598 



NA TURE 



[April 21, 1898 



• ation. The rise of the Roman Empire introduced a new era : it 

 was in one sense an iron z.ge.—ferru!n being synonymous with 

 the sword. We now live in another kind of iron age, but in 

 better and brighter times than those of Hesiod, and we may 

 hope that our great engineering works, our iron roads and iron 

 steam-ships may lead not to the enslaving but the brotherhood 

 of nations. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Miss Jane Cruikshank has given 15,000/, to Aber- 

 deen University, to provide a botanic garden at Aberdeen in 

 memory of the late Dr. Alexander Cruikshank. 



The University of Edinburgh has conferred the honorary 

 degree of LL.D. upon Mr. Horace T. Brown, F.R.S. , Prof. 

 D. G. Ritchie, and Prof. J. Victor Carus, assistant professor of 

 zoology at Leipzig. 



In order to make accessible under the most favourable condi- 

 tions to university students, to teachers, and to investigators, 

 the facilities and environment of the Illinois Biological Station, 

 reinforced by the equipment of the biological departments of 

 the University of Illinois, the university has decided to open, 

 on June 15, a summer school of field and laboratory biology at 

 this station on the Illinois River, at Havana. Opportunity 

 is thus given for personal studies, in field and laboratory, of the 

 plants and animals of a peculiarly rich and interesting situation, 

 and of the methods of modern biological station work. 



The following are items concerning the extension of provision 

 for scientific training in the United States : — Syracuse University 

 will shortly begin the erection of a 45,000-dollar science building. 

 — Adelbert College at Cleveland, Ohio, has a biological building 

 under way, which will cost about the same amount. — Richmond 

 College, Virginia, has received 5000 dollars towards a science 

 building. — The University of Chicago has received a gift of about 

 150,000 dollars from an anonymous donor. Miss Gould has 

 given a further sum of 10,000 dollars towards the endowment of 

 the engineering school of New York University. — Mr. Chester 

 W. Kingsley has given 25,000 dollars to Colby University. 



It was briefly noted last week that the University of Paris 

 had taken up a loan amounting in all to 1,700,000 francs. 

 Referring to this action, the Paris correspondent of the Lancet 

 remarks : — The law which has reconstituted the universities has 

 given to them a civil personality ; they have their own budget 

 and their own sources of income, which are definite and assured, 

 and they are able to contract loans on the security of these 

 sources of income. The 1,700,000 francs which the university 

 has borrowed will be devoted to carrying out two schemes. 

 The greater part of this sum will be devoted to the construction 

 of buildings for the accommodation of first-year students in 

 medicine. The other portion of the loan will be devoted to 

 the keeping-up of a laboratory of natural history at Fontaine- 

 bleau. 



The Technical Education Board of the London County Council 

 will proceed shortly to award not less than five Senior County 

 Scholarships. These scholarships are of the value of 50/. a year, 

 together with the payment of tuition fees up to 30/. a year, and 

 are tenable for three years at university colleges and advanced 

 technical institutes. They are confined to residents within the 

 administrative county of London, and are open only to those 

 whose parents are in receipt of not more than 400/. a year. 

 Candidates should as a rule be under twenty-two years of age, 

 though the Board reserves the right to give preference to candi- 

 dates who are under nineteen years of age. The scholarships 

 are intended to encourage more especially the teaching of science, 

 and to enable those students who cannot afford a university 

 training to pursue advanced studies for a period of three years 

 in the highest university institutions in this country or abroad. 

 Of the seventeen students who are now holding Senior Scholar- 

 ships five are studying at Cambridge, five at the Central Tech- 

 nical College in Exhibition Road, three at the Durham College 

 of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, two at German Universities, 

 and two (ladies) at Bedford College and Holloway College 

 respectively. The scholarships are awarded on a consideration 

 of the past record and general qualifications of the candidates, 

 and not upon the results of a set examination. Application 

 forms may be obtained from the Board's Secretary, 116 St. 

 Martin's Lane, W.C., and must be returned not later than 

 Monday, May 16. 



