Prof. Huxley himself describes his scheme as of a tentative character, but whatever plan be finally adopted it is desirable that the real aims and objects of the Association shall be fully understood.

It is desired that there shall be one University in London which shall be a central authority to organize and improve higher education.

No reasonable person has ever supposed that the existing University of London was to be destroyed as a sort of peace-offering to its critics, or that existing colleges were to be ignored or dragooned into selfeffacement. What is desired is that the Senate of the existing University should be reconstituted by the addition of professors teaching under the control of the University and by a reduction in the number of its lay members, if, with the new additions, it would otherwise be of unwieldy size.

It is desired that a share in the benefits to be obtained from the University should be given to any college only in so far as it is willing to put into the hands of the University the appointment and control of those of its chairs which might be recognized by the University. It is hoped that the advantages which would accrue from this partial fusion would be so great as to lead to the gradual voluntary" absorption" of the colleges. To make this desirable end attainable it is necessary that the College Councils should not be represented, as such, on the Governing Body of the University, but no objection would, we believe, be felt to temporary arrangements which might facilitate the inauguration of the new state of things.

The sooner it is clearly understood that the Association is the result of the labours and the exponent of the views of the "practical men" who are, according to Prof. Huxley, to be found in the professorial ranks, the better it will be for the Association and for London. Prof. Pearson's withdrawal from the secretaryship appears, under all the circumstances, to afford a sufficient guarantee of this.

in savage isles and settled lands. In Savage Isles and Settled Lands: Malaysia, Australasia, and Polynesia, 1888-1891. By B. F. S. BadenPowell, Lieut. Scots Guards, F.R.G.S. (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1892.)

THIS book contains the impressions of Lieut. Baden.

Powell during a journey round the world of over three years' duration; jottings limited chiefly to his own personal doings and observations. The journey was evidently a leisurely peregrination with many divergences to places of interest off his direct route out to Brisbane in Queensland, whither he was bound to assume official duty on the staff of the governor of that colony, and an equally unhurried saunter home again through the Pacific and America. The author does not propose to look at things with scientific eyes, and it is possible here and there throughout the book to detect that he has no profound acquaintance with the ologies. Consequently his book does not fall to be rigidly criticized in these pages. His eyes, however, if not scientific, were kept at all events very wide open, and what came under his own observation

is clearly and accurately described in a pleasant style and with a good deal of quiet ha is easy to see that the "tramp" enjoyed his te the reader, drawn on by his cicerone's mood, accse him through savage isles and settled lands satisfaction. Lieut. Baden-Powell started off thre European continent via Cologne and Vienna to k. thence across Bulgaria, through which "a railway is not very interesting." Nevertheless, "little p villages are seen nestling in the valleys, and glimpses of the Balkans gained." Beyond Sa get through the mountains and "pass through swamp, the railway almost level with the water, growing up all around, in some places so high out all view from the carriage windows. Pass:: the edges of large lakes, the train starts up thos wild fowl, which fly around till the air is quite dr. by them, and on we go, mile after mile, with m more duck rising from the water," evidently a spor paradise. Thence our guide conducts us to tinople and on to Egypt, and though he takes wi trodden paths and tells us little that is new or w he enlivens the way with a constant flow of tams ing talk and anecdote. From Egypt Mr. Bades sets out for southern Australia, but he wanders off his main road for some weeks into Cel India to luxuriate amid their tropic scener ancient monuments. Of the three southern c of the Australias traversed on his way to land he gives us a few brief notes. Of the colony, where he spent some years in the and not very arduous duties of A.D.C. to Sir A Musgrave and Sir Henry Norman, he has a gri that is interesting to tell. He visited much of the .. and saw something of its aboriginal as well i adopted natives, and found interest and amuser both. At a vice-regal ball at Hughenden, a to miles inland, he finds himself a fellow-guest v butler of the hotel he was staying at, and his hos maid, "who was quite the belle of the ball, ard when supper was served, turned waitress again. society in a Bush town." "It was in this distr continues, "that I first set eyes on some real wild The aboriginals of Australia are an extraordinary To look at they are quite unlike any other human I ever saw. A thick tangled mass of black hair *** their heads; their features are of the coarsest; ver

broad and flattened noses; small, sharp, bead-a and heavy eyebrows. They generally have 1 tangled bit of beard; skin very dark and limbs ordinarily attenuated like mere bones. But the " carry themselves very erect. . . . They wander stark naked over the less settled districts, and live on what they can pick up. . . . If not the lowest humanity they would be hard to beat. They st few signs of human instinct, and in their ways: be really more like beasts." Mr. Baden-Powe summarizes his opinions on Australia as a emigration (and those who know the Australasian C will recognize their truth): "The labouring man it a paradise; the professional man will find his pro overstocked; and the man with money to inve probably be ruined. . . . My personal advice to

