18 
NATURE 
[ NOVEMBER 5, 1903 
The exhibition has been exceedingly successful from an 
educational point of view, and the exhibits showed that the 
schools which contributed had entered into the spirit which 
guided the committee in the preparation of its prospectus 
and in the desire to demonstrate what nature-study 
really is. 
The judges were Miss Hodgson, formerly of the House 
of Education, Ambleside; Mr. Jonas Bradley, famous for 
his outdoor school at Haworth, Prof. Haddon, Prof. 
Minchin, and Dr. Chalmers Mitchell. The awards were 
made in strict accord with the objects of the committee, 
and were given so as to mark the work of the schools which 
are on the right lines. Certificates of merit, the highest 
official award of the committee, fell to the lot of the Froebel 
Institute, Streatham High School, Dulwich High School, 
Queenswood School, Orlestone Board School, and the Train- 
ing College for the Deaf, Fitzroy Square. 
Not the least important part of the proceedings were the 
conferences, at which practical teachers not only described 
their methods, but also in some cases showed how they 
came to adopt them. Speakers were carefully chosen from 
among those who exhibited last year and whose work 
was well known to the executive committee, of which 
several members helped to organise the previous effort. 
On the morning of Saturday Mr. Hedger Wallace, chair- 
man of the executive, presided over a meeting at which 
Mr. Badley, of Bedales School, Mr. Harry Lowerison, of the 
Ruskin School Home, Miss Sillham, of the Froebel Institute, 
and Miss Ethel Webb, of Streatham High School, spoke. 
In the afternoon the chair was taken by Mr. Jesse Collings, 
who had something to say about the Bill which he has 
before Parliament to promote nature-study in elementary 
schools, more particularly with the view of improving 
our agricultural education. There is every hope, more- 
over, that his measure will be passed without opposi- 
tion. During the afternoon Miss Alderton, of Stretton, Mr. 
Thomas, of Orlestone, and Mr. Dodgeon, of Burnley, de- 
scribed their work. In the evening Mr. Richard Kearton, 
who has done so much to change the taking of birds’ eggs 
for the collection to the taking of them by the camera, 
showed the pick of his well-known studies of wild-life, and 
others that had not been seen on a screen before. After- 
wards, as on the previous evening, Mr. Martin Duncan 
proved the great possibilities of the Urban Duncan micro- 
bioscope for recording natural history observations in the 
ordinary way and under the microscope. 
On Monday Mr. Oliver G. Pike gave an_ illustrated 
lecture on birds in their homes, and later the Middlesex 
Field Club held a meeting. Mr. Hedger Wallace pointed 
out the great necessity for a field club which should deal 
with Middlesex, record the fast disappearing animals and 
plants, and organise a local museum. Mr. Henry Stevens 
showed a number of remarkable slides of animals and plants 
under control, and Mr. Wilfred Webb demonstrated, also 
by the aid of the lantern (kindly lent by the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society), how much nature-study could be done 
in London, proceeding afterwards to touch on the work of 
schools throughout the country. 
On Tuesday evening Mr. R. B. Lodge lectured on some 
suburban birds and beasts, while under the auspices of the 
Selborne Society Prof. Boulger and Mr. E. A. Martin spoke 
on subjects in character with the objects of the exhibition. 
Financially, also, the exhibition has been a success. 
BOTANY AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
HE meetings of the botanical section at Southport 
showed no falling off in interest. The arrangements 
made by the local authorities were admirable, and there 
was a good attendance of British and foreign botanists. 
In his presidential address, Mr. A. C. Seward, F.R.S., 
gave an able and comprehensive summary of the present 
state of our knowledge concerning the composition and 
distribution of the floras of the past, from the earliest 
records in the Devonian and Lower Carboniferous up to 
the dawn of the Cretaceous period. 
