EDITOBIAL GLEANINGS. 147 



"The majority of those who are accustomed to walk in the fields and 

 woods with open eyes for the observation of animal life have surely been 

 struck by the readiness with which animals belonging to the same family 

 or community find each other again, after having separated voluntarily or 

 under compulsion. Indeed, even newly-hatched or new-born young, which 

 one surely cannot easily suspect of having a fully developed memory for 

 places or any acquaintance with the locality, and as to which it is quite 

 i mpossible to imagine that they are already in possession of the full use of 

 their senses, nevertheless again discover, apparently with the greatest ease, 

 their parents, brothers and sisters, or companions, even when they have 

 been separated from them for so long a time or by so great a distance that 

 their sensory powers are inadequate to bring them into direct communication 

 one with another." 



The lecturer then alluded to what he provisionally termed biological 

 circles or circular wanderings, which he traced among vertebrates, including 

 mankind, and among insects, by which they return to the spot where they 

 were separated. This, he remarks, must be of fundamental importance for 

 the maintenance of life and the development of the individuals affected ; it 

 is, he remarks, " universally distributed — it is one of the general laws." 



It must be emphasised that Prof. Guldberg distinctly repudiates any 

 connection of his circular movement with the manege-movement known in 

 physiology in the case of brain-lesion. 



At the Conference of Delegates of the Corresponding Societies of the 

 British Association, Liverpool, 1896, perhaps the most original paper 

 read was one by Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, " On a Federal Staff for Local 

 Museums." 



The author advocated the formation of "a federal staff to circulate for 

 all purposes requiring skilled knowledge, leaving the permanent attention 

 to each place to devolve on a mere caretaker." By this arrangement 

 " each museum would have a week of attention in the year from a geologist, 

 and the same from a zoologist and an archaeologist." 



The duties of such a staff would be to arrange and label the new 

 specimens acquired in the past year, taking sometimes a day, or perhaps a 

 fortnight, at one place ; to advise on alterations and improvements ; to 

 recommend purchases required to fill up gaps; to note duplicates and 

 promote exchanges between museums ; and to deliver a lecture on the 

 principal novelties of their own subject in the past year. 



" The effect at the country museums would be that three times in the 

 year a visitant would arrive for one of the three sections, would work 

 everything up to date, stir the local interest by advice and a lecture, 

 stimulate the caretaker, and arrange routine work that could be carried out 



