Oct. 1st, 1887.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEV/S. 



187 



the results of the instruction in difierent parts of the 

 country. 



Evening instruction in England is not gratuitous. The 

 fees paid by the students, although small, help to defray the 

 expenses of the school. The opinion prevails in England 

 that people value most what they pay for. My own ex- 

 perience leads me to the opinion that evening schools are 

 most frequented when the instruction is quite gratuitous. 



There is a growing opinion in England in favour of 

 enabling municipalities, either through the agency of the 

 School Board or through the Town Council, to subsidise 

 evening technical instruction. At present, as I have ex- 

 plained, the schools are supported by the students' fees, by 

 voluntary subscriptions, and by the subventions on the 

 results of the examinations. There are many persons who 

 think the fees ought to beabolished, and thatthesubscriptions 

 afford too precarious a source of income to permit of the 

 engagement of very good teachers. If the schools received 

 subsidies from the municipalities in addition to the subven- 

 tions from the State, the fees might be reduced and the 

 teaching might be improved. 



A large number of children leave school at so young an 

 age that they are not sufficiently advanced to profit by the 

 courses of science and technology which are held in all 

 large towns of England. To help these there is now a 

 voluntary movement to found what are called " Recreative 

 classes." The object of this movement is to attract children 

 to courses of instruction in drawing and in elementary sub- 

 jects, by amusements of different sorts, such as concerts, 

 popular lectures, description of travel illustrated by lantern- 

 slides, etc. We have not in England anything which cor- 

 responds exactly with the Fortbildungsschulen and 

 Ergiinzungsschulen of Germanj', and these courses are 

 intended to take their place, and to serve as an introduction 

 to the more advanced technical courses under the Depart- 

 ment and the Institute. 



As a factor in the industrial prosperity of a nation nothing 

 is more important than the technical education of its work- 

 men. It is impossible that the mass of children who are to 

 become ordinary workmen should remain long enough at 

 school to obtain a really good education. At school, they 

 can learn little more than the simple elements of primary 

 instruction. It is in evening classes that they must con- 

 tinue and complete this education. Now that the general 

 introduction of machinery into all trades has rendered 

 almost obsolete the system of apprenticeship, it is in the 

 evening school that the apprentice learns the principles of 

 his trade, the history of its growth and development, and 

 the direction in which he is to look for further improve- 

 ments. It is, too, in the school that he learns to understand 

 the processes and operations that are performed in the 

 factory or shop. May we not saj', then, that the industrial 

 progress of a nation depends on the excellence and com- 

 pleteness of its organisation for the evening instruction of 

 its workmen ? 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



Abstracts of Papers. 



town life and physical development. 



DR. J. MILNER FOTHERGILL read a paper on the effect 

 of town life upon the human body, in the course of which 

 he said that as a hospital physician he had been struck by the 

 physical inferiority of the denizens of towns as compared with 

 country people. That town residence impaired the physique 

 wa« a fact observed by Lugol, Hayles Walsh, Cantlie, and 

 others. Special inquiries set on foot had resulted in proving 

 the great rarit}' of a pure-bred cockney of the fourth generation. 

 Of old life was practically a country life, with a walled town 

 here and there. Now urban populations exceed in number the 



country folk of this country. Of old a strong physique for work 

 or war was the one thing to be coveted. Now the active brain 

 was what was required for success in the battle of Hl'e. In the 

 middle ages the weakly retired to the cloister and the convent, 

 while the race was reproduced by the strong. Now the off- 

 spring of the weakl)' could be reared by costl}' prepared foods. 

 The children of to-day were alike the products of the weakly 

 and the strong. The deterioration ol town populations could be 

 seen to be a reversion towards an earlier and lowlier ethnic 

 form. The stolidity of the country child compared to the pre- 

 cocious development of the town child was largely due to the 

 monotonous existence of the one as compared to the Ufe of ex- 

 citement led by the other. The demands nf the nervous system in 

 the town child led to a comparative starving of the other tissues 

 of the body, while in the country child all grew alike in fit pro- 

 portion. The digestive organs specially suffered, and the town 

 dweller could not eat the food so largely in request in the coun- 

 try — pastry, cakes, meat pies, Yorkshire pudding, Norfolk dump- 

 lings, and Cornish pasties — because such food caused in him 

 dyspepsia. In order to avoid the pains of indigestion the town 

 dweller ate fish, bread, and meat. Especially was he fond of 

 the sapid tasty meat, which was so easily procured in towns. 

 But with the indoor lil'e led, combined with an impure atmo- 

 sphere, the oxidising processes were defective, and the presence 

 of excrementitious matters in the blood set up in time that 

 change in the kidneys and elsewhere commonly spoken of as 

 " chronic Bright's disease," and for wliich it was now proposed 

 to substitute the term " vasorenal change," as more applicable. 

 Another consequence of the impairment of the digestive organs 

 was the inability to take fat, by which the system was predis- 

 posed to pulmonary phthisis, consumption, and Bright's disease, 

 separately or combined, and the maladies which formed the 

 scourge of degenerating town populations, while their children 

 succumbed to the maladies of childhood. 



A REMARKABLE FOSSIL. 



Professor H. G. Seeley exhibited a remarkable fossil, showing 

 the development of the young of Plesiosaurus. Until this fos- 

 sil had been found and forwarded to him he had sought through- 

 out the collections of Europe for evidence on that development, 

 but without success. No more remarkable fossil had ever been 

 found, and no incident in the history of fossilisation was more 

 singular than that which this specimen displayed. The fossil 

 was a series of mummies of minute Plesiosaurus, less than five 

 inches in length, which had the substance of their flesh per- 

 fectly preserved, and their bones preserved within the flesh. 

 The remains showed different conditions of development. This 

 was the only case that had ever occurred of the mineral- 

 isation of the muscular substance and the preservation of the 

 external form of these animals ; and so perfect was the pre- 

 servation that the circle of the eye was preserved, and the con- 

 stituent bones could be distinguished. Prof Seeley also spoke 

 on the reputed clavicles and interclavicles of Iguanodon, and 

 expressed the opinion that what had hitherto been regarded as 

 such clavicles and interclavicles must be turned round and 

 referred to the pelvic region. 



THE SUBSIDENCES AT NORTHWICH. 



Mr. Thomas Ward read a paper entitled " The History and 

 Cause of the Subsidences at Northwich and its Neighbourhood 

 in the Salt Districts of Cheshire." He said : Nortlnvich overlies 

 extensive beds of salt, occupying about three square miles. 

 The first or "top " rock-salt lies at a depth of about 50 yards 

 from the surface, and is covered by Keuper marls, and these by 

 the drift sands and marls. Between the two beds of salt there 

 are 30 ft. of indurated Keuper marl. The second, or " bottom ' 

 rock salt, is over 30 yards in thickness. These beds of salt 

 occupy the lowest portion of an old Triassic salt lake. The first 

 bed of rock-salt was discovered in 1670, the second in 1781. 

 The falUng-in of a rock-salt mine is a very rare occurrence, and 

 subsidences of this kind do not give rise to the reports which 

 are met with in the newspapers. The first reported destruction 

 of a mine was in 1750, and from that date to the end of the 18th 

 century every two or three years a mine collapsed. In the 

 present century, at considerable intervals of time, collapses of 

 mines have occurred, but these with scarcely an exception were 

 old abandoned " top " mines. The subsidences which are so 

 destructive in the town of Northwich and the neighbourhood 

 are entirely caused by the pumping of brine for the manufacture 



