February 2, 191 1] 



NATURE 



461 



senting the first instalment of a gift of 20,000/. made to 

 the University on condition that an additional 8o,oooi. 

 was raised. The 8o,oooZ. has now been subscribed, and 

 the amount 54,200/. has been collected. The total amount 

 is to be added to the endowment fund for the general uses 

 of the University. Mr. William Blodgett has given to 

 Columbia University two farms near Fishkill, N.Y., to 

 be used in connection with the work in agriculture. By 

 the will of Mrs. Martin Kellogg, Yale University receives 

 a bequest of io,oooZ. from the estate of the late Mr. 

 Martin Kellogg, who was formerly president of the 

 University of California. 



Lord Curzon of Kedleston" was on January 25 in- 

 stalled as Lord Rector of Glasgow University. The sub- 

 ject of his address was " East and West : a Retrospect 

 and a Forecast." After a brilliant review of the ethno- 

 graphic and historic differentiae of Asia and Europe, he 

 proceeded to estimate the probabilities as to their future 

 relations. Some had argued that we in Europe " have 

 given to Asia little that she values, or, if left to herself, 

 would not cast away. Our education, it is said, she has 

 only borrowed to turn against us ; our religion she re- 

 jects ; our civilisation she despises ; she is indifferent to 

 our science ; she will manufacture our implements for her 

 own protection ; she will dispute our hegemony, defy our 

 authority, dispense with our agents, undersell our produce, 

 and end by annexing our trade." Lord Curzon gave in 

 detail his reasons for disbelieving this prediction. Among 

 others, he recalled the fact that " the inventions of science, 

 which we are told that the East is to retain for its own 

 selfish use, are not confined to producing the comforts, or 

 conveniences, or even the destructive implements that are 

 employed by man. They have, on the whole, a unifying 

 and softening influence. The electric telegraph, the rail- 

 way, the steamship, the Press, the post, travel to and 

 fro — all these are agencies which tend to bring men 

 together rather than keep them apart. Medical science 

 has shown itself to be so valuable an instrument of social 

 influence and fusion, that it has been permanently grafted 

 on to missionary enterprise. The common share in this 

 heritage of science would render it very difficult for the 

 East to shut itself successfully off again from the West, 

 or to pursue a policy of selfish exclusion. Even were the 

 dependent portions of the East to recover complete 

 political autonomy, the Western would be always " within 

 its gates." " Some of those whom I have the honour of 

 addressing here may be called on to play a part in the 

 future evolution of the great drama which I have 

 endeavoured to describe. If so, I would ask them to bear 

 in mind three things — never to look down on the East 

 or the Eastern ; to remember that the progressive eleva- 

 tion of_ the East is still the noblest work with which the 

 West is charged ; and to realise that each individual 

 European in Asia is not merely a soldier, but a standard- 

 bearer of his race. In a Chinese temple at Canton there 

 stands a venerated gilt statue of a man with a benevolent 

 expression on his features and a black hat on his head. 

 He is supposed to be the Venetian Marco Polo, and to 

 be thus honoured by the Chinese because he taught the 

 West to understand and to respect the East. Be it yours, 

 if you have the opportunity, to earn a similar reputation." 



A CONFERENCE of about forty delegates of the provincial 

 joint committees of European schools in India was held 

 early in January at Calcutta, under the presidency of Sir 

 Robert Laidlaw. In addition to delegates from every 

 province in India, including Burma, we learn from the 

 Pioneer Mail that several prominent education officials 

 were present and took part in the discussions. Several 

 speakers pointed out the inadequacy of the educational 

 facilities offered for the children of Europeans in India, 

 and eventually some fifteen resolutions were adopted. 

