456 



NATURE 



[December 2, 1920 



schools at Kilmarnock. Evcninf; lectures are avail- 

 able, and a certain amount of extension work m the 

 form of lecturing at local institutes, conductmg ex- 

 periments, giving expert advice to farmers, etc., is 

 also done. 



A LARGE and important part of the extension work 

 of most of the universities, colleges, and departments 

 of education in the United States of America is done 

 1>V correspondence methods (Bureau of Education, 

 l/ulletin No. lo, 1920). A list of the iristitutions 

 developing this means of satisfying the desire lor 

 knowledge contains no fewer than thirty^ight uni- 

 versities. Seventy-three institutions are given in all, 

 of which sixty-one are supportc-d by pubhc funds, and 

 they are conducting correspondence courses for nearly 

 one hundred thousand students. The Massachus^etts 

 Board of Education has provided some figures which 

 show the motives actuating the pupils who enrolled 

 for their correspondence courses, and also their 

 previous educational history- More than 50 per cent, 

 undertook courses in the hooe of immediate practical 

 gain while onlv 22 per cent, began the work from 

 motives of culture or enjoyment; the educational 

 history of the pupils showed that 49 per cent, came 

 from secondary schools, and 35 per cent, had received 

 elementary education only. At the same institution 

 -6 per cent, of those who enrolled for correspondence 

 classes were above school-age; the average age was 

 26-3 years. The results obtained from studies of tne 

 a^es'of correspondence students in the University ."f 

 Wisconsin, Indiana University, and other institutions 

 differ little from those obtained in Massachusetts. 



The University Colleges of Newcastle-upon-Tyne — 

 the College of Medicine and Armstrong College, both 

 of which are units of the University of Durham— have 

 launched an appeal to the district they serve for 

 500,000/. A large committee representing the four 

 northern counties has been set up, under the presi- 

 dency of Viscount Grey of Fallodon, and at a recent 

 meeting, at which the Duke of Northumberland acted 

 as chairman, this committee pledgtd itself to do all 

 in its power to relieve the colleges from their present 

 embarrassment. The financial position of Armstrong 

 College is little short of desperate. In July, i92r, 

 the college will be faced with an annual recurring 

 deficit of more than 19,000!. ; the salaries of the staff, 

 though they have already been augmented, are still 

 far loo low ; it has been found impossible to keep 

 equipment up to date; and students have had to be 

 refused admittance in large numbers. This college, 

 the only university college between Leeds and Edin- 

 burgh which teaches science, is faced with bankruptcy. 

 The situation of the College of Medicine, though 

 less serious financially, is also unsatisfactory. 

 It is badly hampered by lack of accommodation, 

 and unable to develop its teaching to the full along 

 iiKxlcrn lines. Believing that their needs have only 

 to be made widely known to their district to be re- 

 liewd, the two colleges have thrown themselves upon 

 the generosity of Tyneside and the surrounding 

 counties. 



K PUBLIC meeting was held on Thursday, Novem- 

 ber 25, at the Leeds Town Hall, under the presidency 

 of the Lord Mayor, to inaugurate an appeal for funds 

 for the University of Leeds. The University is 

 asking the public of Yorkshire, and others interested 

 in the proe-ress of higher e<lucation in the county, 

 for 5oo,oooL, and the Vice-Chancellor (Sir Michael 

 Sadler) w;<s abl° to announce to the meeting that 

 towards this fund gifts amounting to 112,800/. had 

 already been received or promised. .Amongst those 

 who sinoke in sunnort of the appeal were representa- 

 tives of local authorities, who contribute largely to 



NO. 2666, VOL. 106] 



the revenue of the University, and a number of 

 prominent professional and business men. The needs 

 of the University for additional funds were explained 

 at the beginning of the meeting by the chairman of 

 the council (.Mr. .Arthur G. Lupton), the treasurer 

 (the Hon. Rupert Beckett), the Vice-Chancellor, and 

 Prof. Smithells. The number of students in the Uni- 

 versity is now nearly three times as large as before 

 the war. Most of the departments are overcrowded, 

 and the annual expenditure of the University has 

 enormously increased as a necessary consequence of 

 the new conditions created by the war. Ne>y labora- 

 tories are required in nearly all the University's 

 departments of pure and applied science and for the 

 school of medicine, and new buildings are needed for 

 the department of agriculture, the school of dentistry, 

 the University library, the Students' Union and 

 gymnasium, and as halls of residence for men and 

 for women students. A large addition to the general 

 endowment fund of the University is also desired. 



Societies and Academies. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, November 18.— Sir J. J. Thomson, 

 president, in the chair.— Sir \. Schuster : The absorp- 

 tion and scattering of light. The paper is based on 

 the generally accepted theory that refraction and 

 dispersion are caused by the oscillations of electric 

 resonators embedded in the medium through which 

 the light passes. With homogeneous light each 

 resonator responds with a forced oscillation, together 

 with a motion following the laws of free oscillations, 

 and gradually dying out. If white light falls on the 

 medium the forced oscillation has to be replaced by 

 an integral and other terms have to be added that 

 are due to disturbances caused by neighbouring 

 molecules. The equation for the displacement of an 

 oscillator then takes the form : 



z = j E/(h, w) cos [wt -t)dw + 2C,«^«"-'»i sin ^hi' -T'(/ - /,). 



The principal result of the paper is that all the 

 terms of this equation are spectroscopically identical. 

 If the proper value for / (n, -w) be introduced, and if E 

 be regarded as constant, then the integral in the first 

 term of the right-hand side is merely the analytical 

 representation by Fourier's integral of any of the 

 terms of the summation, with a proper adjustment 

 of e. and t,. .As it stands, it represents a motion 

 beginning at time l = o and continuing according to 

 the Ia%vs of a damped oscillator. The mechanism of 

 scattering and absorption is discussed, and Lord 

 Rayleigh's equation for the coefficient of extinction 

 in a scattering medium is obtained in a more vigorous 

 manner, so as to include cases where //-i is not 

 necessarily small.— Prof. O. W. Richardson : The 

 emission of electrons under the influence of chemical 

 action. The electron currents to a surrounding metal 

 electrode from spherical drops of the liquid alloy of 

 sodium and potassium under the influence of chemical 

 action with a number of gases have been investigated 

 and measured under various conditions. The gas 

 which has been studied most is phosgene (COCl,), 

 then, in decreasing order, CU, HjO, and HCl. In 

 all cases the relation between the current and the 

 aoplied potential difference is of the same general 

 character. When proper allowance is made for the 

 contact potential difference between the two metal 

 surfaces it is found that the electron currents are 

 nearly constant for small accelerating electric fields. 

 Thus', as in the case of photo-electric emission, the 

 saturation value of the current is reached with a 



