36o 



NATURE 



[January 12, 191 1 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



London. — A large number of university courses of 

 advanced lectures in science subjects are in progress or 

 announced. In botany, a course of ten lectures on the 

 history of. British botany will begin on January 20 at 

 University College. The first lecture of the course will 

 be by Mr. Francis Darwin, on " Stephen Hales," and the 

 work of other famous botanists will be described in later 

 lectures, the lecturers being Profs. Vines, Bower, Farmer, 

 Lang, Oliver, Scott, Dr. Arber, Mr. Praeger, and Mr. 

 Henslow. Dr. W. N. Shaw, reader in meteorology, will 

 begin a course of eight lectures on climatology, with 

 special reference to British possessions, on the same day 

 at the London School of Economics. Several courses of 

 advanced lectures in physiology are announced. Prof. 

 E. A. Minchin will begin a course of twenty-one lectures 

 on the protozoa at the L^niversity on January 16 at 5 p.m. 

 A course of three lectures on the comparative anatomy of 

 the vertebrate ear, by Mr. R. H. Burne, will begin on 

 January iq at the Royal College of Surgeons. The times 

 of the lectures in each case will be 5 p.m., and admission 

 will be free, without tickets. 



During the temporary absence of Prof. Starling, F.R.S., 

 owing to ill-health, Dr. W. M. Bayliss, F.R.S., has been 

 appointed acting professor of physiology in University 

 College, London. 



It is announced in Science that Harvard University is 

 to receive i2,oooZ. from the will of the late Mrs. William 

 O. Moseley, and that a gift of ioo,oooL has been made to 

 Dartmouth College by Mr. Edward Tuck. 



The degree of D.Sc. as an external student has been 

 granted to Arthur Slator, of University College, Notting- 

 ham, and Birmingham and Leipzig Universities, for a 

 thesis on " Studies in Fermentation," and other papers. 



We learn from Science that, as a memorial to her 

 husband, Mrs. Edward H. Harriman, of New York City, 

 has endowed with 20,oooZ. the chair in forest management 

 in the Yale Forest School. Mr. Andrew Carnegie has 

 agreed to give to the Maria Mitchell Memorial Association 

 a sum of 2000Z. toward the establishment of a research 

 fellowship in astronomy, on condition that the sum of 

 loooZ. required to complete the fund of 5000J. be sub- 

 scribed. The progress made in ascertaining the approxi- 

 mate value of the Wyman bequest for the Graduate 

 College of Princeton University confirms the original 

 estimate of between 400,000?. and 6oo,oooZ. 



A COURSE of six free public lectures is to be given at 

 University College, Gower Street, W.C., by Lieut.-Colonel 

 Ernest Roberts, introductory to the study of Indian 

 sociology, on Tuesdays at 4.30 p.m., beginning on 

 February 21 next. A course of eight lectures, free to all 

 internal students of the University of London, is to be 

 given by Dr. H. H. Dale in the Physiological Institute, 

 University College, on Fridays at 4.30 p.m., commencing 

 on January 20. The London County Council has arranged 

 two courses of ten lectures for teachers, which are free to 

 London teachers, to be given on Wednesdays at 6 p.m., 

 beginning on January 18, at University College. One 

 course is on scientific reasoning and its cultivation, the 

 lectures being given by Dr. A. Wolf, and the other on 

 models to illustrate the geometry of space, the lectures 

 being given by Dr. L. N. G. Filon, F.R.S. 



The Philosophic Faculty of the University of Marburg 

 has conferred the degree of Doctor Honories Causa upon 

 Mr. Ernst Leitz, of Wetzlar, the principal of the well- 

 known firm of manufacturers of microscopes, microtomes, 

 and other optical and scientific instruments. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Faradav Society, December 13, toio. — Mr. F. W. Harbord 

 in the chair. — J. Svtfinburne : Separation of oxygen by 

 cold. The problem of separating oxygen from the air is 

 not the same as making liquid air. To separate oxygen 

 from nitrogen involves doing mechanical work, which is 



NO. 2150, VOL. 85] 



converted into heat. A rectifying plant may be ci 

 sidered as an apparatus, which takes in heat substanti.: 

 at the boiling point of the liquid with highest boil! 

