July, 1891. 
SCIENTIFIC GLEANINGS. 
165 
Mammals Living and Extinct. —Professor Flower and Mr. Lydekker 
have done zoological science a good turn by collecting into a volume a 
large number of articles which were written primarily for the 
“ Encyclopaedia Britannica,” and thus placed them within the reach 
of students. 
A Botanical Manual has been issued lately by A. Johnstone, F.G.S. 
(London : Young J. Pentland), which deserves strong commenda¬ 
tion, though it might be very greatly improved if the chapter on 
physiology, good as it is, had been extended on similar lines to a 
much greater length. 
Physiological Botany. —The second volume of the great American 
“Text-Book of Botany,” designed by the late Prof. Asa Gray, of 
which Prof. G. L. Goodale, of Harvard University, is the author, has 
recently been published in this country by Messrs. Macmillan and Co., 
and has been favourably reviewed in “ The Athenaeum.” 
The University of London. —A good deal of correspondence has 
appeared lately on the future of this important organisation. Pro¬ 
fessor Ray Lankester, Mr. Thiselton Dyer, Mr. Dickins, Mr. Karl 
Pearson, Mr. A. Irving, and others have contributed valuable 
suggestions which deserve, and are pretty sure to have, most 
thoughtful consideration. 
Medical Research at Edinburgh. —This is the title of a review 
in a recent number of “ Nature ” of the third volume of “ Laboratory 
Reports of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.” The 
reviewer says:—“No laboratory in the Kingdom can show for the 
same space of time a record of so much good work in so many 
directions, of which a large part would never have been undertaken 
had this laboratory not been established.” The volume in question 
contains a valuable article by Drs. Woodhead and Wood on 
Bacteriology. 
The Examination of Potable Waters. —In another article in the 
ably-conducted journal from which we have just quoted, reference is 
made to the importance which attaches to the studies of our future 
Medical Public Health Officers, and it expresses, in forcible language, 
how necessary it is that these men of to-morrow should be impressed 
w’ith a sense of the responsibility which attaches to the examina¬ 
tion of waters for domestic purposes, and that most serious mischief 
may and often does result from such investigations being intrusted 
to incompetent persons. 
Natural History in Public Schools. —The Rev. T. A. Preston, in 
the June number of “ Physique,” shows with great force, and in a 
very interesting manner, with how much advantage the study of 
natural history might in some instances be substituted for cricket and 
football. He maintains that boys out for a field excursion take a 
great deal more exercise than is ever taken at cricket. “With those 
who are keen naturalists,” he says, “the mere exercise taken in any 
one day (not in an excursion) is often such that it might almost be 
said to require moderating. I have no hesitation in saying that, if 
exercise alone is to be considered, a field naturalist will take far more 
than any one at games.” It is scarcely needful to remind out- 
readers that Mr. Preston was for many years one of the masters of 
Marlborough College, and president of its Natural History Society. 
