May 4, 191 1] 



NATURE 



to the St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, and is also 

 examiner in physiology to the Royal College of Physicians 

 and to the National University of Ireland. He has pub- 

 lished numerous papers on physiological subjects, and is 

 the joint author of a text-book of experimental physiology. 



Mr. Ivor Back, assistant surgeon to St. George's Hos- 

 pital, lecturer on and teacher of operative surgery in the 

 Medical School, St. George's Hospital, and Prof. D. H. 

 Macgregor, professor of economics in the University of 

 Leeds, have been elected to A.K. travelling fellowships. 

 Mr. E. A. Benions, fellow and lecturer of St. John's 

 College, Cambridge, has been elected to the fellowship 

 rendered vacant by the resignation of Prof. I. Gollancz in 

 December last. 



The Berlin correspondent of The Morning Post states 

 that the Senate of the City of Hamburg has passed a 

 resolution recommending that the Colonial Institute estab- 

 lished there some years ago to train men for the Colonial 

 Service shall be developed into an independent institution. 

 This is regarded as the first official step in the movement 

 to found a university in Hamburg. The city already 

 devotes loo.oooi. annually towards the cost of its scientific 

 Institutions, and the project evidently is to merge the 

 latter into one university, though this word is as yet 

 avoided. 



Prof. H. E. .Armstrong's old students at the Central 

 Technical College have arranged to mark their appreciation 

 of the services he has rendered to science, industry, and 

 education for upwards of a quarter of a century, by enter- 

 taining him at a banquet to be held at the Hotel Cecil, at 

 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 13. It has further been suggested 

 that either an illuminated address or an album signed bv 

 his old students should be presented to him as a memento 

 of the occasion. The gathering promises to be an unusually 

 large one, and will include many of Prof. Armstrong's 

 friends as well as old students. The chairman of the com- 

 mittee is Prof. W. J. Pope, F.R.S., and the vice-chairman, 

 Mr. Maurice Solomon. Applications for tickets should be 

 sent to one of the honorary secretaries, Mr. F. F. Ren- 

 wick, Norland House, Avenue Road, Brentwood, Essex, 

 or Mr. G. W. Tripp, 58 Little Heath, Charlton, Kent. 



It is stated in The Pioneer Mail that efforts are being 

 made by the promoters of the proposed University of India 

 and the Hindu University to amalgamate the two schemes 

 and to work jointly rather than separately. The sugges- 

 tion is that the University should be known as the Uni- 

 versity of Benares. In the beginning the University would 

 only be an examining body like the Government universi- 

 ties in India, but the promoters trust that it will later on 

 become a teaching body, and so fulfil the true ideal of 

 university life. It is estimated that with the amalgama- 

 tion of the two proposed universities the total funds avail- 

 able would come to 50 lakhs. It is further suggested that 

 the King should be asked to lay the foundation of the 

 Muslim University and the University of Benares after 

 the Delhi Durbar. 



.Attention has been directed already in these columns to 

 *h" movement which has been inaugurated to secure the 

 mor« -efficient education of Europeans and Eurasians in 

 India. An iniluv-ntially signed appeal to the people of this 

 country for a fund for this object of not less than 250,000?. 

 appeared in The Times of May i. An All-India Cornmittee, 

 representing the schools for Europeans and Eurasians estab- 

 lished in India by the various religious organisations, has 

 been formed, and it proposes with the fund to be raised : — 

 (i.) to provide adequate salaries for teachers ; (ii.) to 

 increase the number of qualified teachers ; (iii.) to provide 

 facilities in India for training teachers ; (iv.) to bring out 

 qualified teachers to India until the training^ colleges to be 

 founded shall have made such a course unnecessary ; (v.) to 

 provide opportunities for university education for promising 

 students; (vi.) to improve the curricula of existing schools, 

 especially in respect of science and manual training; (vii.) to ' 

 found scholarships to assist deserving students at different 

 stages of their education. A gift of 50,000?. has been 

 received, and another gift of 5000/. has been contributed to 

 the general fund in England. Further contributions mav be 

 sent to Sir Cape] Wolseley, Bt.. 157, 158, St. Stephen's 

 House, Westminster, S.W., hon. treasurer of the fund. 



