May 25, 1911] 



NATURE 



\Z1 



of 200-250 horse-power ; also a larger turbine of the 

 reaction type. A high-speed paraffin engine of 40 horse- 

 power and a four-cylinder petrol motor have been pre- 

 sented recently to the laboratory. The development of the 

 college has kept pace with the increased accommodation. 

 Last year a school of navigation was established, and its 

 success has justified the governors in contemplating the 

 purchase of a sea-going training vessel. A lectureship in 

 sugar manufacture has also been instituted. Mr. Alfred 

 Campion, who was appointed lecturer in metallurgy two 

 irs ago, has been raised to the rank of professor. 

 A MEETING of the Association of Teachers in Technical 

 Institutions was held on .May 20 at the Cardiff Technical 

 School to consider the formation of a South Wales branch 

 of the association. There was a representative attendance 

 of technical teachers from Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, and 

 the county of Glamorgan. An address was delivered by 

 Mr. P. Abbott, the honorary secretary of the association, 

 on " The .Aims and Work of the Association." Mr. Abbott 

 said technical education was the last branch of education 

 to be organised, and consequently technical teachers were 

 the last to band themselves together for the purposes of 

 j'uit action. The organisation of technical education has 

 not yet gone far, and it is probably safe to say that in 

 ihis respect we are ten years behind Scotland and twenty 

 y.-,irs behind Germany. It must be recognised that con- 

 (iiiions are changing, and that the extent of the prosperity 

 ol a country in the future will be determined more and 

 more by the number of skilled and highly trained indus- 

 trial experts that it possesses. If this work of organising 

 linical education is to be efficient there must be coopera- 

 !. On one hand are those whose business it is to 

 -;anise, administer, and finance technical education; on 

 fli • other there are the teachers with an acquaintance with 

 til" calibre and the economic conditions of the students. 

 1 he two classes are complementary, and for true progress 

 till' teachers must make their contributions to the solution 

 of the problems involved. Facilities must be provided for 

 t'l ■ interchange of yiews and the formulation of opinions. 

 "nee the association has the highest of all claims for 

 support of technical teachers. Mr. Abbott dealt at 

 ■ length with the work done by the association, and 

 lially in connection with examinations and curricula, 

 inanv respects, he said, the technical teacher is to-day 

 I relatively worse position than any other section of 

 teaching profession. Returns showed that the full- 

 technical teacher is usually paid worse than the 

 'ndar\--schooI teacher. In conclusion, Mr. Abbott 

 ihasiscd the national character of the association. A 

 -lution was passed unanimously in favour of the forma- 

 ! of a South Wales branch. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



Lo.NDON. 

 Royal Society May 18.— Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., 

 '■ president, in the chair. — Prof. W. M. Bayliss : The 

 properties of colloidal systems. II. — On adsorption as 

 preliminary to chemical reaction. The existence of an 

 " adsorption compound " containing acid and base uncom- 

 bined chemically, and which can he isolated, is described, 

 together with the manner of its conversion into the true 

 chemical compound or salt. It is shown that a similar 

 kind of compound is formed between an enzyme and its 

 substrate, preliminary to the particular chernical change 

 brought about by the enzyme in question. Adsorption 

 between enzyme and substrate as affected by the presence 

 of neutral salts is investigated, and found to follow the 

 laws of " electrical " adsorption. The relation between 

 the concentration of an enzyme and its activity is shown 

 to be expressed by an exponential formula, the value of 

 'the exponent varying considerably according to circum- 

 i stances. In certain conditions it may be unity, and in 

 i others the square root, but is usually between the two. 

 Accordingly, the view that the rate of an enzyme action at 

 any given moment is a function of the amount of the 

 adsorption compound of enzyme and substrate in exist- 

 ence at that time is to be regarded as fairly well estab- 

 lished. — S. M. Jacob : Inbreeding in a stable simple 

 Mondelian population, with special reference to cousin j 

 \ >. 2169, VOL. 86] 



marriage. The paper investigates, on the basis of 

 Mendel's conception of the segregation of unit-characters, 

 the proportions of different types among the offspring 

 resulting from alliances of various degrees of inbreeding. 