NO. i486, VOL. 57] 



During his term of office, Sir A. Mackenzie, the Lieutenant- 

 Governor of Bengal, has done much to advance the cause of 

 scientific and technical education in his province, and a speech 

 he delivered recently at the Indian Association for the cultiva- 

 tion of science is a further expression of his sympathies with the 

 development of education on scientific lines. In the course 

 of his address he said : — " I would have the student of the 

 future cease to be brought up on badly assimilated words 

 and on high-faluting rhetoric, and I would have him taught 

 to observe and think, and educate himself in the way Herbert 

 Spencer indicates as the great desideratum in all education. 

 The oriental mind is only too prone to rest on authority 

 and accept inaccuracies. Pupils trained on books and books 

 alone are mere passive recipients of other people's ideas. They 

 never learn the arts of observing facts and applying know- 

 ledge. The study of science cultivates the judgment as the 

 study of language never can. Science constantly appeals to 

 and develops the individual reason. It is no doubt the case 

 that even in England people are only now waking up to the 

 knowledge of a wise pedagogy, but they are waking up at last. 

 The idea of development of faculty is being substituted for that 

 of mere acquisition of knowledge. The mere cultivation of 

 words and application of formulte is being discredited. The 

 ideal education is being recognised as one which multiplies the 

 power of the eye to see, of the ears to hear, of the hand to 

 execute ; which puts a mind well stored with knowledge into 

 active contact with faculties capable of translating it into 

 action." In India at present science holds but a very secondary 

 place in the curriculum of high education, and if the country is 

 ever to advance there must be an educational revolution which 

 will release the youth of India from the bonds of a purely literary 

 education. The University of Calcutta has as yet done little 

 for science culture, but the Bengal Government has within the 

 last few years done good work for the advancement of technical 

 education. The reconstruction of the Medical College begun by 

 Sir Charles Elliott has been pushed on ; and the Sibpur En- 

 gineering College has been expanded so as to make it a school 

 where civil engineering, mining engineering, mechanical en- 

 gineering, and electrical engineering can be and are being 

 thoroughly taught to over 300 students. The Presidency 

 College, having as principal Prof. A. Pedler and upon its staff 

 Profs. J. C. Bose and Roy, has also admirable work to show. 

 Sir A. Mackenzie concluded by saying : "As the Bengali has 

 conquered the field of medicine, so he may conquer the field of 

 engineering and mechanical industry, if those engaged in the 

 instruction of the young will only shake themselves free from 

 the trammels of a literary curriculum which, coupled with the 

 absence of moral and religious training and the failure to impart 

 a sound knowledge of their own country, its material wants and 

 capabilities, is in my judgment fast ruining the youth of the 

 country and stunting their development." 



SCIENTIFIC SERIAL. 



Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, March. — The 

 relations of analysis and mathematical physics is the translation, 

 by C. J. Keyser, of the interesting address delivered before the 

 International Congress of Mathematicians, at ZUrich, on August 

 9, 1897. The writer. Prof. H. Poincare, answers some questions 

 which he says are often asked, as " What is the utility of 

 mathematics, and whether its nicely constructed theories, drawn 

 entirely from the mind, are not artificial products of our 

 caprice ? " " The end of mathematical physics is not merely to 

 facilitate the numerical calculation of certain constants, or the 

 integration of certain differential equations. It is more ; it is, 

 above all, to disclose to the physicist the concealed harmonies of 

 things by furnishing him with a new point of view." — 'The roots 

 of polynomials which satisfy certain linear differential equations 

 of the second order, is a short note by Prof. M. Bocher, follow- 

 ing up work by Stieltjes in vol. vi. of the Acta Mathematica. 

 — Inflexional lines, triplets, and triangles associated with the 

 plane cubic curve, by Prof. H. S. White, considers the con- 

 figuration of the nine inflexions of a non-singular plane cubic and 

 the twelve lines containing them 3 and 3, from what the 

 writer thinks to be a novel point of view. The statements are of 

 some interest. — On the intersections of plane curves, by Prof. 

 Charlotte Scott, brings together several passages bearing on 

 Maclaurin's paradox {i.e. Cramer's so-called, but it is here 

 carried back to Maclaurin). It is a valuable paper on curves. 