...

among whom (as our author shows) the Jesuit missionaries found and did not make a system of communism (pp. 42 seq.). In nearly all the instances of this class the sense of property was most strongly developed in regard to the hunting ground of the tribe, though (in the case of the Iroquois, &c.) it embraced the Long Houses of the clans of the tribe, an anticipation of Fourier's phalansteries. The differentiation of the clan from the tribe is ascribed to the growth of the taste for property itself (cf. p. 365). Letourneau would explain the present universality of human sympathy as a bequest to us from the days when all property was common (p. 57). The republican organization passed into the monarchical, where the tribe was governed by its chief (pp. 56 seq.). This political change was rather an effect than a cause of coincident industrial changes, especially the introduction of private property in slaves and women. "A comparison of the American tribes, placing them in a graduated series from the primitive system of communistic equality upward, plainly shows that, at least in this part of the world the establishment of aristocracy and hereditary monarchic power has merely crowned an economic evolution, whereof the point of departure was the institution of slavery, and the consequent development of agriculture, whence arose the rupture of primitive equality, creation of exchangeable values, development of private property, contrast between rich and poor, foundation of castes, and hereditary succession" (p. 61). This passage, amongst others, betrays the tendency-fashionable in some quarters at the present time to regard all social development as due mainly, if not wholly, to economic causes. Not that economists by profession are grate persone to our author. On the contrary, they are only mentioned to be rebuked, and their doctrines only to be caricatured (see pp. 91, 96, cf. 120, 124, &c.). But, as by some sections of German Socialists, so by Letourneau, we are given to understand that the politics, religion, and general character of a society are determined by the conditions of industry and the terms of property therein prevailing, while no sufficient allowance is made for the reaction of the former set of phenomena on the latter.

To sum up at this third stage in the development from savagery (the early monarchical system), the idea of personal property is extended from weapons and tools which a man has made, to the trees which he has planted, and then to the plot of ground he has cleared and sown. After that the idea of private property may be considered to be full formed and definitely launched on its modern career of development (p. 72). The great cause of private property is agriculture. Where there was only pasture, as with the Hottentots, the private property was only in cattle, women, and children (p. 79). Agriculture brings us to extended forms of slavery, and to forms of property and modes of valuing and exchanging it that approach more and more to modern ideas.

We need not follow our author into the minutia of his account of "primitive monarchies" and empires. He gives a survey of mankind from China to Peru, and from the earliest times to the period of Roman, feudal, and modern civilization. The earliest stages of the development are (rightly enough) treated more fully than the later, the later being the more generally known. The

differentiation of clan from tribe and of family from ch the formation of village communities for the purpose agriculture, the introduction of inheritance, and of priva property in estates, are all traced out in chapters that? full of interest even when not above cavil.

Prof. Letourneau has perhaps been too ready to por a moral for the benefit of his own generation. after all he gives his readers the facts, and they may f their own moral, which may or may not be his. On the best instances where the materials presented seem justify a different moral than the one drawn from the is that of the dessa or village community of Java. It pronounced to have excellent results, particularly increasing population (p. 121), and is contrasted with “¿ selfish African system" (p. 122); but by our author's ow account it is a combination of private and collective p perty, not an example of the latter by itself (cf. pp. 114,115 The book is, we may presume, translated from th French; and this will account for the use of "alienist "lunacy doctor” (p. 370),“ disengaging” for “ analyzing (p. 373), and "salaried" for wages-earning" (p. 3 But, as a rule, the language is correct and clear English

66

J. B

LEAPER'S "OUTLINES OF ORGANIC

CHEMISTRY."

Outlines of Organic Chemistry. By Clement J. Leage F.C.S. Specially written for Schools and Classe connected with the Department of Science and Ar (London: Iliffe and Son, 1892.)

THIS

'HIS little work is intended, as the title states, for use of beginners. But the author has made way of beginners hard, by leaving in his pages the larg collection of misprints and other slips which we reco to have met with in so small a compass.

