. — " Descending Intrinsic- 

 Spinal Tracts in the Mammalian Cord." By C. S. Sherring- 

 ton, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., and E. E. Laslett, M.D.Vict. 



Experiments inquiring into the existence of spinal paths con- 

 necting the activity of segments situate nearer the head with- 

 segmenls lying further from the head. 



The method adopted may be termed the method of "sue-, 

 cessive degeneration." It consists in producing two or more 

 successive degenerations with allowance of a considerable 

 interval of time between them. In the piece of cord to be 

 examined, a first degeneration is allowed time enough to remove 

 all the tracts descending from sources other than those the 

 immediate object of inquiry. When the time is complete, the 

 cord is left, as it were, like a cleaned slate, on which once more 

 a new degeneration can be written without fear of confusion, 

 with a previous one. The cord is then ready for receiving the 

 lesion which shall cause degeneration of the particular tracts 

 the existence of which is suspected. After a period suitable for 

 the full development of the new degeneration, the cord is treated 

 histologically by the Marchi method, and the microscopical 

 examination proceeded to. 



Results. 



The spinal segments examined as sources of aborally-running 

 fibre-systems have been posterior cervical, anterior thoracic, 

 mid thoracic, posterior thoracic and anterior lumbar. From 

 all these regions, the experiments demonstrate that copious 

 aborally-running fibre-systems spring. 



Speaking generally, of the fibres composing the aborally- 

 running systems springing from the grey matter of the- 

 spinal segments examined, there may be distinguished two 

 sets. For physiological description, it is in some ways con- 

 venient to regard the length of the spinal cord as divisible into 

 regions; thus, a btachial for the fore limb, a thoracic for the 

 trunk, a crural for the hind limb, a pelvic for pelvic organs, 

 a caudal for the tail, and so on. A reflex initiated vid an 

 afferent path of one such spinal region may evoke its peripheral 

 effect by efferent paths of a spinal region other than that to 

 which the original entrant path belongs. Such a reflex has in 

 a former paper by one of us ' been termed a " long " spinal reflex, 

 in contradistinction to reflexes the centripetal and centrifugal 

 paths of which both belong to one and the same spinal region. 

 The latter reflex it was proposed to term "short." 5 Analo- 

 gously, in the aborally-running fibre-systems of the spinal seg- 

 ments examined, by our experiments fibres of two categories 

 are found, one a set passing beyond the limits of the spinal 

 region in which they arise, the other not passing beyond those 



1 C. S. Sherrington, " Croonian Lecture," Phil. Traits., 1897. 



2 ma. 



