1 64 



NATURE 



[November 30, 191 1 



position of education in their respective countries, the 

 whole constituting (within its limits) a valuable document 

 for a comparative study of educational systems such as 

 the intelligent non-expert might wish to make. Thus we 

 find that Austria is the only European country which has 

 compulsory evening continuation schools for boys from 

 fourteen to sixteen years of age. In Germany, practice 

 diflfers in different States, but where continuation schools 

 are compulsory they are day schools, something after the 

 pattern of our half-time schools, though, of course, the 

 pupils are older. Primary 'education is compulsory in nfost 

 countries, though Belgium still stands for the principle of 

 freedi)m. In Russia and Finland, also, it is not yet com- 

 pulsory ; but in Finland it is the question of the hour, and 

 in Russia compu!';ion in this matter was amongst the pro- 

 jected reforms of the murdered Minister Stolypin. It is 

 interesting to note, too, that compulsory school begins 

 earlier in England than in any other European country. 

 In Russia elementary schools oniy provide for children from 

 eight to eleven years of age. VV'e note that the pamphlet 

 does not include France or Italy, and that the various com- 

 munications are not dated. The statement that English 

 teachers (men) in elementary schools receive 175!. a year, 

 rising by annual increments of 5/. to 200J., would surely 

 surprise the officials of the National Union ; and the Board 

 of Education Libr.Try is no longer in Cannon Row. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Geological Society, November 8.— Prof. W. W. Watts, 

 F.R.S., president, in the chair. — Prof. E. Hull: The inter- 



tlacial gravel beds of the Isle of Wight and the south of 

 ngland, and the conditions of their formation. The 

 origin and mode of formation of the gravel terraces of the 

 Isle of Wight and the New Forest districts are still open 

 to discussion. The levels of the higher beds on both sides 

 of the Solent up to about 400 feet indicate the amount of 

 subsidence of the whole area at a time when the stratified 

 gravels, composed mainly of rolled flints, were formed at 

 the margin of the uprising ridges of the Chalk in the post- 

 Glacial epoch, for this part of England. Preceding this 

 was the great uplift by which the British Isles were joined 

 to the Continent as land. By this uplift the English 

 Channel was laid dry, and along its centre there ran a 

 river from its source about the Straits of Dover to its 

 outlet into the ocean through the continental platform. 

 The gravel beds of this district are considered to be the 

 representatives of the high-level gravels of the Midlands 

 and Cromer, also of the " interglacial gravels " of Cheshire 

 and Lancashire, and the shell-tearing beds of the Denbigh- 

 shire Hills, and of Moel Tryfaen in Wales, at levels of 

 about 1200 feet above the sea. — J. B. Scrivenor : The 

 Gopeng beds of Kinta (Federated Malay States). Gopeng 

 is. a prosperous mining centre in the Kinta Valley, close to 

 the granite of the Main Range of the Malay Peninsula. 

 It is shown that not only are the Gopeng beds cut by 

 veins from the granite and altered at the junction with the 

 granite, but they are also faulted down against the lime- 

 stone. The Gopeng beds, consisting of clays and boulder- 

 clays with some stratified drift, are of glacial origin. This 

 is proved by the inclusion of large boulders in the clay, the 

 physical condition of the components of the clays and their 

 distribution, and by the resemblance of the beds to Pleis- 

 tocene glacial detritus. No boulders have been found show- 

 ing striation due to ice action, nor has any glaciated rock- 

 surface been found. The boulders are all decomposed 

 owing to the power of the ground-water in removing silica ; 

 and, if the limestone ever presented the features of a 

 glaciated surface, it has been modified by solution owing 

 to the action of ground-water. The petrology of the 

 Gopeng beds is described. The ice from which the detritus 

 was derived passed over a stanniferous granite mass, and 

 the Gopeng beds carry tin-ore throughout. The tin-ore is 

 an original constituent of the beds, but they have been 

 further enriched by tin-ore derived from the Mesozoic 

 granite at their junction with the granite and in the neigh- 

 bourhood of veins from the granite that have risen through 

 the limestone. The Gopeng beds are considered to be the 

 equivalent in time of the Talchir boulder beds of Orissa : 

 but a petrological similarity is wanting. 



NO. 2196, VOL. 88] 



Physical Society, Noxembcr 10. — Prof. M. L. ' 



F.R.S., president, in the chair. — Prof. Coker : 'I' 

 of holes and semicircular notches on the <i 

 stress in tension members. For the exper! 

 mination of stresses in loaded memb*'rs an op 

 tion of a model shaped in transparent 



advantages. Two cases of importance arc exai 



way, and the results are compared with those ob' 

 analysis. The first example relates to the case 

 in a tension member subjected to a unif' 

 stress p. The values of (p,-p^y the difTf : 

 the principal stresses, are obtainw optically, 

 agreement with the calculated values if the f! 



hole is not greater than one-quarter of thi; 



plate ; but beyond this the agreement is not gi 

 practical purposes it is important to be able to 

 the maximum stress from the value obtained by 

 that the total load on a tension member is unifo, . 

 tributed over the cross-section, k formula based on 

 relationship found in the experiments takes the form 



^ - ^ t 



/'max - ^^ 2^ ^ ^ ^ j/'mean. 



where c is the ratio of the width of the member ta| 

 diameter of the hole; if c is large comparH »'*^i ul 

 this reduces to the simple form 



/^mcnn 



_ y 



<■+! 



In the case of two semicircular notches, arra 

 symmetrically with regard to the centre line and tol 

 cross-section, there appears to be no exact mathem; 

 solution ; but an appro.ximation has been obtained by 

 resulting in expressions for p, and /)^ at the minit 

 section of the form 



provided that the radius of the notch is small comp 

 with the breadth of the plate. ' Experimental detern. 

 tions of /j--/y show that the maximum values agree 

 those of the formulae for notches having a maximum 

 of about one-quarter of the breadth of the member, 

 the minimum values do not show good agreement if 

 notch has a radius greater than one-eighth of the breai 

 The results appear to indicate that the radial stress 

 large notches is greater than that given by the formii 

 For determining the maximum stress from the applied 

 stress a formula is proposed of the form 



Aniax 



I2r' 



61^ -h4f^ -!-<■+ 1 



and this shovvs a fair agreement with the experir 

 values. 



R oyal AnthropoloGrical Institute, November 14. —Mr. 

 Williamson : Mafulu mountain people of British 

 Guinea. The paper refers to an inland tribe of whom 

 little has hitherto been known, but among whom the a« 

 spent some time last year. The Mafulu are a 

 statured people, sooty-brown in colour, with gr 

 brownish hair. The clothing of both men and 

 consists merely of a narrow band of bark cloth, 

 between the legs and tied round the waist. They| 

 cannibals, but not head-hunters. They live in scat 

 clusters of villages perched up in the summits of the 

 tain ridges, and are divided into clans, each clan 

 its own chief and village club-house. They bury their 

 underground except as regards chiefs and important 

 whose bodies are put into boxes fixed above grour 

 clusters of poles in the village enclosure or in a 

 fig tree. The author described some of their curious 

 and ceremonies, including the "Big Feast," at which 

 supports of one of these boxes are cut away so that 

 box and its contents fall to the ground; then the skull c.^ 

 bones within it, and those of all their other important 

 dead, are smeared with the blood of slain pigs, after which 

 the evil-disposed ghosts of their owners will no more disturb 

 the people. The author suggested the possibility of these 

 people having a partial pygmy or negrito ancestry. 



