Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/175

Rh "The majority of those who are accustomed to walk in the fields and woods with open eyes for the observation of animal life have surely been struck by the readiness with which animals belonging to the same family or community find each other again, after having separated voluntarily or under compulsion. Indeed, even newly-hatched or new-born young, which one surely cannot easily suspect of having a fully developed memory for places or any acquaintance with the locality, and as to which it is quite impossible to imagine that they are already in possession of the full use of their senses, nevertheless again discover, apparently with the greatest ease, their parents, brothers and sisters, or companions, even when they have been separated from them for so long a time or by so great a distance that their sensory powers are inadequate to bring them into direct communication one with another."

The lecturer then alluded to what he provisionally termed biological circles or circular wanderings, which he traced among vertebrates, including mankind, and among insects, by which they return to the spot where they were separated. This, he remarks, must be of fundamental importance for the maintenance of life and the development of the individuals affected; it is, he remarks, "universally distributed—it is one of the general laws."

It must be emphasised that Prof. Guldberg distinctly repudiates any connection of his circular movement with the manège-movement known in physiology in the case of brain-lesion.

the Conference of Delegates of the Corresponding Societies of the British Association, Liverpool, 1896, perhaps the most original paper read was one by Mr. W.M. Flinders Petrie, "On a Federal Staff for Local Museums."

The author advocated the formation of "a federal staff to circulate for all purposes requiring skilled knowledge, leaving the permanent attention to each place to devolve on a mere caretaker." By this arrangement "each museum would have a week of attention in the year from a geologist, and the same from a zoologist and an archæologist."

The duties of such a staff would be to arrange and label the new specimens acquired in the past year, taking sometimes a day, or perhaps a fortnight, at one place; to advise on alterations and improvements; to recommend purchases required to fill up gaps; to note duplicates and promote exchanges between museums; and to deliver a lecture on the principal novelties of their own subject in the past year.

"The effect at the country museums would be that three times in the year a visitant would arrive for one of the three sections, would work everything up to date, stir the local interest by advice and a lecture, stimulate the caretaker, and arrange routine work that could be carried out