Nov. 26, 1885] 



NA TURh 



11 



has the College of Physicians done for medicine and 

 for medical education? Although it was one of the 

 first founded of the Professional Guilds, we have had 

 repeated occasion to point out in these cokmms that in 

 the opinion of the most competent authorities, medical 

 education even to-day is the worst organised and least 

 effective. 



The latter part of the extract gives Prof. Odling's view 

 as to the easy admission afforded by professional eminence 

 into the Royal Society. As regards engineers, we have 

 never heard of any one being elected into the Royal 

 Society except on the ground of his contributions to 

 science. Commercial or professional eminence has, so 

 far as we know, not been considered. As regards 

 doctors, owing to the ancient ties of the Royal Society 

 with medicine, we believe that it has been the custom to 

 consider, in judging their claims, that marked eminence 

 in their profession should be taken into account ; but 

 professional eminence alone does not decide the choice. 

 In saying this we do not express our own opinion merely ; 

 and we must add that there is no written law in the 

 matter, the decisions each year resting with the Council 

 of that year, and the Council, as is known, is an ever- 

 changing body. 



The latter part of Prof Odling's address, which we 

 have not space to give at length, deals with the ad- 

 vantages which in his opinion are likely to result from 

 the new organisation. He also gives some paragraphs 

 from the preamble of the charter under which the Insti- 

 tute has now been incorporated. One of these paragraphs 

 runs as follows : — " That the said Institute was not esta- 

 bhshed for the purposes of gain, nor do the members 

 thereof derive or seek any pecuniary profits from their 

 membership." We confess we find it difficult to har- 

 monise this extract from the charter with the general drift 

 of the part of the address now under consideration ; for 

 although Prof Odling frankly acknowledges, to quote his 

 words, "to those of Uj who have already attained the 

 higher steps on the ladder of success it can scarcely 

 afford any personal advantages whatever," it is clear that 

 this is not to obtain universally. Among the " advan- 

 tages " we find not only " gain to the public " but " gain 

 to ourselves " ; we read of " noteworthy advantages, social 

 and material, to the persons " who form the Institute. 

 We also read : " Among its other objects, the Institute of 

 Chemistry exists undoubtedly for the purpose of improv- 

 ing the position and prospects of professional chemists " ; 

 we further find that the Institute "will add alike to the 

 social and substantial attractiveness of the chemical pro- 

 fession." 



We do not find too many references to researches not of 

 a directly remunerative kind, but Prof. Odling makes 

 one concession : he thinks that among the members of 

 the Institute " some proportion, at any rate, will find the 

 pursuit of research the vocation for which they are espe- 

 cially qualified, and for which they will, IN THE SEED- 

 SOWING TIME OF THEIR LIFE, be willing to make, as 

 others have made before them, even considerable pro- 

 fessional sacrifices." 



Ilias in mice. In the phrase we have put into capitals 

 we have the real key to the address. It would appear 

 that the life of a chemist shoidd be divided into two 

 periods — Seed-time and Harvest. Research may be the 



seed, the harvest must be gold. The continued pursuit 

 of truth, the continued love of science for its own sake, 

 may be left to the unwise. The ideal chemist is one who 

 uses research only as an investment. He carefully limits 

 it to his earliest years. By it he is to gain a reputation 

 as a man of science. His reputation thus gained procures 

 for him a post of high scientific honour and position. 

 The " seed-sowing time " is now over. The golden 

 harvest is ripe. It has to be reaped and garnered. The 

 duties of the position of honour obtained by the original 

 investment are therefore to be thrown to the winds in 

 order that this may be done. He is now a man of " pro- 

 fessional eminence" : he is now on " the higher steps of 

 the ladder of success." 



Does any one think that his electors have a right to 

 protest or his friends to lament .-' Certainly not ; they 

 have no such right. Their feelings have simply arisen 

 from their ignorance of the Whole Duty of a chemical 

 Man. 



In these days of rapid intercommunication among 

 nations we know that Prof Odhng's address will be carried 

 to our brethren beyond the seas and to many centres of 

 scientific activity in other lands. We wish it to be known, 

 therefore, that the spirit it breathes is an alien spirit, 

 repugnant to students of pure science in this country. 



CENTRAL AMERICAN COLEOPTERA 

 Biologia Cen/rali- Americana. Insecta : Colcoptera. Vol. 

 I. Part I. By H. W. Bates. (London : R. H. Porter, 

 18S1-S4.) 



THIS part of Godman and Salvin's great work is now 

 complete, and though called a part is practically a 

 volume, with introduction, indices, and completed pagina- 

 tion ; its publication has extended over four years. It 

 deals with the two great families of carnivorous beetles — 

 the Cicindelidfe and Carabidx — and consists of 316 pages 

 of letterpress and thirteen plates of coloured figures. The 

 number of species of the two families recorded from the 

 region is 1086, belonging to 154 genera. Nine new 

 genera and about 450 new species are described, this 

 latter figure including, however, a certain number of 

 species characterised for the purposes of this work in the 

 j"r«vrrf/Vzg-J- of the Zoological Society for 1878 and a few 

 others similarly dealt with in the Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History. In his introduction the author 

 touches on some points of geographical distribution, and 

 states that the inclusion of the central highlands of 

 Mexico and Guatemala in the Nearctic province by 

 Wallace is not supported by these insects, but that on 

 the contrary they markedly confirm the essentially Neo- 

 tropical character of the Central American fauna. He 

 also is inclined to adopt the opinion that the Central 

 American region comprises two distinct sub-provinces, as 

 proposed by Salvinfrom his study of the birds, the line of 

 division passing probably across Nicaragua ; and con- 

 siders that even the more northern of these sub-provinces 

 is not a southern extension of the Nearctic province, but 

 rather a remarkably distinct sub-province of the Neo- 

 tropical fauna. 



In the body of the work the distribution and extent of 

 each genus is briefly stated, and, so far as known, every 



