and raise the standard of middle-class education, 
College students would, as unattached students, be members ot 
the University, but would be generally younger than the 
_ the secondary schools throughout the country, 
_ forty weeks’ residence, 
be continued on alternate days. 
_ Anatomy and Physiology will be continued on Tuesday, January 
28, at 1 P.M., and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at 
~ 
an, 16, 18 
73] 
this appeal is wholly ax Zar?z, We understand that the ex- 
lanation given by the majority of the Council is that the vote of 
January 7 was asurprise, and as such justified its re-consideration. 
_ Now of all our public associations which have for their aim 
the advancement of scientific truth, the Anthropological can 
__ least afford to suffer by internal dissension, and it is earnestly 
to be hoped that this difference of opinion on the subject of a 
_ successor to Sir John Lubbock will be amicably arranged at 
the forthcoming meeting. The more so as it bears so clearly on 
the face of it that the interests of science are not in question. 
A ScnHeMe is on foot for the establishment of a County 
College at Cambridge, and it seems likely to be successful. An 
_ address on the subject, with many influential signatures from 
among the masters, professors, and tutors of the University, has 
been presented to the Chancellor, the Duke of Devonshire. 
The County College is intended to combine and assist the efforts 
that are being made in the various counties of England to extend 
The County 
present undergraduates, aud more strictly looked after. One 
qualification for admission would be a previous residence of two 
years in one or more schools accepted by the University, and the 
having passed the Junior Local Examination. The special 
branch of the college function would be to prepare teachers for 
The utmost 
expense for each student is estimated at 80/. per annum, with 
The cost of the buildings is estimated 
at 20,000/., which it is proposed to raise by a joint-stock com- 
pany. Besides other necessary accommodation, the building will 
contain separate bedrooms for 300 students, 
THE annual conversazione of the Midland Institute, which has 
now become one ot considerable importance in Birmingham, was 
held on Tuesday and yesterday, and will be continued this 
evening, when all the exhibited objects will be thrown open to 
the students of the Industrial Department. The success of these 
meetings has considerably affected the prosperity of the Institute, 
which now adds the Zrestige of fashion to the more solid attrac- 
tions of its educational usefulness. 
WE would draw attention to the further communications on 
the recent star-shower which we print this week. At the 
moment of going to press we have received another account of 
the display as it was seen at Mauritius, which we hope to print 
next week. 
Pror. HUMPHRY commenced his Lectures on Practical 
Anatomy, on Tuesday, January 14, at 9 A.M., and will continue 
them daily at the same hour till the 27th, after which they will 
The course of Lectures on 
the same hour. 
Tue study of Physiological Botany receives so little attention 
in this country compared with what it does in France and 
_ Germany, that we are very glad to see that the editorial staff of 
the Quarterly Fournal of Microscopical Science has been 
strengthened by the addition of the name of Prof. Thiselton 
Dyer to those of Mr. J. F. Payne and Mr. E. R. Lankester ; an 
earnest, we trust, that vegetable histology will assume the place 
it deserves in the programme of the magazine for the future. 
As a commencement, Prof. McNab of Dublin contributed to the 
January number an article on ‘‘Haustein’s Researches on the 
Development of the Embryo in Monocotyledons and Dicotyle- 
_ dons,” which will, we hope, stimulate our young botanists to 
_ further research in this little-worked field. 
NATURE 
a i a tr 
SESS 
209 
THE Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge will 
lecture on Electrostatics and Electrokinematics during the Lent 
Term, in the Botanical Lecture-Room New Museum on 
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at 12 A.M., beginning 
Feb. 1. 
WE are indebted to the Scientific Editor of Harper's Weekly 
forthe following :—Prof. Marsh and party returned on December 7 
from the Rocky Mountains and Western Kansas, where they 
had spent the preceding two months in geological researches. 
They bring back a Jarge number of vertebrate fossils from the 
cretaceous and tertiary formations of the West, including many 
new and interesting mammals, birds, and reptiles, Among the 
treasures secured during the present trip was a nearly entire 
skeleton of Hesperornis regalis (the gigantic diving bird of the 
cretaceous), numerous remains of pterodactyls, and a second 
species of the peculiar genus of cretaceous birds with biconcave 
vertebrae (/chthyornis). The remains indicate a bird rather 
larger than /chihyornis dispar, Marsh, but of more slender pro- 
portions. It may readily be distinguished from that species by 
the sacrum, which is proportionally more elongated, and has the 
cup of the posterior vertebral face more deeply concave. This 
species Prof. Marsh called Zchthyornis celer, and the group of 
birds now represented by the two species constitute the family 
of /chthyornide. 
THE work of Dr. Cowes, just published, upon the birds of 
the United States, includes a synopsis of the fossil forms sup- 
plied by Professor O. C, Marsh, who has made this branch of 
palzeontology a special study. He enumerates no less than 29 
species, to which number must be added several others dis- 
covered by Professor Marsh in his late trip to the Rocky Moun- 
tains. A single kind belongs to the woodpecker tribe, while 
two are raptorial and three gallinaceous, namely, three kinds of 
turkeys, Twelve are waders and eleven are swimmers, 
WE are very glad to see from a report in Les Aflondes for 
January 2, and from aletter sentus by the Abbé Moigno, that his 
most praiseworthy scheme of popular scientific lectures, instead of 
being likely to come to an end for want of funds, has taken a 
new lease of life, and that the Sa//es are now in a fair way to 
become a permanent Parisian institution. The Abbé and his 
friends have most disinterestedly spent a large sum to establish 
the institution, and they deserve the very highest credit and 
every encouragement in their attempt to provide for the Parisians 
the means of the best scientific and literary education; for not 
only are there lectures and conversazioni on science, art, and 
literature provided every night for grown-up people, but the 
Abbé has inaugurated a series of classes on a comprehen- 
sive plan for the higher education of the young. We sincerely 
hope this wide scheme will be completely successful, and that 
by-and-by its good effects will be markedly perceptible. 
Dr. T. ARCHER Hirst, V.P.R.S., F.R.A.S., President of 
the London Mathematical Society, and Assistant-Registrar in 
the University of London, is to be appointed Director of Studies 
in the Royal Naval College now being instituted at Greenwich. 
Mr. W. SAVILLE KENT has been appointed Curator of the 
Brighton Aquarium. 
Tue Octopus in the Brighton Aquarium met with a sad fate 
on Jan. 7. Finding himself uncomfortable in a tank where he 
had been newly placed by the curator, he came out, in an un- 
guarded moment, of the house of living oysters he had collected 
asa shelter round him. In this tank were several large speci- 
mens,of spotted dog-fish. One of these fish, with the true ’cute- 
ness of a sea-dog, immediately pounced upon the unsuspecting 
octopus, and swallowed him.—Another novelty has been intro- 
duced into the Brighton Aquarium, viz., the apparatus for carry- 
Ing on salmon and trout hatching. The trout from the Trent are 
thriving splendidly. 