On the very first page, in the opening lines, there a curs a wrong formula for urea; and the book ends with wrong formula for aldehyde-ammonia. We do not pr pose to convert this notice into a table of errata; but following may be given as illustrating the sort of g ance which the beginner may expect. On p. 75, in brief space of three lines, we meet with “ (COOH "CH(OH)" and "C2H(OH)COOH,” as represe ing respectively oxalic acid, glycerin, and-monoformit The blunder, in each case, consists, of course, in plac a coefficient inside instead of outside the bracket; but doubt whether, even with this correction, the last expre sion, with its carboxyl-group in place of the g O.CHO, would be recognized, even by an experienc chemist, much less by a beginner, as representing formin.

Blunders, due to carelessness, are not confined to mulæ. Thus we find: "Pure white precipitate of s oxide (p. 13), whereas the context shows that s chloride is meant; "ethene dichloride, CH,Cl," (p "lead the gas into lime water, and note the formati insoluble carbon dioxide (p. 51); “by the further ch ation of methyl chloride we get ethylidene chlor(p. 67); whilst, on p. 99, "grains " is twice given s of "grams." But the worst blunder we have met occurs on p. 109, where, possibly owing to a transpo of the pages of the author's manuscript, the explana

hich should follow Experiment 112 (Preparation of Ethyl Nitrite) have been moved on by a whole page, and made o follow Experiment 115 (Preparation of Nitro-ethane). The utterly bewildering effect of this jumble, which is enanced by the unexpected re-entrance of the subject of itro-ethane in the middle of a paragraph a little later on, innot be realized without reading the passage.

The work is intended to combine practical with theotical instruction. The selection of experiments is, on e whole, judicious, and the practical directions are generly good. This is not to be wondered at, as the author is evidently, in these points, followed pretty closely rof. Emerson Reynolds's "Experimental Chemistry," en to such details as the substitution of a tin oil-can for distilling flask (p. 99), or a peculiarity in the bending of tube (p. 74), and to the reproduction of some of the lustrations in every case without acknowledgment. rof. Reynolds is not, however, responsible for the illusation on p. 17, in which the distillate from a Liebig's ondenser is represented as falling from a considerable eight into a flask placed below.

It is not true that (p. 12) "every organic compound ontaining nitrogen will, when fused with metallic sodium, onvert the latter into sodium cyanide." Diazo-comounds do not yield any cyanide; and compounds ontaining sulphur as well as nitrogen form thiocyanate. or is heating a cyanide with excess of concentrated Iphuric acid (p. 76) a method of distinguishing it from formate.

The author's style is occasionally slovenly, and somenes worse: "Observe how the fact that oxalic acid so adily split up into CO, CO, and H.O support (sic) this aphic formula for it " (p. 117).

On the whole, we suspect that teachers will prefer a At-book which calls for fewer marginal corrections.

OUR BOOK SHELF.

By

n Introduction to the Study of Botany, with a special chapter on some Australian Natural Orders. Arthur Dendy, D.Sc., and A. H. S. Lucas, M.A. Small Svo, 272 pages with about 30 pages of woodcuts. (Melbourne and London: Melville, Mullen and Slade, 1892.)

E authors of this little work are both teachers of tural Science in the University of Melbourne and it specially intended for the use of students in Australia. th this object in view it would have been better pers to have selected common Australian types to illuste the life history of the great divisions of the vegetable gdom; but Pinus is taken as a representative of nosperms and Vicia of angiosperms. Whether these nts are both easily procurable in Australia we are .ble to say, but even in that case it would have been ter to have taken native plants Possibly the prepar›n of illustrations may have influenced the authors, for y are largely, in the first part, " modified," "simplified," adapted" figures from well known books, or they are ply copied. Taken as a whole, we do not doubt that primer will prove useful to students, but it needs h revision to make it what it ought to be. Here and e, where we have tested it, we have found serious tcomings. Take for example the account of the sions of the vascular cryptogams.

1. Filicine@.-These are the ferns which constitute y large and interesting subdivision. The full account idly given of the common bracken renders a detailed

description unnecessary in this place. There are two principal subdivisions of the Filicinea; the homosporous, which produce only one kind of spore, and the heterosporous, which produce large megaspores and small microspores. The former include all the ordinary ferns and are again subdivided into six families,' of which the Polypodiaceæ are the best known and most abundant, including most of the common ferns, such as Pteris."

