Jan. 1 6, 1890] 



NATURE 



255 



Oriental languages was particularly interesting. This institution 

 has the following staff of professors and teachers : — One pro- 

 fessor of Chinese ; two teachers of Chinese, both natives — one 

 for teaching North Chinese, the other South Chinese ; one 

 professor of Japanese, assisted by a native teacher ; one professor 

 of Arabic, assisted by two native teachers — one for Arabic as 

 spoken in Egypt, the other for' Arabic as spoken in Syria ; one 

 native teacher of Hindustani and Persian ; one native teacher of 

 Turkish ; one teacher of Suaheli, an important language spoken 

 on the East Coast of Africa, assisted by a native. Besides these 

 special lectures, those given by the most eminent professors of 

 Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and Chinese in the Universities of 

 Berlin are open to the students of the Oriental seminary. The 

 number of students amounts at present to 115. Of these, 56 

 are said to belong to the faculty of law, which must be taken to 

 include all who aspire to any employment in the consular and 

 colonial services. Fifteen belong to the faculties of philosophy, 

 medicine, and physical science ; four to the faculty of theology, 

 who are probably intended for missionary work. Twenty-three 

 are mentioned as engaged in mercantile pursuits, three are 

 technical students, five officers in the army, and nine are returned 

 as studying modern Greek and Spanish, languages not generally 

 counted as Oriental, though, no doubt, of great usefulness in the 

 East and in America. Prof. Miiller succeeded in conveying a 

 remarkably vivid impression of the fact that England, looking 

 at the subject simply from the point of view of her own material 

 interests, cannot afford to neglect the studies to which so much 

 attention is devoted elsewhere. "England," he said, "cannot 

 live an isolated life. She must be able to breathe, to grow, to 

 expand, if she is to live at all. Her productive power is far too 

 much for herself, loo much even for Europe. She must have a 

 wider field for her unceasing activity, and that field is the East, 

 with its many races, its many markets, its many languages. To 

 allow herself to be forestalled or to be ousted by more eloquent 

 and persuasive competitors from those vast fields of commerce 

 would be simple suicide. Our school, in claiming national 

 support, appeals first of all to the instinct of self-preservation. 

 It says to every manufacturing town in England, help us, and, in 

 doing so, help thy.self. Whenever the safety and honour of 

 England are at stake we know what enormous sums Parliament 

 is willing to vote for army and navy, for fortresses and harbours 

 — sums larger than any other Parliament would venture to name. 

 We want very little for our School of Oriental Languages, but 

 we want at least as much as other countries devote to the same 

 object. We want it for the very existence of England ; for the 

 vital condition of her existence is her commerce, and the best 

 markets for that commerce lie in the East." 



On Saturday, February 22, the Physikalisch-okonomische 

 Gesellschaft of Konigsberg is to hold its centenary celebration. 

 The proceedings will consist of a Festsitzung at 11 a.m., a visit 

 to the Provinzial-Museum at I, and a Festessen at 8 p.m. 



Several courses of afternoon lectures which promise to be 

 exceptionally interesting will be delivered during the present 

 season at the Royal Institution. On January 21 Mr. G. J. 

 Romanes, F.R.S., will begin a series of ten lectures, forming 

 the third part of his course on " Before and After Darwin.'' 

 This series will relate to the post-Darwinian period, and will 

 •nclude a discussion of Weismann's theory of heredity. Prof. 

 Flower, F.R.S., will begin on January 25 a course of three 

 lectures on the natural history of the horse, and of its extinct 

 and existing allies. A course of four lectures on the early 

 developments of the forms of instrumental music will be begun 

 by Mr. F. Niecks on March 6. 



The annual general meeting of the Institution of Mechanica' 

 Engineers will be held at 25 Great George Street, Westminster, 

 on January 29, 30, and 31. The chair will be taken each even- 

 ing by the President at 7.30 p.m. The following are the papers : 



on the compounding of locomotives burning petroleum refuse 

 in Russia, by Thomas Urquhart ; on the burning of colonial 

 coal in the locomotives of the Cape Government railways, by 

 Michael Stephens ; on the mechanical appliances employed in 

 the manufacture and storage of oxygen, by Kenneth S. Murray. 



The annual general meeting of the Anthropological Institute 

 of Great Britain and Ireland will take place on Tuesday, the 

 28th inst., at 8.30 p.m., Dr. John Beddoe, F.R.S., President, 

 in the chair. The following will be the order of business : — 

 Confirmation of the minutes, appointment of scrutineers of the 

 ballot, Treasurer's financial statement. Report of Council for 

 1889, the Presidential Address, report of scrutineers, and 

 election of Council for 1890. 



DuRi NG the last few years anthropological studies have excited 

 a good deal of popular interest, and lately it occurred to the 

 Council of the Anthropological Institute that it might be worth 

 while for them to arrange for the preparation of a series of 

 lectures presenting clearly the results of recent anthropological 

 research. Accordingly a course on the following branches of 

 the subject has been planned : physical anthropology ; the geo- 

 logical history of man ; prehistoric and non-historic dwellings, 

 tombs, and ornaments ; the development of the arts of life ; 

 social institutions ; anthropometry. The Assistant-Secretary of 

 the Institute is prepared to arrange for the delivery of these 

 lectures at places within convenient distance of London. 



The first volume of Prof, Thorpe's " Dictionary of Applied 

 Chemistry " (Longmans) will be published in a few days. The 

 work will consist of three volumes, and will treat specially of 

 chemistry in its relations to the arts and manufactures. It will 

 be uniform with the new edition of Watts's " Dictionary of 

 Chemistry," edited by Muir and Morley. 



M. Gran EL has been appointed Professor of Botany to the 

 Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier. 



On Monday the Khedive opened the new Museum at Ghizeh, 

 whither the archasological treasures hitherto preserved at Boulak 

 have been transferred. 



The " tercentenary of the invention of the compound micro- 

 scope " will be celebrated by a Universal Exhibition of Botany 

 and Microscopy, to be held at Antwerp during the present year, 

 under the auspices of M. Ch. de Bosschere, President, M. Ch. 

 Van Geert, Secretary, and Dr. H, Van Heurck, Vice-President. 

 It is proposed to organize an historical exhibition of microscopes, 

 and an exhibition of the instruments of all makers, and of 

 accessory apparatus and photomicrography. At the conferences 

 the following subjects will be discussed and illustrated : — The 

 history of the microscope ; the use of the microscope ; the pro- 

 jecting microscope and photomicrography ; the microscopical 

 structure of plants ; the microscopical structure of man and of 

 animals ; microbes ; the adulteration of food-substances, &c. 

 Communications are to be addressed to M. Ch. de Bosschere, 

 Lierre, Belgium. 



We regret to have to record the death of Mr. Daniel Adamson, 

 well known from his connection with the iron and steel industries. 

 He died on Monday at the age of 71. Mr. Adamson was 

 President of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1887, and was a 

 member of other mechanical and scientific associations. 



Dr. F. Hauck, the eminent algologist, died at Trieste on 

 December 21, 1889, at the early age of forty-four. He was 

 the author of the volume on marine Algae in the new edition of 

 Rabenhorst's "Cryptogamic Flora of Germany." 



The December number oi \\^&[Amcricatt. Geologist contains 

 an interesting paper, by William Upham, on the late Prof. 

 Henry Carvill Lewis, who, it will be remembered, died at 

 Manchester on July 21, 1888, a day or two after his arrival in 

 this country from America. He became ill during the voyage. 



