February io, 1898] 



NA TURE 



357 



very hopeful for either of the educational measures referred to, 

 and unless the Government seriously pushes them forward 

 another Session will pass without the much-needed legislation. 

 The measures are urgently pressing for consideration, and they 

 ought not to be permitted again to lapse, as they have done before. 



The Lancet announces that the Senate of Glasgow University 

 have appointed Prof. Michael Foster to be Gifford Lecturer in 

 the Glasgow University for the sessions 1898-99 and 1899-1900, 

 in succession to Prof. Bruce, whose term of office expires with 

 the current session. 



The students of Finsbury Technical College will hold their 

 annual conversazione at the College on February 18. Prof. S. 

 P. Thompson has promised to lecture on "Wireless Telegraphy." 

 Mr. Ives will give an exhibition of colour photography, and 

 glow-lamp making will be demonstrated by Mr. Robertson. 



A.N illustrated article on technical education in the United 

 States, together with some other statistics relating to the 

 occupations of students who have passed through certain 

 representative American institutions, appears in the January 

 Record of Technical and Secondary Education. Among other 

 articles we notice one on technical instruction given to fishermen 

 in Aberdeenshire and Essex. 



The following item of information from the tenth annual 

 report (1897) of the Clerkenwell Public Library, London, is 

 worth recording : — " Scientific works are very largely circu- 

 lated. Biology, including evolution and methods of scientific 

 research, is a very popular subject, the sixty-eight works which 

 the library contains on this topic having been issued over 2800 

 times within recent years. In this subject two copies of 

 Darwin's ' Descent of Man ' have been issued nearly 200 

 times, a record which is exceeded only by the most popular 

 novels." 



Dr W. B. Benham, M.A., New College, Oxford, has been 

 elected to the chair of Biology in the University of Otago, and 

 will leave England at the end of March. Dr. Benham has for 

 the past seven ye^rs held the post of " Aldrichian Demonstrator 

 in Comparative Anatomy " at Oxford, and as such has acted as 

 assistant to Prof. Lankester, to whom he was previously assistant 

 in University College, London. For ten years Dr. Benham 

 has been Lecturer in Animal Biology at Bedford College for 

 Women, London ; and was appointed Examiner in Zoology in 

 the University of London last year. Ilis original researches 

 are embodied in some thirty papers : these are mainly concerned 

 with the anatomy and classification of the Oligochtete Anne- 

 lids ; he has also contributed the article "Polychaeta" to the 

 Cambridge Natural (History, and published an account of the 

 Brain of the Chimpanzee "Sally," the Blood ol Magelina, 

 the Anatomy of Phoronis, &c. 



At the annual congress of the South-eastern Union of 

 Scientific Societies, held at Tunbridge W^ells Igist May, Mr. S. 

 Atwood, of New Brompton Natural History Society, drew at- 

 tention to the difficulty of securing rooms for meetings in some 

 of the smaller towns, even where suitable rooms belonging to 

 Technical Institutes existed, which the Societies would be 

 willing to hire. On the proposition of Mr. Pankhurst, of 

 Brighton, the following resolution was passed unanimously : — 

 " That it be an instruction to the Council of this Union to 

 consider the question of how far buildings erected under or 

 used for the purposes of the Technical Institution Acts may 

 be made available for the use of local scientific societies." 

 Since then the Council have had the matter under consideration, 

 and have communicated with Colonel Holland, of the Kent 

 County Council, who has replied to the effect that the Technical 

 Education Committee have no control over Technical Institutes, 

 and the local authority must be applied to for the permission 

 desired. Colonel Holland adds : " If that authority wishes to 

 help, it can do so without any permission from the Technical 

 Education Committee." It appears, therefore, that no legal 

 obstacle exists to the use of rooms belonging to or used for the 

 purposes of technical instruction when such rooms are not needed 

 for their special objects. 



