October ii, 191 7] 



NATURE 



119 



the first report for the establishment of degrees of 

 Litt.B. and Se.B., and the shortening by one year of 

 the period required to elapse before admission to a 

 degree conferring membership of the Senate. It was 

 pointed out that the question of research degrees was 

 bound up with the question of the residence of students 

 from other universities for a limited period, and that 

 the needs of such students called for sympathetic and 

 generous treatment by the University. 



With regard to the Previous Examination, wUch 

 had been the subject during the past year of no fewer 

 than six reports, two of them dealing with the question 

 of compulsory Greek, now under consideration by a 

 reconstituted ' Previous Examination Syndicate, the 

 Vice-Chancellor urged that it was time that the method 

 of exemption from this examination should.be simpli- 

 fied, and pointed out that this' simplification was ren- 

 dered the more easy as the various examining bodies 

 had recently established examinations for certificates 

 on common lines. Various educational bodies were 

 asking for simplification, and' one and all demanded 

 the abolition of compulsory Greek. He hoped that 

 one way in which the University would mark the 

 conclusion of the war would be by asking of candidates 

 for admission only whether they had had a sufficient 

 education, and not as to whether they could qualify 

 in particular subjects. 



The Financial Board had reported that the estimated 

 income of the Chest for 1917 was 20,40oi., a decrease . 

 of 60 per cent, from the pre-war income, whilst the 

 expenditure was estimated at 36,200?. The board in 

 its report had indicated how the deficiency might be 

 met. The financial position of the Univei;sity was 

 better than had been expected, but, even if the income 

 of the University after the war reached the pre-war 

 standard, it would be insufficient to meet the claims 

 for future expenditure. Returns made by the Special 

 Boards of Studies indicated that large increases in 

 annual and capital expenditure must be expected if the 

 University was to meet the claims that might be made 

 upon it as a place of teaching and research. Con- 

 tributions from the colleges to the Common University 

 Fund to raise the statutable amount of 30,000/. had 

 increased from 10^ per cent, in 1915 to \2\ in 1917; 

 this gave some indication of the effects of the war on 

 the incomes of the colleges. 



The new Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Shipley, master of 

 Christ's College, was prevented by indisposition from 

 being present at the Senate House, and was admitted 

 at the lodge of Christ's College. 



Oxford. — The Herbert Spencer lecture will be de- 

 livered in English by Prof. Emile Boutroux on Satur- 

 day, October 20. The subject will be " The Relation 

 between Thought and Action from the German and 

 from the Classical Point of View." 



The Rev. H. E. D. Blakiston, president of Trinity, 

 has been appointed Vice-Chancellor for the ensuing 

 year. 



St. .Andrews. — Prof. D'Arcy W. Thompson, pro- 

 fessor of natural history, University College, Dundee, 

 has been appointed to the chair of natural history at 

 St. Andrews, in succession tc Prof. W. C. Mcintosh, 

 who has just retired. 



At University College (University of London) a 

 course ot six lectures on " Coals, Peats, and Some Oil 

 Shales : their Origin, Structure, and Significance, 

 Palaeobotanical and Otherwise," will be given by Dr. 

 Marie Stopes on Tuesdays from October 16 to Novem- 

 ber 21, at 3 p.m. The lectures will deal with micro- 

 scopic evidence in some detail, and will be specially 

 adapted to students of botany and geology, but are 

 open to the general public interested in coal. 

 NO. 2502, VOL. 100] 



Prof. F. J. Cheshire, director of the Department of 

 Technical Optics in the Imperial College of Science and 

 Technology, South Kensington, S.W., has been ap- 

 pointed honorary head of the Technical Optics Depart- 

 ment of the Northampton Polytechnic, Clerkenwell, in 

 accordance with the schemes of the Board of Education 

 and of the London County Council for the provision of 

 instruction in technical optics. These schemes may now, 

 therefore, be regarded as definitely and fully launched, 

 and it is not too much to hope that in view of the 

 careful consideration given to their elaboration their 

 effect upon the training oi present and future genera- 

 tions of optical workers .will be an important factor in 

 replacing the optical trade of this country in the lead- 

 ing position which it occupied until about the last 

 quarter of. the nineteenth century. 



Mr. T. Ll. Humberstone, secretary of the com- 

 mittee of the Education Reform Council concerned with 

 university education, writes with reference to the corn- 

 ment of our reviewer on the report of the council 

 (Nature, September 27, p. 61) that the section 

 of the report dealing with universities '* speaks too 

 much from the London point of view." He urges that 

 as the report deals only with questions of general 

 interest, there is no peculiarly London aspect. Our 

 reviewer points out in reply that the Universities of 

 Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the newer provin- 

 cial universities, were not strongly represented on the 

 committee referred to, and he suggests that the 

 statesmanlike policy to have adopted -would have been 

 to secure well-chosen representatives from these uni- 

 versities so as to obtain from them an adequate expres- 

 sion of the desirable and practicable reforms at their 

 respective universities. Reforms at the various univer- 

 sities will, he believes, prove to be most salutary and 

 productive when they arise from within, and the surest 

 plan, even if more difficult of attainment, is to create 

 the appropriate impetus at the universities themselves, 

 rather than to attempt to impose changes from outside. 



In an address on organisation of business and the 

 development of the resources of the British Empire at 

 the opening of the School of Pharmacy of the Phar- 

 maceutical Society, Lt.-Col. Harrison, C.M.G., ex- 

 pressed his opinion that one of the most important 

 problems that civilisation has to solve is how to secure 

 the economy and efficiency 'of thoi ough organisation of 

 the production and distribution of commodities of all 

 kinds. In pharmacy this organisation has been taking 

 place but slowly, and it is essential that it should be 

 undertaken without delay by pharmacists themselves. 

 A curriculum of study should be made compulsory, and 

 the scientific standard raised so that pharmacists may 

 take the place to which they are entitled. The num- 

 ber of women entering pharmacy has been steadily 

 increasing, especially since the outbreak of war, and 

 they have been filling the places of men who have been 

 called to the colours. While women make excellent 

 students, they are too prone to yield to authority and 

 iire indisposed to make independent experiments on 

 their own initiative, without which progress in science 

 is difficult. Teachers of women students should, there- 

 fore, do their best to instil into their students the spirit 

 of investigation and- research, and to develop their 

 faculty of criticism. 



Last week Lord Sydenham, presiding at a meeting 

 of the Women's Indian Study Association, raised again 

 the urgent question of the education of women in 

 India. The results as disclosed at the census of 191 1 

 are sufficiently deplorable. Only thirteen females per 

 mille attain the low standard of literacy prescribed for 

 the enumeration. Sir E. Gait, reviewing these figures, 

 found some comfort in the consideration that the pro- 

 portion of literates at the age period fifteen-twenty is 



