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NATURE 



[May 27, 1920 



conduct the Lampadephoria of the inspiration of 

 humanit)-, and to guard and develop the most precious 

 and enduring aspects of the most comprehensive of 

 all the arts — the art of Life itself." 



The new building of the Department of Applied 

 Statistics and Eugenics (including the Galton and 

 Biometric Laboratories) at University College, 

 London, will be opened by Dr. Addison, Minister of 

 Health, on Friday, June 4. The Vice-Chancellor of 

 the University will preside. 



Two lectures on Factors in the Froth-flotation of 

 Minerals will be given at the Sir John Cass Technical 

 Institute, Aldgate, E.C. 3, by Mr. H. Livingstone Sul- 

 man, on Wednesdays, June 2 and 9, at 5.30 p.m. 

 The chair at the opening lecture will be taken by Mr. 

 F. Merricks, president of the Institution of Mining 

 and Metallurgy. 



The Glasgow Technical College is preparing for 

 its entrance hall a monument in bronze and marble 

 to the 612 students and members of its staff who gave 

 their lives in the war. To show the quality and 

 quantity of the war work of the 3218 members, 

 students, and past students of the college who served 

 in the Army or Navy, or on special national dutv, the 

 college has issued, in a volume of 211 pages, a list of 

 their names and services. The preface, by Sir George 

 Beilby and Mr. Stockdale, the director, summarises 

 the contributions of the college to research on fuels 

 and explosives, the testing of war materials, and the 

 training of munition workers. The normal classes 

 had to be maintained for the thousands of evening 

 students as well as for the many foreigners and 

 refugees, for whom most of the day classes had to 

 be continued in spite of the reduction in the staff. 

 The successes enumerated include three awards of the 

 Victoria Cross and 336 orders and crosses. Amongst 

 the ranksv attained, one student bec)amte colonel, 

 fifteen were lieutenant-colonels, and seventy-seven 

 majors. The letters quoted from the Government 

 Departments express high appreciation of the re- 

 search work conducted at the* college. Of its con- 

 tributions, both of men and mind, to the national 

 strength, the college and science may well be proud. 



The recently issued report on the war work of the 

 College of Technology, Manchester (faculty of tech- 

 nology in Manchester University), gives an interesting 

 account of the services rendered by members of the 

 college in his Majesty's Forces— particularly in con- 

 nection with the Royal Engineers' and the technical 

 branches of the Royal Navy— and in the many fields 

 of scientific research opened up by the war.' The 

 greater part of the report is concerned with college 

 war work other than that of supplying men. It ap- 

 pears that before the war was over the college was 

 by no means large enough to undertake all the work 

 which the military authorities — including the Air 

 Board as well as the Admiralty and the War Office- 

 were anxious to entrust to it. The mechanical and 

 electrical engineering departments of the college were 

 intimately concerned with the work of the Lancashire 

 Anti-Submarine Committee, which had its head- 

 quarters in thie college, and produced and de- 

 veloped several instruments, including, in particular, a 

 deep-sea hydrophone for detecting 'and combating 

 enemy submarines. The same departments helped to 

 solve certain problems relating to the fitting of wire- 

 less apparatus to aeroplanes ; for instance, a high fre- 

 quency alternator, designed .and manufactured in the 

 college, was largely adopted for both naval and mili- 

 tary 'planes. A new type of gas furnace desif^ned in 

 the college led to important improvements in the heat 

 treatment of machine tools, involving an increase of 

 NO. 2639, VOL. 105] 



30 per cent, in the speed of the machining of shells 

 and other munitions. The same research enabled the 

 college to supply the Admiralty with special blades for 

 cutting mine mooring cables, and when the demand 

 for these blades was greater than the college could 

 supply, the Admiralty required its manufacturers to 

 employ the method of heat treatment devised in thi^ 

 College of Technology. An iijiproved cast iron of high 

 tensile strength, produced under the direction of the 

 metallurgical department of the college, was usefully 

 employed in the manufacture of gas shells. The col- 

 lege departments of applied chemistry and textiles car- 

 ried out a number of investigations upon fabrics used 

 in aircraft manufacture. A thorough investigation of 

 the structure and scouring of airship fabrics led to the 

 development of a process which was afterwards ap- 

 plied to all R.N.A.S. fabrics. The giant airships R33 

 and R34 were treated with a special dope produced at 

 the college before starting on their long-distance 

 flights. The chemical laboratories were also engaged 

 during the war in investigating processes for the 

 manufaGture of explosives, pharmaceutical products, 

 dyestuffs, rubber derivatives, and foodstuffs. 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 

 Royal Society, May 13.— Sir J. J. Thomson, presi- 

 dent, in the chair.— Dr. A. D. Waller : Demonstration 

 of the apparent " growth" of plants (and of inanimate 

 materials) and of their apparent "contractility." In 

 Sir J. C. Bose's original demonstration an amputated 

 leaf was fixed up in connection with a crescograph, at 

 a magnification stated to be x 10', and the indicator 

 was shown to be moving in a direction and at a speed 

 that were stated as representing the growth of the 

 petiole. Alternating currents were now sent through the 

 leaf, causing a sudden reversal of the movement of the 

 indicator, e.g. in the demonstration that the present 

 author witnessed at the Royal Society of Medicine the 

 indicator (a spot of refected light) moved to the right at 

 what he judged to be something like i metre per sec. 

 in the direction of elongation (by growth?), and flew 

 off scale in the opposite direction, at least ten times 

 as fast, as soon as the buzz of the exciting coil was 

 heard (" degrowth "). The demonstration was, in Dr. 

 Waller's opinion, illusory. The movement to the right 

 (indicating an elongation of petiole=o-i m. per sec.) 

 was indeed consistent with "growth," although its 

 rate was surprisingly high under the conditions of 

 experiment. The elongation might, however, have 

 been due to, or modified by, many accidental varia- 

 tions of conditions — heat, moisture, handling of plant 

 during preparation, etc. — and was precisely similar to 

 the gradual elongation that takes place in a damp 

 fiddle-string under similar conditions. The second part 

 of the experiment, when the " excited " plant shortenecl 

 and caused the indicator to flv off to the left, is held to 

 afford conclusive proof of fallacy. The fact belonged 

 to the familiar phenomena of heat contraction aroused 

 bv electrical currents in all kinds of (doubly refracting-) 

 nioist conductors, whether livinc: or dead, to the studv 

 of which attention was directed by Engelmann in his 

 Croonian Lecture of 1805. These are demonstrable 

 with a low-power crescograph (xio'), and play a part 

 in masking- or simulating physiological changes -^vhen 

 a high power (xio') is employed. — W. N. F. "Wood- 

 land : The " renal portal " system (renal venous 

 meshwork) and kidney excretion in vertebrata. The 

 first three .narts of this memoir contain, in the first 

 place, proof that the assumption, commonly made in 

 physiological literature, that the venous blood " sup- 

 plied " to the kidneys of lower vertebrata mixes with 