NO. 2166, VOL. 86] 



On April 5 the Governor of Bombay, Sir G. Clarke, 

 laid the foundation-stone of the Central Science Institute 

 and the Cowasjee Jehangir Hall in Bombay. In the 

 course of his address, which was reported in The Pioneer 

 Mail, the Governor said the mill owner and merchant 

 want men accustomed to accurate thinking and capable 

 of bringing practical consideration to bear upon realities. 

 To both, the possessor of literary culture imperfectly 

 assimilated is of no value, as he lacks some essential 

 qualifications even if his literary attainments were more 

 solid. Both look forward to the developments of the 

 natural resources of India and the consequent creation of 

 industries which await the diffusion of practical science 

 among Indians. The example of Japan is frequently held 

 up to the pyeople of India, but the moral is not grasped. 

 The Japanese instinctively absorbed western science and 

 proceeded to turn it to account, and as soon as they could 

 stand alone they showed that they could rival their 

 European instructors in carrying on scientific progress. In 

 India, scientific habit of thought is rare. Even in Bom- 

 bay, where malaria could easily be stamped out, the 

 proved results of harbouring the mosquito have not 

 sufficed to carry conviction in many cases, and the spread 

 of infection continues. Direct and indirect need of scien- 

 tific training face the people of India at every turn. A 

 patient investigator is required who will solve for India 

 problems upon which great industries depend, problems 

 many of which are purely Indian. A constructive power 

 is wanted which depends upon training, that deals with 

 forces and with facts, not with abstract speculation. The 

 need is felt every day of the full recognition of the reign 

 of law in the natural world and of the inexorable rela- 

 tions between cause and effect now widely ignored. An 

 antidote to mere book learning is wanted, a faculty which 

 can concentrate itself upon the practical side of the ques- 

 tions of the day and can discern fallacies of rhetoric, pre- 

 ferring action to talk and practical achievement to visions. 

 All this and much more can be conferred upon India only 

 by sound scientific training widely diffused. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Mathematical Society, April 27. — Dr. H. F. Baker 

 president, in the chair. — Lieut. -Colonel A. Cunningham : 

 The number of primes of given linear forms. — H. 

 Hilton : The properties of certain linear homogeneous 

 substitutions. — W. P. Milne : A symmetrical method of 

 generating cubic curves by apolar pencils. — Prof. M. J. M. 

 Hill : The proofs of the properties of Riemann's surfaces 

 discovered by Luroth and Clebsch. — G. N. Watson : The 

 solution of the homogeneous linear difference equation of 

 the second order (second paper). — G. B. Matho<«r« : A 

 cartesian theory of complex geometrical elements of space. 



Zoological Society, Apiil 21;.— Dr. S. F. Harmer, F.R.S, 

 vice-president, in the chair. — Dr. W. Nicoll : Three new 

 trematodes from reptiles, from material received from the 

 society's prosectorium. The specimens were interesting as 

 forming an important addition to our knowledge of the 

 large variety of forms which inhabited the air-passages 

 and anterior coil of the alimentary canal of reptiles and 

 batrachians. — Dr. R. T. Leiper : Some parasitic nema- 

 todes from Tropical Africa. The author gave a brief 

 description of a number of new genera. The paper was 

 based on helminthic material he had collected during a 

 visit to East Africa, Uganda, and the Sudan in 1907, and 

 on material sent to him by members of the Colonial 

 Medical Service. — Oldficld Thomas : Mammals collected 

 in southern Shen-si, central China, by Mr. Malcolm 

 Anderson, for the Duke of Bedford's exploration of eastern 

 .Asia. The region e.xplored was in the Great Pe-ling (or 

 Tsin-ling) range, that divides northern from southern 

 China, many of the specimens coming from the sacred 

 mountain Tai-pei-san, where several of the most interest- 

 ing forms were obtained. Of these, by far the most 

 striking was a new species of takin (Budorcas), readily 

 distinguishable by its uniform golden buffy colour from 

 the Sze-chuen species (B. tibctamis). In the adult of this 

 fine animal the coloration was wholly buffy, the darkening 

 of thr' e;irs, dorsal line, hinder back and limbs found in 



