24 



NATURE 



[NOVEMUER 4, 1909 



some length by Mr. Harris, no less than 108 varieties 

 being dealt with, and a similar article describes 176 trees 

 found in Dominica. Dr. Watls and Mr. Tempany discuss 

 the soils of Nevis in a very luminous paper. Mr. W. 

 Bilifen writes on soil inoculation, and describes a number 

 of experiments made in various parts of the West Indies 

 with Prof. Bottomley's cultures. No increase in crop was 

 produced, excepting only in two cases ; this result is, of 

 course, quite in accordance with careful trials made else- 

 where. 



The Agricultural News is altogether distinct in type 

 from any other agricultural paper. It consists almost 

 entirely of scientific articles, some original and some 

 quoted from other sources, but all bearing on the problems 

 of West Indian agriculture. With a body of scientific 

 men like the staff of the West Indian departments there 

 is probably no great difficulty in getting "copy," but it 

 is interesting and significant 'that the " news " shouM be 

 appreciated by the planters. An interesting economic 

 problem is raised in one of the issues. The West Indies 

 are, of course, almost purely agricultural, vet quantities 

 of food-stuffs are imported, 'in the Leeward Islands, for 

 instance, the total value of all imports for 1906-7 was 

 407,251/., of which 151,260/. was for food, viz. 46,751/. 

 for wheat flour, 13,593/. for corn meal, 12,657/. for salt 

 pork, hams, and bacon, 9127/. for bread-stuffs, 8537/. for 

 rice, and 991/. for peas and beans. No doubt it is 

 economically sound for these islands to grow for export 

 such staple products as sugar, cacao, cotton, limes, 

 bananas, and to import the above food-stuffs ; but in manv 

 of the West Indian islands there are men unemployed 

 and land uncultivated ; moreover, crops like cotton require 

 some sort of rotation. Why could not some scheme be 

 evolved for raising on the spot the bulk of this imported 

 produce? The question is discussed in a broad, masterlv 

 way in an interesting and informing article. 



Of the recent pamphlets dealing with special subjects 

 that have reached us, three relate to the sugar-cane. 

 Experiments have been in progress some vears in .Antigua 

 and St. Kitts to ascertain those varieties of sugar-cane 

 which are likely to give improved yields of sugar, and, at 

 the same time, to show increased resistance to disease. 

 In the manurial trials it is found that sulphate of ammonia 

 or nitrate of soda alone, i.e. without potash or phosphate, 

 is the most profitable form of manure for ratoon canes! 

 Sulphate of ammonia proved more useful than nitrate of 

 soda, probably due to its being less liable to loss by leach- 

 ing. Potash and ohosphate still further increase the vield. 

 but not to a sufficient extent to pay for the additional 

 fertiliser. Dried blood did not prove remunerative. Very 

 full details are published in a separate report. Experiment's 

 on similar lines are made at Barbadoes ; the results are 

 very similar, but the increased yield obtained by the use 

 of potassic manures was profitable. 



Jamaica has its own Department of .Agriculture and 

 publishes its own bulletin. The new series began in April 

 of this year under the editorship of the director, Mr. H. H. 

 Cousins, and it is well got up and illustrated with very 

 good photographs. Mr. Cousins contributes articles in his 

 usual lucid style on rum. cassava, starch, mangoes, and 

 other important local industries. Mr. .\shby discusses the 

 yeasts^ of the rum distilleries, and in another article the 

 birteria of the soil, and Mr. Harris describes the timbers 

 of Jamaica. 



THE QUINOUECENTEN.ARY OF THE 

 UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG. 



T' 



'HIS year, the year of anniversary celebrations, has 

 been an annus mirahilis for other countries than our 

 own. In Germany Leipzig has been commemorating het 

 five-hundredth birthday, and Prof. \A"undt, her official 

 historiographer, had a crowded and distinguished audience 

 before him in the theatre at Leipzig, an assemblage in- 

 cluding the King of Saxony, the Royal princes, and many 

 learned delegates drawn from all four quarters of the 

 globe ; but some notice must be taken of the previous 

 history in order to understand and to preface Prof. Wundt's 

 enthusiastic and interesting discourse. 



