NA TURE 



[November iS, 1909 



in water, up to joo° F. or more when dry. 

 This led on to one of Dallinger's best known re- 

 searches (Proc. Roy. Soc, xxvii., 1878), in which he 

 showed that flagellates could gradually adapt them- 

 selves to tolerate extremely high temperatures. 

 Starting with a medium at 60° F., in which three 

 selected species (e..?. DalUngeria Drysdalei) flour- 

 ished, he very gradually raised the temperature to 

 158° F., without killing off the organisms. That 

 scalding heat would, Indeed, have been fatal to the 

 original stocks, but there had been, of course, myriads 

 of generations, and the power of resistance to heat 

 had been gradually augmented. The adapted forms 

 showed marked vacuolation. Dallinger seems to 

 have thought that this was a case of the inheritance 

 of " acquired characters," but it is obviouslv out with 

 VVeismann's category of " somatic modifications." 

 It is interesting to recall that Darwin was much in- 

 terested in Dallinger's experiment because of its 

 bearing on the adaptation of living creatures to hot 

 springs. He wrote : — " The fact which you mention 

 about their being adapted to certain temperatures, 

 but becoming gradually accustomed to much higher 

 ones, is very remarkable. It explains the existence 

 of algje in hot springs." 



So far as we know, Dallinger's microscopical 

 studies did not extend beyond monads and the like 

 except by way of recreation, and his output of work 

 was not great. It was thorough, however, as the 

 man himself, and the lesson of his patience has still 

 to be learned by some of the too impetuous workers 

 of to-day. In 1886 he published the " Fernlev Lec- 

 ture " on " The Creator, and What we may Know 

 about Creation," and he wrote manv scientific 

 articles for the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine. He 

 wrote also a number of papers on spontaneous gener- 

 ation and heterogenesls, both of w'hich he profoundlv 

 disbelieved in, on the ultimate limit of microscopic 

 vision and kindred questions, and on the thermal 

 death-point of microbes. .\ characteristic deliverance 

 was an address to the Literary and Philosophical 

 Society in Liverpool entitled " Life-histories and 

 their Lessons : a Defence of the L'niformity and 

 Stability of Vital Processes as Controlled bv the Laws 

 of Evolution." But his magnum opus, apart from 

 monads, was his edition and re-edition (i8qi and 

 iqoil of " Carpenter's Microscope," which he brought 

 up to date, and with the aid of specialists developed 

 into a most valuable encyclopaedia of the whole science 

 and art of microscopv. 



Dallinger was elected a Fellow of the Roval Society 

 in 1S80, and he received the honorary degrees of 

 LL.D. from Victoria L^niversitv in 1884, of D.Sc. 

 from Dublin in 1892, of D.C.'L. from Durham in 

 1896. He enjoyed the respect and esteem of scientific 

 workers, and lie has left his successors a pattern of 

 thoroughness, patience, and enthusiasm. 



THE STUDY OF GERMAN IN SCHOOLS. 

 'yWEL\'E months ago an influentially signed 

 ■•- letter, dealing with the studv of German in 

 secondary schools, was sent to the" President of the 

 Board of Education. That letter pointed out the 

 serious neglect into which the study of the German 

 language is falling in secondary schools, and urged 

 the Board to take steps to encourage and foster the 

 teaching of German. It was made clear that the de- 

 cline of German as a secondary-school subject is a 

 matter of grave national importance from the points 

 of view of general literary culture, the public services, 

 practical utility, and of rendering a good understand- 

 ing between the peoples of two great nations less 

 easy. 



XO. 2090, VOL. 82] 



About six months after the receipt of this letter, the 

 Board of Education issued a memorandum (circular 

 705) on language-teaching in State-aided secondary 

 schools in England, in which an optimistic view of 

 the condition of German teaching in England was 

 taken, and it appeared to be argued that an advance 

 was in progress in the number of pupils studying the 

 language. 



The various associations interested in the teaching 

 of modern languages have had the Board's circular 

 in particular, and the whole question generally, under 

 consideration again, and a second letter has been sent 

 to the President of the Board of Education, signed 

 by representatives of the Modern Language Associa- 

 tion, the -Society of L^niversity Teachers, the Teachers' 

 Guild of Great Britain and Ireland, and the British 

 Science Guild. 



The letter conveys the sense of disappointment of 

 the associations generally with the " Memorandum 

 on Language Teaching in Secondary Schools in 

 England " (circular 705), and dissents in particular 

 from several of the doctrines and statements laid 

 down in it. It appears that 



The Board of Education has not obtained, and cannot 

 obtain, the materials required for making the return on 

 the time allotted to modern language teaching in schools 

 in the exact form that the motion in the House of Lords 

 made on February 5, 190S, demanded, but there seems no 

 good reason why the Board should not furnish Parliament 

 and the public, in whatever shape it thought good, with 

 the information suggested by the motion. \\'hat we desire 

 to know, and what the Board has full power and oppor- 

 tunity for ascertaining, is the present condition of modern 

 language teaching in secondary schools, the place assigned 

 to it in the curriculum by headmasters and governing 

 bodies, the relation in which it stands to the teaching of 

 Classics and of English, the qualifications, emoluments, 

 and status of its teachers. On these points the 

 memorandum throws no light. 



The remark in the Board's memorandum that " the 

 advance in the study of German is not at the present 

 moment as rapid as the advance in the study of 

 French, or even of Latin," scarcely represents the 

 facts. All the evidence available shows that, not onlv 

 has there been no advance in the study of German, 

 but rather a rapid and decided retrogression. Sym- 

 pathetic action is required to arrest this decline. 



The letter continues : — ■ 



As regards the contention that " the curriculum ol 

 schools is necessarily guided by the course of the Universi- 

 ties to which it is to lead," we would observe that only 

 a fraction of the pupils in State-aided schools proceed to 

 the university^ and no curriculum can be deemed satis- 

 factory which does not satisfy the needs of the bulk of 

 the scholars. The majority of the pupils in these schools 

 leave school before the age of seventeen, and it is allowed 

 that for such pupils, " both practically and educationally, 

 German is a language of the first importance"; yet the 

 Board throws the whole weight of its influence into the 

 scale of Latin as against German, apparently out of con- 

 sideration for the one boy in a hundred who will go on 

 to the university ; and in this case what would be con- 

 fessedly good for the many would be no less good for the 

 favoured few. The number at Oxford and Cambridge 

 taking medicine, science, and modern subjects is rapidiv 

 on the increase, and it is a constant cause of complaint 

 among the professors and teachers of these subjects that 

 their pupils come to them heavily handicapped by their 

 ignorance of German. It is hardly necessary to insist on 

 the value of a knowledge of German to honour students 

 in every faculty. 



Our suggestion that the Board should encourage and 

 foster schools of the type of the German Realschule and 

 Ober-Realschule is not noticed, but it is indirectly 

 negatived by the insistence on Latin as one of two foreign 

 languages where two are taught. 



