March 10, 1870 | 
founded with the special aim of fostering the industrial 
arts, should be to insist on teaching principles systematis 
cally, and not in their isolated applications. To treat of 
the applications of the science is, of course, necessary, 
even for the sake of science itself ; and under certain cir- 
cumstances, some of these applications may wisely be 
dwelt on more than others ; but this is quite a different 
thing from pretending to teach as scence detached frag- 
ments of science in their application to this or that art. 
The following extract from a well-known essay by 
Liebig, written so long ago as 1840, clearly shows that 
his views on this question coincide with those above 
expressed :— 
“The teaching of science in the laboratories of the 
Trade—and Polytechnic—Schools is, in most places (in 
Prussia), very deficient. A system of true scientific in- 
struction should fit a student for each and every possible 
application of science; for these applications become 
easy, and follow as a matter of course, from a knowledge 
of scientific principles. Nothing is more deleterious or 
dangerous than when utilitarianism is made the foundation 
of a system of tuition in a school, or when institutions, 
whose true aim ought to be experimental instruction in 
scientific principles, are employed to convert mere chil- 
dren into soap-boilers, brandy-distillers, or sulphuric acid 
makers. All this entirely destroys the true purpose of the 
institution. 
“T have found, in all those attending my laboratory 
who intended to pursue a technical course of study, a 
general predisposition to devote themselves to some 
branch of applied chemistry. It is only with feelings 
of fear and trepidation that they consent to follow my 
advice, and give up the time they thus waste on mere 
drudgery to making themselves acquainted with the 
methods by which pure scientific problems are soluble, 
and by which alone they can be solved. .... There are 
many of my pupils, now at the head of many depart- 
ments of manufacturing industry, who, having had no 
previous acquaintance with the processes, were in half an 
hour perfectly az fac¢ with all the details of the manufac- 
ture, whilst in a short time they saw and introduced all 
sorts of necessary reforms and improvements. This 
power they had gained by being accustomed in their 
laboratory work to obtain the most accurate and precise 
knowledge of all the substances which came into their 
hands in their work; they had to learn the conditions 
necessary for avoiding errors, they investigated the pro- 
perties of the products of decomposition formed, and thus 
became acquainted with the sources of error, with the 
means of avoiding losses; they were able to improve 
their apparatus, and to amend their processes. All this 
can never be learnt when the work is conducted according 
to cut-and-dry methods.” 
There are, no doubt, certain obstacles in the way of the 
proposed amalgamation in Germany; but in the old 
English Universities, and in the science colleges which 
we hope soon to see established in various parts of Eng- 
land, the difficulty would not arise at all. Apart from 
questions of tradition and historical routine, there can be 
no reason why students of applied science, led by their 
probable destination to manufacturing industry, should 
not study systematic science in the same class-rooms with 
students of the same subject who may have other aims: 
NATURE 
477 
and if such students require minute practical and experi- 
mental instruction, there is no reason why they should not 
obtain this in physical and mechanical, as they do already 
in chemical, laboratories. In sucha technical department, 
future teachers of science and leaders of manufacturing 
industry would be trained in the application of science to 
the most important branches of art and manufacture— 
so far, that is, as these are fit subjects for academic treat- 
ment ; so far as they are not, they must be left to the 
workshop. H. E. ROSCOE 
VON SCHLICHT ON FORAMINIFERA 
Die Foraminiferen des Septarienthones von Pietzpuhl. 
By E. von Schlicht. 4to. With 38 lithographic plates. 
(Berlin, 1870. London: Williams and Norgate.) 
SINCE the appearance of D’Orbigny’s “ Foraminiféres 
Fossiles du Bassin Tertiaire de Vienne,” no work 
has been issued on the Foraminifera in their geological 
or paleontological relations, with pretensions at all 
corresponding to those of the newly-published monograph, 
the title of which stands at the head of the present 
article. We do not use the word frefensions in an offen- 
sive sense, for the author is careful to apprise his readers 
of the limitations of the treatise ; but rather to indicate 
the sort of impression produced by the dimensions of the 
book and its profuse illustration, A quarto volume con- 
taining, in addition to the letter-press, thirty-eight large 
plates devoted to the Foraminifera of a small division of 
the Tertiary system of North Germany, and confined to 
a very limited district, or, as we might put it, 1,192 
drawings of microscopic shells from the clay of a single 
brickyard, ought to show in its results a very evident 
raison a@étre to save it from the imputation of labour 
thrown away. We need not require the expression of 
new or startling philosophical views to bring such a work 
within the scope of things worth doing; but we may fairly 
expect from so large an expenditure of labour and cost, 
some real and definite addition to our scientific knowledge. 
Whilst a smaller book might pass unnoticed, or at least 
without critical examination, one like this cannot escape 
without an inquiry as to what it contains of novelty, 
either in observation or theory,—in facts or their arrange- 
ment ; and on the reply dictated by a patient study of its 
contents, the verdict as to its value must depend. To 
frame an answer to these questions which will serve to 
give an idea of the work, it will be necessary to offer a 
few preliminary observations and to epitomise the labours 
of previous observers in the same field. 
In the Tertiary system of Belgium, and Northern and 
Central Germany, there occurs a thick bed of clay, con- 
taining nodules of argillaceous limestone, with radiating 
cracks or fissures in their interior, which have become 
filled with calc-spar. These nodules are termed “ sep- 
taria,” and they are regarded as sufficiently characteristic 
of the deposit to give it a name, though possibly a some- 
what indefinite one. As used by German authors, the 
term “Septarienthon” includes the Rupelian clays of 
Rupelmonde and Boom, near Antwerp, the brick-clays of 
the neighbourhood of Berlin, together with similar beds 
in the valleys of the Maine and Elbe, and in many other 
localities between the Baltic and the centre of Germany. 
These beds are of Lower Miocene or Upper Eocene age, 
and belong to a group of transition strata, associated by 