Charles IV., the first German King of Bohemia, in 1349 

 NO. 2088, VOL. 82] 



established at Prague the first German university. About 

 half a century later, and in the throes of the Great Schism, 

 whilst Wenceslaus was still occupying the Imperial throne, 

 there was a great national and religious revolt in all the 

 Slav domains of the Holy Roman Empire, and in the 

 course of this upheaval the University of Prague was 

 nationalised by the Cechs. Then, in 1409, a small band 

 of German teachers and students left Prague, turned their 

 faces northwards, and founded a new home at Leipzig. 

 Prof. Wundt's address shows how fully he realises that 

 the spirit of those first free emigrants was perpetuated 

 in the great school they established. For in this her 

 voluntary uprising, Leipzig is unique among the universities 

 of Germany ; her existence might be confirmed by the 

 princes and electors, and she might acknowledge many 

 benefactions from on high, but she was ever independent 

 of both city and Sovereign. Yet this independence, this 

 tradition of liberty, was sterilising ; it rested on an essential 

 immutability ; until 1830, when the University had to 

 conmiit her own suicide — but was spared the public 

 executioner — and became a State institution, sire remained 

 scholastic, manacled with fetters of an age outworn. 



Prof. Wundt thinks that the present age may witness 

 a change, as at those two epochs when humanism and 

 science forced a reluctant way in. .'\s Leibniz said, " The 

 past has ever been fulfilled by the future." " Wherever 

 we look," says Prof. Wundt, " we see the force of new 

 needs impelling us far beyond the original objects of the 

 universities. The universities arose out of the bosom of 

 the Church. The State was concerned with conserving 

 a class of learned clerics, and thus availed herself of them 

 as schools for the making of a learned officialdom ; and 

 thus the State cut herself free from the Church in the 

 settling of the aims of the universities. But nowadays a 

 third pow-er is associated with the State, and is present- 

 ing an ever-increasing tale of demands, viz. the community. 

 .Society henceforth needs the State as a means of attain- 

 ing its ends, just as the Church once similarly required 

 the resources of the State." .\nd the modern university 

 will present a more motley and less secluded appearance ; 

 it will have to deal with the claims of women to a 

 university education, to admit technical high schools 

 and pupils from Realgymnasien to an equality with its 

 original alumni, and to extend and expand to suit the 

 manysidedness of modern life. Leipzig, very late in the 

 day, at last had to succumb in the fight against humanism, 

 and had to allow the newer teaching gradually to supersede 

 scholastics. So, too, the University had to approve 

 natural science and the linking of research to scholarship ; 

 but the present conflict is not " as of old, a struggle 

 between irreconcilables, of whom only one may win ; 

 rather, the task of combining the ideal of the future with 

 the whilom new ideal of culture." 



The early centuries of the University are, on the whole, 

 undistinguished. Not even the Reformation transformed 

 it essentially, .■\fter the model of Paris, the University 

 was divided into four " nations," each under its dean, 

 the Meiszners, the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Poles; 

 but all these ancient differences have been swept away ; 

 this only remains, that, at every annual election, the 

 statutes of 155a are entrusted to the new officer, and the 

 benevolent funds for poor students still subsist. Also every 

 piofessor has, like the mediaeval magister, a famulus^ 

 In 1543 Maurice, tha great Elector of Saxony, gave the 

 University the old Dominican monastery of St. Paul, 

 which was itself built on the foundations of one of the 

 three castles erected in 1217 to cow the city. There were, 

 as is usual in the story of university life, many town and 

 gown riots, perh.aps, as the professor suggests, survivals 

 of the old Bohemian spirit of liberty. The University was 

 a close corporation, rigidly scholastic, with only one 

 faculty, theology, up to which all other branches of know- 

 ledge necessarily led; and then, too, "it was the fate 

 of the German university that its development should have 

 begun at a period of the decay of learning." When the 

 sleep of the other universities was being broken by dawn- 

 ing humanism, Leipzig resisted longer than any other; 

 and the University of Leipzig was regarded as an alms- 

 house for irremovable magisiri, and for some time, 

 during the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, young 

 children were matriculated in l.irge numbers so as to 

 secure them some legal immunity ; there were only a few 



