NA TURE 



rpi 



SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1922 



CONTENTS. 



Children and Museums 3 DI 



Ninety Years of British Science 3° 2 



A Standard Treatise on Crystallography . . . 303 



New Editions of Chemical Works .... 305 



Phosphatic Fertilisers. By H. J. P. • 3°° 



Our Bookshelf '..307 



Letters to the Editor : — 



Spectrum Lines of Xeutral Helium. — Prof. W. M. 



Hicks, F.R.S 309 



Micro Methods in the Practical Teaching of Chemistry. 



— Prof. Egerton C. Grey 3°9 



An Atomic Model with Stationary Electrons. — Dr. 



H. S. Allen 310 



The Variable Depth of Earthquake Foci. — Dr. 



Dorothy Wrinch and Dr. Harold Jeffreys . 310 

 An Electrical Analogue of the Vocal Organs. — John 



Q. Stewart 3 11 



Interspecific Sterility.— Dr. J. W. H. Harrison . 312 

 The Mass Spectrum of Iron.— Dr. F. W. Aston, 



F.R.S 3'2 



Density of Absorbed Films.— R. M. Deeley . . 313 

 The Pigeon Tick.— L. H. Matthews and A. D. 



Hobson 313 



An Ancient Wasp. — Prof. T. D. A. Cockerell . 315 



Black Coral.— Dr. M Nierenstein . . . 313 

 The Zoological Society. (Illustrated.) By E. G. 



Boulenger 314 



The Resonance Theory of Audition. ( With dia- 

 gram.) By Prof. E. H. Barton, F.R S. . . . 316 



The Lesser Whitethroat's Fanfare. By Prof. W. 



Garstang . . . . . . . 319 



Obituary : — 



W. H. Hudson 319 



Current Topics and Events 320 



Research Items 322 



The Weights and Measures of India. By C. A. 



Silberrad 325 



School Instruction in Botany ..... 329 



University and Educational Intelligence . . . 330 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers 331 



Societies and Academies 332 



Editorial and Publishing Offices : 



MACMILLAN &■ CO.. LTD., 

 ST. MARTIN'S STREET. LONDON, W.C.2. 



Advertisements and business letters should be 



addressed to the Publishers. 



Editorial communications to the Editor. 



Telegraphic Address : PHUS1S, LONDON. 

 Telephone Number : GERRARD 8830. 



Children and Museums. 



THE direct educational work accomplished by 

 museums in the United States is a perpetual 

 source of shame to us in this country. We are well 

 aware that much is being done in some of our own 

 museums, often at the self-sacrifice of their officials ; 

 but have we anything to compare with what is de- 

 scribed in a recent number of Natural History (March- 

 April 1922) — the journal of the American Museum of 

 Natural History? Consider lantern - slides, for ex- 

 ample. Our own Natural History Museum has recently 

 started one or two loan collections, comprising in all 

 some few dozen slides. Those of the American Museum 

 number many thousands. They are stored in a room 

 accessible to teachers, who can thus select precisely 

 what they want for their class-room lectures. Last 

 year more than two hundred thousand slides were cir- 

 culated. It is not long since a fair collection of slides 

 made by an assistant in our own museum was handed 

 over to another institution because there were no 

 facilities for keeping it in the museum itself. Needless 

 to say, the American Museum has a lecture theatre. 

 It has 869 nature-study collections to be lent to any 

 public school in greater New York. .There are two 

 motor cars and a motor cycle to deliver slides and 

 collections. Each messenger visits from twenty to 

 forty schools a day. The American Museum is about 

 to erect a special School Service building of five storeys 

 where from three to five thousand children daily may be 

 taken care of properly. The blind are also provided 

 for. 



Of course, all this cannot be done by the ordinarv 

 officers of the museum, and that is a fact which must be 

 recognised in this country. The American Museum 

 has its own Department of Education, with Mr. George 

 H. Sherwood at the head. In the same way the 

 Brooklyn Botanical Garden has its Curator of Ele- 

 mentary Education, who contributes to the same 

 issue of Natural History an interesting article on 

 " Gardening and the City Child." But the work which 

 starts in the museums and public gardens of New York 

 and Brooklyn is taken up by other outside bodies, as 

 the School Nature League of New York City, the 

 president of which, Mrs. John I. Northrop, here tells 

 us how in one of the elementary schools in the middle 

 of the slums a wonderful nature-room has been in- 

 stalled. It is visited by from eight hundred to one 

 thousand children every week. Here is a place for all 

 those miscellaneous curiosities so frequently rejected 

 by the staid museums. They can be placed in the 

 hands of the children and many a fascinating lesson 

 drawn from them. The love of nature thus begun is 

 carried out into the open by means of summer camps, 



NO. 2757, VOL. I io] 



