Feb. 



1885] 



NA TURE 



339 



scheme as Prof. Armstrong very properly suggests. The 

 would-be discipie of science is thunderstruck (as probably not a 

 lew teachers of science were when they first saw the scheme), 

 but the novelty of the situation, the sight of new appliances and 

 strange results, enable him to pull himself together, and his 

 interest for a time keeps up. Presently he is asked to conduct 

 for himself some simple steps of deductive reasoning ; he fails, 

 the whole business is a new world to him, and in the misery of 

 his wishfulness to do something, he beseechingly asks for 

 more dry facts to devour. What is the ultimate result? If 

 science is to be taught effectually it must begin with the earliest 

 years ireer, and there is surely no subject 



that lends itself m ore appropriately to the youthful mind. 

 Children delight to talk of flowers, of insects, of the wonders 

 of nature; they are ever asking suggestive questions ; they are 

 indefatigable collectors of objects of beauty ; the Kindergarten 



i> has acknowledged that the child is an orderly being 

 delighting in symmetry and colour. Yet we increase his vocabu- 

 lary by the word "star'' and fail to tell him anything of the 

 wonders of stardom. Why, our very fairy tales are based on 

 just such fabric '. To effect this early introduction of science 

 the very best and most considerate teaching is required, as 

 indeed it is a much more difficult task to guide the young 

 student's thoughts than to guide the veteran student's reading. 

 We want, further, a well thought-out progressive scheme of 

 simple general science which shall be suggestive to the teacher 

 of the course to be pursued. To draw up such a scheme is, I 

 am quite aware, not a matter of moments : it would require the 

 association of many minds and many sympathies. 



Something in this direction has been done in France, and 



text-books are to be found in the English science primers 

 and in Paul Bert's Book of General Science for the Young ; 

