NATURE 
289 
THURSDAY, JULY 30, 1885 
THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 
ONVOCATION met on Tuesday to consider the 
report and draft scheme submitted to it by Lord 
Justice Fry’s Committee. After a somewhat lengthened 
debate the House adjourned till November 3. when no 
doubt their consideration will be resumed. 
We do not think much is lost by the delay. As we 
pointed out last week, the scheme has at first sight an 
aspect of complexity. But this arises in great measure 
from the technical form and language with which it is 
necessary to invest provisions intended to receive legis- 
lative effect. We do not think the underlying principles 
are difficult to disentangle, but it could hardly be ex- 
pected that such a body as Convocation would grasp them 
without considerable opportunity for explanation and 
discussion. 
The particular date which the accident of circumstance 
determined for the meeting was in some respects un- 
fortunate. Many of the medical graduates who might be 
expected to support the scheme were drawn away by the 
meeting of the British Medical Association at Cardiff. 
In November all the medical schools will be in full 
activity, the leading teachers in every faculty will be in 
town, and the preliminary ventilation which the scheme 
has now received, followed, as it willbe, by the discussion 
and reflection of the vacation, will prepare Convocation 
for a definitive decision in the autumn. 
What that decision should be there can hardly be any 
doubt in the mind of any reasonable person. The re- 
markable attention bestowed by the leading journals on a 
purely academic question goes far to prove that the ear of 
the public is ready to entertain any reasonable proposals 
for the development of real university work in London. 
It is for the graduates in Burlington Gardens to decide 
whether they will approach the task or leave it to some 
new organisation which may be created for the purpose. 
That the thing sooner or later in some shape or other will 
be done we have not ourselves a shadow of a doubt. 
The Association for promoting a Teaching University 
for London has suspended to some extent its own efforts, 
pending the action of Convocation, to which in its first 
report it has given its cordial support. The Association 
and the Committee of Convocation do not, however, seek 
to attain their objects quite on the same lines, and the 
identification by some of the speakers on Tuesday of the 
views put out on behalf of the two perfectly distinct 
bodies introduced a certain amount of confusion into the 
debate which no doubt the present opportunity for 
further consideration will go far to remove. 
Of the debate itself little is to be said. Lord Justice 
Fry’s speech explanatory of the scheme had the quality 
of lucidity which every one expected from him. But 
more than this, he exhibited a largeness of view in con- 
templating the possible future of the University which 
might have been expected to carry with it a more en- 
thusiastic sympathy from Convocation than it obtained. 
The criticisms which followed were mostly on points of 
VOL. XXXII.—No. 822 
detail, and, on the whole Convocation, without being 
adverse, evidently felt that it should like more time for 
reflection. 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE PHANEROGAMS 
L’Evolution du Régne Végétal. Les Phanerogames. Par 
MM. Marion et Saporta. (Bibliotheque Scientifique 
Internationale, 1885.) 
Se the appearance of the first volume of this 
«7 important work the views of the authors have been 
subjected to more than one attack, and they have turned 
aside to vindicate the correctness of their interpretation 
of the often obscure fossils upon which our knowledge of 
the earliest forms of plants is based. The wisdom of the 
delay is unquestionable, for it would have been useless to 
continue a work whose foundations had been shaken by 
adverse criticism. It is not to be expected that their 
views will even yet be universally acceptable, for the 
difficulties attending the study of fossil plants are such 
that its most experienced professors are still scarcely 
agreed upon some of the fundamental questions. It is 
well known that Prof. Williamson is opposed to the 
French school as to the gymnospermous nature of several 
groups of Carboniferous plants, and in addressing the 
British Association in 1883 (NATURE, September 20, 
1884) he criticised in advance some of the main facts 
dwelt upon in this work, In contrast to the divergent 
views of English investigators, the greatest workers in 
France, including the honoured names of the late Adolphe 
Brongniart, and of MM. Grand’-Eury, B. Renault, Marion, 
and de Saporta, are in complete accord. Their work 
presents for the first time a complete outline of the evo- 
lution of the vegetable kingdom, and its importance and 
novelty are such as to demand a critical as well as friendly 
examination. 
In the former volume it will be remembered (NATURE, 
May 26, 1881) the authors endeavoured to trace the deve- 
lopment of vegetable life from the protoplasmic body, 
differentiated from animal life in no way other than 
through the conversion of a portion of its protoplasm into 
chlorophyll, to the heterosporous cryptogams. The 
present volumes prove that there is an almost direct 
passage from the latter to the far higher phanerogams. 
There is no need to argue at the present day that if 
phanerogams were differentiated from cryptogams this 
must have taken place in very remote times ; and it is 
equally certain that evolutionists will be disposed to 
anticipate that the initial differences between them must 
at first have been relatively imperceptible. An hetero- 
sporous cryptogam in which the microspores penetrate 
to a solitary macrospore in order to effect fertilisation, 
and in which the prothallus is enclosed and germination 
takes place zz situ, is well on the road to become a 
phanerogam and, moreover, a gymnospermous one, if 
the macrosporangium be not protected by any leaf modi- 
fied into a tegumentum. The change in the reproductive 
organs was accompanied and preceded by modifications 
in the vegetative organs, and the transformation is actu- 
ally found to have progressed through three distinct 
stages—the progymnospermous, the gymnospermous, and 
the mefagymnospermous. 
The Progymnosperms are among the earliest plants 
16) 
