December 14, 191 1] 



NATURE 



are typical of the group course system, a feature which is 

 not surprising when we consider the way in which the course 

 system has developed. It illustrates, perhaps, more clearly 

 than any other fact the lack of " guidance from the mind 

 that sees the needs of the country from the greater and 

 national point of view." Cast-iron schemes and syllabuses 

 are not required: the Board's rigid syllabuses have during 

 recent years proved a failure from the teacher's point of 

 view ; but surely some greater degree of uniformity can be 

 obtained than is shown above, whilst retaining the necessary 

 pliability to suit local requirements of the industries. 

 Before any uniform system of endorsement of certificates 

 can be introduced, coordination of the courses in different 

 institutions must be secured by the standardisation of the 

 courses, as a guide to the standard to be arrived at in 

 any one year, or at the end of a given course. A very 

 grave injustice will be done to a great number of students, 

 and, further, there will be a danger of the loss of many 

 students, unless the conditions outlined in the circular are 

 modified, either (i) by delay in the operation of the scheme 

 for one or two years, or (2) by modifications of the con- 

 ditions, such as reduction of the entrance fee, the granting 

 of certificates by the Board, particularly in the lower stage, 

 and the revival of examinations in such subjects as light 

 and natural sciences, during the transitional period that 

 must ensue until institutions can come into line with the 

 new requirements. 



The time is opportune, too, for revision of the award of 

 Government grant on the work done by evening students. 

 Local authorities are sufficiently hard pressed at the present 

 time without taking over the burden of the cost of 

 examination systems, and the time has arrived for allocat- 

 ing an increased amount of money in the form of a 

 capitation grant for those taking group courses, somewhat 

 on the lines of the grant made at present for day courses 

 in technical institutions, thus differentiating between group 

 courses and single-subject courses. Teachers are convinced 

 that three nights per week, under present conditions of 

 daily employment, are too much in the cases of youths 

 under eighteen, and up to the end of the second year in 

 the senior course the Board might reasonably make the 

 full grant for two evenings (five hours) per week, extending 

 over a thirty weeks' session, instead of encouraging, as at 

 present, courses which are overburdened, for the local 

 authority cannot afford to reduce the number of hours per 

 week in the institution expected from the student, owing 

 to the loss of grant which this would entail. A better 

 grounding in the elementary branches of the work would at 

 the same time undoubtedly be secured. 



As to the best method of carrying out a national system 

 of examinations, which is absolutely independent of 

 centralised examinations such as those of the Board of 

 Education, and City and Guilds Institute, the feeling is 

 growing in some quarters that this will be most success- 

 fully accomplished by the cooperation of county education 

 authorities with the local education authorities in county 

 boroughs, to form examination boards of teachers and 

 representatives of the local industries, acting as external 

 examiners or assessors in conjunction with the teachers in 

 the institutions of a given area as internal examiners. 

 Such boards would be more in sympathy with the local 

 requirements than any central board could possibly be, and 

 the Board of Education, through its inspectorate, and a 

 National Examination Board should be able to maintain a 

 moderately constant standard throughout the country once 

 the system is in thorough working order. Such a National 

 Examination Board should contain representatives, who 

 should be teachers, from the local examination boards. 



Each year in a student's work marks a distinct stage in 

 his career, and this should be recognised on successful 

 completion of the work of each year by the award of a 

 local certificate or record, to be exchanged at the end of 

 the course for the full endorsed certificate, giving a national 

 stamp, or hall-mark, to the work. At the same time, it is 

 worth consideration whether certain single-subject courses 

 of a highly technical character are not worth the award of 

 a special endorsed certificate, particularly in cases where- 

 the student is able to take up the higher work without 

 passing through the preliminary grind of the earlier years, 

 or in cases where the subject-matter does not readily adapt 



NO. 2198, VOL. 88] 



itself to inclusion in a course. There is undoubtedly the 

 need for a national evening course system, so that the 

 smaller institutions may readily and naturally feed the 

 larger, in which the more advanced work will be concen- 

 trated, and so that this work may lead up systematically to 

 the day diploma work of our specialised technical 

 institutions. 



