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NATURE 



[December 27, 1917 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Camhridge. — The University has gratefully accepted 

 nn offer received from Mrs. King, of Worthing, to 

 give loooL 5 per cent. War Stock for the establishment 

 of a scholarship for research work on fevers, in memory 

 of her daughter, Nita King, a member of a Voluntary 

 Aid Detachment, who died of cerebro-spinal fever in 

 France. 



I^ONDON. — Prof. Bernard Pares, professor of Rus- 

 sian history, language, and literature in the University 

 of Liverpool, has been appointed the first incumbent 

 of the chair of Russian which has been established by 

 endowment from the London County Council, and will 

 be tenable at King's College. 



The degree of D.Sc. (Economics) has been con- 

 ferred on Mr. A. D. Smith, an internal student, of the 

 London School of Economics, for a thesis entitled 

 "The Development of Rates of Postage." 



Dr. Arnold Eiloart has been appointed assistant 

 lecturer in chemistry, and Mr. J. T. Westwood assistant 

 lecturer in mechanical engineering, at the Technical 

 College, Huddersfield. 



Miss E. C. Talbot, of Margam, has presented to the 

 council of University College, Cardiff, a benefaction 

 amounting to about 30,000!., which will produce a 

 salary of 1500L per annum for the purposes of a chair 

 in preventive medicine. The first occupant of the 

 chair is to be nominated for election by the council 

 bv an expert board, g which Sir Wm. Osier is to be 

 chairman. 



Particulars of a novel form of technical instruction 

 have reached us from America. A winter school for 

 the training of librarians is to be held at the Riverside 

 Public Librarv, Riverside, California, from January 7 

 to March 2 of next year, and the services of numerous 

 experts in library administration have been secured as 

 lecturers and demonstrators. Among the subjects of 

 lectures included in the attractive programme offered 

 to intending students are : — The library as a museum, 

 high-school libraries, library mechanics and handicraft, 

 cataloguing and classification, office filing and index- 

 ing, and binding and repair work. 



There is evidence that the need for improved 

 technical education in France is engaging the atten- 

 tion of the authorities. The question was first raised 

 a year ago by a paper by M Leon Guillet in the 

 Bulletin of the French Society of Civil Eng-ineers for 

 October-November, 1916. The meeting at which the 

 paper was read was presided over by the Minister of 

 Commerce and Industry, and out of the discussion 

 which arose a committee was formed for the purpose 

 of submitting- recommendations to the Minister men- 

 tioned. Discussion was invited from persons not 

 members of the society, and the results are published in 

 the Bulletin of the society, January-April, 1917, and 

 the Revue de Mdtallurgie, May-June, 1917. A sum- 

 mary of the committee's recommendations also appears 

 in the September-October number of the Bulletin de la 

 Society d' Encouragement pour I'Industrie Nationale. 



The Committee on the Neglect of Science has pub- 

 lished an article bv Sir Ray Lankester on the new- 

 scheme of examination for Class L of the Civil Service. 

 This is of considerable interest to those concerned with 

 the position to be occupied by science in secondary- 

 school and university education in the future. An ad- 

 mirable summary of the report of the Government Com- 

 mittee under the chairmanship of Mr. Stanlev Leathes 

 is embodied in this statement, and Sir Ray Lankester 

 frankly admits that the new proposals are a great 

 advance in the direction desired by the Neglect of 

 NO. 2513, VOL. 100] 



Science Committee. The Government Committee, in 

 its report, has, however, contented itself with attempt- 

 ing to secure equality of opportunity to all branches of 

 learning, and considers that the schools and universities 

 should do the rest. Whether the theoretical advance 

 will prove of practical value remains to be seen, for the 

 older universities and great public schools are, without 

 exception, dominated by the " classics." In the con- 

 cluding sentence of Sir Ray Lankester 's article the posi- 

 tion is summed up as follows :- — " Mr. Stanley Leathes's 

 Committee, instead of rescuing education from the pro- 

 fessional vested interests of the classical schoolmasters, 

 hands back the victim, after many professions of good 

 will, to the tender mercies of those who are banded 

 together to starve, torture, and discredit her, and re- 

 morselessly to maintain the domination and the pecu- 

 niary allurements of the 'classical system.'" 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, December 13. — Sir J. J. Thomson, 

 president, in the chair. — Prof. B. Moore : The forma- 

 tion of nitrites from nitrates in aqueous solution by the 

 action of sunlight and the assimilation of the nitrites 

 by green leaves in sunlight. Dilute solutions of 

 nitrates exposed either to sunlight or to a source of 

 light rich' in light-energy of short wave-length (such 

 as light from mercury vapour arc enclosed in silica) 

 undergo conversion of nitrate into nitrite. There is an 

 uptake of chemical energy in this reaction transformed 

 from light-energy, as in the formation of organic carbon 

 compounds in foliage leaves ; it is to be added to the 

 relatively small number of endothermic redactions in- 

 duced by light. When green leaves are immersed in 

 nitrate solution comparatively little nitrite accunjulates, 

 indicating that nitrites are rapidly absorbed by the 

 green leaf . Nitrat'^s-taken up by plants from soil would, 

 in presence of sunlight, be changed to nitrites, w-hich 

 are much more reactive than nitrates. This indicates 

 that the early stages of synthesis of nitrogenous com- 

 pounds are carried out in the green leaf and aided by 

 sunlight. Rain-w^ater collected for a considerable time 

 contains no nitrites, all having been oxidised to nitrates, 

 but if exposed to bright sunlight or ultra-violet light 

 for a few hours a strong reaction for nitrites is always 

 obtained. There is no hydrogen peroxide or ozone in 

 air at surface level. The fresh odour in open air, 

 commonly referred to as " ozone." is probably nitrogen 

 trioxide, which at high dilutions has the odour of ozone. 

 The oxides of nitrogen are probably formed by the 

 action of sunlight, rich in ultra-violet rays, in upper 

 regions of the atmosphere upon air and aqueous 

 vapour. — T- R- Moir : The transition from rostro- 

 carinate flint implements to the tongued-shaped imple- 

 ments of river-terrace gravels. Seven flint implements, 

 exhibiting a beak-like profile, have been found, asso- 

 ciated with early palaeoliths, in certain ancient valley 

 gravels. The implements described exhibit certain 

 characteristics of form only before seen in the rostro- 

 carinates discovered beneath the Pliocene Red Crag and 

 in other pre-Palaeolithic deposits in East Anglia. They 

 show also by the nature of their flaking and proven- 

 ance that thev are of early Palaeolithic age. The dual 

 character of these specimens is verv marked and points 

 to the conclusion that the knowledge of the manner in 

 which to make a palaeolith was acquired by long ex- 

 perience in producin£f rostro-carinates. This view finds 

 support in the experiments in flint-flaking which have 

 been carried out. The specimens have been recovered 

 from a wide area in southern England, and it seems 

 reasonable to regard them as ©resenting transitional 

 types linking the rostro-carinates with the earliest 

 palaeoliths. 



