98 



NA TURE 



[y^me 7, 1877 



supposing that these diflSculties be got over, the age of 

 the deposit in which these fragments are stated to have 

 been found is a matter of dispute in which the authorities 

 are about equally balanced on either side. 



The asserted inter-glacial age of the river gravels con- 

 taining paleolithic implements proved equally unsatisfac- 

 tory. The cases supposed to be decisive of the question 

 in the neighbourhood of Brandon and Thetford, were 

 considered by Prof. Hughes to throw no light upon it, 

 sin"e the deposits above them, supposed to be boulder 

 clay, are not boulder clay in situ. It was forcibly urged 

 by several speakers, and especially by Prof. Prestwich, 

 that the Hint implement-bearing strata are proved by their 

 position in the valleys to be later than the glaciation of 

 the district, in every case where it has been glaciated, or 

 in other words, that they are decidedly of post-glacial 

 age. 



The general question of the antiquity of man in Europe 

 was not discussed, although we gathered that the evidence 

 of the presence of man in the Italian pleiocenes was not 

 considered satisfactory. The general impression left 

 upon our minds is that in Britain there is no evidence of 

 any pateolithic men, either in caves or the river-deposits 

 of an age older than post-glacial, and that the discoveries 

 of the last fourteen years have merely given us interesting 

 details as to the pakLolithic savage, without telling us 

 anything of his relation to the glacial period. 



THE VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY 

 MUSEUMS 



WELL-arranged museums are valuable to the state in 

 many ways. The technological department ought 

 to show in what new directions capital may and may not 

 be invested ; the geological and mineralogical should point 

 out in what kind of rock and in what parts of the earth's 

 crust ores and minerals are to be sought, and should save 

 the expenditure of money in useless trials. The museum 

 of the Royal School of Mines in Jermyn Street performs 

 these functions. But they are valuable in a still higher 

 sense as encouraging a love of knowledge for its own 

 sake apart from any selfish aims. The visitors to the 

 British Museum, however frivolous they may be, leave it all 

 the better for having been there. It is impossible that they 

 should not carry away some sort of idea, which otherwise 

 would not have occurred to them, even if it be merely the 

 recognition that outside their daily lives there is a world 

 of knowledge vast and indefinite, but real and tangible. 

 In this respect museums are educators of the masse?, 

 offering them a means of culture which would otherwise 

 be out of their reach. And lastly, as instruments of 

 training in natural history they are, as I have already 

 observed, as necessary to the student as collections of 

 books to the student in arts. 



Natural history pursuits are in themselves one of the 

 forms of higher education, and one that is especially 

 adapted for the culture of the lower, sometimes falsely 

 termed theworking classes— as if the higher classes worked 

 neither with head nor hand. In proof of this I may quote 

 the following example, which I am free to mention by the 

 death of the man to whom it relates. Some years ago a 

 mechanic, one of the evening class students at Owens 

 College, took me to see a collection of fossils made by 



" a hand " in a cotton-mill at Oldham. To my astonish- 

 ment I found that it consisted not merely of fossils an 

 natitrcl, shells, and the like, but of those of coal plants, 

 polished, and in many cases cut into slices so as to show 

 their minute structure. This had been done by rubbing 

 them down on the kitchen floor, cementing them to a piece 

 of glass, and then grinding them until they became trans- 

 parent. The care and labour implied in a process of this 

 kind can only be estimated by those who have tried it. 

 But it was necessary to have a microscope to see them, 

 and I actually discovered that the instrument which was 

 given me to use was made by the man himself, who could 

 not afford to buy more than the lenses, which he mounted 

 in tubes that were made to slide in each other after the 

 manner of a telescope. He was also a good local botanist. 

 His collection of fossils, along with another made by a 

 friend of his under similar circumstances, furnished 

 the materials on which Prof W. C. Williamson has to 

 a great extent founded his admirable memoirs on the 

 coal-plants, now being published by the Royal Society. 

 From time to time I saw a good deal of my friend, and a 

 man more completely lifted out of the usual level of his 

 class into what I may call the unselfish horizon I never 

 met. This could be traced directly to the scientific pur- 

 suits to which he was led by seeing somebody one day 

 pick up a piece of coal shale, and hearing him say that 

 there was a fish scale in it. He disbelieved this, examined 

 for himself, took to collecting, and ultimately became 

 what he was, devoting his early mornings and his late 

 evenings not merely to collecting but to knowing. His 

 knowledge embraced other things than natural history. 

 James Whittaker, of Oldham, may be taken as a type of 

 the effect of natural history in elevating a man's character. 

 He is the representative of a small, though very imponant, 

 body in the Northern Counties, a body which would be 

 largely increased by the foundation of museums of the 

 right sort. From [i ersonal contact with men like him I 

 have arrived at the conclusion that in this direction we 

 have a means of spreading culture among the intelligent 

 mechanics, artisans, and mill-hands, who go neither to 

 church nor chapel, who do not read very much, and very 

 often have no aims higher than those of the mere animal 

 li'e. Had they access to museums on holidays and in 

 the evenings, I am sure that the receipts of public 

 houses would ultimately be lessened. At present they 

 have few recreations and little chance of self-improve 

 ment ; for the so-called mechanics' institutes, which were 

 originally intended for them, have generally passed into 

 the hands of the class immediately above them. 



W. Boyd Dawkins 



PHYSIOLOGICAL JESTHETICS 



P/iyu'oloqical ^Esthetics. By Grant Allan, B.A. Svo. 



(London : Henry S. King and Co., 1877.) 



WE have here a little work of some 300 pages, which 

 deals with the philosophy of lesthetics almost 

 exclusively on its physiological side. Of course, in thus 

 restricting his subject, the author neglects all the more 

 subtle and intricate parts of that philosophy ; but every 

 competent reader will agree with him that it is desirable, 

 for the purpose of analysis, to separate as distinctly as 

 possible the physiological from the psychological elements 



