462 
Chest to expend a sum of 7500/. on the erection of an 
annex to the east side of the present University Museum 
to contain the collection and to provide the requisite 
cases and fittings; a vote of thanks to General Pitt- 
Rivers was also passed. 
This most important collection, therefore, which com- 
menced its public existence at Bethnal Green, and has 
so long been exhibited at South Kensington, will rest 
finally at Oxford, where it cannot fail to be studied 
with ever increasing interest and benefit to learning 
generally.” The title of the collection as the “ Pitt-Rivers 
Collection” is to be maintained, and the developmental and 
gradational system of arrangement devised by the donor, 
and carried out by him in the greater part of the collection, 
with such valuable and interesting results is to be retained. 
The new building, which will be provided with two 
galleries, will be entered by two doorways at different 
levels from the present University Museum. 
The delegates of the Museum have elected Dr. E. B. 
Tylor tc be Keeper of the Museum in place of the late Prof. 
Henry Smith, so that the new collection, as well as the 
anthropological collection of the late Prof. Rolleston, 
will fall into the hands of the man most suited to arrange 
and explain them. 
FOHN RICHARD GREEN 
7pae death of Mr. Green, at the early age of forty-five 
years, we regard as a serious loss not only to his- 
torical literature but to science. We have frequently 
maintained that science has no peculiar sphere, that every 
field of human research is capable of scientific treatment. 
As we pointed out in reviewing Mr. Green’s famous 
“Short History ” and his “‘ Making of England,” he has the 
credit of having been the first historian who appreciated 
the function of science in a State, or the moulding power 
of the environment of a people. Not only so, but he dis- 
tinctly aimed at showing that the history of a people 
is simply an evolution dependent for its course and out- 
come on the action and reaction between the entity and 
its surroundings. This» conception of the function of 
the historian was probably even more distinctly brought 
out in the ‘‘ Geography of the British Isles,’ by Mr. 
Green and his accomplished and congenial wife. As 
we pointed out in our notice of the “Short History ” 
moreover, Mr. Green not only wrote his ‘‘ History’’ on a 
scientific method, but gave large space in that history to 
a record of the progress of science and of scientific 
societies, as distinct and influential elements in the life of 
our nation. Indeed he may be regarded as the first his- 
torian who, breaking away from the old conventional 
methods of writing history from the outside, and thus mis- 
taking the shell for the kernel, adopted the method of the 
physical geographer as distinct from the mere topo- 
grapher, and, penetrating deep beneath the surface, traced 
the forces which have actuated the nation and brought 
it to its present standpoint. Although the impulse given 
by Mr. Green to historical study will certainly bear fruit, 
his loss cannot be overestimated. His “Making of 
England” was evidently only a prelude to a series of 
volumes in which he intended to show in minute detail 
the interaction between the various elements that go to 
make up the life of these islands,—the ethnical and 
moral elements on the one hand, and the encompassing 
physical elements on the other. Happily he has left behind 
him in a nearly complete state a second volume on 
“The Coming of the Northmen,’ which brings his 
scheme down to the point when it may be said that all 
the forces were in the field, the continued action of which 
has gone to make up the England of to-day. Since Mr. 
Green’s death ample testimony has been borne to his 
rigidly scientific method of work, and the patience with 
which he wrote and rewrote ere his own severely critical 
NATURE 
[March 15, 1883 
standard was reached. It will be difficult to find a suc- 
cessor to Mr. Green so far as stirring eloquence of style 
is concerned, but we trust that his scientific method may 
find favour, and that historians in future will endeavour 
to trace the life of a nation as he did, after the manner of 
the biologist and physical geographer. 
THE BOTANY OF THE “ CHALLENGER” 
EXPEDITION 
ES time to time various contributions to the 
Botany of the Challenger Expedition have been 
published in the Yournal of the Linnean Society, 
chiefly in the fourteenth and fifteenth volumes; but 
hitherto no part of the botanical results has appeared 
in the series of sumptuous volumes in which are re- 
corded the discoveries and observations of the expedi- 
tion. The Government have at length decided to devote 
one volume of about 350 pages and fifty plates to 
the elucidation of the flora of the more interesting 
countries visited, which the writer of the present article 
has undertaken with the assistance and under the super- 
intendence of Sir Joseph D. Hooker. There can be no 
doubt that the Government are right in their estimate of 
the relatively small importance of the results obtained in 
botany as compared with those obtained in other branches 
of science ; yet we think we shall be able to show that the 
botanical collections are sufficient to form the basis of a 
most interesting volume. It is almost superfluous to state 
that the botanist of such an expedition has little chance 
of exhausting the flora of any of the numerous countries 
or regions visited ; and the task of elaborating the ma- 
terials seemed at first an unpromising one. At many of 
the places visited, and especially some of the more inter- 
esting ones, the stay was too short and the means inade- 
quate for making and drying large collections of plants, 
Nevertheless the naturalist, Mr. H. N. Moseley, seems to 
have lost no opportunity, having collected in almost every 
place touched at. Unfortunately the plants of the least- 
known countries, such as the Aru and Admiralty Islands, 
reached England in a very much damaged condition. 
But imperfect as they are, they include a large proportion 
of novelties, and indicate a flora rich in endemic species. 
The best collections, so far as number and quality of the 
specimens are concerned, are those from Chili, Juan 
Fernandez, Japan, the Sandwich Islands, &c.; yet they 
contain little or nothing new to science, and by no means 
fully represent the vegetation of the several countries. 
There remain the collections made in the remote islets 
of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans, which, with what 
was previously known, afford material for a practically 
complete flora of these isolated spots, so interesting to the 
student of the distribution of plants and animals. And 
it has been decided that this shall be the scope of the 
work. 
The Bermudas, the oldest English colony, come first in 
the arrangement adopted. These islands, having an area 
of about one-seventh of that of the Isle of Wight, are 
situated about six hundred miles from the American 
continent, and although settled as long ago as 1612, 
nothing approaching a complete and critical account of 
their vegetation has hitherto been published. The flora 
is a poor one, especially in regard to number of species, 
and is evidently of comparatively recent origin, being in 
this respect in striking contrast to that of various other 
Atlantic islands—that of St. Helena, for example. The 
indigenous element has been, almost without exception, 
derived from the West Indies and the extreme south-east 
of the mainland of North America. By the indigenous 
element we mean those species which have reached the 
islands independently of human agency, direct or indirect. 
With unimportant, though rather numerous, exceptions, 
the indigenous and introduced elements are easily dis- 
— 