One would have expected a word or two respecting the heterosporous group-the Rhizocarpe, with some mention of Marsilea, so memorable in the history of Australian exploration; but the authors seem to have come to grief between the older and newer classifications of vascular cryptogams, for in another place (p. 90) we read of "heterosporous ferns." The definition of the Equisetineæ contains no reference to the spores; and the description of the Lycopodinea contains no information at all. It runs thus: "This group includes the club-mosses (Lycopodium) and the beautiful Selaginella, a plant frequently grown in conservatories for decorative purposes. They are all of rather small size, and are popularly spoken of as "mosses" owing to the general appearance of the plant with its numerous very small leaves."

Comment on such a description would be superfluous. In the classification of the cellular cryptogams, lichens are altogether left out, and are apparently not mentioned anywhere. In fact the same incompleteness and inexactness pervades the book, which opens with a eulogistic preface by W. Baldwin Spencer, Professor of Biology in the University of Melbourne.

W. B. H.

A German Science Reader. (Modern German Series.) Compiled by Francis Jones, F.R.S.E. (London: Percival and Co., 1892.)

THE idea of introducing to English readers extracts from the works of many well-known German scientific authorities will be thoroughly welcomed. The author has brought together sixteen very interesting articles on several branches of science, supplemented with notes, in which difficult passages are translated, and a glossary of the technical terms not usually found in dictionaries. Among the articles we may mention, Electric Telegraphs by Bernstein; Ice and Snow by Kantz; Air by Müller; Aniline Dyes by Kekulé; Spectrum Analysis by W. Kirchhoff and Bunsen, &c.

More About Wild Nature. By Mrs. Brightwen. (London T. Fisher Unwin, 1892.)

MRS. BRIGHTWEN'S book on "Wild Nature Won by Kindness was so widely appreciated that she has been encouraged to prepare a second volume of the same general character. It speaks well for her knowledge of animals, and for her interest in their habits, that the new sketches are written in as fresh and bright a style as if she had never before occupied herself with the mass of subjects with which she deals. She is a careful and accurate observer, and all readers who care for natural history will find much to please them in the facts and impressions she records. The author's illustrations add greatly to the charm of the text.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. [The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex· pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, or to correspond with the writers of rejected manuscripts intended or this for any other part of NATURE. No notice is taken of anonymous communications.]

Arborescent Frost Patterns.

ON Sunday last, December 4, I observed a curious pheno menon, which I do not remember having ever seen before in the streets of London. Along the Euston Road, the Marylebone

Road, and other thoroughfares having an east and west direction the paving flags were all covered with a striking, vegetablelike pattern which might be most appropriately described as an arborescent tracery. The pattern was not formed of the usual small and delicate frost figures such as we are familiar with on window panes, but was made up of large and holdly-fronded designs such as shown in the sketch, which I hurriedly made on the spot :

The "fronds" were from one to two feet in length, and often most gracefully curved. A keen wind was blowing at the time from a few degrees north of west and the flags had evidently been coated with a thin layer of mud from the previous night's rain. I attribute the pattern to the rapid freezing and evaporation of the water in this surface layer of mud which was going on during the morning. I only noticed the tracery along east and west thoroughfares; in sheltered streets not swept by the cold wind no design was visible. The phenomenon may be known well enough to others, but by many, like myself, it may have hitherto been passed over unnoticed. My chief object in sending this description is to call attention to the very vegetablelike appearance of the pattern. If allowed to dry in a calm atmosphere and then buried under a fine alluvial or other deposit a record would be preserved which the future geologist might at first sight be tempted to read as "vegetable remains.' I have seen very similar tracery in the London clay about Clacton-on-Sea and elsewhere. R. MELDOLA.

Ice Crystallites.

THE interesting facts recorded by your correspondent C. M. Irvine on p. 31 recall some unrecorded observations of my own. On several occasions during recent winters I have observed these crystallographic forms of ice on a gravel walk by the side of my lawn, in places where, owing to faulty gradients, the water does not completely drain away at the surface, and the ground just below the surface is in consequence more saturated with water than at other spots. The acicular iceforms have appeared in bundles standing up between the pebbles and capped by earthy material, just as described by Mr. Irvine, and in previous communications to NATURE by Mr. B. Woodd Smith (see his letter on p. 79). The nature of the soil agrees with that described by these two observers, so far as permeability to water is concerned; and I think they appeared on the occurrence of clear frosty weather after a thaw and melting of previous snow. My ooservations, however, extended further than theirs appear to have done. 1 was at the time pursuing the study of the glassy acicular crystallites of sulphur (which are erroneously described as "crystals" in most textbooks on chemistry). These, on examination with polarized light (as I have described elsewhere) are found to be destitute of any crystalline internal structure (in tact truly vitreous or isotropic masses in spite of their crystallographic outlines); such structure developing, as devitrification proceeds, by crystallization in the orthorhombic system, to which the outlines of the crystallites do

not conform.

