4i6 



NATURE 



[December 9, 19 15 



Education Department or its equivalent. An elaborate 

 scheme of work is set out for the course of instruc- 

 tion, including chemistry, plant diseases, agricultural 

 engineering, animals, co-operation, etc., which is to 

 cover a year of three terms. Three examinations 

 are arranged for during the course, and a certificate 

 is to be granted at its conclusion. If the 

 students succeed in gaining a sound knowledge of 

 even a quarter of the subjects detailed in the pro- 

 spectus, the school may perhaps be considered to 

 justify its existence, but it would seem impossible in 

 so short a time as a year for a real grasp of tropical 

 agriculture to be gained by the students. Lectures 

 and demonstrations are to be given by the staff of 

 the Agricultural Department, an arrangement which 

 bids fair seriously to hamper the legitimate work of 

 the agricultural officers if, the syllabus is to be fol- 

 lowed and not to be merely a grandiose paper 

 scheme. 



The Appointments Board of the University of Lon- 

 don was appointed by the Senate in 1909 to assist 

 graduates and students of the University to secure 

 appointments. During the past academic year the 

 Board has secured more than 100 appointments for its 

 clients. In the last report of the Board to the Senate 

 attention is directed to the special assistance which 

 has been given recently, in filling the vacancies caused 

 by men enlisting, by the appointment of women gradu- 

 ates to them. The services of educated women are 

 proving of great value in boys' schools, in business 

 offices of every kind, and in the various Government 

 departments. The secretary to the Appointments 

 Board, University of London, will be glad to assist 

 employers by giving names of suitable women 

 graduates still disengaged. 



The Cambridge University Calendar for the year 

 1915-16 has now been issued by the University Press. 

 The present edition contains an index of complete 

 degrees honoris causa, in addition to the index of 

 titular degrees which appeared last year. A separate 

 section on the war has also been added, and an anno- 

 tated list of presidents of the union, from the founda- 

 tion of the society in 1815, appears in the appendix. 

 In other respects the edition of last year has only been 

 brought up to date. Since the section on the war was 

 sent to press, a supplementary war list has been issued 

 by the Cambridge Review. From this it appears that 

 the total number of members of the University on ser- 

 vice is now 10,250, and of these nearly one in seven 

 is numbered among the killed, the wounded, or the 

 prisoners, while more than 300 have won distinctions 

 in the field. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, December 2.— Sir J. J. Thomson, presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — W. H. Young : Note on the exist- 

 ence of converging sequences in certain oscillating 

 successions of functions. — S. A. Shorter and S. 

 Ellingworth : The emulsifying action of soap — a con- 

 tribution to the theory of detergent action, (i) The 

 hydrolysis alkali in a soap solution is capable of assist- 

 ing in the formation of the soap absorption layer by 

 interacting with free fatty acid in an oil. (2) The 

 "surface activity" of the hydrolysis alkali, in case of 

 oils containing small amounts of free fatty acid, is 

 much smaller than that of the undecomposed soap. 

 (3) Surface activity of free alkali in soap solution is 

 less than that of the same concentration of alkali in 

 water. (4) Addition of alkali to soap solution in- 

 creases surface activity of soap. This effect is much 

 too large to be explained by suppression of hydrolj'sis. 



NO. 2406, VOL. 96] 



It is suggested that the effect is due to increase in 

 colloidal nature of " semi-colloidal " soap solution. — 

 P. E. Shaw : The Newtonian constant of gravitation 

 as affected by temperature, (i) It has been found 

 possible (a) to obtain consistent cycle readings in a 

 gravitational experiment of the Cavendish type, even 

 though the large masses are maintained for hours, 

 above 200° C, while the small masses remain at 

 ordinary temperatures; (b) to carry on this investiga- 

 tion in the centre of a city at any time by day or night, 

 in spite of tremors and the special disadvantage of 

 having the torsion balance in a vacuum. (2) The con- 

 clusion reached is that there is a temperature effect 

 of gravitation. When one^ large mass attracts a small 

 one the gravitative force between them increases about 

 1/500 as temperature rises from, say, 15° to 215°. 

 Provisionally, the result is stated as -fi-2-Mo-* per 

 1° C. The readings are not steady enough to justify 

 the statement that there is a linear relation for G/6. 

 Time may be a factor in the effect, but the net result 

 has not bwn shaken by a long series of tests. (3) The 

 above result, though new, is not entirely unsupported 

 by other experiments, for previous work yields indirect 

 evidence of a positive temperature-coeflicient. The 

 weight experiments of Po}-nting and Phillips, which 

 yielded negative results, are not strictly comparable 

 with the author's. (4) As a by-product of these ex- 

 periments, it was found that silver bars of the highest 

 purity, after being heated to 130° C. and kept in a 

 strong magnetic field, were permanently, though 

 weakly, magnetised, and that the coercivity was con- 

 siderable.— G. I. Taylor : Skin friction of the wind on 

 the earth's surface. The amount of the skin friction 

 between the wind and the surface of the earth is 

 calculated from observations of wind velocity at 

 different heights above the ground. It is found that 

 the skin friction force acting on unit area of the 

 ground is proportional to the square of the wind 

 velocity, and that its actual value is of the same order 

 as, though probably smaller than, that found by ex- 

 perimenting with l!at plates and pipes in the labora- 

 tory. The object with which the investigation was 

 undertaken was to find out whether the skin friction 

 on a small surface is' nearly equal to that on a very 

 large surface ; but if it were assumed that this is the 

 case, the method employed furnishes an explanation 

 of the fact that the surface wind is, on the average, 

 roughly about half the gradient wind in the latitude of 

 the British Isles. 



Society of Public Analysts, December i.— Mr. A. Chas- 

 ton. Chapman, president, in the chair. — W. Partridge : 

 The "presumptive coli test" on unchilled water. The 

 author points out that if positive results are ignored 

 and negative results only considered, the "presumptive 

 B. coli test " often usefully supplements the ordinary 

 chemical analysis of unchilled water. — E. R. Bolton : 

 Notes on methods of analysing oleaginous seeds and 

 fruits. It is shown that the errors in the estimation 

 of oil in oleaginous seeds and fruits (copra in particu- 

 lar) are due rather to " sampling " than to actual 

 analysis. Methods of sampling, grinding, and analysis 

 were demonstrated to show that, while the oil in copra 

 could be estimated with great accuracy by the methods 

 given, a departure from the procedure would be liable 

 to cause considerable error. 



Manchester. 

 Literary and Philosophical Society, November 16.— Prof. 

 S. J. Hickson, president, in the chair.— Dr. G. A. 

 Hemsalech : The spectra emitted by metal vapours in 

 the explosion region of the air-coal-gas flame. The 

 author reviewed the work done on Bunsen-flame 

 spectra by M. de Watteville, and on the different 

 flame spectra of calcium and iron by Hemsalech and 