 text-books, however, are not an immediate want — for the matter 

 of that, the pupil may make his own — we do, however, want that 

 which will help the conscientious teacher to see how he may 

 make the teaching "f science interesting, intelligent, and above 

 all progressive. We cannot afford to wait for unintelligent 

 teaching to die a natural death, remembering that there is in 

 England no criterion that the teacher in the middle-class school 

 tack, that teaching does not pay in examinations, that the 

 dry-bones method lends itself most readily to school discipline, 

 and finally, that the subjects chiefly taught are of such a nature as 

 almost to preclude any other method with the young. Under 

 the present regime science is not a growth, it i> a graft, and a 

 graft, it is to be feared, of a most unfortunate nature ; the sooner 

 it develops roots of its own the better. It is, under the circum- 

 stances, no cause for wonder that the more advanced student 

 flounders over common general principles. I have confined my 

 remarks, for the 'ake of definiteness, to middle-class schools, but 

 they are, I believe, with unessential variation, applicable to the 

 general question of the teaching of science. G. II. Bailey 

 I February 3 



Barrenness of the Pampas 

 I AM anxious to add a few further remarks on this interesting 

 during its investigation that I was so deeply 

 ! erate struggle for existence which charac- 

 terises the I ordering fertile zones. I could there watch the 

 :i the very battle-field itself, and for that purpose 1 

 established myself for some months in the north of Uruguay, 

 away from all other habitation, among the wooded banks and 

 lagunes of the River Arapey. This river, though normally a 

 q ream, is subject to tropical floods, during which the 



water rose often thirty feet in eight hours. The "monte," or 

 fertile wooded belt on each side, is intersected with ravines and 

 eming with animal and vegetable life of singular in- 

 I he alligator, carpincho, myopotamus, nutria and other 

 and numberless snakes thrive in the marshy swam] s, while in 

 we met with the puma, the jaguar, the great lizard, 

 the Podinama, the Nasua facialis, and numerous other singular 

 animals and birds described in my little book. But it was 

 among the flora that the principle of natural selection was most 

 prominently displayed. In such a district, overrun with rodents 

 ped cattle, subject to floods that carried away whole 

 islands of botany, and e pecially to droughts that dried up the 

 lakes, and almost the river itself, no ordinary plant could live, 

 even on ihis rich and watered alluvial debris. The only plants 

 ped the cattle were such as were either pm 



n< 'i indestructibly tough. Hence we had 

 only a gre<t development of solanums, talas, aca 



and laurels. The buttercup is replaced by the little poisonous 

 yellow oxalis with its viviparous buds, the passion-flowers, 

 asclepiads, bignonias, convovuluses, and climbing leguminous 

 plants escape both floods and cattle by climbing the highest 

 trees and towering over head in floods of bloom. The ground- 

 plants are the portulacas, turneras, and Oenotheras, bitter and 

 ephemeral on the arid rock, and almost independent of any 

 other moisture than the heavy dews. The pontederias, alismas, 

 and plantago, with grasses and sedges, derive protection from 

 the deep and brilliant pools ; and though at first sight the 

 " monte " doubtless impresses the traveller as a scene of the 

 wildest confusion and ruin, yet, on closer examination, we found 

 it far more remarkable as a manifestation of harmony and law 

 and a striking example of the marvellous power which plants, 

 like animals, possess of adapting themselves to the local pecu- 

 liarities of their habitat, whether in the fertile shades of the 

 luxurious "monte" or on the arid, parched-up plains of the 

 treeless Pampas. Edwin Clark 



Great Marlow 



Recent Earthquakes 



With reference to the statement in Nature, vol. xxxi. p. 262, 

 that the earthquake of December 25, 18S4, was registered by the 

 magnetic variation instruments in London, permit me to inform 

 you that an effect was also noticed on a curve of the magneto- 

 graph at the Imperial Marine Observatory, Wilhelmshaven. But 

 while at London declination and bifilar were specially affected, 

 here only the Lloyd's magnetic balance, the instiument for ver- 

 tical intensity, was set in oscillation, first at 9J1. 5 2m . p.m. local 

 time. Full details will be published in the Zeitschrifl of German 

 Meteorology. Dr. M. Eschenhagen 



Wilhelmshaven, February 6 



Mr. W. A. Sanford, in Nature of January 29, p. 289, 

 says on the above subject : — "It would be interesting to know 

 whether anything of the same kind [as described in his letter] 

 had been observed elsewhere at the same time." I have been col- 

 lecting observations on this subject for a continuation of my paper 

 on earthquakes in Devon, published in the Transactions of the 

 Devonshire Association. The Vicar of Bampton has very kindly 

 given me his experience of the earthquake, as the wave appeared 

 to have passed very near, if not directly under, his house. Bamp- 

 ton is -even miles north of Tiverton, and about a mile inside 

 the junction of the Carboniferous and the Devonian systems, 

 situate on a rather large patch of limestone. The time the 

 earthquake occurred there was 8.42 p.m. In the drawing- 

 room at the vicarage it appeared as if a heavy traction-engine 

 was passing close to the window ; the window faces eastward. 

 In the kitchen the servants were greatly alarmed by a rumbling 

 noise and a shaking under the floor. Some, of the Vicar's 

 neighbours say they heard a report, and houses with cellars 

 under them and higher felt the shaking more ; some persons 

 who were up stairs, thinking that it was some explosion, rushed 

 down stairs and out of doors. The effects were also felt at 

 Shillingford, two miles distant, and also at-Combehead, one and 

 a half mile distant. The porters at the station describe it as 

 like a heavily-laden mineral train passing. The only damage 

 done at Bampton was a piece of wall was thrown down. This was 

 My the same shock or seismic wave as mentioned by 

 Mr. Sanford as occurring on the night of Thursday, January 22, 

 and would appear to have travelled from east to west. 



Edward Parkitt 

 Devon and Exeter Institution, Exeter 



Loligopsis ellipsoptera 

 Con ri you allow me space to ask whether any of your readers 

 can give me a clue to the present locality of the type-specimen 

 is ellipsoptera, Adams and Reeve, obtained during the 

 voyage of the Samaiang; and also to state how grateful I 

 should be to any one who can lend me specimens of that genus 

 or of others allied to it ? Wm. E. HOYLE 



Challenger Expedition Office, 32, Queen Street, Edinburgh, 

 February 9 



L. Wray, Jun. — Your supposed dragon-fly belongs to the 

 family Ascalaphida, allied to ihe ant-lions. 



