158 



NATURE 



[April 19, 191 7 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



The Duke of Richmond and Gordon has been 

 riected Chancellor of Aberdeen University in succes- 

 sion to the late Lord Elgin. 



It is announced that Mr. Heijiry Musgrave pro- 

 poses to contribute a sum of lo.oooL to Queen's 

 University, Belfast, to endow a chair in connection 

 with Russian language and literature. 



New buildings for the arts faculty, the library, and 

 the general museum of the University College of 

 North Wales were put up on a particularly fine site 

 in the city of Bangor a few years ago, and were 

 opened by his Majesty the King on July 14, 1911. 

 The funds, a large proportion of which had been 

 contributed by the rural districts of North Wales, 'did 

 not suffice for the re-housLng of the science depart- 

 ments. These, including agriculture and forestry, 

 •which are of the first importance in the neighbour- 

 hood, have remained in buildings of a purely tem- 

 porary character, which were adapted for the purpose 

 some thirty years ago. A movement has now been 

 initiated by Mr. R. J. Thomas, of Holyhead, to erect 

 buildings for the science departments on the new site, 

 as a "memorial to the men of North Wales who 

 have fallen in the war." Mr. Thomas has started the 

 fund with a gift of 20,oooi., and it is hoped to raise 

 at least 150,000!. In the new buildings especial pro- 

 minence will be given to agriculture and forestry, 

 which are, or will be, the main industries of the 

 northern counties of Wales. Other branches of science 

 — physics, chemistry, geology, botany, zoology, and 

 so forth — are provided for in the scheme. It is the 

 intention of the authorities to erect laboratories on 

 what may be termed a modern university scale. The 

 high ability for science, as well as for literature, 

 which so often appears in the remote rural districts 

 of North Wales will in the new laboratories find 

 fuller opportunity than heretofore. It is a pleasure 

 to record that his Majesty the King (the Chancellor 

 of the Universitv), H.R.H. the Prince of Whiles, and 

 the Prime Minister have each expressed their approval 

 of, and their sympathy with, the scheme. 



With the growing advances in technical education 

 it is very desirable that teaching connected with the 

 building trade^ — one of the largest trades in this 

 country — should be proj>erly organised. The " Memor- 

 andum on the Teaching of Building in Evening 

 Technical Schools," recently issued by the Board of 

 Education (Circular 978), is Intended to convey sug- 

 gestions as to organisation, accommodation, equip- 

 ment, and methods of instruction to teachers and 

 those responsible for arranging building classes. At 

 the same time, we are glad to see it stated that these 

 suggestions are not designed to stereotype methods 

 of procedure, which must varv with the needs of 

 different localities. Most technical institutions possess 

 some classes suitable for students interested in build- 

 . ing, but in many cases these are inadequately cor- 

 related with other courses which it is desirable a 

 student should take in addition, and the memorandum 

 urges the desirability of " grouped " courses which 

 shall give the worker a sustained interest and pro- 

 vide him with an adequate time-table. Further, it is 

 pointed out that such courses should be arranged to 

 form a continuous scheme from quite junior to ad- 

 vanced work, and that for those whose field of opera- 

 tions or whose intelligence is too limited to render a 

 full course suitable a parallel restricted scheme of 

 work, should be arranged. It is impossible here to 

 enter into the detailed suggestions given in the fifty 

 pages of this publication, which cover not only the 



NO. 2477, VOL. 99] 



ordinary building trades proper, but also sur\'eying and 

 office work ; it may be noted, however, that a laudable 

 effort has been made to show in what manner mathe- 

 matics and pure science can be brought to bear upon 

 the direct needs of the builder. In conclusion, some 

 comments on the material requirements of these sub- 

 jects, in the wav of lecture-rooms and laboratories, 

 are given, which include plans of a combined lecture- 

 and drawing-room found to be satisfactory, and of a 

 building laboratory showing the arrangement of the 

 various fittings. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Aristotelian Society, March 5. — Dr. H. Wildon Carr, 

 president, in the chair.— Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan : Fact 

 and truth. We may start with facts of appearance, 

 as a convenient point of departure. A fact of appear- 

 ance is always relational in structure, and it is this 

 relational structure which is of the very essence of 

 fact. All facts of appearance are facts for knowledge, 

 but we need to distinguish facts for knowledge and 

 facts of knowledge. We may winnow out from the 

 multiplicity of facts for knowledge certain facts of 

 knowledge which have a privileged^ status, and we 

 may speak of a fact of knowledge as accordant with 

 a privileged fact of appearance without denying that 

 accordance may inerge in identity. We may then 

 further distinguish between " the sphere of knowledge " 

 and " the sphere of the knowable " — a fact of know- 

 ledge as an item of content on the sphere of know- 

 ledge may be said to be correspondent to a knowable 

 fact, when the radii of the two spheres in contact 

 are in the same right line. And here again corre- 

 spondence may merge in identity — the difference be- 

 tween knowable fact and fact of knowledge being a 

 difference in contexts The relation between any know- 

 able fact on a non-contact radius of the sphere of 

 the knowable, and any imagined fact on a non-con- 

 tact radius of the sphere- of knowledge, is given in 

 practical determination by the nature and amount of 

 rolling of the spheres requisite to establish right-line 

 contact. Right-line contact is that of direct acquaint- 

 ance when the knowable and that which is then and 

 there factually known are one. Fact is always par- 

 ticular, always a "this" or "that" dateable and 

 placeable. But owing to the enormous amount of 

 repetition in the total fact-structure of the knowable 

 world, truths 51s well as facts of knowledge enter into 

 the structure of the sphere of knowledge. There is 



(a) truth in th^ structure of the knowable world, 



(b) truth in the structure of knowledge, and (c) truth 

 as correspondence of these two structures. 



Royal Anthropological Institute, March 27. — Sir Her- 

 cules Read, president, in the chair. — Miss M. Edith 

 Durham : South Slav customs as seen in Serbian ballads 

 and tales by Serb authors. Until quite recent times 

 justice, in South Slav lands, was administered by the 

 headmen of the district, who sat before the church 

 and considered the evidence and judged accordingly. 

 The number of headmen summoned depended upon 

 the gravity of the case. In the case of a blood- 

 feud twenty-four was the usual number. They made 

 an account, balancing one dead man against one dead 

 on the other side, and reckoning the value of the wounds 

 at so many "bloods" apiece — each blood to be paid 

 for. Peace was made by members of the opposing 

 families or clans swearing blood-brotherhood, and by 

 a member of the injured family standing godfather 

 to an infant of the other family. Godfatherhood was 

 reckoned as blood-relationship, and the two families 

 were thus united. Viik Vrchevitch, who collected and 



