May 17, 1877] 



NA TURE 



39 



by Oxford and Cambridge, by the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, by the teachers of medicine and surgery in the 

 London hospitals, and by others. The matter was 

 referred to the Privy Council, and argued before it in 

 1834. There was no question then of anything so futile 

 as what has been once or twice suggested for Owens 

 College, the title of university, without the privilege 

 of degrees. The Privy Council found the subject sur- 

 rounded by difficulties, and adjourned its consideration. 

 Shortly after, Lord Melbourne's Ministry, which was 

 friendly, retired from office, and Sir Robert Peel's, which 

 took the view of the old universities, succeeded. An 

 address to the Crown, however, was carried against the 

 Ministry by 246 to 136, on the motion of Mr. W. Tooke, 

 prajing that a charter might be granted to the University 

 of London, with no restriction but that they were not 

 f confer degrees in divinity. The Privy Council was asked 

 I ' icport on the subject, but the report was delayed, and 

 Ijtfore they presented it Lord Melbourne returned to power, 

 la August, 1835, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ]\lr. 

 Spring Rice, communicated to the Council of the existing 

 L'niversity College that Government proposed to incor- 

 porate by charter as a university in London, a body of 

 gentlemen eminent in learning and science, with the'powcr 

 of examining and granting degrees in arts, medi- 

 cine, and laws to students of certain colleges in Lon- 

 don, therein named, and of others existing throughout 

 the country to be afterwards recognised, as well as of the 

 schools of piofessional education. This university was 

 to be supported by an annual grant. There were to be 

 no religious tests. The' existing body, which called itself 

 the University of London, received a charter as a college 

 and was named as one of the colleges entitled to submit 

 students for examination. The two charters to the new 

 imiversity and the new college were issued on November 

 28, 1835. They have been several times modified. The 

 list of affiliated colleges was always large, and as the 

 Senate of the University had no control over the affiliated 

 colleges it grew unwieldy, institutions of the feeblest 

 character receiving affiliation. In 1863 a charter was 

 granted empowering the Senate to admit persons not 

 educated in affiliated colleges to examination, and this 

 decision creates the University of London of to-day as 

 distinguished from the institution of the same name 

 founded in 1835. About half the students now come 

 from affiliated Colleges and half from anywhere or no- 

 where. The examinations must be fixed in view of this 

 fact. Examiners must take into account as a most vital 

 matter the books on the subjects of their examination 

 which are readily accessible to students, and they cannot 

 shape their examinations in view of the practice in teaching 

 of any one or more of the affiliated colleges. We hope 

 that the proposed university of the north may have a 

 shorter novitiate, and that she may be conducted in as 

 elevated a spirit and with as resolute a desire to promote 

 the interests of literature and science as the University of 

 London has been. It would have been a painful spectacle 

 if the youngest of our Universities, forgetful of her own 

 early struggles, had spent her energies in an opposition 

 which Oxford and Cambridge have thought unnecessary 

 or unworthy of them. The speech of her Chancellor leads 

 us to hope that the claims of the proposed new university 

 will be considered calmly and on their merits. 



NICHOLSON'S "LIFE-HISTORY OF THE 

 EARTH" 



The Ancient Life-History of the Earth; a Comprehensive 

 Outline of the Principles and Leading Facts of Palceon- 

 tolo^ical Science. By H. AUeyne Nicholson, M.D., 

 U.Sc, M.A., Ph.D. (Got?.), F.R.S.E., F.L.S., Professor 

 of Natural History in the University of St. Andrews. 

 (Edinburgh and London : William Blackwood and 

 Sons, 1877.) 



THERE is no feature in which the ordinary geological 

 manuals in common use in this country are more 

 deficient than in the sketches which they give of the 

 leading characteristics of the animal and vegetable life of 

 the successive periods which they describe. The truth of 

 this remark will be made strikingly apparent by a com- 

 parison of the works in question with some of the best 

 German treatises on geology, such as those of von 

 Hauer and Credner, and still more if we examine them 

 side by side with that most excellent of text-books. Prof. 

 Dana's " Manual of Geology." 



Some writers on geology in this country would indeed 

 appear to hold the opinion that, since the succession of geo- 

 logical formations was first determined in our own islands, 

 an appeal to the facts of British stratigraphical geology 

 must in every case be final in deciding all difficulties 

 which may arise concerning the definition and limits of 

 the difterent systems of stratified rocks in every part of 

 the globe. Hence the controversies which have taken 

 place in this country concerning the boundaries between 

 the Cambrian and;. Silurian, the Devonian and Carboni- 

 ferous, and the Permian and Trias have acquired an alto- 

 gether factitious importance, and undue weight has been 

 attached to the interpretatiou of some obscure section 

 the significance of a local unconformity, or the appear- 

 ance—often a fallacious one — of a gradual transition 

 between two sets of beds, while far more suggestive facts 

 connected with the relations of the fossil contents of the 

 two series of rocks are too often altogether lost sight of. 



But it cannot be too strongly impressed upon the minds 

 of English geologists that the district in which a system of 

 strata is first detected may not necessarily be the one in 

 which it is best adapted to serve as the type of that 

 series ; that as a matter of fact the best illustration 

 of the features and relations of the Cambrian and 

 Silurian is to be found, not in Wales, but in Bohemia ; 

 and of the Devonian, not in Devonshire, but in the 

 Eifel. English students, too, need to be reminded that 

 the classification of the stratified rocks is based not 

 upon the occurrence of certain physical breaks, in the 

 continuity of a series of beds, which are often, indeed, 

 of very local character and small importance, but upon 

 the great principle that each formation is characterised 

 by a well-marked and distinctive fauna or flora. Con- 

 cerning the fact, position, and significance of many 

 of the physical breaks in the succession of forma- 

 tions, the ablest field-geologists, such as Sedgwick 

 and Murchison, Jukes and Godwin-Austen, have fre- 

 quently arrived at very opposite conclusions ; and the 

 importance which has been attached to these discussions 

 on points of details has doubtless led many to entertain a 

 notion of the instability of the foundations of the geolo- 

 gical systems of classification which is very far from 



