November 15, 19 17] 



NATURE 



217 



transferable vote; and if London preferred one repre- 

 sentative to itself rather than the half of three to which 

 it. was entitled under the Bill and by the number of 

 its graduates, he had no desire to appose its wishes. 



One of the great captains of industry of Scotland 

 has. specially organised and equipped an engineering 

 factory for the employment exclusively of educated 

 women of good social standing instead of the usual 

 woman factory worker, and with the fixed determination 

 to carry on operations permanently under those condi- 

 tions, the work to be taken up being that associated 

 with the manufacture of internal-combustion motors. 

 There is a fully illustrated account of the new factory 

 in Engineering for November 9, from which we learn 

 that it has some of the salient features of a technical 

 college combined with practical work in the factory, 

 which gives that stimulus to study not realisable in 

 the laboratory of a college. The factory is situated in 

 the south of Scotland amidst beautiful scenery, so that 

 students of botany and of wild-life generally can have 

 full opportunity of pursuing their hobby. All the acces- 

 sories whigh are now placed under the wide term 

 "■welfare" have been adopted to the fullest extent. 

 Highly trained lecturers conduct classes at the works; 

 these are compulsory. Entrants receive 205. per week 

 during the probationary period of six weeks ; they then 

 decide whether or not they intend to pursue the en- 

 gineering career. If such be the case, and they are 

 considered suitable, an apprenticeship agreement is 

 entered into, and the wages become 255. per week. 

 Examinations are held at six months' intervals, and each 

 ■' pass " means an increase of 55. per week. It is evident 

 that the whole scheme provides for women the oppor- 

 tunity of prosecuting an engineering career under the 

 most favourable and stimulating conditions, and that 

 the conditions are those best calculated for women of 

 good education and social standing to attain a broad 

 experience of engineering science and practice. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, November 8.— Sir J. J. Thomson, 

 president, in the chair.— Prof. A. D. Waller : The ^al- 

 vanometric measurement of "emotional" physiological 

 changes. The principal object of this communication 

 is to prove that emotional response of the human 

 subject is characterised (and can be measured) by altera- 

 tions of the electrical resistance of the skin, inde- 

 pendent of the well-known muscular and vasomotor 

 and secretory manifestations of emotion. — Lieut. 

 D. M. S. Wat'son : The structure, evolution, and origin 

 of the Amphibia. Part I.^The "orders" Rachitomi 

 and Stereospondyli. In this paper all known genera of 

 flachitomous and Stereospondylous Stegocephalia are 

 reviewed, the brain-case and basi-cranial region, 

 hitherto practically unknown, being described more or 

 less completely, and much new information about other 

 regions set down. — E. C. Grey : The enzymes concerned 

 in the decomposition of glucose and mannitol by 

 Bacillus coli communis. Part II. — Experiments of 

 short duration with an emulsion of the organisms. 

 Part III. — Various phases in the decomposition of 

 glucose by an emulsion of the organisms. By selec- 

 tion. Harden and Penfold obtained evidence, that the 

 proportion in which the enzymes of bacteria occurred 

 could be artificially modified, which result might sug- 

 gest that the enzymes, although intracellular, are able 

 to act independently of one another. The present re- 

 searches demonstrate that this is a fact. 



Physical Society, October 26.— Mr. W. R. Cooper, 



vice-president, in the chair. — T. Smith; A class of 



multiple thin objectives. The objectives dealt with are 



cemented combinations of several thin lenses. Two 



NO. 2507, VOL. 100] 



kinds of glass only are employed, the odd elements 

 being of one kind, say crown, and the even elements 

 of the other kind, flint. Such lenses may be regarded 

 as combinations of achromatic ceniented doublets, and 

 formulae are found for the aberration coefficients of 

 such lenses in terms of those of a standard doublet 

 when the geometrical conditions for the absence of 

 air-gaps between the components are satisfied. Gener- 

 ally speaking, the results reached are that the outer 

 surfaces are concerned with coma, and the inner 

 surfaces with spherical aberration. In all cases the 

 determination of a system to satisfy given conditions, 

 involves only the solution of a quadratic equation, 

 and an algebraic method thus effects a solution in a 

 fraction of the time involved in a trigonometrical in- 

 vestigation. Chromatic differences of first-order aber- 

 rations are easily determined. The application of the 

 method is illustrated by a series of quadruple objec- 

 tives which satisfy the ordinary conditions for tele- 

 scope objectives. Diagrams show the variation of the 

 curvatures with the different forms, the magnitude of 

 the second order spherical aberration, and the chromatic 

 differences of first-order aberrations.— Prof. J. W. 

 Nicholson ; The radius of the electron and the nuclear 

 structure of atoms. The electron is usually regarded 

 as a globule of electricity with a definite radius. This 

 conception has proved valuable, but involves difficulties 

 in connection witli the nuclear structure of complex 

 atoms. On the view that the electron consists of a 

 region of strain in the aether such line constants should 

 have some significance throughout the whole aether, 

 which may, in fact, be in some manner cellular with 

 these linear magnitudes involved in the sipecification 

 of the cells, and therefore in any strained structure 

 composed of them. The electron would be regarded 

 as a state of strain which for practical purposes is 

 concentrated at its centre, rapidly diminishing out- 

 wards according to some very convergent law involv- 

 ing some line constant in its specification. By way 

 of illustration the idea is worked out mathematically 

 on the assumption that the strain varies as e-^^, on 

 which hypothesis A-' is the "radius." It can be 

 shown that the Lorentz formula for mass as a function 

 of velocity can be obtained for this type of electron. 

 The charge on the electron is regarded as a funda- 

 mental property of the aether, and is related to 

 Planck's constant h. 



Linnean Society, November i. — Sir David Prain, 

 president, in the chair. — Prof. W. A. Herdman : Spolia 

 Runiana. III., The distribution of certain Copepoda 

 and Diatoms in the Irish Sea throughout the year. 

 The author explained the prevalence of certain genera 

 at definite periods of the year, such as the abundance 

 of seven genera of Diatoms in the maximum attained 

 about April in the many (more than 5000) standard 

 hauls of the plankton-nets on the yacht Runa, in some 

 cases reaching hundreds of millions of Diatoms per 

 haul. The Copepoda, which were of much greater 

 size, did not reach such numbers, but attained as many 

 as tens to hundreds of thousands per haul, in the 

 autumn maximum at a period when the Diatoms had 

 practically disappeared. These two periods, spring and 

 autumn, showed monotonic plankton in each case of 

 phytoplankton and zooplankton respectively. The con- 

 nection between the prevalent plankton and the move- 

 ment of migratory food-fishes was traced in several 

 cases, and the fact was emphasised that the bulk of 

 the plankton of our seas is made up of a very few- 

 organisms present in enormous numbers. — Lt.-Col. 

 J. H. Tull Walsh : The t!oi-mination of Iris psetidacorus, 

 Linn., in normal and .ilmormal conditions. 



Aristotelian Society, November 5. — Dr. H. Wildon 

 Carr, president, in the chair. — Dr. H. Wildon Carr : 

 Inaugural address : The interaction of mind and body. 

 After a brief allusiorr to the progress made during 