INDUCED ACTION OF LEUCOCYTES} 



CCIENTIFIC workers may like to have a brief account 

 •^ of some recent researches which, I think, are likely 

 to be of both theoretical and practical interest. The re- 

 searches commenced nearly five years ago in a special study 

 of leucocytes by a method devised by my brother, Mr. 

 H. C. Ross, and myself. This consists in placing liquid 

 blood under a cover-glass, not, as usual, upon another 

 surface of glass, but upon a bed of transparent jelly with 

 which various reagents, including stains, have been mixed. 

 The original object of the method was to try to cultivate 

 human leucocytes in vitro. At first careful studies of the 

 rate of absorption of stains by the leucocytes under various 

 chemical conditions of the jelly were made by Mr. Ross. 

 Two years later he found that extract of haemal gland, 

 extracts of apparently many dead and decomposing tissues, 

 and globin, when mixed with the jelly, force a large pro- 

 portion of the leucocytes to divide before the eyes. Sub- 

 sequently, he and his assistant. Dr. J. W. Cropper, ascer- 

 tained by a series of lengthy studies that many of the 

 substances which possess this property (in different degrees) 

 belong to the amidine grouping. They have found, also, 

 that a second series of substances, though by themselves 

 they cannot produce division of leucocytes, have the power 

 of augmenting very greatly the power of the former group 

 of substances to do so. They give the names auxetics and 

 augmentors to the two groups respectively. The principal 

 auxetics are extracts of organs, creatine, xanthine, 

 creatinine, guanidine, benzamidine, theobromine, acetami- 

 dine, caffeine, theophylline, methylamine, ethylamine, 

 propylamine, &c., and certain aniline dyes. Some of the 

 augmentors are various alkaloids, atropine, choline, 

 cadaverine, neurine, &c. 



The technique, though simple, requires considerable care. 

 If a stain such as polychrome methylene blue is added, 

 the cells become coloured progressively as the division 

 advances. All the varieties of the human leucocytes can 

 be made to divide ; but the technique is slightly different 

 for each variety. The proportion of cells affected in a 

 given preparation of blood varies according to perfection of 

 technique up to, say, 80 per cent. ; but as death occurs 

 rapidly, especially if stain be used, it usually overtakes a 

 large proportion of them before the division has been com- 

 pleted. After about twenty minutes all the cells die, and 

 by that time the process is complete in only a small per- 

 centage. Efforts to keep the cells alive longer upon these 

 medicated jellies or in solutions of auxetics have not yet 

 been very successful and would not be easy. After their 

 death the leucocytes give up again most of their stain, and 

 the jelly preparation rapidly spoils ; but a method has been 

 found of making (with some difficulty) permanent speci- 

 mens of such of the blood as adheres to the cover-glass 

 by fixing the whole preparation with osmic acid vapour, 

 and then freezing and picking off the cover-glass from tlv 

 bed of jelly. 



To watch the same cell passing through the whol 

 process requires an accurately adjusted^ warm stage c: 

 microscope-incubator and considerable patience, because th'- 

 cell which we happen to select for observation will mosi 

 probably belong to the majority which die before compl 

 tion of the division; but partial division can be easil. 

 witnessed. If, however, the specimen is incubated for ten 

 minutes, and is then surveyed rapidly from field to field, 

 numbers of the leucocytes caught in all stages of th<' 

 process can be readily seen. The fixed films just referral 

 to show exactly the same objects, but enable us to examim 

 them repeatcdiy and at leisure. And in both these caso-^ 

 the dividing forms are so numerous and similar that thcri 



1 From a paper vaii at the meeiine of the Path'logical Section of il 

 Royal .Society of Medicine on November 7 by Sir Ronald Rosi, K.C. I! . 

 F.R.S. 