In a paper on the teaching of science in secondary schools, 

 read on January 12, in Birmingham, before the Friends Guild of 

 Teachers, Dr. Bevan Lean deprecated children beginning sys- 

 tematic work in science or entering the laboratory before the age 

 of thirteen or fourteen, and urged that before boys (and girls) 

 were allowed to learn chemistry or physics they should possess 

 at least a sound knowledge of arithmetic. It was emphasised 

 that the teaching of science in schools should not be in any 



NO. 1476, VOL. 57] 



sense commercial, nor should its aim be the mere awakening of 

 interest or even the gain of knowledge f it was valuable solely 

 as a means of mental culture, because through it could best be 

 stimulated the power of accurately ascertaining facts and drawing 

 correct inferences. It was urged that this educational value 

 could best be obtained through chemistry, because chemistry ad- 

 mitted of quantitative experiment within the time of a short class 

 and of an infinite variety of experiment ; and, moreover, it so 

 frequently touched matters and operations that were familiar to 

 children in every-day life. The scientific method of investigating 

 nature must be illustrated, and that necessitated placing the 

 children in the attitude of discoverers, so that they could proceed 

 from the known to the unknown, and not from the simple to the 

 complex. Experience showed, too, that the problems on which 

 great investigators were engaged 100 years ago were suitable for 

 the modern schoolboy. This did not mean that we could build up 

 the whole of our science for ourselves. The time for books and 

 lectures would come, but at school it was far more important 

 that boys and girls should be placed in direct contact with facts 

 in the attitude of inquirers. It was a necessary corollary that 

 the teacher ought to have a knowledge of the history of his 

 science, and that it would be a great advantage if he had himself 

 carried on original research : at the least, he ought to have an 

 inveterate habit of inquiry. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, January. — 

 On the commutator groups, by Dr. G. A. Miller. This is a 

 collection of eleven theorems, some of which are proved in the 

 present paper. For proofs of the remaining theorems reference- 

 is made to the writings of Frobenius and Dedekind. Dr. G. A- 

 Miller has also a paper, read before the Society at its December 

 meeting, entitled " On the limit of transitivity of the multiply- 

 transitive substitution groups that do not contain the alter- 

 nating group." This is a paper which contains three theorems- 

 and four lemmas bearing upon results recently given by Jordan 

 and Bochert in Liouvilles Journal and the Mathematische 

 Annalen respectively. — Geometry of some differential ex- 

 pressions in hexaspherical coordinates, by Dr. V. Snyder, read 

 at the Toronto meeting, is an appendix to the author's disser- 

 tation " Ueber die linearen Complexe der Lie'schen Kugel-. 

 geometrie " (Gottingen, 1895). ^'^ gives an outline of differential 

 geometry, and shows the application of it to the quadratic com- 

 plex. Some results are, among the 00* spheres which touch a 

 given surface, there are oo^ which also cut a fixed sphere at a. 

 constant angle. These spheres either envelope another surface 

 or are arranged in oo^ pencils, touching the surface along the 

 curve of intersection with the sphere, which is then a line of 

 curvature of the given surface {cf. Darboux, " Theorie des 

 surfaces," vol. i. p. 257, who does not mention the exceptional 

 case). The locus of the point-sphere in a spherical complex of 

 degree n is a surface of degree 2«, and contains the circle at 

 infinity as an «-fold line. The surface of singularities of a quad- 

 ratic spherical complex is a cyclide. The Dupin cyclide is the 

 only surface that can be the complete envelope of a non- 

 reducible special quadratic spherical complex. Numerous- 

 references are given to writers on the subject. — Dr. E. O. Lovett 

 gives a useful abstract of some lectures by Sophus Lie, viz. 

 " Vorlesungen txber Differentialgleichungen mit bekannterk^ 

 infinitesimalen Transformationen " (edited by Dr. G. Scheffers, 

 Leipsic, 1891). — Dr. Charlotte A. Scott, in a short note, com- 

 mends a translation of Prof. Klein's "Vortriige iiber 

 ausgewahlte Fragen der Elementargeometrie," by Messrs. W. 

 W. Beman and D. E. Smith.— The "Notes" and "New 

 Publications " give their usual useful information. 



Bulletins of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, 1897 

 (xviii.), Nos. 2 and 3, February and March. — No. 2. — Geo- 

 logical excursion in North Russia, by Amalitzkiy. — Age of 

 clay slates on the Upper Ulba, Altai, by von Petz. — Excursion 

 to Crimea (botany), by Levandosvkiy. — On the part played by 

 iron on the motions and the degeneration of cells when they are 

 submitted to the bactericidal action of the immunised serum, by 

 Sakharoff. — On fertilisation in Jtiglans regia and J. nigra, by 

 Navashin. 



No. 3. — On the relations between the Upper Tertiary in 

 Russia, Rumania, and Austro-Hungary, by Andrusoff. — 

 Journey to East Persia (geobotany), by KorovyakofT. — All 

 these communications are fully summed up in French or 

 German. 



