Jan. 8, 1 8 74 J 



NATURE 



191 



to all without any condition for admission or any exami- 

 nation, and the number of persons who have frequented 

 it during the last few years amounts to from 150,000 to 

 1 80,000. 



" To the honour of workmen it must be said, that a 

 more attentive audience can nowhere be found ; never 

 does the slightest disorder arise, and I am happy to say 

 that during the unhappy events which have taken place 

 in France, the Conservatoire was always respected, and 

 underwent no disturbance or invasion. 



" But if we think the part of casual lecturers in the 

 galleries useless, and if we are convinced that the real 

 duty of the Conservatoire des-Arts-et-Metiers consists in 

 the classification, maintenance, and increase of its collec- 

 tions, and in the teaching of the applied sciences, which 

 it gives on such a large scale, we also believe that the 

 Government should attach great importance to that 

 teaching, which, during twenty years, we have developed 

 under the name of technical education, and which has 

 produced such good results in several of our great indus- 

 trial centres. 



" Your department pursues the realisation of this wish, 

 and we hope it will be able, with the aid of the resources 

 placed at its disposal by the National Assembly, to de- 

 velop more and more this practical instruction, which, 

 beginning at the primary school, gradually enables men, 

 according to their intelligence and love of study, to rise 

 from the lowest to the highest grades of society." 



NOTES 

 We have with much regret to record the death of Mr. Edward 

 Elyth, on December 27 last, in his sixty-fourth year. Of Mr. 

 Blyth it may be said that he was a Zoologist in the truest 

 sense of the word, and his practical knowledge of the birds 

 and mammals of India and the surrounding countries was 

 probably greater than that of any living naturalist. Up till 1S40 

 he devoted himself to the study of the ornithology of the British 

 . Isles, and in that year appeared an English translation of 



iCuvier's " Regne Animale," in which the mammals, birds, and 

 reptiles were edited by him ; many of his own notes suijgestmg 

 modifications in the then existing systems of classification, 

 have been subsequently fully substantiated and adopted. For 

 twenty-two years after this date Mr. Blyth held the post of 

 Curator to the Calcutta Museum of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal, during which time, and in conjunction with Dr. Jeidon, 

 he did more than anyone to advance the study of Natural 

 r History in India, and to improve the value of the collection he 

 i, controlled. Afier a short visit to Burmah, during which he did 

 much good to zoological work, he returned to England in 1863, 

 since which time he has contributed many valuable papers to 

 ornithological and other journals, and under the very appropriate 

 signature "' Zoophilus," a large number of excellent articles to the 

 Field. With an unparalleled memory Mr. Blyth combined 

 exceptional powers of observation and a genuine enthusiasm for 

 natural history, which is but rarely seen ; these made his im- 

 promptu observations and opinions of more than ordinary value, 

 and no one was more willing than himself freely to give all 

 informational his command, towards the assistance of any fellow- 

 worker, or the elucidation of any diificulty in his favourite 

 subject. 



Dr. Fr.\ncis C. Webb, editor of the Medical Times and 

 Gazelle, died suddenly on the morning of December 24 last, at 

 the age of 47 years. 



At a preliminary meeting of the Varley Testimonial Com- 

 mittee, held on November 20, it was resolved to recommend 

 that a Memoir of the late Cornelius Varley, illustrated with a 

 Photographic Portrait, should be prepared and issued under the 

 superintendence of the Committee, and that a copy be pre- 



sented to his family, in token of the high estimation in which he 

 was held ; and further, that some Memorial be erected to his 

 memory at the place of his interment. 



Telegrams from Naples of the 3rd and 4th inst., state that 

 Prof. Palmieri announces a severe eruption of Vesuvius to be 

 imminent. A rumbling noise is audible from the mountain, and 

 although fire has not been seen in the interior of the craters, the 

 density of the smoke indicates the proximity of fiery matter. 



Mr. Manley Hopkins, Consul-General at Hawaii, having 

 written to the Times that he had discovered in the Samoan 

 Islands a living specimen of the Dodo, believed to have been ex- 

 tinct a century ago, Prof Owen wrote to the same paper that 

 the bird referred to is the dodlef. "The extinct dodo of the 

 Island of Mauritius was about six times bulkier. Coloured 

 figures of both birds — that of the dodo, copied from paintings 

 by the Dutch artists, who saw the living bird in the time of their 

 Stadtholder Maurice, that of the dodlet from the bird living in 

 the Zoological Gardens about ten years ago, with the skeletons 

 of both didus and didunculus are given in my work on the Dodo 

 (quarto)." 



A VERY suggestive anatomical point has been made out by 

 Sir Victor Brooke, respecting the tarsus in certain of the Cer- 

 videc. He finds that in the species of the genus Cervuliis (the 

 Muntjacs), the tarsus, instead of consisting of a naviculo-cuboid 

 bone, together with two separate cuneiform bones, has the outer 

 of the two cuneiform masses anchylosed to the naviculo-cuboid 

 mass, to form a single bone, leaving the minute internal cunei- 

 form free. In a very young specimen of Cervuliis niunljac the 

 cuboid was free, and the naviculare anchylosed to the outer 

 cuneiform bones, showing that the tendency to blend in this 

 direction is greater than that of the naviculare and the cuboid to 

 combine. This same peculiarity is also found In the Pudu 

 Deer of South America. 



The question as to the limit of capability of the microscope 

 is investigated by Prof. Abbe, of Jena, in a recent number of Max. 

 .Schultze's An/iii' ; and he is led by a series of physical deduc- 

 tions to the remarkable result, that this limit is already as good 

 as reached by our best microscopes, and that all hope of a deeper 

 penetration into the material constitution of thinys, than such 

 microscopes now afford, must be dismissed. E.xperiment and 

 theory agree in showing how the changes wrought by diffraction 

 of light passing through fine structures, whose elements are so 

 small and near each other as to call forth this phenomenon, are 

 such as to prevent the object being imaged more geoinelrieo. 

 Thus it may happen, on the one hand, that different struclures 

 give the same microscopical image, and, on the other, that like 

 structures give different images. Consequently, while objects 

 of the kind (systems of fine lines and the like) may appear ever 

 so distinct and well marked in the microscope, we are not en- 

 titled to regard such appearances as of morphological signifi- 

 cance, but merely as physical phenomena, from which nothing 

 further can certainly be inferred than the presence of such strac- 

 tural conditions as are capable of producing the diffracdon effects 

 obtained. The remrrk has notable applications to many of the 

 microscopical researches on markings of diatoms, and on striated 

 muscular fibre. And it affects not merely the morphological 

 relations of the objects, but the deductions, made from micro- 

 scopical observation, as to properties (such as differences of 

 transparence, colours, polarisation, &c.). The author lays down 

 the following principle as basis for determination of a limit : — 

 By no microscope can parts 1)e distinguished (or the marks 

 (Merkiiiale) of a really present structure perceived), if th' y are so 

 near to each other that the first bundle of light rays produced by 

 diffraction can no longer enter the objective simultaneously with 

 the undiffracted cone of light. Prof Abbe has also recently 

 described a new illuminating apparatus for the microscope, 