 One resolution urged that in view of the great and in- 

 creasing difficulty of finding suitable occupations for the 

 children of the domiciled community, as well as for other 

 and higher reasons, this conference regards it as urgently 

 necessary that European schools should be enabled to 

 provide a more efficient and complete training, physical 

 and intellectual, than they have hitherto given, and that 

 to such improved general education should be added 

 instruction especially devised to prepare scholars for their 

 chosen professions in life. Another recorded that the 

 NO. 2153, VOL. 85] 



conference regards a more efficient staff, especially in the 

 lower classes of schools, as an indispensable condition of 

 improvement in education. Whilst considering it neces- 

 sary that for the present qualified teachers should, as 

 hitherto, be brought from abroad, the conference regards 

 it as equally necessary that such efficient training should 

 be provided in India as should make it possible for locally 

 recruited candidates to equip themselves fully for the 

 teaching profession, and, further, the conference considers 

 " that every qualified teacher should enjoy a reasonable 

 salary increasing with long service, some provision for 

 retiring allowance, and fair security of tenure." A third 

 resolution pointed out that the conference regards the 

 adequate and complete education of the domiciled com- 

 munity as one of the primary responsibilities of the 

 Government of India, and considers that in view of the 

 necessary larger cost of that education the imperial 

 revenue must bear a larger share than heretofore. At the 

 same time, it acknowledges the duty both of the Christian 

 churches and the domiciled community to assist the 

 Government financially and otherwise to a much greater 

 extent than in the past. Regarding the curricula of Indian 

 universities as unsuited to European students, the con- 

 ference strongly urged the establishment of a Central 

 European College affiliated to the University of London, 

 and staffed, for the present, by fully equipped teachers 

 from abroad. To this college, it was decided, may suit- 

 ably be added classes for the training of secondary 

 teachers. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Royal Society, January 26. — Sir Archibald Geikie, KC.B., 

 president^ in the chair. — Major P. A. MacMahon : 



Memoir on the theory of the partitions of numbers. 

 Part V. : Partitions in two-dimensional space. — Arthur 

 Schuster : The origin of magnetic storms. The paper 

 contains a critical examination of the theory that mag- 

 netic storms are caused by streams of electrified corpuscles 

 ejected from the sun. If the electro-kinetic energy of such 

 storms be calculated, it is found that, when the magnetic 

 field produced is comparable with that observed in mag- 

 netic storms, the energy is enonnously great compared 

 with that obtained by mere addition of the energies of the 

 separate corpuscles. Even if during violent storms, when 

 the magnetic force may be of the order 0004 C.G.S., the 

 corpuscles had an initial velocity nearly equal to that of 

 light, the energy required to establish the magnetic field 

 would be sufficient to reduce the speed to less than 4 kilo- 

 metres a second before the swarm reaches the earth, the 

 passage between the sun and the earth taking about a 

 year. In this calculation the cross-section of the swarm 

 is assumed to be determined by the effective duration of 

 the magnetic disturbances which it is supposed to produce. 

 If the swarm be reduced m cross-section the energy belong- 

 ing to it would be diminished, but for a given magnetic 

 force the density of the corpuscles in the swarm must 

 then be correspondingly greater. This leads to the con- 

 sideration of the effects of electrostatic repulsion between 

 the particles. It appears that if H be the magnetic effect, 

 the electrostatic acceleration at the edge of a swarm of 

 electrons must be greater than 5Xio''H. This accelera- 

 tion would be sufficient to drive a corpuscle in the first 

 second through a distance equal to more than the diameter 

 of the earth. It follows that, even taking account of 

 electromagnetic attractions between the corpuscles, a 

 swarm of corpuscles, when sent out from the sun in a 

 definite direction, would soon be dissipated to such an 

 extent that no sensible magnetic disturbance could be 

 produced. Finally, the electrostatic effects, which would 

 be observed on the surface of the earth in each magnetic 

 storm, are discussed, and here the calculation also leads 

 to the conclusion that the theory criticised is untenable. 

 i If magnetic disturbances are produced by rays emanating 

 from the sun, it can therefore only be in an indirect 

 manner. We may imagine that the injection of corpuscles 

 ionises the upper portions of the earth's atmosphere, and 

 consequently renders the already existing electromotive 

 forces more effective, or we may imagine that the appwoach 

 towards the earth's magnetic field of highly conducting 



