April 2,0, 1874] 



NATURE 



501 



progressive attenuation, and is not marked on any published 

 map. 



In this case the streams are nearly at right angles to each other 

 when discharged ; another instance, however, seems to be fur- 

 nished in a neighbouring loch, Gron Lake, in whicli thev are 

 collateral. Kreftiiig's map (1S6S) represents the loch as bifur- 

 cating at its north-east end, each of the inlets giving rise to a 

 stream ; they seem about two miles apart, are marked by lines 

 of about equal thickness, and flow nearly parallel to the Trond- 

 jhem fjord near Mosvigen. 



I believe that instances of a like nature with these are by no 

 means rare in Norway. I know at least one lake near Trond- 

 jhem, which at a former period seems to have had a double out- 

 fall, and many others in which, were the existing outlet dammed 

 by a moraine twenty to fifty feet high, the water would find one 

 or several openings elsewhere. 



I hare indeed noted several instances of lakes with two out- 

 falls upon Prof. Munch's large map of Norway (1845), but fail- 

 ing to discover any confirmation in other maps, and finding it 

 in other respects unreliable upon matters of such detail, I 

 can assign no value to them. 



It would be a fact of curious significance, as bearing upon 

 Prof. Ramsay's theory of the glacial origin of lakes, if most 

 authenticated instances of lakts with several outfall* could be 

 referred to districts which have been traversed by a continuous 

 sheet of glacier ice. When glaciers were confined within valley 

 boundaries, as in Britain, their force was of necessity concen- 

 trated along lines, but upon level tracts or plateaux they 

 were free to scoop wherever circumstances favoured erosion. 

 Should it prove that Norway, North America, and Lapland 

 give us the majority of lakes with several outfalls, no other 

 theory can explain the fact. 



St. James's Park, S.W. Hugh Miller 



Trees "Pierced" by other Trees 

 Colonel Greenwood's answer (Natuije, vol. ix. p. 

 463) to Mr. J. J. Murphy encourages me to mention a 

 botanical phenomenon which I witnessed in 1S65, but have 

 scarcely ever mentioned before for fear of being disbelieved. I 

 was standing on the bank of the little river Evenlode, in Ox- 

 fordshire, looking at an old pollarJ willow trunk about six feet 

 high, « hen I observed in the decayed wood of the tree an upright 

 sort of staff resembling a dark-colour'ed old school ruler, and of 

 about that size. I knocked away some of the touchwood above 

 aad below, and found my ruler lengthened each way. At the 

 point where it would naturally issue at the top, I found a small 

 twig of undoubted ash, of which the leaves were fully expanded, 

 sprouting up among the branches of willow. Upon clearing away 

 a Utile more rotten wood I laid bare another ruler, which, like 

 the first, appeared to lengthen upward to the top of the tr-unk and 

 downward to the ground, but there was no second twig of ash 

 above. The "rulers" were roui^h where they were totally 

 enclosed by the willow, and had put forth little threadlike 

 rootlets. But the part which I found exposed to the air was 

 smoother and looked like a true branch, but was darker than the 

 usual colour of ash. I afterwards drew the proprietor's atten- 

 tion to the tree, but he could not suggest any explanation. I 

 daresay it is there and in the same condition to this day ; if 

 anyone wished it, I could easily describe where it might be 

 found. One explanation I have had offered is, that an ash-seed 

 had fallen down a deep crack in the willow. But there was no 

 sign of such a crack — m crack-like cavity — one of the "rulers " 

 beuig totally and closely enveloped with the rotten wood, and the 

 other very nearly so. Whether it would have been possible for 

 an ash-seed to germinate in a crack which must have been at 

 least four feet deep and probably much deeper, and was open at 

 the top only and was certainly no larger than the shoot which it 

 formed, is a question I must leave to botanists. Another ex- 

 planation was, that as ash-roots travel for a considerable distance 

 underground, it was possible that two such roots, finding suitable 

 pabulum in the rotten trunk of the willow, had turned upwards. 

