100 YEARS AGO

Writing on the subject of “Greek at Oxford,” a correspondent of the Times again expressed the common belief that “Darwin regretted not having learnt Greek.” A letter from Mr. Francis Darwin in the Times of December 29, 1904, shows that the statement is altogether opposed to Darwin's views. Darwin says of his education at Shrewsbury School:— “Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history” (“Life and Letters,” i., 31). He was, in fact, a victim of that “premature specialisation” which is generally referred to in a somewhat one-sided spirit, and from which the public schoolboy is not yet freed. Mr. Darwin adds:— “If the name of Charles Darwin is to be brought into this controversy it must not be used for compulsory Greek, but against it. In 1867 he wrote to Farrar, ‘I am one of the root and branch men, and would leave classics to be learnt by those alone who have sufficient zeal and the high taste requisite for their appreciation’ (‘More Letters of Charles Darwin,’ ii., 441).”

From Nature 5 January 1905.

50 YEARS AGO

The expedition organized jointly by the Zoological Society of London and the British Broadcasting Corporation returned to Britain just before Christmas from ten weeks field-work in Sierra Leone, bringing a large collection of animals and a considerable quantity of cinematograph films and sound recordings... One of the main objects of the expedition was to find the nesting habitat of Picathartes gymnocephala, a rare passerine bird the systematic position of which is obscure; this bird has seldom been seen alive by Europeans. The habitat was found in difficult hilly bush country, and in spite of the dense shade cast by the forest successful films were made of the birds on and near the nests, of the eggs and of the parents feeding the young by regurgitation. Sound records were also obtained of the voices of the birds in their natural surroundings, and a living specimen was captured and brought to London. Another species never before exhibited in captivity that was successfully sought and found is the brilliantly iridescent emerald starling Coccycolius iris.

From Nature 8 January 1955.