43« 



NATURE 



[January 31, 191 8 



in the past? It is the shameful truth that the man 

 of science, with few exceptions, has received little or 

 no recognition by the mass of the people of this 

 country, who, unknowing and uncaring, have been 

 perfectly content to allow him the status, both social 

 and financial, which he himself has modestly sought 

 for his everyday life and wants. But the country, in 

 its hour of need, has turned to its scientific sons for 

 help in its war problems, and has not turned in vain. 

 The war is bringing home to the nation the dependence 

 of its very existence on science, and a little good may 

 come out of a very great evil if public opinion can be 

 brought to realise that the statement is as true in peace 

 as in war, and that a nation's administrators should 

 always include among them suitable men of the 

 highest technical and scientific standing, not merely 

 to advise, but also to initiate and direct. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 

 Birmingham. — At a special Degree Congregation held 

 on Thursday, January 24, the Vice-Cliancellor (Col. 

 Gilbert Barling, C.B.) conferred the honorary degree 

 of Doctor of Laws on Lord Morris, , late Premier of 

 Newfoundland. 



London. — The following doctorate has been con- 

 ferred by the Senate :^D. 5c. in Statistics: Miss 

 Kirstine Sm'ith, an internal student, of University Col- 

 lege, for a thesis entitled " On the standard deviations 

 of adjusted and interpolated values of an observed 

 polynomial function and its constants, and the guid- 

 ance they give towards a proper choice of the distribu- 

 tion of observations." 



mittee has discai-ded a large number of obsolete scien- 

 tific books in order to make room for up-to-date works, 

 including technical books on every handicraft known 

 to be followed in Aberdeen. In the Reference Depart- 

 ment of the Aberdeen Library the trade and technical 

 periodicals, dictionaries and encyclopaedias, business 

 directories, gazetteers and atlases form a " commer- 

 cial library " similar to those which have been estab- 

 lished in Glasgow and Liverpool. The purpose of such 

 commercial libraries is to make immediately available 

 the best and most recent information as to all matters 

 affecting trade and commerce. We congratu- 

 late the Aberdeen Library Committee upon the steps 

 it is taking to increase the efficiency of the library and 

 to make it a centre for the spread of accurate know- 

 ledge in all branches of industry and commerce. 



We learn from the Times that in reply to an inquiry 

 as to whether :vlr. Andrew Carnegie would make good 

 the damage to the science building at Dalhousie Uni- 

 versity, Halifax, N.S., which was originally his gift, the 

 reply received from the trustees of the Carnegie Cor- 

 poratio_n,_ New York, was that they would "consider 

 it a privilege to pay for repairing the damage." 



New scales of salaries, necessitated partly by the 

 increase in the cost of living, have been, or are being, 

 drawn up for teachers in primary and secondary 

 schools, but so far nothing has been done in London 

 towards improving the salaries of technical teachers, 

 salaries which even before the war were already too 

 low. Failure to do this is, in part, due to the fact that 

 no " Fisher grants " similar to those given for elemen- 

 tary and secondary education have been available for 

 technical education. A meeting to consider the 

 matter has been arranged by the Association of 

 Teachers in Technical Institutions to be held at the 

 Polytechnic, Regent Street, W.I, on Saturday, February 

 2, at 3 p.m. All teachers in technical institutions, 

 junior technical schools, and trade schools (whether 

 members of the association or not) are invited to 

 attend. 



We have received the annual report of the committee 

 of the Aberdeen Public Library for "the year 1916-17. The 

 committee realises that public libraries should prepare 

 for the coming period of reconstruction by providing 

 their readers with the most authoritative books in pure 

 and applied science. It is felt that people in all depart- 

 ments of industry are beginning to see more clearly 

 the value of a thorough scientific knowledge of their 

 craft, and that they will therefore ask for books which 

 contain the most recent information instead of being 

 content with books which are now out of date. Acting 

 upon the advice of a special sub-committee, under the 

 convenership of Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, the com- 



NO. 2518, VOL. 100] 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London'. 



Royal Microscopical Society, January 16.^ — Mr. E. 

 Heron-Allen, president, in the chair. — Presidential ad- 

 dress : The Ro}al Microscopical Society during the 

 great war and after. The president gave a review of 

 the war conditions under which the society has met 

 since August, 19 14, and of such part of the work of the 

 society as is ripe for publication in connection with 

 the war. He gave an analysis of the work of the 

 society's abstractors during the periods 1901-13 and 

 1914-17, and adumbrated a contraction and specialisa- 

 tion of the activities of the society in the future, in the 

 direction of the technical optics of the microscope and 

 its application to all branches of industry and research. 



Linnean Society, January 17. — Sir David Prain, presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — E. S. Goodrich : The restoration of 

 the superficial bones of the head of the fossil fish Osteo- 

 lepis. Having shown the restorations of Pander, 

 Gregory, and Watson, which differ considerably from 

 each other, Mr. Goodrich described his own restoration 

 of the bones and lateral-line canal system, and directed 

 attention to the importance of an accurate knowledge 

 of the structure of such an early and primitive form 

 as Osteolepis, from the Lower Devonian strata, for a 

 correct interpretation of the homologies of the cranial 

 bones in the higher fishes and in the land 

 vertebrates. — J. Britten : Sorhe early Cape botanists. — 

 C. E. Salmon : A hybrid Stachys. The plant originated 

 in the author's garden, where previously only Stachys 

 germaiiica and S. aJpina were cultivated ; it was iden- 

 tical with S. intermedia [Solander in] Ait. Hort. Kew, 



ii., 3"' (i7«9)- 



Manchksti:r. 



Literary and Philosophical Society, December 11, 1917. 

 i — Mr. T. A. Coward, vice-president, in the chair. — W. 

 I Thomson : Somatose. Somatose is a substance pre- 

 \ pared by dissolving the refuse from meat which has 

 I been extracted with water with the view of producing 

 i meat extract. In South America this refuse material 

 I was thrown into the sea. A German chemist found 

 that he could dissolve part of this refuse fibrin by 

 i heating it with water under a pressure of 90 lb. to 

 I the square inch — that is, at a temperature of 320° F. 

 i By filtering and evaporating this solution to dryness 

 i he obtained a horny grey mass, which, on being pow- 

 dered, constituted som.atose. It was held by some that 

 the value of somatose as a food could be determined 

 by the amount of nitrogen it contained, and that the 

 nitrogen equivalent in somatose w^as equal to the 

 nitrogen equivalent in lean beef. With the view of 

 determining this, the author considered that it could 

 be done only by feeding an'imals with food containing 

 lean beef on one hand and somatose on the other. 