 But this also 1 must leave to men of science, and notably to 

 Col. Greenwood. T. S. 



PROF. TAIT ON " CRAM" 

 N Wednesday, the 22nd inst., at the ceremony of 



^^ capping the Graduates in Arts of Edinburgh tfni- 

 versity, Prof. Tait gave an address in which he touched 



on various subjects of Academical interest. On the 

 subject of " Cram " he spoke as follows : — 



" It is a mere common-place to say that examination, 

 or, as I have elsewhere called it, artificial selection is, as 

 too often conducted, about the most imperfect of human 

 institutions ; and that in too many cases it is not only 

 misleading, but directly destructive, especially when 

 proper precautions are not taken to annihilate absolutely 

 the chances of a candidate who is merely crammed, not 

 in any sense educated. Not long ago I saw an advertise- 

 ment to the effect : — ' History in an hour, by a Cambridge 

 Coach.' How much must this author have thought of the 

 ability of the examiners before whom his readers were to 

 appear ? There is one, but so far as I can see, only one, 

 way of entirely extirpating cram as a system, it may be 

 costly — well, let the candidates bear the expense, if the 

 country (which will be ultimately the gainer) should 

 refuse. Take your candidates, when fully primed for exa- 

 mination, and send them oif to sea— without books, with- 

 out even pen and ink ; attend assiduously to their 

 physical health, but let their minds lie fallow. Continue this 

 treatment for a few months, and then turn them suddenly 

 into the Examination Hall. Even six months would not 

 be wasted in such a process if it really enabled us to cure 

 the grand inherent defect of all modern examinations. It 

 is amusing to think what an outcry would be everywhere 

 raised if there were a possibility of such a scheme being 

 actually tried — say in Civil Service Examinations. But 

 the certainty of such an outcry, under the conditions 

 supposed, is of itself a complete proof of the utter abomi- 

 nation of the cramming system. I shall probably be told, 

 by upholders of the present methods, that I know nothing 

 about them, that I am prejudiced, bigoted, and what not. 

 That, of course, is the natural cry of those whose ' craft is 

 in danger' — and it is preserved for all time in the historic 

 words, ' Thou wert altogether born in sin, and dost thou 

 teach us ? ' I venture now to state, without the least fear 

 of contradiction, a proposition which (whether new or 

 not) I consider to be of inestimible value to the country 

 at large : — Wherever the examiners are not in great part 

 the teachers also, there will cram to a great extent super- 

 sede education. I need make no comment on this, 

 beyond calling your particular attention to the definite 

 article which twice occurs in the sentence, and which 

 gives it its peculiar value. 



" I said, m my former address [eight years ago], that 

 ' coaching ' seems quite natural to all who are engaged 

 in it, and, in particular, that it did so to myself more than 

 twenty years ago. This shows that it is possible that 

 something akin to the results of the profound specula- 

 tions of Riemann, Helmholtz, and others, may hold in 

 the moral if not in the physical universe. It is pro- 

 bably new to most of my audience to hear that very 

 great authorities are as yet in doubt whether the proper- 

 ties of space itself are the same in ditferent localities ; 

 whether, in short, in our rapid flight through space, we 

 may not be insensibly getting into a region, our existence 

 in which will involve a gradual change of form, in order 

 that our physical substance may continue to fit the vary- 

 ing circumstances of our position. Assume that some- 

 thing like this holds in the world of mind, and you see at 

 once how the same man may, while resrding in Edin- 

 burgh, honestly denounce certain methods as wholly per- 

 nicious which a few years' residence in Cambridge may 

 invest in his eyes with a perfection more than human. I 

 do not say that this is an explanation ; but the analogy 

 is at least worthy of remark ; and I leave further discus- 

 sion of it to my old friend Mr. Todhunter, who, living in 

 the middle of that singular region, tells me he thoroughly 

 agrees with me in my main arguments against examina- 

 tions, and then soundly rates me for my mode of pro- 

 pounding them." 



After advocating the restoration of the B.A. degree to 

 Edinburgh University, Prof. Tait spoke in forcible terms 



