5 CO 



NATURE 



[March 24, 1898 



main reading-rooms seat 400 or 500 readers ; and the rooms of the 

 Avery Collection and seminary rooms will accommodate several 

 hundred more. The Due de Loubat has made many other 

 jjenerous gifts to educational institutions, having founded pro- 

 fessorships and scholarships in Berlin, Stockholm, Madrid, and 

 the Universities of France and Italy. In America he has given 

 valuable books and manuscripts to the University of Wash- 

 ington, University of Pennsylvania and Columbia ; and at 

 Columbia he founded the Loubat prizes of 1000 and 400 dollars, 

 which are given annually for original work in various branches 

 of science and art. , 



In the House of Commons, on Tuesday, Sir John Lubbock 

 called attention to the new Education Code, and the need of 

 extending its provisions so that elementary science might be 

 more widely taught in elementary schools. He moved : ' ' That 

 it is desirable to assimilate the provisions of the English 

 Education Code, as regards class and special subjects, to those 

 in the Scotch Code of 1897." Under the Code the subjects 

 taught in elementary schools fall into three categories — the 

 obligatory subjects, the class subjects, and the so-called specific 

 subjects. The obligatory subjects are, in the case of boys, 

 reading, writing, and arithmetic. The specific subjects comprise 

 various sciences, domestic economy, and one or two languages. 

 With the exception of domestic economy, however, they are 

 not largely taken up. The class subjects are English, 

 geography, elementary science, and history. Sir John Lub- 

 bock submitted that all these four subjects are essential. He 

 did not propose to make them obligatory, but thought schools 

 should be encouraged to take them up. So far from this, how- 

 ever, schools are actually precluded from doing so. The Code 

 provides that no child shall be presented in more than two class 

 subjects. If, therefore, a class took geography and elementary 

 science, they must omit history and English. If they took 

 history and English, then elementary science and geography 

 must be omitted. Sir John Lubbock's contention was that this 

 is a radically wrong system . of education; that English, 

 geography, elementary science, and history are all important 

 siibjects ; and that the itifluence of the Education Department 

 should be exercised not to prevent, but to encourage these 

 being taken up in elementary schools. After a discussion, in 

 the coiirse of which it was pointed out that the whole difficulty 

 is one of time, Sir John Lubbock withdrew his motion. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



American J otirnal of Science, March. — Geothermal data from 

 deep artesian wells in the Dakotas, by N. H. Darton. Nearly 

 kll the waters in the great artesian basin of the Dakotas are 

 jierceptibly warm. The author gives a chart showing the dis- 

 tribution of the wells according to temperature, which shows 

 temarkable regional regularities. As regards the cause of the 

 subterranean heat, the suggestion as to the oxidation of pyrites 

 by underground waters is probably untenable on account of the 

 d^epth. A collection of all available data will be necessary 

 before a theory is attempted. — Examination of some triclinic 

 na.inerals by means of etching figures, by T. L. Walker. Ex- 

 periments may be made with etching figures to determine the 

 equivalence of pairs of parallel faces. If parallel faces give 

 different etching figures, the faces do not belong to the same 

 crystal form. This thesis was proved by etching tourmaline 

 with a red-hot mixture of potassium bisulphate and powdered 

 fluorspar, and by etching axinite, cyanite, albite, and other 

 crystals. —Some new Jurassic vertebrates from Wyoming, by 

 W. C. Knight. The new species are called Ceratodus robustus 

 and Ceratodus a?nericamis. — Auriferous conglomerate of the 

 Transvaal, by G. F. Becker. The workable area of the Wit- 

 watersrand is a strip of country a couple of miles in width and 

 about thirty miles in length. The banket skirts the southerly 

 edge of a large area dotted over with proclaimed gold-fields, 

 in which ordinary veins are associated for the most part with 

 crystalline schists. This area includes the northern part of the 

 Transvaal and portions of Mashonaland and Matabeleland. Its 

 extent is approximately 130,000 square miles. The banket is 

 a highly siliceous mass, consisting of quartz pebbles embedded 

 in a matrix composed of sand, pyrite, and other minerals, all 

 cemented by secondary silica. The free gold in the matrix, 

 like the pyrite, occurs in minute crystals or in irregular, sharp- 

 cornered, hackly aggregates. The author inclines to the marine 

 placer origin of the deposit, and believes that until the Lower 



NO. 1482, VOL. 57] 



Cape formation has been traced across the continent of Africa 

 other spots as rich as the Rand may be hoped for. — A spectro- 

 scope without prisms or gratings, by A. A. Michelson. A kind 

 of transmission grating may lie made of plates of glass a few 

 mm. thick, arranged with their edges in a step-by-step order. 

