January 20, 19 10] 



NA 7 VRE 



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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Editor docs not hold himself responsible for opinions 

 expressed by bis correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for tliis or any other part of Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.] 



Cross-feitilisation of Sweet-peas. 



It is unnecessary, I think, to cite more than one of the 

 rtjcent statements with regard to sweet-peas, though I can 

 provide others. Sir Francis Galton in his just issued 

 " Memories " (p. 300) writes : — 



" After much consideration and many inquiries, I deter- 

 mined in 1885, on experimenting with sweet-peas, which 

 were suggested to me both by Sir Joseph Hoolier and Mr. 

 Darwin. Their merits are three-fold. They have so little 

 tendency to become cross-fertilised that seedsmen do not 

 hesitate to grow differently coloured plants in neighbouring 

 beds. . . ." 1)1;.' 



I must thank Mr. Francis Darwin (p. 308) for his 

 reference to the " Cross- and Self-fertilisation." On the 

 page he refers to Charles Darwin writes : — " Why, then, 

 do not the varieties occasionally intercross, though this 

 would not often happen, as insects so rarely act in an 

 efficient manner? " and again, " Whatever the cause may 

 be, we may conclude, that in England the varieties never 

 or very rarely intercross." These are the views which 

 evidently Charles Darwin communicated to Sir Francis 

 Galton. 



My point is that now they do intercross, and that 

 varieties cannot with safety be kept in neighbouring beds. 

 Mr. Wright, the superintendent of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society's Garden at Wisley, told an inquirer in 1907, as 

 to his experience re sweet-peas, that he had no doubt 

 there was some English insect that cross-fertilised them, 

 and that in trying new sorts the gardeners had to place 

 the rows in different parts of the garden to minimise the 

 risk as much as possible. Charles Darwin, in the passage 

 referred to, says that " on two or three occasions " he 

 saw Megachile in the act of depressing the keel, and he 

 notes that these bees had the undersides of their bodies 

 thickly covered with pollen. My point is that hourly every 

 day these bees came in large numbers ; their visits were 

 not occasional, but persistent and effectual ; I never saw 

 a hive bee, although they frequently tried, successful. 

 Megachile may, in the course of forty years, have developed 

 the habit much more completely. The purport of my letter 

 was merely to suggest to those growing sweet-peas that 

 there is no security that they will be self-fertilised if 

 Megachile be frequent. 



I should like to add that " The Original ir " is by no 

 means the first tt who has contributed to the columns of 

 Nature ! The tt's are a large and talkative species. 



The Village Institute and its Educational Possibilities. 



The growth of social life in villages during the last few 

 years has been fostered by the erection of village institutes, 

 halls, and reading-rooms, and yearly such institutions are 

 becoming more numerous. Has the educational life of the 

 village been fostered by their growth? 



The majority of these institutions cater for games and 

 recreation, together with a supply of reading matter of 

 the daily paper and monthly magazine type. The presence 

 of the latter indicates a desire on behalf of the manage- 

 ment or the donor of the institute to devote at least part 

 of the work of the institute to educational purposes. In 

 many institutes the reading-room is little frequented and 

 has the least share of the members' time, whereas the 

 billiard-room, where long visits are the rule, invariably 

 presents a scene of congestion. 



To a certain extent the village institute is a replica of 

 the mechanics' institute of the towns and urban districts ; 

 both serve as a meeting place for members, and supply 

 opportunities for recreation and self-improvement to them. 



The mechanics' institutes were, in their earliest days, 

 the housing place of evening classes in science, art, and 

 languages, but the growth of continuation education has 

 led to the genera! abandonment of the mechanics' insti- 

 tutes for systematic class instruction and the provision of 

 NO. 2099, VOL. 82] 



special buildings. Courses of lectures of a more or less 

 educational character still remain at the mechanics' insti- 

 tutes — remnants of their early educational efforts. The 

 mechanics' institute is a model upon which the village 

 institute might shape its policy and methods, so becoming 

 a centre of educational activity. 



As a result, we find that several village institutes, like 

 their town compeers, give courses of lectures. Such sub- 

 jects as agriculture, horticulture, poultry-keeping, bee- 

 keeping, and other rural industries are so treated, but, 

 generally speaking, the village institutes have never 

 attempted to take up the work of systematic evening 

 education, as the mechanics' institutes did, fitted to the 

 environment of the villager. 



The future of an individual is as much a problem for 

 the " powers that be " in a rural community as it is in 

 the urban district, town, or city. This future is not 

 thoroughly and properly catered for by providing the in- 

 dividual with games and recreation to the exclusion of 

 provision for craft-work and intellectual training for his 

 daily work. Why should not the village institute help in 

 the intellectual development of villagers, keeping them 

 mentally elastic and manually efficient by suitable educa- 

 tional work ? 



If the institute cannot provide suitable educational pro- 

 vision on account of lack of funds, it certainly should not, 

 by its rules of membership or otherwise, be an obstacle 

 in the way of other institutions which take up evening 

 classes. 



The younger members of rural communities, as in towns, 

 after leaving day school generally display no further interest 

 in their own education, and their elementary education 

 equipment begins to rust. 



In the towns we appeal to the employer to look after 

 the welfare of the youth by asking him to see they attend 

 the evening school. In the villages the same appeal may 

 be made by way of the village institute. The appeal in 

 each case would cease if continuation work became com- 

 pulsory, but as at present compulsion is not a part of 

 either political party's programme, we must look to other 

 means. It may be said there would be no resting and 

 rusting of the villager if there were an evening continua- 

 tion school in the village, a statement which brings one to 

 the raison d'etre of the present letter on village institutes. 



The village institute has usually no restrictions concern- 

 ing the admission of a youth when he applies to become a 

 member. It would not be necessary to advocate a re- 

 striction if institute managers had, as a condition of 

 membership, told the would-be member that the institute 

 would be closed to him on those nights the evening school 

 was open. It would not be too drastic to tell the would- 

 be member that up to eighteen years of age he would be 

 expected to attend the evening classes held in the village. 

 In small villages, where the number of available students 

 for an evening school is small, the village institute should 

 render all the help it can. A leading educationist stated 

 before the recent Consultative Committee on Attendance at 

 Evening Schools that there was a club where no boy was 

 allowed to remain a member unless he attended the even- 

 ing classes two nights per week. The village institutes 

 might take up a similar definite position where evening 

 schools are in existence. 



The foregoing suggestions are made because the insti- 

 tute, by providing games, not only threatens the e.xistence 

 or birth of an evening school, but cultivates in its young 

 members no sense of responsibility either to themselves or 

 to the community. A curriculum of pleasure alone should 

 be far from satisfactory for the leaders of village activity. 



It may be said that an institute cannot afford financially 

 to cripple itself by the adoption of the foregoing 

 suggestions. My reply is that managers would find that 

 such a regulation, prospective in nature, would not reduce 

 applications for membership. Temporarily there might be 

 a little resistance to the conditions, but in time applicants 

 would become educated to the benefits of such a regula- 

 tion and recognise it, as they do the payment of a fee. 

 The authority managing the evening school might 

 transfer the fee from the school to the institute if the 

 student made a satisfactory percentage of school attend- 

 ances. Thus the student would not be mulcted in two 

 payments, one for the school and another for the institute. 



