1 
OCTOBER 23, 1913] 
NATURE 237 
special object of meeting at that town being to offer 
advice with regard to the work of a newly established 
museum and art institute. In a later paragraph of 
the same issue reference is made to the question of 
the future of the museums established and furnished 
by the late Sir Jonathan Hutchinson at Haslemere, 
Selby, and Charles Street, London. Although the 
founder is believed to have spent something like 
30,0001, on these institutions, no provision for their 
future maintainance is made in his will, the executors 
being empowered to dispose of them in such manner 
as they think best. At a meeting held at Haslemere 
last week it was announced that Mr. Jonathan 
Hutchinson, writing cn behalf of the trustees of 
Sir Jonathan WHutchinson’s estate, had stated that 
if it were found possible to raise the necessary en- 
dowment fund, the trustees were willing to hand 
over by deed the freehold site and the museum with 
all its contents to a suitable trust committee. It was 
also intimated that other members of the Hutchinson 
family were prepared to give substantial monetary 
help to any fund which it might be proposed to raise. 
The value of the site at Haslemere is estimated by 
the trustees at about 4oool. 
THE inaugural lecture for the newly founded lecture- 
ship in palaobotany at University College, University 
of London, was delivered on Friday, October 
17; by Dr.) Marie “Stopes. (Dre seal; F.R.S., 
the director of the Geological Survey, was 
in the chair. In the course of her lecture Dr. 
Stopes communicated the view that palzobotany is an 
independent science, though its main results are of 
particular service to botany, geology, or in practical 
mining. The first part of the lecture was devoted 
to a historical account of the subject, and a number 
of quotations were made from old books not generally 
known to palzobotanists. Historically the science 
has passed through three phases: the first when 
fossil plants were looked on as wanton ornaments, 
even at a time when animal fossils were recognised 
as being of organic origin; the second when plant 
impressions were drawn accurately and described, but 
without true understanding; the third when a scien- 
tific study of plant fossils revealed their importance 
in the conceptions of evolution and morphology of 
living plants, their value as ‘“‘ thermometers of extinct 
continents,” and their importance to the strati- 
graphical geologist and coal miner. Dr. Teall said 
that he had been recently much impressed by the 
results of fossil botany, and expressed a hope that 
more students would give it careful attention. Prof. 
PF. W. Oliver, F.R.S., in thanking Dr. Teall and the 
lecturer, said that he realised that the botanical side 
of paleobotany was not its only one; he agreed with 
the lecturer that palaobotany was an independent 
science, and he hoped before long to see a department 
of paleontology in the University. 
On Wednesday, October 15, a conversazione was 
held at King’s College, by the Royal Microscopical 
Society, when nearly five hundred fellows and their 
friends were received by the president, Prof. G. Sims 
Woodhead. The object was to bring together, so far 
as practicable, a series of exhibits which would demon- 
NO. 2295, VOL. 92] 
strate the many uses to which microscopes may be 
put at the present time, both in science and commerce, 
and to enable those interested or engaged in micro- 
scopic work to demonstrate the methods they em- 
ployed and the results they had obtained. The centre 
tables in the Great Hall of the college were occupied 
by pond-life exhibits, and more than forty micro- 
scopes were arranged under the direction of D. J. 
Scourfield. These were the centre of interest to a 
large number of visitors throughout the evening, 
many of the living objects being beautifully shown. 
Among the exhibits which also engaged the attention 
of visitors, that by F. W. Watson Baker, a demon- 
stration of the actual grinding of a lens for a micro- 
scope objective, holds a high place. The subjects of 
other interesting exhibits were :—A beautiful series of 
slides showing wild flowers under opaque illumina- 
tion, Conrad Beck; preparation of rock sections, C. H. 
Caffyn; an experiment with the Abbe diffraction 
microscope to illustrate the effect of altering the phase 
of one of the spectra forming on image of a grating, 
J. E. Barnard; transparencies in colour, E. Cuzner 
and T. E. Freshwater; colour stereoscopic slides of 
water mites, H. Taverner; an eyepiece micrometer 
with diffraction grating—an ingenious method of 
avoiding the errors common to most micrometers, 
J. W. Gordon; foraminifera, E. Heron-Allen and 
A. Earland; apparatus for stereo-photomicrography 
and also for high-power binocular observation, J. W. 
Ogilvy; fluorescent objects illuminated by ultra-violet 
light, Max Poser; and exhibits to illustrate differ- 
ential colour illumination, J. Rheinberg. Two lec- 
tures were delivered during the evening, one by Dr. 
E. J. Spitta on diatom structure and a demonstration 
of the microscopic structure of rocks, by C. H. Caffyn. 
Some “Notes on the Struggle for Existence in 
Tropical Africa” are contributed to the current num- 
ber of Bedrock by Mr. G. D. H. Carpenter, who 
spent nearly three years on the equatorial islands of 
Lake Victoria in studying the tsetse-fly on behalf of 
the Royal Society’s Sleeping Sickness Commission. 
He emphasises the importance of studying mimiery 
under natural conditions rather than in the cabinet, 
and advances it as a strong argument in favour of 
the truth of the mimetic theory that the resemblance 
of one insect to another is explicable in exactly the 
same way as the resemblance of an insect to a dead 
leaf. On the theory of natural selection through 
minute variations, mimetic resemblances are simply a 
special case of coloration analogous to other special 
cases. 
Tue October number of The Fortnightly Review 
contains an article by Henri Fabre, the veteran 
naturalist of Sérignan, on his relations with Charles 
Darwin. The article illustrates in an interesting way 
some of the leading characteristics of these two re- 
markable men—the combined fertility and caution in 
speculation shown by Darwin, with his determination 
to bring every hypothesis to the test of experiment; 
and the unrivalled powers of observation possessed 
by Fabre, his enthusiasm in the pursuit of his 
favourite study, and the charm of his literary style. 
Darwin, being interested in the homing instincts of 
