JuLy: 3, 1902] 
NATURE 
225 
difficulty of icebergs in sufficient numbers reaching so 
low a latitude. 
The biological work was very fully developed on the 
voyage, and in addition to a close watch being kept on 
the changes in the surface plankton by continuous 
tow-netting, attention was devoted to the use of very large 
wide-meshed nets (one was of 7 metres diameter) for 
horizontal towing, and to a vertical net of 2 metres 
diameter. A somewhat unexpected result of the latter 
was the discovery that very young fishes increased in 
number with the depth. 
Thus in a vertical draught from | 
500 metres twelve “ fischchen” were found, in one from | 
800 metres fifteen, from: 1000 metres thirty-two, from 
1200 metres thirty-six, from 2000 metres forty-three and 
from 3000 metres no fewer than ninety-six. Most of 
them belonged to the genus Cyclothone. 
Dr. Bidlingmaier enters very fully into the methods and 
difficulties of magnetic work at sea. The two principal 
instruments in use are a Bamberg’s deviation mag- 
netometer and a Lloyd-Creak inclination instrument 
identical with that supplied to the D¢scovery. The 
results are not yet ready for publication, but a number of 
France, as set out in the report before us. And the United 
States, our Australian Colonies and Canada, to name no 
more cases, would all report similarly—their educators 
have begun to realise that primary education has been 
systematised on bookish and artificial lines, which can 
nowhere be more pernicious or more easily avoided 
than in the purely country school, with trees and fields 
around it. 
Unfortunately, the pioneers of any movement, just 
because they are pioneers and have brought a certain 
amount of original thought to the work, are apt to forget 
that there must be other people progressing on the same 
lines ; they shut themselves up in their own schemes, 
and. bit by bit work through the same mistakes which 
everyone else has previously made. 
Here comes the special value of such reports as the 
one we are now considering, and had this account of the 
attempt in France to impart an agricultural bias to the 
rural primary school been available a year or two earlier, 
| many experiments destined to failure might have been 
observations were made both at the ports of call and at | 
sea. At Cape Town Profs. Beattieand Morrison repeated 
the comparison of their own instruments with those of 
the expedition which they had made a short time pre- 
viously with the Déscovery’s, thus enabling a comparison 
of the instruments of the two exploring vessels to be | 
made. 
The report concludes with a letter from the auxiliary 
station at Kerguelen which was established by Herr | 
Enzensperger on the shores of Royal Sound in November, 
and was visited by the Gawss on her way southward in 
January, 1902; but the letter had been dispatched some 
weeks before the ship arrived. 
We miss any detailed account of the meteorological 
work of the expedition, or particulars as to the placing 
avoided, and much well-meant effort directed into more 
fruitful channels. 
The problem in France is like that of England, there 
is the same depression in agriculture, the same domi- 
nance of the town in the organisation of the State, the 
same increasing distaste for a farming life—in a word, 
the same impossibility of the primitive industry, with its 
toil, its small returns, its isolation, competing either for 
men or capital with the specialised affairs of the town. 
But as Mr. Brereton reminds us, France is more of an 
agricultural country than we are, so the problem was 
taken in hand earlier there ; the economic difficulties were 
| palliated by protection, and the primary education of the 
and working of the various self-recording instruments | 
on board. 
It is impossible to overrate the importance of pre- 
liminary work in comparatively easy conditions before 
grappling with the manifold difficulties of the polar seas. 
Indeed, we believe that those who organise polar expedi- 
country was overhauled to ensure that it should stimu- 
late, rather than divert, the child’s desire to live on the 
land 
The volume before us consists of two reports; the 
first is a very detailed account by Mr. Cloudesley Brere- 
| ton on the organisatien of rural education in the Depart- 
tions for scientific work would be well advised to insist | 
on a preliminary trip of at least three months’ duration 
before the final plans and equipment are settled. 
The | 
result would not be waste of time ; it would render fruitful | 
a vast amount of work, which without preliminary 
experience is sure to be wasted. In this respect Ant- 
arctic expeditions are more advantageously situated than 
those to the Arctic regions, where the ship is in the 
midst of its field of work before the men have settled 
down to life on board and to work under the countless 
limitations which harass the man of science at sea. 
H.R. M. 
RURAL EDUCATION IN FRANCE: 
@re is always being reminded afresh of the essential 
solidarity of the thought of civilised man; no 
movement seems to begin with one man or in one place ; 
the tide rises, and though this or that first receives the 
impulse and takes credit for being the creator, yet the 
wave has already reached many a distant creek and inlet. 
In two or three years the idea of giving an agricultural 
colouring to the work of the rural elementary schools of 
England has been getting itself translated into codes and 
circulars and syllabuses; the Agricultural Education 
Committee gave the needful push, but if anything else 
were wanted to prove that it only supplied the “starter” 
to a medium already prepared to react, it would be a | 
consideration of the work done in the same direction in 
1 Vol. vii. of ‘‘Special Reports on Educational Subjects,” published by | 
the Board of Education. | 
NO. 1705, VOL. 66] 
ments of Calvados, Orne, Sarthe, Indre et Loire, Loir et 
Cher. Here the machinery for the education both of 
child and teacher ; the relations, financial and adminis- 
trative, between the central authority, the department 
and the commune; the status of the teachers, the in- 
spectorate, the departmental professors, &c., are set out 
at length, together with the personal impressions of the 
author while visiting typical schools in the district 
indicated. Mr. J. C. Medd, the author of the second 
report, deals with the country bordering Mr. Brereton’s 
on the north and east; he is, perhaps, more specially 
concerned with “Venseignment agricole” than with the 
general machinery of education. The first thing that 
strikes us is dhe predominance given in both reports, 
and indeed in the French system, to the programme. 
Most new movements in education narrowly escape being 
choked in their early days by a programme, and as we 
in England are still struggling to free ourselves from the 
wrappings of syllabuses, it is interesting to read how the 
vastness of the schemes framed by the departments in 
response to the law of 1879, resulted in practically no 
teaching except bya few enthusiasts. This was realised, 
and the Ministry issued in 1897 a well-reasoned scheme 
‘‘on the teaching of elementary notions of agriculture 
in rural schools,”! which forms the basis of the work 
that is proceeding to-day. Even this circular seems to 
err in attempting instruction’ which is too definitely 
technical for the primary school, and so degenerates into 
text-book repetitions. The study of manures and artificial 
fertilisers has an extraordinary attraction for the sort of 
man who teaches in a primary school; he needs to be 
warned that they do not constitute the whole of agricul- 
ture, rather than encouraged to devote his ‘‘ champs 
1 A translation appears in the Report of the Irish Commission on Primary 
| Schools [ce 8925]. 
