1 16 



NATURE 



[March 23, 191 1 



The dual character of the problem set before the 



CominissiontTs is clear enough in these instructions, 

 but the duality is no lon^'er restricted to the academic 

 field of teaching and examination. The conflictinj,' 

 views of the teacher and of the examiner are but a 

 small part of that problem, the "dualities " of internal 

 and external interests, or of incorporated and non- 

 incorporated colleges, or of academic and technological 

 ideals, are dominated by the still more cojjent duality 

 of Metropolitan and Imperial. 



The accidental development of an Imperial Uni- 

 versity under the Metropolitan name can be remedied 

 and utilised in one way alone. The University of 

 London is dc facto the rough sketch of an Imperial 

 University that should be distinguished by the name 

 • Imperial." The Incorporated Colleges are dc facto 

 the nucleus of a Metropolitan University that should 

 be distinguished by the name " London." 



THE FVK-SEALS OF BERING SEA. 



WE learn from The Times of March 17 that Russia 

 has accepted an invitation from the United 

 States Government to take part in a new Seal Fishing 

 Conference at Washington a few months hence, prob- 

 ably in the spring of 1912, and Sir Edward Grey has 

 announced in the House of Commons that an official 

 invitation addressed to this country is now upon its 

 way. It is generally understood that this invitation 

 will be accepted, and that the Home Government, 

 together with Canada, will take part in a friendly 

 discussion upon this once difficult and contentious 

 subject. 



It is now eighteen years ago since the Paris Tribune 

 of Arbitration gave its ruling, the gist of which was 

 that, while the United States had no rights of pro- 

 perty in the seals outside the ordinary three-mile 

 limit, yet that in the special circumstances of the 

 case it was desirable that that legal limit should be 

 set aside and a wider boundary fixed ; and as a 

 matter of fact a close time was appointed, and a zone 

 of sixty miles around the Pribyloff Islands was pre- 

 served against the operations of the "pelagic sealer." 

 Three years later the question was again raised by 

 a celebrated letter addressed to our Ambassador by 

 Mr. John Sherman ; but after inspection of the seal- 

 rookeries by British experts, and a re-discussion of 

 the whole circumstances of the case at Washington, 

 no sufficient reason was found for disturbing the 

 decision of the Tribunal, and the case has since re- 

 mained t« statu quo. 



During the thirteen or fourteen years that have 

 elapsed since the Washington conference no inspec- 

 tion of the rookeries has taken place by British 

 agents, and but little news concerning their condition 

 has reached this country ; but there can be no doubt 

 at all that the herds have greatly deteriorated during 

 these recent years. The American agents declare that 

 the seals are now only one-fourth as many as at the 

 time of the arbitration, when already the diminution 

 had gone far. At the same time, the Canadian seal- 

 ing fleet has dwindled almost to nothing, and accord- 

 ingly the responsibility for the recent depletion of the 

 herds must He on other shoulders than our country- 

 men's. 



It appears that it is now the Japanese who are 

 mainly responsible. As Japan was no party to the 

 Paris Arbitration, the sixty-mile limit has never 

 applied to them, and the Japanese sealers accordinglv 

 ply this trade around both the Russian and American 

 islands right up to the three-mile limit, and (if report 

 savs truly), even sometimes to the very shore. Dur- 

 ing the years of the Russo-Japanese war it is said 

 that the Commander Islands were freely pillaged, 



NO. 2160, VOL. 86] 



and it is certain that nowadays the Japanese fleet- 

 non-existent a do/en years ago — is both large ar 

 active. In igo8, it is said by the United Stat 

 agents that the Japanese fleet consisted of no fei 

 than thirty schooners, some with as many as sixteen(| 

 boats, and rumour has it that our own countrymen in 

 British Columbia have attempted to put their vessi'ls 

 under the Japanese flag, so as to evade exclusion from 

 the sixty-mile zone. It is believed that Japan has 

 agreed to take part in the impending conference if 

 (ireat Britain likewise agrees to participate, and there 

 is thus every reason to hope that an arrangement 

 may be come to by which the destruction shall be 

 arrested, and the herds gradually restored. 



PKOF. JAKOB MAARTES V.\N BEMMELh 



IN the death of Prof, van Bemmelen, which touK 

 place on March 13, there passes away the oldest 

 member of that singularly distinguished band of 

 chemists and physicists which has had its home at 

 the University of Leyden. 



Born on November 3rd, 1830, at Almelo, where his 

 father was head of the Grammar School, Prof, van 

 Bemmelen was in his eighty-first year at the time 

 of his death. His father died in 1830, and the widow 

 moved to Leyden, where her son attended the High 

 School, until he entered the University in 1847. He 

 studied chemistry under the then professor of chem- 

 istry and pharmacology, van der Boon Mesch. Van 

 Bemmelen has himself left on record a description 

 of the very primitive laboratory- — a single room with 

 wide old-fashioned hearth in the great St. Catherine 

 Inn in Breedestraat, serving as lecture-room and 

 laboratory. There, as he notes, chemical instruction 

 could go no further than the simplest quantitative 

 experiments ! 



In 1852 van Bemmelen became assistant to Prof, 

 van Kerchoff at Groningen, and it is owing to the 

 fact that the students were mostly interested in phar- 

 macology that his earliest papers were purelv phar- 

 macological in character. 



Van Bemmelen's life work, his investigation of 

 the colloidal state, came to him when he left Kerchoff 

 to become teacher in the School of Agriculture at 

 Groningen. There he began his analysis of soils, 

 and there also, in 1864, he began to experiment on 

 the "absorption processes in mould," the results of 

 which were not published until 1877, thirteen years 

 later. This delay was due to pressure of other work, 

 largely alien to the young chemist's tastes. In 1858 

 he had married the daughter of the Rev. Jan Boeke, 

 Baptist minister at Amsterdam, a lady whom the 

 writer remembers as a gracious and kindly hostess at 

 Leyden ten years ago, and the necessity for providing 

 for his home led him to accept with much misgiving 

 the position of director of the High School at Gron- 

 ingen when it was offered in 1864. There he stayed 

 for five years, with little time or opportunity for 

 laboratory work, and, as he himself has recorded i" 

 the Gedenkboek of the school, much distressed 

 the slow progress he could make in his studies t,; 

 absorption. In 1869 he was moved to the High 

 School at Arnheim, where he remained until the 

 final move to Leyden in 1873. 



Though the chief work scarcely progressed at all 

 during these years of school administration, they 

 were not wholly barren of scientific work. More thari 

 twenty papers were published, all on problems 1 

 agricultural chemistry. To this period also belon;, 

 what van Bemmelen himself veri' characteristically 

 called his greatest contribution to chemistry — the dis- 

 covery of Bakhuis Roozeboom, who came to assist 

 him in soil analysis. 