In NATURE (vol. xxxvii. p. 104) is a letter from myself, recording some observations on the vitreosity of ice, as exhibited under certain suitable conditions by hailstones, and referring to a previous letter (Ibid. vol. xxxvi. p. 77), wherein the vitrification and devitrification of water was suggested as the possible

cause or certain structural phenomena observed in them f time to time. It was with those ideas present to my mind ** during recent winters I have made an examination of the ac lar ice-forms referred to, which struck me as made up of unus clear and transparent ice. On taking my microscope c doors, fitted with a polarizing apparatus, when the tempera was a few degrees below freezing, with a thick overcoat prevent the heat of one's body from affecting the ice-needle found that, on taking them from the ground and placing the once on the stage between crossed "Nicols," they appears. be completely isotropic, as they had no reaction on polarized I have concluded, therefore, that these ice-needles are str. analogous (physically) to the prismatic crystallites of: phur; and they resemble precisely the microscopic lathe-sh forms, into which I have seen a perfectly clear minute pla sulphur-glass break up in the first stage of devitrification. explanation suggested by Mr. Woodd Smith, that they have been formed by a slow growth of ice at their base, molecular movement of water in the soil keeping up the s so long as refrigeration continued, has seemed to me the natural one; their isotropic molecular structure is no doux to the rapidity of freezing owing to a sudden fall of temper at the spot. A. IRVIN

Wellington College, Berks, November 27.

The l'olucelle as Alleged Examples of Variation "al Unique among Animals."

IT is barren work for the parties in a controversy mere? deny each other's statements without adducing further evide Mr. Bateson first stated that var. mystacea did not Bombus muscorum. I replied that it did, and the stateme my letter in no way depended on the case at the Royal C of Surgeons, but on a careful comparison of the insects Oxford Museum. It is useless for me to repeat that I rega as an example of mimicry, not indeed equal to that afforded the same fly and Bombus hortorum, but far better than others which are generally believed to be instances of principle (such as the resemblance of Clytus arietis, or ever resemblance-admitted by Mr. Bateson in his first letterVolucella inanis, to a wasp). I therefore propose to fam the Editor of NATURE with photographs of the Voluce humble-bees for reproduction, so that readers can judge matter for themselves. I will do my best to obtain a neg which shows the coloured bands.

Although I believed that the two London Museums suppr my view, it will be obvious to any one who reads the letter I did not rely on such support, but on my own comparison the insects.

Mr. Bateson has offered no further evidence in support o remarkable assertion that the variation of the "Velmi unique. I am not surprised that he should pass over this of my letter, for I felt sure that there was no further evide offer. It will be remembered that this evidence was co in the "brief statement of facts" given in his first letter, is practically summed up in the sentence "This fly exhib rare condition of existing in two distinct forms in both se In assuming this rarity to be so excessive that the words most unique" may be applied to it, and in evidently consider that we must proceed as far as the peach and nectarine in to find a parallel, Mr. Bateson exhibits a want of acquar with the facts of variation which is very surprising in one believed to have spent some years in their study. For the no essential biological difference between this variatio inany others, examples of which I gave in my last letter.. which could easily be multiplied. In fact, many a would have corrected such a mistake. Compared with magnitude of this erroneous statement in Mr. Batesonletter, the details under discussion assume very small; tions. In considering that "no speculation is needed to e the exceptionally interesting facts of the variation and 1 semblances of the Volucelle," it would appear that Mr. Ba seeks to replace that most invaluable servant of science, spea tion, by far-reaching and unsupported assertion.

"show

In his last letter Mr. Bateson says "it is admitted th making this statement Mr. Poulton relied not on or authorities, but on the general impression of others." from this being the case I stated my belief that the impre is prevalent among those who are original authorities a Hymenoptera and their parasites, and I also showed that