November 8, 1917] 



NATURE 



19Q 



l^oard would deliberately arrest a sequential scheme 

 of development, such as that set out in the institu- 

 tion's report. Mr. Fisher promised that the points 

 raised would receive careful consideration. Ihose 

 who have been intimately acquainted with the work- 

 ing policy of the Board of Education towards junior 

 technical schools will be gratified that a large and 

 influential body of engineers has at last spoken out 

 with no uncertain voice, and will look with renewed 

 hof>e for the speedy removal of the crippling regula- 

 tions under which such schools have been governed. 



The widespread disappointment at the Government's 

 decision to postpone for the present any further con- 

 sideration of Mr. Fisher's Education Bill continues to 

 receive expression in resolutions passed by public 

 bodies and in letters to the Press. Among the latter 

 may be mentioned a letter signed by a number of 

 representative persons, including the Bishops of Oxford 

 and Winchester, the Master of Balliol, ^x. W. L. 

 Hitchens (chairman of Messrs. Cammell Laird), and 

 several Labour members of Parliament. The letter 

 states that the signatories are convinced that they ex- 

 press the opinion of a large majority of their country- 

 men when they say that no more urgent task confronts 

 the nation than the creation of an educational system 

 which will cultivate more fully the physique, the intel- 

 lect, and the character of the rising generation of English 

 children, and that it would be little less than a national 

 disaster if the present opportunity were allowed to pass 

 unused. Again and again in the last ten years the 

 nation has been warned that in allowing nearly one-half 

 of its children to leave school before their fourteenth 

 birthday, and more than three-quarters of those be- 

 tween fourteen and eighteen to escape educational 

 supervision altogether, it is creating a moral and 

 economic problem which no intervention at a later 

 age can solve. The chief medical oflRcer of the Board 

 of Education has directed attention to the prevalence 

 among large numbers of school children — one million 

 is the latest figure — of ailments which undermine their 

 vitality, which render futile the efforts of the teachers 

 and the educational expenditure of the State, but can 

 be remedied only by the adoption of a more compre- 

 hensive system ojf physical education and medical treat- 

 ment. The general character of the right educational 

 policy is not disputed. If it be said that the crisis of 

 a great war is not the right moment to proceed with 

 educational legislation, the answer is that if the im- 

 provement of our national system of education was 

 desirable before the war, the war itself has made that 

 improvement indispensable. The letter urges that it 

 is in the public interest that at least the educational 

 proposals of the Bill should be passed into law at a 

 sufficiently early date to be brought into operation 

 before the conclusion of the war. We are glad to see 

 the statement in the Times of November 6 that the 

 Government has been so much imoressed bv the 

 I amount of feeling aroused by its decision not to pro- 

 ceed any further with the Education Bill this session 

 that the position is to be reconsidered. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

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

 president, in the chair. — Lord Rayleigh : The reflection 

 of light from a regularly stratified medium. The re- 

 markable coloured reflection from some crvstals of 

 chlorate of potash described by Stokes, the colours of 

 opals and of old decomposed glass, etc., lend interest to 

 the calculation of reflection from a regularlv stratified 

 medium, in which the alternate strata, each of con- 

 stant thickness, differ in refrangibility. The higher 

 the number of stratifications, supposed perfectly regu- 

 NO. 2506, VOL. 100] 



lar, the nearer is the aoproach to homogeneity in the 

 light of the favoured wave-lengths. A general idea 

 of what is to be expected may be arrived at by con- 

 sidering the case where a single reflection is very 

 feeble, but when the component reflections are more 

 vigorous, or when the number of alternations is very 

 great, a more detailed examination is required. An 

 important distinction reveals itself accordmg to the 

 relative values of the refractivity and thicknesses. In 

 one case a sufficient multiplication of the number of 

 strata leads to complete reflection ; in the other it does 

 not. — Sir William Abney : Two cases of congenital 

 night-blindness. The two cases were examined spec- 

 troscopically. An interesting fact appeared that in their 

 extinction of the different rays pf the spectrum all 

 light disappeared throughout the spectrum at the same 

 moment that the colour vanished, and that the' colour 

 vanished to the normal eye at the same point that it 

 did to the colour-blind. This pointed to the fact that 

 the colourless part of the rays failed to give any 

 sensation of light. As normal eyes see in a faint, 

 light with these colourless rays, it is to be presumed 

 that the night-iblind owe their blindness in faint lights 

 to the absence of certain retinal processes which the 

 normal eyes possess. — Hon. R. J. Strutt : Duration of 

 luminosity of electric discharge in gases and Viapours — 

 further studies, (i) The l>ehaviour of jets of luminous 

 gas flowing away from the region of discharge at a 

 low gaseous pressure has been investigated, using the 

 principal permanent gases, also mercury vapour. In 

 a transverse electrostatic field the luminosity is de- 

 flected, part of it in most cases going to the positive 

 plate, and part to the negative. But in hydrogen, 

 when the pressure is n6t very low, nearly the whole of 

 the luminosity is deflected to the positive plate, a small 

 part remaining undeflected. As the pressure is re- 

 duced, an increasing part of the luminosity goes to 

 the negative plate. Similar results are observed in 

 mercury vapour. (2) Further observations are re- 

 corded on these jets at higher pressures, arranging 

 a spark discharge so that the gas can flow out from 

 it through an orifice into a sustained vacuum. With 

 hydrogen (condensed discharge) the exuded jet of 

 luminositv, about q mm. long, shows the Balmer 

 series. The discharge spectrum shows widened lines. 

 These become narrow as the luminous gas emerges. 

 (3) Nitrogen in the same arrangement, with an un- 

 condensed discharge, shows a jet with periodic swell- 

 ings similar to those observed by Mach and Salcher 

 and Emden when a jet of compressed air, examined 

 by the shadow method, escapes into the open. The 

 wave-length agrees with that to be anticipated from 

 their experiments. (4) This nitrogen jet luminosity 

 is not to be confused in anv way with active nitrogen. 

 The time for which it endures is of quite a different 

 order of magnitude, and the soectrum is essentially 

 difi'e.rent.— G. W. Walker : Surface reflection of earth- 

 quake waves. — Dr. H. S. Allen : Characteristic fre- 

 quency and atomic number, (i) Simple relations are 

 found to hold between the values of the product Nr 

 for different elements (N being Moseley's atomic num- 

 ber and V the characteristic frequency). (2) For twenty- 

 five metals it is found that the product can be ex- 

 pressed in the form Nv = »iva (n a whole number and 

 V a constant of value 2 1-3 x 10^* sec.-* approximately). 

 (3) The same rule is obeved in the case of certain non- 

 metallic elements. (4) Similar results are found when 

 the characteristic frequency is calculated from the 

 elastic constants by Debye's formula. The value of 

 n thus obtained is not in all cases the same as that 

 deduced from the specific heats. (5) Application of 

 the theorv of orobabilitv shows that there is but a 

 small chance of the product Nv approaching so nearly 

 to integral multiples of a constant frequency by a 

 mere accident. (6) It is found that the atomic num- 



