NATURE NOTES 
PuRLEY Beeches. — A General Committee has been formed 
to secure the purchase of the 13J acres of picturesque woodland, 
of which we gave an illustration in our February number! It 
is hoped that they may raise some substantial part of the ^5,400 
purchase money, leaving the balance to be provided by the 
rates. Our President has consented to serve on the Committee. 
Degrading Spectacle at Sheffield. — We have received 
a copy of a Sheffield newspaper for September 21, describing 
“ a scene of slaughter and butchery ” organised to secure a 
superannuation fund for the Sheffield Branch of the Journeymen 
Butchers’ Federation of Great Britain. We are glad to read 
that the exhibition was the first of its kind ever held in Sheffield, 
and hope, it may be the last. It consisted in the public slaughter 
and dressing of bullocks and sheep, which were pushed and 
dragged on to a platform, “ executed ” with Greener’s humane 
cattle-killer, skinned and disembowelled, in presence of a crowd 
of some two thousand people. Harmless athletic sports followed. 
Though we are informed that “it was not such a gory business 
as the uninitiated might have expected,” we cannot but think 
such a spectacle degrading and brutalising to all present. Else- 
where such exhibitions have generally been prohibited by the 
authorities. 
Wild Plant Protection. — The South-Eastern Union of 
Scientific Societies, at the request of Prof. Boulger, have issued 
the following circular i — 
“ The Council are desirous of eliciting information as to the 
danger of extermination of wild flowering plants and ferns, and 
as to any means — other than educational — of checking the same. 
Will you, therefore, kindly bring the matter before your Society 
at an early date, and. inform the Council whether, in the opinion 
of your Society (i) any particular species or groups are, in your 
district, in present danger of extermination ; and (2) if so, from 
what cause ; and (3) whether your Society is of opinion that any 
legislative or other action can and should be taken to check such 
extermination.” 
Answers may be addressed to G. C. Druce, 118, High Street, 
Oxford; G. S. Boulger, ii, Onslow Road, Richmond, Surrey; 
or Rev. R. Ashington Bullen, Pyrford Vicarage, Woking. 
Branches of the Selborne Society and Societies affiliated to it 
may be willing to co-operate in this collection of information, in 
which case their help will be most welcome to the Editor of 
Nature Notes. 
Whitgift Hospital, Croydon. — We have received the 
following letter from Mr. E. A. Martin : “ The attack on this 
foundation has for the present l>een postponed, but it must not 
be considered as abandoned. In July it was decided to postpone 
the matter for six months, tlie effect of this being that the 
removal of the Hospital cannot be included in a Corporation 
Hill for consideration next Session. At the earliest, supposing 
we fail in the meantime to convert the Corporation to our way 
