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"1 do not believe that is a true dilemma. What maybe true is that to resolve the apparent dilemma is thelawyers' primary task; and that the secret of success is tobe found in the dimension of time. It is certain thatsuccess is not possible without looking outside the limitsof the formal rules of law to the interaction betweenlaw and life."There were other reasons, it is true, but those werethe fundamental reasons why, at Monash, a new kindof law course was devised for this University's lav..·degrees.'The course for the first degree was designed to providea basic university education with almost equalrequired reading in non-legal subjects as in the law; andonly the second concentrated upon legal subjects withthe practice of law in view. That plan made a fiveinsteadof a four-year course essential. But that was asmall price to pay if the foundations were laid to buildfor a greater capacity to resolve the apparent dilemma Idescribed earlier."One result of the establishment of those two degreesis that the Monash LL.B. degree as such is a mark ofa more balanced and complete university attainmentthan any LLB. degree 1 know in the United Kingdom orAustralasia. In many universities of those regions therequirements of the Monash LL.B. degree would justifythe conferring of the degree of Master of Laws."With the staff of this school and the physical advantagesof this building also in mind, [ have no hesitationin assuring the graduates of this school that the standardsthey satisfy here are as high as any in the common lawworld. They can be proud to be graduates of MonashUniversity as I am proud to become an honorary graduateof Monash today."I am greatly honoured today to be asked to open thisbuilding and with much pleasure I do now declare thislaw school building open".Professor D. P. Derham receives his honorary degreefrom the Chancellor (ll·ft). Seated, Professor P. L.Waller, acting dean of the faculty of LawLEARNING EXPERIMENTSWITH FISHBy R. F. Mark, Senior Lecturer,Department of PhysiologyDuring the last thirty years we have lived through agolden age in the experimental investigation of thebrain. More than anything else, the advance has comethrough the ability to record in isolation the electricalactivity of single cells amongst the millions that makelip each brain. Properly done, this allows the piecingtogether of a mosaic of response patterns of individualneurones and gives a degree of understanding of themechanism of the brain that was not possible before.The same techniques, pushing modern electronicmethods to the very limits of resolution, have beenapplied to the biophysical mechanisms of the individualnerve cell, and now there seems no reason why thedescription of nerve cell signalling should not soonreach the level of single molecules and be described inthe same terms as the chemical basis of life itself.Yet the two aspects of brain function that have thegreatest medical and scientific interest have been almostuntouched by this advance. These are firstly the understandingof the detailed growth and development of thebrain, with all the implications for knowledge of normaland abnormal mental development, and secondly themechanism of the long-term changes in the brain thatmust underlie processes of perception and memory.The problems are so difficult that only as a result ofrecent knowledge has it been possible to put them inscientific terms in which they can be analysed bysimple experiments. Even so the complexity of thehuman or mammalian brain makes the going very difficult.As so of len in science one looks for a model,retaining the properties of interest but leaving out thatwhich is confusing and probably irrelevant. It becomesof very great importance then to know whether loweranimals and simpler forms of life see and feel andremember as we do. The more primitive the animal thesimpler the brain and the easier in theory is the analysisof its physical mechanism. For this reason, in thePhysiology department of the medical school, the visualand learning abilities of fishes are being studied in detailand the contribution of various parts of the brain tothese abilities is being examined.WAYS OF TEACHING FISHThere is a long history of experiments on trammgfishes to respond to various visual stimuli and it provesquite easy to teach even the common goldfish to recognizelights, colours and sounds or more complicatedpatterns such as printed letters of the alphabet. The artof doing so is to make it possible for the fish to revealhis choice by some clear change in behaviour. Thereare numerous methods. The illustrations show someways, all of which are in use in our laboratory, in whichthis can be done. Fig. I is a diagram of an arrangementthat can teach a fish to respond to a sudden increase inlight level by leaving the lighted area and swimming toa darkened part of the tank.! A hurdle going almost tothe surface of the water divides a tank into two iden­1 Steiner, J. and Mark, R. F.-Are memories stored inthe fish tectum? Aust. J. Exp. Bioi. Med., 1968,(in press).27