July 15, 1920] 



NATURE 



631 



tion of them, any sum remaining over being given 

 to the British Association ; and all his astronomical 

 journals and drawings of Jupiter and Mars to the 

 British Astronomical Association. His trustees are to 

 complete and publish the star maps for tracing meteor 

 paths now in process of completion under the care 

 and charge of Sir William Peck, of The Observatory, 

 Edinburgh. 



A SUMMER meeting of the Association of Technical 

 Institutions will be held at Cambridge on Friday and 

 Saturday, July 23-24. The proceedings will com- 

 mence on the Friday at 10 a.m., when the president, 

 the Marquess of Crewe, will take the chair. Papers 

 will be read on Friday morning by Principal J. C. 

 Maxwell Garnett on a national system of education 

 and by Principal C. Coles on the necessity for close 

 co-operation between technical colleges and the uni- 

 versities. On Saturday morning Principal C. L. 

 Eclair-Heath will read a paper on the relations which 

 should exist between the day continuation schools and 

 the central technical college, and Principal L. Small 

 one on adult education in relation to the work of 

 technical schools. Resolutions dealing with adult 

 education will be submitted at the conclusion of the 

 reading, of Principal Small's paper. 



We are notified by the Board of Education that the 

 removal of the main offices of the Board from the 

 Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, to 

 King Charles Street, Whitehall, is in progress, and 

 will, it is hoped, be completed by the end of the 

 present month. On and after Julv 26 the official 

 address of the Board will be Whitehall, S.W.i. It 

 is requested that only urgent communications shall 

 be sent until after July 24, and that these shall be 

 marked " Urgent " on the outside wrapper. The 

 Medical Branch of the Board is at Cleveland House, 

 19 St. James's Square, S.W.i. The Pensions Branch 

 is at the Science Museum, Imperial Institute Road, 

 South Kensington, S.W.7. The Examinations Section 

 of the Board is housed at 49 Cromwell Road, South 

 Kensington, S.W.7. The office of Special Inquiries 

 and Reports and the Library will remain for the 

 present at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Visitors 

 whose business solely concerns these branches should 

 call at the addresses given above. 



The activity of the scientific society of a school 

 may be taken as a measure of the interest aroused in 

 scientific subjects and a sign of progressive teaching. 

 Clifton College occupies a high position, judged by 

 this standard, and its scientific society, founded so 

 long ago as 1869, continues to foster the inborn 

 aptitude of many young people for observation and 

 experiment. We have before us a list of exhibits at a 

 conversazione given by the society on July 8, and we 

 do not hesitate to say that the demonstrations, 

 apparatus, specimens, and collections shown would 

 do credit to any scientific society. The demonstrations 

 included wireless telegraphy and telephony, the arti- 

 ficial formation of clouds, the fixation of nitrogen, the 

 fractional distillation of petrol from crude petroleum, 

 and other subjects, and the exhibits illustrated many 

 interesting facts and phenomena of biological and 

 physical science. The conversazione was held to 

 show to parents and friends the work and resources 

 of the scientific society, and we are sure that the 

 company must have been impressed by what was 

 displayed. Clifton College is renowned among the 

 public schools for its attention to science, and the 

 recent conversazione shows that it is able to main- 

 tain the high place gained for it by men like Wilson, 

 Shenstone, Worthington, and Rintoul. 



NO. 2646, VOL. 105] 



i6-i 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 



Royal Society, June 24.— Sir J. J. Thomson, presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — Sir Ray Lankester : Some rostre- 

 carinate flint implements and allied forms. A series 

 of rostro-carinate flint implements is described and 

 figured in this paper from various localities, including 

 one from the Lower Palaeolithic gravel of the valley 

 of the Oise (France). It is shown that the form 

 exhibited by .the "Norwich test specimen," with 

 ventral plane, dorsal plane or platform, anterior 

 rostrum, with dorsal carina or keel, is modified in 

 some of the specimens here figured by the "flaking 

 away " of the ventral plane and by the hook-like 

 curvature of the rostrum. A large Sub-Crag example 

 is described, in which only one of the characteristic 

 features of the type, namely, the great ventral plane, 

 is retained, the implement serving as a very efficient 

 "jack-plane." The evidence of the manufacture of 

 these implements by a -series of humanly directed 

 blows is indicated by the illustrative drawings. — Lord 

 Rayleigh : A re-examination of the light scattered by 

 gases in respect of polarisation. I. : Experiments on 

 the common gases. Re-determinations are given of 

 the relative intensity of the two polarisations in the 

 light scattered at right angles by pure gases. The 

 paper is chiefly concerned with developing accurate 

 experimental methods. The values obtained are as 

 follows : 



Gas Ha Nj Air Oj CO, N,0 



Intensity of weak com- I 



ponent polarisation ... i4'5i 474 5'68 lO'i 12*4 



(Strong component = ICO.) | 



— A. Maliock : Note on the influence of temperature 

 on the rigidity of metals. The exf>eriments here 

 described were carried out at the Davy Faraday 

 Laboratory as a continuation of a somewhat similar 

 set on the temperature-variations of Young's modulus 

 (see Proc. R.S., A, vol. xcv.). The method adopted 

 in the present series depended on the determination 

 of the periods of a torsion balance the restitutive 

 couple of which was given by the rigidity of a speci- 

 men of the metal tested at various temperatures. The 

 coefficients of temperature-variation found for rigidity 

 agreed with those for Young's modulus in so far 

 that in both cases the variation diminished as the 

 melting point of the metal increased. The chief 

 value, however, of the present experiments was irr 

 showing that the natural plasticity or internal friction 

 of metals (which leads to what has sometimes been 

 called hysteresis) was even more aff'ected by tem- 

 perature than were the coefficients of elasticity, and 

 that the value of "rigidity" obtained from the 

 observed periods was very appreciably affected by the 

 variation of plasticity. For this reason the numerical 

 results are not given in the paper, but the method of 

 experiment is described and the nature of the errors 

 introduced bv the change of plasticitv stated. — 

 E. F. Armstrong and T. P. Hildltch : A study of 

 catalytic actions at solid surfaces. V. : The rate of 

 change conditioned by a nickel catalyst and its bear- 

 ing on the law of mass-action. The hydrogenation 

 of selected simple organic compounds containing one 

 ethylenic linkage has been studied with reference ta 

 the indications of a linear relation between the amount 

 of hvdrogenation and time which were observed in 

 the ca-se of mixtures of unsaturated glyoerides (part i. 

 of this series). It is now found that this relation, in 

 the case of methyl and ethvl cinnamates, safrol, or 

 anethol (when hvdrogenated in the liquid state irr 

 presence of nickel at 140° or 180° C), takes a linear 