The report of the joint committee of Sections K and L 
on the teaching of botany in schools was read and dis- 
NO. 1775, VOL. 69] 
cussed. A summary of the recommendations will be found 
in the report of the education section. In an interesting 
discussion which followed the reading of the report in 
Section K, several botanists expressed their approval of the 
report, and it was suggested that it would be a good plan 
if the methods recommended could be tried by teachers and 
the results communicated to the committee. 
The morning of September 11 was given up to a series 
of papers and a discussion on the subject of heredity. Mr. 
W. Bateson, F.R.S., in an introductory address on recent 
discoveries in heredity, gave an excellent account of 
Mendel’s researches, and pointed out that we have now 
reached a stage at which, by the employment of these 
methods, the solution of problems in heredity becomes 
possible under certain conditions. He described many of 
his own experiments, and exhibited specimens of the results 
which he had obtained in the hybridisation of various 
species of plants and animals, all of which give strong 
support to Mendel’s laws. 
Miss Edith R. Saunders followed by an extremely lucid 
account of her recent work on cross-breeding in plants, and 
showed the results of some of her more striking experi- 
ments (vide Reports to the Royal Society, 1902). 
Mr. C. C. Hurst read a paper on recent experiments in 
the hybridisation of orchids, in which he showed by means 
of some beautiful coloured drawings that, so far as the 
intermediate hybrids are concerned, the results are 
apparently consistent with Mendelian principles. Dominant 
hybrids are infertile, and in the case of false hybrids further 
research is necessary before any definite conclusions can be 
arrived at. 
The morning of September 14 was devoted to a discussion 
on the origin of the Monocotyledons, introduced by Miss 
Ethel Sargant, whose work on this subject is well known 
(vide ‘‘ Annals of Botany,’’ 1903). Miss Sargant maintains 
that a careful study of the anatomy of seedlings in various 
families of Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons leads to the 
conclusion that the common stock from which they both 
spring was not only angiospermous in character, but that 
it was more like a Monocotyledon than a Dicotyledon. 
Miss E. N. Thomas, who followed with a paper on the 
structure of the embryo sac and the phenomena of fertilisa- 
tion, pointed out that the results obtained support Miss 
Sargant’s view in so far as they indicate the existence of 
a great gulf between Angiosperms and all other groups of 
plants, whilst there is little, if any, distinction in these 
respects between Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons. 
In the subsequent discussion Miss Sargant’s views were 
freely criticised, but all the speakers agreed that this 
valuable contribution to a very difficult question opened up 
a very interesting field of investigation. 
Prof. H. Marshall Ward, F.R.S., gave an account, illus- 
trated by plans and lantern slides, of the new botanical 
laboratories at Cambridge. This large block of buildings 
provides ample accommodation for study in all departments 
of botany, and special facilities are afforded for original 
investigation. The university is to be congratulated upon 
so important a development of its botanical school. Prof. 
Lignier presented a paper on the flower of the Gnetacez, in 
which some interesting new facts were brought forward, 
and Dr. Lotsy gave an account of his work on partheno- 
genesis in Gnetum ula. 
The semi-popular lecture was given on the afternoon of 
September 14 by Prof. J. B. Farmer, F.R.S., on stimulus 
and mechanism in organisation. In a very able address 
the lecturer discussed the various forms of stimuli and the 
nature of the processes involved, and endeavoured to trace 
a connection between the growth and structural differenti- 
ation of an organism and the response to definite stimuli 
acting on special kinds of mechanism. 
On September 12 an excursion, under the leadership of 
Mr. Lomax, was made to the Clough Foot Colliery, and 
on Tuesday afternoon the vegetation of the sandhills was 
investigated under the leadership of Dr. Otto v. Darbi- 
shire and Mr. Henry Ball. In a paper which he had 
previously communicated to the section as a preliminary 
to this excursion, Dr. Darbishire pointed out that the sand 
dunes are encroaching on the grass land, and that, although 
they can be fixed by sand-loving plants, it is only tempor- 
arily, and psamma is commonly planted for this purpose. 
The plant societies in the various regions of the dunes are 
well marked, and include a number of extremely interesting 
