July 22, 1909] 



NATURE 



115 



temperature, &c., were described by Mr. F. P. Jepson, 

 who has thus been able successfully to confirm the 

 observations of previous investigators. Mr. Walter E. 

 Collinge described the part played by the Collembola, or 

 " springtails," in the destruction of such plant life as 

 developing seeds, bulbs, orchids, and hops. The struc- 

 ture of the rose-aphid Siplionophora rosarum was de- 

 scribed by Mr. A. J. Grove, and Prof. E. B. Poulton 

 exhibited a collection of predaceous insects and their prey. 



The disappearance of the fresh-water crayfish from the 

 Thames valley and other localities in this and European 

 countries owing to the so-called " plague " is a problem 

 of great interest to biologists. Mr. Geoffrey Smith's paper 

 on some of the work that he has been carrying on in 

 cooperation with Prof. Dreyer on the pathogenic bacteria 

 of Carcinits mocnas was of especial interest to economic 

 biologists, as this work is connected with the question of 

 the relation of the so-called plague bacillus to other 

 pathogenic bacteria living on the outside of crabs, lobsters, 

 and crayfishes. 



Prof. William Somerville exhibited an interesting collec- 

 tion of injurious fungi and the injuries caused by the same, 

 and a paper on the blossoming and pollen of our hardy 

 cultivated plants, by Mr. C. H. Hooper, was communicated 

 to the association. 



On July 14 a very enjoyable excursion to the School of 

 Forestry's arboretum at Tubney and to Bagley Woods was 

 made. It was also resolved to accept the invitation to 

 hold the meeting next year at the University of Man- 

 chester. 



THE MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION. 



'X'HE twentieth annual conference of the Museums 

 Association, which opened at Maidstone on July 13, 

 attracted a fair number of members from the more southern 

 towns, though the northern districts were not very generally 

 represented. 



Preceding the conference there was a council meeting 

 on the evening of Monday, July 12, when the secretary 

 and editor, Mr. E. Howarth, resigned those offices, after 

 being editor of the Museums Journal since its first issue in 

 1901, and secretary for many years prior to that date. The 

 formation of the association was first advocated in an 

 article written by Mr. Howarth and published in Nature 

 in 1877. From that time the idea gradually extended, and 

 in 1889 the association was duly organised at York, where 

 it will very fitly hold its twenty-first anniversary next year. 



The president, Mr. Henry tSalfour, curator of the Pitt- 

 Rivers Museum at Oxford, opened the proceedings with 

 an extremely interesting address, which dealt cogently 

 with the question of a national folk-museum, one of the 

 phases of museum work that has been strangely neglected 

 in these islands. While the ethnology of most regions of 

 the world is illustrated in museum's with profusion, 

 the mediaeval and post-medireval life of our own country 

 has received quite inadequate attention. Even the British 

 Museum is everything except British so far as ethnology 

 is concerned. The president instanced two museums, how- 

 ever, where praiseworthy efforts were made to illustrate 

 local folk-culture, viz. the Museum of the Society of 

 .Antiquaries in Edinburgh and the Guildhall Museum, 

 London. " What is required is a national folk-museum 

 dealing exclusively and exhaustively with the history of 

 culture of the British nation within the historic period, and 

 illustrating the growth of ideas and indigenous character- 

 istics. Others have, indeed, a perfect right to criticise us, 

 for in most European countries a folk-museum is a 

 prominent and patriotic feature of very many of their 

 cities and towns," Berlin, Budapest, Sarajevo, Moscow, 

 Paris, Helsingfors, Copenhagen, Bergen, Christiania, and 

 Stockholm being cited as a few examples. 



Mr. Balfour then described with some detail the Nordiska 

 museum in Stockholm as a model upon which to base a 

 national folk-museum of our own, and said, " I feel sure 

 that a well-organised and carefully arranged folk-museum 

 standing in grounds which could be adapted for an open- 

 air exhibition w^ould be as much appreciated by students 

 and as popular with the masses as any institution in the 

 country." If a strictly national collection develops as it 

 NO. 2073, VOL. 81] 



should, and is treated upon broad scientific lines, there 

 will be no lack of lessons that may be learnt from it. 