 point, and gives it out at a lower temperature near ; 

 boiling point of the most volatile liquid. An air separa 

 thus takes in heat at 90° A, gives out heat at about 82^ 

 and at the temperature of the works, say, 273° A. i 

 Linde process may be regarded as a rectifying plant 

 this sort, and a thermodynamic engine, in which a gas 

 compressed so as to liquefy at 90° A under pressure, :>< 

 to evaporate at 82°, thus supplying the heat at the boil- 

 ing point of oxygen and absorbing it at the boiling point 

 of the air. Such a process is generally considered 

 irreversible, but is, in fact, nearly reversible, and there- 

 fore economical. Assuming an efficiency of 40 per cent., 

 the cost of oxygen comes out approximately 15. a ton on 

 a large scalf. This ought to lead to its use in blast 

 furnaces and other cases where an extra high tempera- 

 ture may be important. — Dr. H. J. S. Sand and W. M. 

 Smalley : A new apparatus for the rapid electro-analytical 

 determination of metals. A glass-frame anode for use 

 with silver and nickel kathodes. In order to reduce the 

 amount of platinum employed, a pair of electrodes has 

 been designed which, while retaining as much as possible 

 the essential features of those previously described, con- 

 tains as little platinum as possible. The anode has been 

 made largely of glass, so that the total weight of platinum 

 has been reduced to about 5 grams. Special care has been 

 taken in the design to render it as little fragile as possible. 

 For copper determinations a kathode of silver is employed, 

 which has been designed so that it can be made without 

 much difficulty with the facilities usually available in a 

 chemical laboratory. For zinc determinations a kathode 

 of nickel was employed. The results of copper and zinc 

 depositions are substantially as good as those obtained 

 with platinum electrodes. The time required for deter- 

 mining 0-3 gram of copper is about seven minutes. A 

 stand for holding the auxiliary apparatus required in 

 electro-analysis is also described. 



Geological Society, December 21, 1910. — Prof. W. W. 

 Watts, F.R.S., president, in the chair. — T. O. 

 Bosworth : The Keuper marls around Charnwood 

 Forest. The area under consideration includes the towns 

 of Leicester, Loughborough, Coalville, and Hinckley. 

 The Charnian rocks project through a mantle of Triassic 

 deposits, which once completely covered them. The 

 quarries have been opened in the summits of the buried 

 hills. A quarry is so worked that its outline follows the 

 contour of the buried hill ; consequently, the section pre- 

 sents but a dwarfed impression of the irregularity of the 

 rock-surface. On the buried slopes and in the gullies are 

 screes and breccias, and bands of stones and grit are 

 present in the adjacent beds of marl. All these stones are 

 derived only from the rock immediately at hand. Where 

 exposed, the Charnian igneous rocks are deeply weathered 

 and disintegrated, but the same rocks beneath the Keuper 

 are fresh right up to the top. The Keuper marls lie in a 

 catenary manner across the gullies. There has been 

 almost no post-Triassic movement in Charnwood. All the 

 points of contact of any one bed with the Charnian rocks 

 lie on one horizontal plane. The inclination of the strata 

 must, therefore, be due to subsequent sagging. _ The 

 Upper Keuper deposits accumulated in a desert basin, of 

 which parts were dry and parts were occupied by ever- 

 shifting salt-lakes and pools. In these waters the red 

 marls were laid down. The abundant heavy minerals are 

 garnet, zircon, tourmaline, staurolite, rutile, magnetite. 

 The grains are intensely worn. The quartz-grains are 

 sometimes wind-worn. The false bedding is mainly from 

 the south-west. The ripples indicate prevalent south- 

 westerly winds. — R. L. Sherlock : The relationship of 

 the Permian to the Trias in Nottinghamshire. The con- 

 formability or unconformability of the Bunter to the 

 Permian has been much discussed, but it is generally con- 

 sidered that there is a small unconformity between them. 

 In this paper, a section on the Great Central Railway 

 near Anneslev is described. It shows a gradual passage 

 from the Middle Marl into the Lower Mottled Sandstone. 

 Detailed mapping has confirmed this conclusion. From 

 Nottingham to Mansfield the Middle Marl retain? -^ 



