May 4, 191 1] 



NATURE 



325 



ninence in English engineering education, but no Colonial 

 1 -presentative took part. 



Trade Schools and Continuation Schools. 



Mr. R. Blair (London Education Officer) read a paper on 

 the recent development of day schools for boys or girls 

 following immediately on the close of the elementary- 

 school career, the schools being so closely associated with 

 the industry for which they are preparing their students 

 that the preparation is a substitute for the earlier years 

 of apprenticeship. He directed attention to the extent and 

 peculiarities of London's needs, and his valuable remarks 

 were supported by a large amount of useful statistics 

 appended to his paper. He selected for detailed descrip- 

 tion the work of the Brixton School of Building. The 

 paper is one to be read in full and kept for reference ; we 

 must content ourselves with noting that Mr. Blair 

 attributes the success of the schools to the thoroughness 

 of the investigation made into the conditions of a trade 

 before establishing a school or class, and to the appoint- 

 ment of a consultative committee of experts. The striking 

 success of the girls' schools was due to the high standard 

 of devotion and enthusiasm of the staff. 



Mr. Graham Balfour (Staffordshire) showed how com- 

 plicated and varied were the difficulties in organising con- 

 tinuation schools, and the need for resourcefulness and 

 iudgment in dealing with each individual locality. 



Mr. C. E. Bevan Brown (Christchurch, N.Z.)' said that 



lently an Act had been passed in New Zealand allowing 

 local authorities to make continuation classes compulsory. 



A Criticism and a Hope. 

 Had the papers and discussions been the British part i 

 of proceedings to which the Overseas Dominions had 

 contributed a similar share, we should feel that these con- 

 f'-rences had made a good beginning. It is to be hoped 

 that when the report of the private sessions appears it 

 will reveal the fact of a useful interchange of experience 

 and ideas between the delegates of the various parts of 

 the Empire. So far as the public sessions are concerned, 



• cannot be said that a programme consisting solely of 

 iitributions from the United Kingdom fulfils even 



j)|)roximately the aspirations with which we regard an 

 I inperial Education Conference. It has been stated in the 

 daily Press that the Colonial Governments were not invited 

 to make suggestions for the business of the conference. 

 In face of the fact that the Board of Education had four 

 years for preparation, this statement appears to us in- 

 credible, or, if credible, then discreditable. We hope that 

 one result of the private sessions will be to evolve a method 

 by which the various parts of the Empire can act in 

 concert, so as to carry out in future those aims of the 

 conference which were stated with clear insight by the 

 President of the Board in his opening address. 



G. F. D. 



BIRD NOTES. 



"T^O the April issue of British Birds, Messrs. Witherby 

 and Alexander contribute an account of the visitation 

 of crossbills to the British Isles in 1909. The birds made 

 their appearance on Fair Isle on June 23, and before the 

 end of that month were seen in the Shetlands, Orkneys, 

 Outer Hebrides, Merionethshire, and Durham ; while in 

 July they were observed all over England except the 

 extreme south-west, as well as in a number of places in 

 Wales, and a few scattered localities in Ireland. The 

 latest record of their beinff seen at sea was in the Shet- 

 lands early in August. The first nest recorded was taken 

 on January 12, 1910, near Thetford, while the latest nests 

 were seen respectively in Sussex and Kent on May 25, 

 the height of the breeding season being in March and 

 April. Nests were recorded from thirteen English comities. 

 The dates of departure of the birds varied locally ; in some 

 districts all had gone by the end of 1900, in others there 

 was little or no diminution in the numbers till well on in 

 the following year, but, as a whole, the records indicate 

 that the main departure took place either in February or 

 in April and May. From a second paper in the same 

 i'siie, it appears, however, that a few rrossl)ills remained 



NO. 2166, VOL. 86] 



to breed in certain localities in the spring of the present 

 year. A note is added in the latter paper on the thin- 

 beaked Scots crossbill (Loxia curvirostra scotica), which 

 breeds regularly over a considerable area in Scotland. 