 The development of culture within the geographical region 

 would be illustrated by chronological series depicting the 

 general life and habits of the people at successive periods. 

 An open-air exhibition in connection with the main museum 

 would enable obsolete types of habitations and other large 

 structures to be erected, and admit of the exhibition of 

 many features of the older domestic and social economy ; 

 and. further, it would supply a permanent centre for the 

 performance of the folk-dances, songs, and old-time 

 ceremonies of the British people. 



It was rather singular that the special subject of the 

 " arrangement of mammalia in museums," which had 

 been selected by the council, was completely ignored, not 

 u single paper with any reference to it being submitted, 

 while ethnology received a large amount of attention. Mr. 

 H. L. . Braeks'tad supported the president's plea with a 

 bright, descriptive paper on open-air museums in Norway, 

 Mr. F. W. Knocker discoursed on the practical improve- 

 ment of ethnographical collections in provincial museums, and 

 Mr. W. Ruskin Butterfield offered some suggestions for 

 loan exhibition's of local antiquities. Art museums were 

 dealt with in thoughtful papers by Benj. I. Gilman, of 

 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Dr. A. H. Millar, 

 of the Albert Institute, Dundee. Other papers comprised 

 the Maidstone Museum, by J. H. Allchin ; the relation 

 between libraries and museums, by F. Woolnough ; 

 mounting and displaying coins, by R. Quick ; life-history 

 groups of injurious insects, by H. Bolton ; and a very 

 serviceable description by Sir Martin Conway of his 

 ingenious and convenient method of dealing with photo- 

 graphs. 



The annual report, read at the business meeting on 

 July 15, recorded the uninterrupted growth of the associa- 

 tion, which now possesses a cash balance of 250/., as well 

 as a stock of publications that are constantly in demand. 

 The ballot papers showed that Dr. Tempest Anderson had 

 been elected president, Mr. E. E. Lowe secretary, and Mr. 

 F. R. Rowley editor. It was decided to publish a directory 

 of all the museums in Great Britain and the colonies, the 

 work to be proceeded with at once by Mr. H. M. Platnauer 

 and Mr. E. Howarth. 



ADAPTATION IN FOSSIL PLANTS.^ 



'T'HE Darwinian theory of the origin of species by varia- 

 ■*• tion and natural selection only fulfils its fdle in so 

 far as the distinctive characters of organisms are, or have 

 been, adaptive, i.e. beneficial to the species. Purely 

 " morphological " char.acters (if any such exist) and non- 

 adaptive characters in general are not explained by the 

 Darwinian theory (or only indirectly with the help of 

 correlation). I therefore make no apology for having a 

 good deal to say about adaptations in what follows. 



That the great bulk, if not the whole, of organic struc- 

 ture is of the nature of an adaptive mechanism or device 

 cannot be seriously doubted. 



The origin of species by means of natural selection does 

 not, as has sometimes been imagined, involve a constantly 

 increasing perfection of adaptation throughout the whole 

 course of evolution. Darwin expressed his belief " that 

 the period during which each species underwent modifica- 

 tion, though long as measured by years, was probably 

 short in comparison with that during which it remained 

 without undergoing any change."' 



During the long periods of rest, adaptation to the then 

 existing condition of life must have been relatively perfect, 

 for otherwise new variations would have had the advantage 

 and change would have ensued. It thus appears that, as 

 a rule, a state of equilibrium has existed in the relation 

 of organisms to their environment, only disturbed when 

 the conditions were changing. That such long periods of 

 evolutionary stability have actually occurred is shown, for 

 example, not only by the familiar case of the flora of 

 Egypt, unaltered during a long historic period, but still 

 more strikingly by the absence of any noticeable change 



1 Abridged from the presidenti.-il address delivered before the Linnean 

 Society on M.ay 24. By Dr. D. H. Scott, F.R.S. 

 - "Origin of Species," sixth edition, p. 279. 