 The results are comparable with those of the best gratings. 



AnnalfU der Physik uiid Chemie, No. I. — Canal rays, by E. 

 Goldstein. The canal rays are so called from the manner of ob- 

 taining them by perforating the kathode. They form the yellow 

 layer next the kathode, and when the latter is perforated straight 

 yellow streamers pass through and fill the tube on the side 

 away from the anode. These rays produce no phosphorescence, 

 and are not in themselves deflected by a magnet. They form the 

 prolongation of the kathode rays backwards, and converge when 

 the latter diverge, and vice versA. — Potential gradients in vacuum 

 tubes, by W. P. Graham. The gradient along the tube was in- 

 vestigated chiefly by means of two electrodes mounted on a glass 

 rod a small fixed distance apart. The glass rod was introduced 

 into the tube through the Torricellian mercury column, and 

 could be moved up and down. Maximum and mininum gradients 

 were observed to correspond with the bright and dark strata of 

 the positive light. But such fluctuations were also observed in 

 the dark space itself. Minimum gradients were found to adjoin 

 the two electrodes. — Coloured alkaline haloids, by E. Wiede- 

 mann and G. C. Schmidt. The authors endeavour to dis- 

 criminate between the various theories advanced in explanation 

 of the coloration of alkaline haloids by the kathode rayfe, and 

 show that it is due not to a physical change, but a slight chemical 

 reduction of the salts. — Determination of relative thermal con- 

 ductivities by the isothermal method, by W. Voigt. The method 

 devised by de Senarmont for the investigation of crystalline con- 

 ductivities may be considerably improved by adding elaidinic acid 

 to the mixture of wax and turpentine. This gives very sharp 

 curves. The method may be extended to the comparison of 

 conductivities of various metals by constructing a rectangle out of 

 two adjacent triangles of the metals in question, and pressing the 

 shorter edge of the better conducting metal against a copper 

 block kept at a constant temperature. The method admits of an 

 accuracy of 2 per cent. — The optical constants of sodium, by P. 

 Drude. The refractive index of sodium, as determined from the 

 reflective properties of the metal contained in a spherical vessel 

 in an atmosphere of hydrogen, is smaller thano'054, which is the 

 smallest value yet found for any metal. The standard NaK alloy 

 comes next ; and then silver with n = o*i8. — Glow-worm light, 

 by H. Muraoka and M. Kasuya Further experiments show that 

 the photographic effect of glow-worm light is not due entirely 

 to radiation, but partly at least to volatile substances in.separable 

 from animal life. Resin and coffee, and certain metallic oxides, 

 produce a similar effect, even when not in, contact with the 

 plate. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 

 London. 



Royal Society, February 17. — " On the Connection between 

 the Electrical Properties and the Chemical Composition of 

 different kinds of glass." By Prof. Andrew Gray, LL.D., 

 F.R.S., and Prof. J. J. Dobbie, M.A , D.Sc. 



In order to finally determine if possible the circumstances 

 which affect the conductivity and specific inductive capacity of 

 glass, several specimens of glass of special composition have 

 been made up for the experimenters by Messrs. Schott and Co., 

 of Jena, and by Messrs. Powell and Sons, of London. It had 

 been previously found, by Prof. T. Gray, that potash and soda : 

 lime glasses had a higher conductivity than flint glasses — a 

 result also arrived at by Dr. Hopkinson. Accordingly glasses 

 richer in lead oxide than any formerly available, and in some cases 

 practically free from soda, were made, so as to test whether 

 diminution of the amount of soda and increase of lead oxide 

 would still further diminish the conductivity. Specimens of 

 glass used by Messrs. Schott, mainly in the manufacture of 

 thermometers, were also obtained, as well as of a barium crown 

 glass, not hitherto experimented on. 



The conductivities were measured by the direct deflection 

 method by placing the specimen (in some cases the bulb of a 

 long-stemmed flask, filled up to the bottom of the stem with j 

 mercury, and immersed in a mercury bath ; in others a plate j 

 silvered on its two faces) in series with a battery and a very 1 

 sensitive high resistance galvanometer. The method of loss of . 