The Irish Times of March 31, as quoted in The Field of 

 April 8, reports an enormous influx of migratory birds 

 into Ireland, especially the south-eastern districts, 'during 

 the last week of March. In New Ross on the night of 

 March 29 the town was practically invaded by a vast 

 swarm of starlings, while in Kilkenny on the same day 

 the streets were strewn with the dead bodies of various 

 species, including curlew, while much the same thing 

 happened in Carlow on March 30. There can be little 

 doubt that the influx and subsequent destruction were in 

 some way connected with the abnormally cold weather 

 prevalent at the time. 



In The Emu for January, Mr. A. J. Cambell describes, 

 under the name of Erythrotriorchis rufotibia, a new species 

 of so-called Australasian goshawk, characterised bv the 

 rich rufous or chestnut brown of the shank of the leg. 

 This bird inhabits north-western Australia ; the other 

 members of the genus are E. radiatus of eastern, northern, 

 and central Australia, and E. doriae of south-eastern Papua. 



To The Sclborne Magazine for April, Mr. A. H. Macpher- 

 son contributes notes on London birds in 19 10, in which 

 reference is made to the visit of a great crested grebe to 

 the Serpentine on January 29. To illustrate the article on 

 account of this casual visit with a figure of a nesting 

 grebe, is, perhaps, a little misleading. 



Mr. y. Franz gives, in Ilintmel itnd Erde for March, an 

 illustrated account of the bird-observing station at Rossitten, 

 with figures of the modes of ringing birds' feet, and notes 

 on some of the results which have been obtained by the 

 system of bird-marking. 



From a paper by Mr. Grinnell issued in vol. vii., No. 4, 

 of the Zoological Publications of the University of Cali- 

 fornia, it appears that the Californian linnet (Carpodacus 

 frontalis) was introduced into the Hawaiian Islands about 

 forty years ago, and that the males of the race now estab- 

 lished there differ from the normal form of their con- 

 tinental brethren by the replacement of the crimson head 

 and breast colouring by yellow or orange. This pale 

 colouring of the cock Hawaiian linnet is paralleled 

 sporadically by the linnet of the mainland in a wild state, 

 and constantly in birds kept in confinement. As the change 

 in the Hawaiian bird does not appear to be due to 

 differences in temperature or humidity, change of food, or 

 a diminution in the number of foes, it appears to be 

 coimected with deep-seated factors, one of which may be 

 insularity of habitat. " A deficiency in capacity, of the 

 germ, for the formation of the appropriate enzyme may 

 have been intensified through close breeding until the 

 condition was reached where the amount of enzyme pro- 

 duced in the feather anlage is insufficient to carry on 

 oxidation of tyrosin beyond the yellow, or, at farthest, the 

 orange stage. R. L. 



OPTICALLY ACTIVE ALCOHOLS. 



'T'HE January issue of the Chemical Society's Journal 

 contains an important paper by Dr. R. H. Pickard 

 and Mr. J. Kenyon on the " Dependence of Rotatory Power 

 on Chemical Constitution." Hitherto much of the work 

 that has been done in order to find out the influence on 

 optical rotatory power of temperature, solvent, concentra- 

 tion, and chemical constitution has been based upon the 

 observations of complex compounds, such as nicotine and 

 derivatives of various complex acids and bases. These 

 substances have the advantage that they can be purchased 

 as natural products in optically active forms, but the com- 

 plexity of their structure has rendered it almost impossible 

 to draw any general conclusions from the vast array of 

 facts that have now been accumulated. In the research now 

 described the authors have endeavoured to reduce the 

 problem to its simplest possible form by studying the 



properties of the series of secondary alcohols, R,.HOH.R,, 

 of which the simplest member is secondary butvl alcohol, 

 CH .CHOII.CIL.CH,. 



Up to the present no fewer than fourteen of these 

 alcohols have been prepared, and separated into their 