 A detailed examination "^ is made of the consequences of 

 first-cousin marriages, the form of inbreeding most fre- 

 quently met with in actual human populations, while 

 unions of other degrees of affinity, both those closer and 

 those more remote, are also considered. The important 

 point is brought out that for an evil which is a Mendelian 

 recessive and is of common occurrence, a first-cousin 

 marriage will not be much more likely to produce defective 

 offspring than any other kind of marriage, but that a very 

 rare recessive evil is relatively far more readily developed 

 by such a consanguineous marriage. Now it is probable 

 that there are very many of these rare defects latent in 

 man. As the chance of a particular one of these appear- 

 ing is increased by cousin marriage, the appearance of any 

 random one of the large number is rendered much more 

 probable by such a union. The same is true, on the 

 Mendelian hypothesis, for any desirable qualities when 

 such can be shown to be recessive. It is also established 

 that the relative frequency of the appearance of the 

 allogenic constituent in the offspring of related pairs 

 diminishes by about one half for each grade of cousinship, 

 so that the efficacy of cousin marriages in developing the 

 recessive character diminishes with the grade of the 

 marriage. In general, inbreeding accentuates both the 

 pure dominant and the pure recessive strain to the same 

 extent and at the expense of the hybrid element. — Miss 

 M. Wheldale : The direct guaiacum reaction given by 

 plant extracts. Previous work on oxidising enzymes has 

 led to the interpretation of the direct blueing action in 

 terms of the activity of a system consisting of an organic 

 peroxide in conjunction with a peroxidase. The author 

 finds that the power to give the direct action possessed by 

 water-extracts of tissues is accompanied by another pheno- 

 menon, i.e. the formation of brown or reddish-brown pig- 

 ments in the tissues on exposure to chloroform vapour. 

 Both phenomena are characteristic of certain natural 

 orders, but are absent from others or are characteristic of 

 certain genera only in an order. When the direct action 

 is not given, the plant extract will blue guaiacum on 

 addition of hydrogen peroxide (indirect action), and the 

 tissues do not show change of colour in chloroform vapour 

 in the same period of time. The phenomenon of direct 

 blueing of guaiacum is considered by the author to be the 

 outcome of the presence of the dihydric phenol-pyrocatechin 

 in the plants examined. Pyrocatechin is oxidised on the 

 death of the tissues, and then acts as a peroxide, enabling 

 the peroxidase, which is almost universally present, to 

 transfer oxygen to the guaiacum. These conclusions are 

 based on the following evidence : — (i) that pyrocatechin 

 can be detected in plants (such as have been examined) 

 which give the direct action and show change of colour 

 in chloroform, whereas it cannot be detected in plants 

 lacking these characteristics ; (2) that solutions of both 

 chemically prepared pvrocatechin and the actual plant pro- 

 fhici. after oxidation in air, will give a din^rt action with 

 L;uai.iium and peroxidase only. The sann- i'MiIi is not 

 obtained with phenols having the hydroxyl groups in other 

 positions. Hence the direct guaiacum reaction has, in all 

 probability, no real significance as such in plant meta- 

 bolism, but is merelv the outcome of the presence of a 

 certain metabolic product. — Dr. A. Theilar : Transmission 

 of amakebe by means of RhipiccphnJiis appendiculatus, the 

 brown tick. This is an account of experiments carried 

 out at Pretoria, confirming the result arrived at by the 

 Sleeping Sickness Commission during 1000. that the 

 disease of calves in Uganda, known as amakebe, is in 

 reality East Coast fever. It was' arranged with the 

 Government veterinary surgeon in lldanda. Mr. Hutchins, 

 to send to Dr. Theiler nymnhrc of Phipicephaliis abpendi- 

 culatus, the brown tick, collected from calves in Uganda 

 suffering from amakebe. On several occasions Mr. 

 Hutchins forwarded ticks, which arrived at Pretoria alive 

 and in good condition. The nympli« in transit moulted 

 into the adult stage. Two experiments were performed to 

 ascertain whether brown ticks, collected as nymphnc in 

 Uganda from a calf suffering from amakebe, will trans- 

 mit the disease when placed on susceptible calves in the 



