June 3, 1897] 



NA TURE 



117 



ing machine he had devised. There was a good discussion on 

 the decimal system, initiated by a note by Captain Sankey ; and 

 to the same section, Mr. Spagnoletti contributed a note on the 

 equilibrium system of feeding electric railways. There were two 

 good papers in the Railway Section : one on " Standardising 

 of working loads and working stresses for railway bridges," and 

 the other on " The use of small scale experiments in some 

 engineering problems." These were contributed by Mr. Mon- 

 crieff and Mr. Mallock respectively. 



THE POPULATION OF RUSSIA. 



THE results of the first one-day census, which was made 

 throughout the width and breadth of the Russian Empire 

 on February 9 last, were expected with great interest. The last 

 census was made in 185 1, and a partial one in 1858 ; and yet it was 

 not a census proper, for the local police authorities on the spot 

 merely made lists of the permanent residents and taxpayers in 

 each locality. After much preparatory work, it was decided to 

 make, this year, a " one-day census"; that is, in the lists 

 which had to be made for each house in each locality, all those 

 persons who spent the night in a given house and in a given 

 locality on February 9 (or about that date in the villages), had to 

 be mentioned, whether they were permanent residents or not. It 

 was quite a novel experiment, which was looked at with little 

 confidence ; but the Vice-President of the Russian Geographical 

 Society, who had had already a great deal of experience with 

 such censuses as they were made, since 1870, in separate big 

 towns (in these censuses the illiterate population filled their lists, 

 as a rule, admirably well), insisted upon the new method being 

 accepted. The census was organised under his guidance, and 

 seems, so far as can be judged, to have been quite successful. 

 The items, obtained from all the local committees, partly by 

 telegraph— with the exception of some parts of the province of 

 Yakutsk — are now published ; and the population of the empire 

 appears from them as follows -.—European Russia, 94,188,750; 

 Kingdom of Poland, 9,442,590 ;Grand Duchy of Finland (Finnish 

 yearly census), 2,527,801; Caucasia, 9.723,553; Siberia and 

 Sakhalin, 5,731,732; the Kirghiz Steppes, 3,415,174; Tur- 

 kestan, with the Trancaspian Region and the Pamirs, 4,175,101 ; 

 Russian subjects in Bukhara and Khiva, 6412 ; total, 

 129,211,113. The corresponding figures, in 1851, were: 

 European Russia, 52,797,685 ; Poland, 4,852,055 ; Finland, 

 1,636,915; Caucasia, 4,436,152; Siberia, 2,437,184; Steppes, 

 1,220,654 ; total, 67,380,645. It may thus be said that although 

 the percentage of births is very high in Russia, it took nearly 

 fifty years for the population to double. 



An English writer about Russia made, some time ago, the 

 remark that Russia suffers from a polisf?i, that is, from a want 

 of towns. This want has lately very much disappeared. There 

 are now in the empire no less than 19 towns having a popula- 

 tion of more than 100,000 (out of which two in Poland, two in 

 Caucasia, and one, Tashkend, in Turkestan) ; 35 towns with 

 populations from 50,000 to 100,000 ; and 69 towns with popula- 

 tions of from 25,000 to 50,000. St. Petersburg has already 

 attained the figure of 1,267,023, and Moscow approaches the 

 million (988,610). 



It is worth mentioning that no less than 230,000 persons 

 took part in the census ; very many of them were volunteers, 

 who were recruited among the students of the Universities and 

 the High Schools. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Oxford.— Prof. H. A. Miers, F.R.S., and Mr. W. Garstang, 

 have been appointed examiners for the Burdett-Coutts Scholar- 

 ship. 



An examination for one or more Natural Science Demyships 

 and Exhibitions will be held at Magdalen College in October. 

 The value of the Demyships is £^0 per annum. Candidates 

 must be under nineteen years of age on the day of election, 

 Octol>er 18. 



The Right Hon. John Morley delivered the Romanes Lecture 

 in the Sheldonian Theatre on Wednesday last. The subject 

 was Machiavelli. 



Cambridge. — Dr. Alex. Hill, Master of Downing College, 

 and University Lecturer in Anatomy, has been elected Vice- 

 Chancellor for the ensuing academical year. 



NO. 1440. VOL. 56] 



Dr. R. D. Roberts has been appointed a (iovernor and 

 Member of Council of the University College of Wales, Aberyst- 

 wyth. 



The first Smith's Prize has been awarded to Mr. E. T. 

