ing the curriculum of this college one would imagine that the training of prospective public men in France is far more perfect than our own, and so it is in some respects. For in fact what is the composition of our present House of Commons? The smallest minority consists of young men whose parents are possessed of ample means and who have been able to give their sons a University training and a life of physical and mental exercise with the direct object of serving the state. A majority, however, of the practical politicians of Great Britain, who have successfully served in several of the leading departments of state, have graduated perhaps from the parish vestry; in some cases have derived their tuition in public life from a municipal council, and very many others have acquired their knowledge of organisation from congregational meetings of dissenting bodies. This is especially the case in the United States. The admirable constitution of the great Republic of the West was framed to a great extent by men who were accustomed to lay down the rules and regulations of Puritan conventicles, and there are few such statesman-like documents left to posterity even by the most experienced and trained jurists or diplomatists. Both the English and Americans receive their political knowledge from the experience of life itself. The French on the other hand, seek to meet the exigencies of a throbbing and active civilisation by a fixed code of theoretical education. When a French governor of a colony finds himself face to face with a situation not calculated upon in his official training, he becomes to a certain extent helpless; whilst Englishmen and Americans use their ordinary l'intérieur; administration des affaires indigènes; emplois dans les grandes compagnies industrielles et financières.)

D'autre part, le programme comprend des éléments d'instruction supérieure qui complètent utilement la préparation à certaines hautes positions commerciales. (Banques. Contentieux des grandes Compagnies. Inspection des chemins de fer, etc.)

business aptitudes, coupled with a common sense view of the situation, and thus in most cases they govern naturally and not artificially. There is much the same method adopted in English-speaking countries in their commercial education. Neither the British nor Americans are trained to Commerce theoretically, they go into the practical school of life, and it becomes a question of the survival of the fittest. No one could for a moment advocate an entire absence of training for commercial life, and leave it merely to the haphazard education of buying and selling; but I maintain there is such a thing as overtraining for commercial pursuits, and I fear both Germany and France will find that a lassitude will follow the ultra theoretical training which they now deem so indispensable for the moment. In the matter of technical education we have been, it must be admitted, somewhat behind the nations of the Continent, especially in the want of encouragement given to capable artizans, and in the scientific development of the appliances of manufactures, more especially in chemistry, in which department the Germans have had better opportunities. This, however, is being rapidly changed with us for the better. It remains yet to be proved whether practical commercial office training, following a sound all-round school teaching, is not in the long run better adapted for the idiosyncracies of English speaking people than a highly tempered course of theoretical commercial school studies, such as the French and Germans pursue. As successful business men among English-speaking people, the Scotch are decidedly in the very front rank, and as financiers they yield to no other community. The Scottish banking system is abreast of the financial requirements of every phase of advanced commercial civilisation, and they need fear no competition from either French or German bankers. In the British colonies, in India, and in South America, they are directors or managers of the

principal banking and financial institutions. Might we not rather look to the practical Scottish commercial training for emulation, rather than to the theoretical French or German methods?

Dr. J. BIRKBECK NEVINS read a paper on "The Changes of Dynasty, and of National, Political, and Religious Sentiment in France, as illustrated by the French Coinage from 500 B.C. to the Present Time."*

FIFTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSITUTION, December 12th, 1888.

MR. JAMES BIRCHALL, PRESIDENT, in the Chair. Mr. E. H. Cookson (Mayor of Liverpool) was duly elected an Ordinary Member.

Mr. GUTHRIE called attention to the Aquaphone, a recent discovery for transmitting sound through water.

Mr. JOHN NEWTON, M.R.C.S., read a paper "On the Origin of the Religious Idea." †

SIXTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, January 7th, 1889.

MR. JAMES BIRCHALL, PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

Mr. F. J. Leslie, F.R.G.S., and the Rev. Lawrence P.

Jacks, M.A., were duly elected Ordinary Members.

Rev. H. H. HIGGINS and Mr. F. ARCHER, B.A., exhibited and described a specimen of Wood Opal from the Nile Valley.

Miss FANNY L. CALDER read a paper on "Domestic

Education in Elementary Schools." *

SEVENTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, January 21st, 1889.

MR. JAMES BIRCHALL, PRESIDENT, in the Chair. Mr. JOHN NEWTON, M.R.C.S., read a paper "On the Religions of India; Ancient and Modern."

EIGHTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, February 4th, 1889.

MR. JAMES BIRCHALL, PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

Dr. SHEARER communicated the following note:-" An Original Illustration of Goethe's Law of Morphology in Plants."

66

ABNORMAL OR ATAVIC ROSE.

THE accompanying monstrosity, or abnormality, in the fruit of the Rosa Spinossima is one more beautiful, and to me, so far as the Rosacea are concerned, perfectly new illustration of the profound law in morphology, hinted at by Linnæus and established by Goëthe, viz., that the flower and fruit are composed of several successive whorls or series of modified leaves, folior appendages or phyllomes more or less altered and blended together to form compound organs, the fruit or Cynarrhadum, in the case of the rose, being formed from the union of the calycine leaves, or their petioles, with the dilated end of the receptacle, and enclosing several achenes. Typical formula S5 P5 A00 G1-00.

See page 109.

In the Rosacea, the carpels are either enclosed within a hollow receptacle formed by the union of the lower parts of the calycine leaves with the dilated end of the receptacle forming the receptacular tube, or "hip," or Cynarrhadum, as in the roses proper, or they are free, not enclosed at all, but surrounded by the whorl of separate calycine leaves or sepals, as is the case in the raspberry, the

blackberry, and the geum.

This latter, or free condition of the sepals, normal in the latter but abnormal in the rose, is the condition we met with in the specimen exhibited from the New Brighton sandhills last September, and here represented

There is

no trace of the cup or receptacular tube, the carpels are naked, seven or eight in number, and the calycine leaves, five in number, are foliaceous, much developed, and putting on a close resemblance to the odd leaflet of the ordinary pinnate foliage leaves. The circlet of leaves replacing the urn have long stalks and single rounded laminæ, and that they are clearly the representatives of the missing urn is