May 18, 1SS8.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



475 



educated upper classes, although it was admitted that the 

 average high-honour man has, as a rule, weak sight. 

 Coming to the question of cranium capacity. Dr. Venn 

 divided his group of Cambridge men into three classes. 

 Class A consisted of first-honour and tripos men. Class 

 B contained all other honour men of any class. Class C 

 was composed of ordinary degree, or " poll " men, and 

 the mournful group of" plucked " students. The results 

 arrived at were that Class A had larger heads than Class 

 B,.and B in turn had more " brain box" than Class C. 

 The diagrams on the wall, however, showed many 

 marked divergencies from the rule or law attempted to 

 be laid down, and critical exception to the president's 

 "" curved lines" of mathematical character were taken by 

 several of the speakers in the debate that followed the 

 papers. It seems, however, that (i) the high-honour 

 man has worse sight and more brain than his fellows ; 

 (2) that, while in the masses the brain ceases to grow 

 at the age of nineteen, in cultivated students it grows to 

 the age of twenty-five ; and (3) that the honour man is 

 exceptionally precocious. To prove that brain is a struc- 

 ture which, like muscle, energy, and nerve-force, can be 

 cultivated with success, the average figures of the three 

 ■classes mentioned were laid down as " rectangular 

 boxes" that would contain respectively (A) 244-56, (B) 

 2377, and (C) 237-33 cubic inches of thinking substance. 

 Many exceptions to the rule were alluded to, and it 

 cannot be fairly said that any accurate law relating to the 

 connection between the volume of brain in cubic inches 

 and the power of those inches to create or formularise 

 thought was logically arrived at. The statistics and 

 tables presented were curious, but not convincing. 

 A third paper followed, entitled, " Remarks on 

 Replies by Teachers to Questions respecting Mental 

 Fatigue," in which the President gave examples of the 

 answers he had received from teachers in reply to 

 queries as to " warning symptoms " of mental fatigue in 

 their pupils. They were of the usual character, and 

 included jaded expression, " lack-lustre " eye, restless- 

 ness, yawning, lolling, nervous laughter, fits of sneezing, 

 abnormal skin-colour, especially in the tips of the ears, 

 inability to make the tongue obey the will, headache, sleep- 

 lessness, and sleepiness, loss of power to spell, to translate, 

 or perform ordinary arithmetical calculations — in a word, 

 all the symptoms that are perfectly familiar to all who 

 have occasion habitually to perform daily mental work. 

 Some curious instances of colour-blindness produced by 

 mental fatigue were adduced, such as the case of a lady 

 school-teacher who found herself painting ivy-leaves in a 

 brilliant orange when exhausted with a day|s labour, and 

 saw her blue curtains turn into a dingy yellow. On 

 the other hand, an interesting example of the effect of 

 over-worked brain was shown in the shape of a 

 capital pen-and-ink drawing of an elephant, of distinctly 

 humorous character, produced in a state of somnambulism 

 by a student studying for a competitive examination. 

 He had been talking to his friends on the subject of 

 elephants before retiring to rest, and he woke up in the 

 night at his study table with all his candles lit, the pen 

 wet beside him, and the elephant capitally drawn on a 

 sheet of blue paper that was handed round among the 

 audience. More interesting, however, than the elephant 

 were the sketches of terrier dogs, drawn on the same 

 sheet at right angles to the central design, showing 

 that the paper must have been turned round and a new 

 current of thought introduced into the sleeping intelli- 

 gence of the subject. 



ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



At the last meeting of the Scientific Committee Mr. 

 Lynch showed some flowers of Eichonica tricolor, a 

 tropical aquatic plant from Pernambuco, where it was 

 gathered by Mr. Ridley. The flowers are in erect terminal 

 panicles, each of a rich blue colour, with a small yellow 

 spot on the lower perianth-segment. Mr. Lynch had 

 grown it in a pot submerged to the rim. A discussion 

 ensued as to the culture of these beautiful plants, Mr. 

 Burbidge narrating his method of inducing Pofhos cras- 

 sipes to flower. This he does by not allowing the plant 

 to float, but by placing it in a pot on a shelf fully ex- 

 posed to light, and thus checking its wandering ten- 

 dencies. 



Young stems of Dipladcnia bolivicnsis were shown, in 

 order to show the herbaceous stipular outgrowths at the 

 base of the leaf, and which are divided into narrow lobes 

 in a palmate fashion. These, instead of falling off or 

 drying up, become woody, and may serve to aid the plant 

 in climbing from tree to tree. 



A paper was read on the " Fertilisation of Tigridia and 

 Hippcastriim " from Dr. Bonavia, in which he described 

 how bees search for the nectar under each edge of the 

 inner petals of Tigridia; but as they do not touch the 

 stamens and pistil they musthave discovered the concealed 

 glands through scent, and so rifle the flower, just as ants 

 do, without pollinating it. Hifpeastrwn is fertilised by 

 pollen-seeking bees or bee-like insects in India. One 

 kind of bee balances itself on the wing opposite the tuft 

 of anthers, and then, suddenly making a sort of somer- 

 sault among them, brushes off the pollen with the hairs 

 of its body, when the stigma gets dusted all over with 

 pollen. A second kind, after balancing itself, by a 

 sudden movement brushes off the pollen with the hairs 

 of its legs. Lastly, a third kind of bee settles on the 

 anthers, scoops out and devours every grain of pollen. 

 After alluding to the fact that some flies are also pollen- 

 eaters, the author suggests that certain humming-birds, 

 provided with feathers on their feet, may possibly be the 

 true fertilisers of Hippeastrum in its native country. 



In the course of the discussion on the subject it was 

 pointed out that humming-birds hover over the flowers 

 and perforate them with their beaks, and hence that the 

 tufts of feathers on the legs of some of the species are 

 not likely to act as pollen-brushes. Mr. Morris related 

 how in Jamaica the humming-birds, which at first had 

 not attacked the flowers, suddenly began to split the 

 tubes of the Cinchona flowers, and thus ensured the 

 fertilisation of the flower. Mr. Burbidge called atten- 

 tion to the fact, that in South America the scarlet runner 

 does not set its fruit, but in this country it fruits freely 

 owing to the bees, which bore through the base of the 

 flower — a curious illustration of a foreign flower rendered 

 fertile by the agency of British bees. 



EDINBURGH GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

 At the ordinary meeting on May 3d, Mr. James Melvin, 

 Vice-President, in the chair. 



Professor Claypole, in replying to a communication 

 from the Society, furnished some further material (sup- 

 plementary of his former paper) in support of his argu- 

 ment that the Falls of Niagara were receding at a more 

 rapid pace than was formerly supposed. 



Mr. G. H. Kinahan contributed a note on " jEolian 

 Driftage," in the course of which he dealt briefly with 

 the amount of driftage and denudations due to wind. The 