 Whittaker (bracketed second wrangler 1895), of Trinity College, 

 for his essay on "Multiform Functions." The second prize is 

 divided between Mr. R. C. Maclaurin (twelfth wrangler 1895), 

 of St. John's College, for his essay on " Solutions of the 

 Equation (v''^ + k^)'V = o in Elliptic Co-ordinates," and Mr. A. E. 

 Western (seventh wrangler 1895), of Trinity College, for his 

 essay on " Quadratic Complex Numbers." The essays of Mr. 

 C. Godfrey, of Trinity, Mr. T. J. I. Bromwich, of St. John's, 

 and Mr. B. Hopkinson, of Trinity, receive honourable mention. 



Mr. A. Sedgwick, F. R.S., has been reappointed a Manager 

 of the Balfour Fund for five years. The University table in the 

 Marine Biological Laboratory at Plymouth is to be occupied by 

 Mr. S. D. Scott, of King's ; the corresponding tables at Naples 

 are assigned to Mr. F. B. Stead, of King's, and Mr. K. R. 

 Menon, of Christ's. 



Prof. Lewis announces a course of lectures and demonstrations 

 in Crystallography during the long vacation. Dr. Kanthack, 

 Deputy Professor of Pathology, will give courses in Bacteriology, 

 in Morbid Anatomy and Histology, and in Pathology. 



The Examiners for the Mathematical Tripos announce that 

 ninety men and twenty women "have acquitted themselves sa 

 as to deserve honours." 



Honorary degrees will, on June 17, be conferred on the Arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury, Lord Lansdowne, the Chief Justices ofi 

 England and South Australia, a number of the colonials 

 premiers — Sir Cieorge Goldie, Sir Arthur Arnold, Sir John Kirk, 

 F. R. S. , and Sir William H. White, F. R. S. 



Dx. Percy Gardner, Lincoln Professor of Archaeology at 

 Oxford, Dr. Sydney H. Vines, F.R.S., Sherardian Professor of 

 Botany at Oxford, and Dr. H. Marshall Ward, F.R.S., Professor 

 of Botany at Cambridge, all of whom were formerly Fellows of. 

 Christ's, have been elected Honorary Fellows of the College. 



The following are among recent appointments: — Dr. J. L. 

 Prevost to be full Professor of Physiology at Geneva ; Dr. E.. 

 Kaufmann, Privat-docent in Anatomy at Breslau, to be Pro- 

 fessor ; Dr. K. Zeisig, Assistant Professor of Physics in the 

 Darmstadt Technical High School, to be full Professor ; Dr. 

 Max Wolters, Privat-docent in Anatomy at Bonn, to be Pro- 

 fessor ; Dr. Ludwig Heim to be Assistant Professor of Hygiene 

 and Bacteriology at Erlangen ; Dr. M. Siegfried to be, Assistant 

 Professor of Physiological Chemistry at Leipzig ; Prof. A. J. 

 Moses to be Professor of Mineralogy, and Mr. H. M. Howe. 

 Professor of Metallurgy, in Columbia University ; Mr. W. G. 

 McMillan, Lecturer in Chemistry and Metallurgy at Mason 

 College, Birmingham, to be Assistant Secretary of the Institu- 

 tion of Electrical Engineers. 



The name of the Michigan Mining School has just been 

 legally changed to the Michigan College of Mines. It is pro- 

 posed to make the tuition fees approximately the same as those 

 charged by other advanced technical schools in America. When 

 the school was working out its policy, it was thought wisest not 

 to charge tuition, but to collect as wide a constituency as 

 possible in order that there might be all possible chance to make- 

 the methods as broad and thorough as could be done. It was 

 also deemed hardly just to the students to demand tuition until 

 the institution was much better equipped for its work than the 

 public assistance given during the first decade of its existence 

 permitted. Now that success has been attained in educating 

 men for practical work, the institution seems fully warranted in 

 charging hereafter for its instruction. The new regulation comes 

 into effect immediately after August 19. 



A ROYAL charter, dated May 11, has, says the Educational 

 Times, been granted for the establishment in Sheffield of a 

 University College. The council of Firth College, the executive 

 committee of the Sheffield Technical School, and the council of 

 the Sheffield School of Medicine petitioned that those institu- 

 tions should be consolidated and included in one college, having 

 for its object the provision of such an education as might enable 

 residents in the city and neighbourhood to qualify for degrees at 

 any of the Universities in the United Kingdom. It was repre- 

 sented that the endowments of the institutions were of the 

 aggregate value of 100,000/., and that there was reason to 

 anticipate further contributions to a large amount after the 

 incorporation of the College. The charter now granted sets 

 forth, amongst other things, that the institution shall be known as 



