1868. | Chemical Science. 517 
notice of some experiments which led to rather unexpected results, 
of which the author could find no notice in the methodical trea- 
tises on electricity, although they might seem to lie in the way of 
any experimenter on induced currents. Two thick copper wires 
were coiled together, the circuit of one being completed by the 
battery and make-and-break apparatus, and that of the other by an 
ordinary astatic galvanometer of moderate sensitiveness. When 
the handle of the instrument is turned there are generated in the 
second circuit a series of instantaneous currents, which are alter- 
nately opposite in sign, but whose magnitudes are equal, although 
that corresponding to the break of the battery circuit is the most 
condensed. When, then, the instrument is worked with such 
‘rapidity that the interval between the currents is very small, in 
comparison to the time of free oscillation of the needle, the needles 
might be expected to be sensibly unaffected. But so far was this 
from being the case, that, although the swing of the needle pro- 
duced by a single impulse was only a few degrees, yet under the 
influence of the series of equal and opposite currents it remained 
steadily at 60 or 70, and that on either side of the zero point, which 
had, in fact, become a position of unstable equilibrium. 
CuEemicaL Science. (Section B.) 
This Section is generally the least interesting to the general 
public, and is the most scantily attended. The papers brought for- 
ward were chiefly of interest to chemists only, and in the following 
abstracts we shall only notice the most important. 
The President, Dr. Frankland, F.R.S., in his introductory ad- 
dress, delivered on August 20th, drew attention to the discouraging 
way in which scientific studies are being introduced into our older 
universities, the lack of the necessary funds for the proper endow- 
ment of professorships and for the provision of suitable buildings 
and apparatus in our modern institutions, and the insignificance of 
the rewards offered to successful students in science, which have 
naturally operated most injuriously upon the extension of chemical 
culture. Whilst in Heidelberg, Ziirich, Bonn, Berlin, Leipzig, and 
Carlsruhe magnificent edifices have been raised, replete with all the 
newest contrivances for facilitating the prosecution of chemical stu- 
dies, we are here still compelled to give instruction and conduct 
research in small and inconvenient buildings utterly inadequate to 
the requirements of modern chemistry. The large sums spent by 
the governments of Germany and Switzerland upon these establish- 
ments sufficiently testify to their opimion of the national value of 
chemistry in education. ‘The laboratory at Ziirich cost 14,0002, 
that of Bonn 18,450/., the one now nearly completed in Leipzig 
