i6o 



NA TURE 



[Dec. ly, 1885 



to 3-604 inches, there having thus fallen on these two days fully 

 eight inches and a half. During this time the wind was westerly 

 and north-westerly, force 2 of Beaufort's scale, with occasional 

 squalls. On the Monday the wind was still westerly, and though 

 no rain fell from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m., the rainfall for the twenty- 

 four hours was i '225 inch. 



The death is announced of Xavier Ullesberger, the well- 

 known palaeontologist, at Ueberlingen, on the Lake of Con- 

 stance, at the age of seventy-nine. His special distinction is the 

 discovery of the lacustrine villages in the Lake of Constance, at 

 Nussdorf, Maurach, Uhldingen, and Sipplingen. The extensive 

 collection of Celtic and prehistoric objects which he got 

 together in the course of his researches is preserved at 

 Stuttgart. 



The death of Mr. Edwin Ormond Brown, Assistant-Chemist 

 to the War Department, occurred on Saturday last. Mr. Brown 

 had been engaged in the chemical establishment at the Royal 

 Arsenal, Woolwich, for about thirty years, and has been instru- 

 mental in the improvement of gun-cotton and other explosives, 

 besides rendering useful services in other matters. 



The Earl of Iddesleigh gave a very sensible address the 

 other evening to the students of the Exeter Science Classes, of 

 which he is the patron. He spoke of the rapidly growing 

 feeling in favour of scientific education, and of the results it had 

 already accomplished for the individual and the nation. After 

 referring to misconceptions as to what technical education really 

 meant, the Earl said: — "There is no doubt that by technical 

 education you may mean one of two things. You may either 

 mean an advance in the teaching of the scientific principles on 

 which industrial processes depend, or you may mean the teaching 

 of those processes practically and illustratively in the school 

 rather than in the workshop. There is a very great difference 

 between these two things. It may be desirable at times to give 

 a certain amount of instruction in schools of a practical cha- 

 racter, but that must not be pushed very far. It must be borne 

 in mind that technical teaching, to be of real service, must be 

 obtained in tlie course of work itself in the workshop. But with 

 regard to the principles on which the processes of manufacture 

 rest, those principles can only be taught in the schools, and it is 

 to the development of those principles that we ought to pay 

 most attention. That is the advantage which in schools of 

 this kind you get. The study of pure and unapplied science is 

 interesting 1 every one, but it does not at once appear that it 

 has a direct bearing on the pursuits and callings of those who 

 indulge in it. I daresay you may have heard the old question 

 put, ' What is the use of any purely scientific discoveiy ? ' 

 For answer another question was asked, ' What is the 

 use of a baby ? ' The question is. What will it turn out to be ? 

 How will it be brought up, and how will it be brought into play ? " 

 The Earl of Iddesleigh then quoted the following passage from 

 Prof. Huxley : — " 'If you could, in the first place, keep your 

 elementary scholars long enough to put them through a fair 

 training in the principles of which the application lies in the 

 special direction of metallurgy, and, secondly, if you could 

 secure that they should acquire a special proficiency in such sub- 

 jects, I think that would be a most admirable thing to do ; but 

 I thing the way it would work out under the present conditions 

 would be this, that you would have special classes set up to 

 grind young fellows without any knowledge of principles in tha^ 

 which would be no better than a rule of thumb. I do not believe 

 that that would be of the smallest good. I believe, on the con- 

 trary, 'that it would do endless harm, because there would be a 

 sort of pre-supposition that these young men really had the 

 knowledge which would enable them to advance and improve 

 their methods, whereas in reality the knowledge they pos- 

 sessed would be nothing more than a little of the ordinary /cch- 

 nique of their business varnished over with scientific phraseology. ' 



What you want," the Earl said, "is what Prof Huxley says you 

 want, as far as you can get it — the education to turn upon the 

 principles on which the true science is based, as distinguished 

 from the application of the science. Having got that, you will 

 find that there will be abundance of opportunity to apply to the 

 arts which you are about to prosecute the principles you have 

 learnt. These principles I believe to be the main secret of what 

 is sometimes called scientific, and sometimes called technical, 

 education." 



The Royal Geographical Society will hold a special meeting 

 on Monday, December 21, to welcome Major Greely, the dis- 

 tinguished Arctic explorer, and hear him tell the story of his 

 work and adventures in the Polar Seas. 



The Natural History Museum at Vienna has just been pre- 

 sented with 708 skulls collected through a series of years by Dr. 

 Weissbach, who was for a long time director of the Austro- 

 Hungarian hospital at Constantinople, and was a veiy distin- 

 guished anthropological investigator. Of the collection 195 are 

 pure Turkish skulls, 131 Greek, 96 Servian or Croat, 48 Hun- 

 garian, 43 Armenian, 29 old Byzantine. There are also skulls 

 of Maronites, Albanians, Koords, Asiatic Jews, cStc. 



As No. I of the Special P.apers of the Alabama Weather 

 Service we have an interesting record of the weather from 1 701 

 to 1885, by Capt. W. H. Gardner, of Mobile. 



Science has, on the whole, no reason to quarrel with the 

 results of the General Election. Sir Lyon Playfair is returned by 

 a large majority for one of the divisions of Leeds ; and Sir John 

 Lubbock again takes his seat unopposed for London University. 

 A new and very important addition to the ranks of scientific men 

 in Parliament is Sir Henry Roscoe, who was elected after a 

 sharp contest for South Manchester. His election is striking in 

 one way, for he is the only Liberal returned in the six divisions 

 of Manchester. Sir Edward Reed retains his former seat for 

 Cardiff, but Prof Riicker, of the Yorkshire College, failed to 

 win a place. The medical profession is even more strongly 

 represented than it was before. Dr. Foster, Professor of Medi- 

 cine in the Queen's College, Birmingham, was elected for 

 Chester, and Mr. Erichsen, the eminent surgeon, is a candidate 

 for Edinburgh and St. Andrews Universities. Even amongst the 

 followers of Mr. Parnell, there are members of the medical 

 profession. Mr. Ernest Hart, however, has been rejected by 

 Mile End. 



We have received the last part (vol. i. part 5) of the Proceed- 

 ings of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science for the session 

 1884-85. It contains a series of museum notes, by Dr. Buchanan 

 White, the indefatigable President for the current year, which 

 are intended to form a guide to the museum subsequently ; two 

 papers on the comparative anatomy of the teeth, by Mr. James 

 Stewart ; the diatoms of the Tay, by Dr. Trotter ; shells — their 

 structure, growth, and use, by Mr. Coates ; the climate of the 

 British Islands, with special reference to Perthshire, by the Rev. 

 A. Campbell ; the native timber trees of Perth, by Mr. Lindsay ; 

 and some minor contributions. The presidential address is 

 devoted to the exceedingly practical subject of explaining why 

 the growth of the museum renders considerable increase of space 

 necessary, and the cost of the consequent building operations. 

 An appeal is also made for further specimens for the Perthshire 

 collection of natural history — an appeal which we trust may meet 

 with adequate response, for apart from the general public benefit 

 of local museums as centres of education throughout the country, 

 they are of universal scientific importance when they are made 

 the depositories of specimens of the natural history, past and 

 present, of their respective neighbourhoods. But to be of the 

 fullest value in this respect, they must be made as complete as 

 possible. 



