June 21, 191 7] 



NATURE 



339 



most great questions of national policy the principles 

 and facts of science must be accorded their due place. 

 It is satisfactory to note that the Government does 

 not intend, in measures having for their object the 

 reform and development of educational policy and 

 methods, to disturb the basis of the Act of 1902 in 

 respect of denominational education. 



The fort}--third annual conference of the Associa- 

 tion of Headmistresses was held in London on June 8 

 and 9. Miss Escott, the president, referred in her 

 address to necessary reforms of the educational system, 

 and to the subjects which should be included in educa- 

 tional schemes for girls. " Science in girls' schools," 

 she said, "'ought to be greatly developed as part of a 

 liberal education and with special reference to life 

 around them. It would be in the interest of both 

 science and mathematics if the science teacher had a 

 good knowledge of mathematics, and the mathe- 

 matical teacher a working knowledge of chemistrs' 

 and physics. In the beginning of general elementary 

 science it would be very helpful for one teacher to 

 take both the science and mathematics In a form, 

 and it is scarcely necessary to say that in advanced 

 work the mathematical teacher should have a know- 

 ledge of physics." Among the resolutions passed was 

 one in favour of the metric system, and another wel- 

 coming the formation of' the Secondar>--School 

 Examinations Council. An educational programme 

 put forward by the Executive Committee, and adopted 

 by the meeting, included the following recomrnenda- 

 tions : — (i) The complete co-ordination of all forms 

 of education ; (2) improvement of the teaching of bovs 

 and girls in the upper standards of elementarv school's : 

 (3) better provisions for the intellectual, m'oral, and 

 physical discipline of young persons during the period 

 of adolescence: (4) maintenance allowances for more 

 promising pupils; (5) better salaries and better pros- 

 pects for teachers; (6) a reduction in the number of 

 examinations which may be taken in schools. "The 

 association further hopes that the leaving age for all 

 pupils in elementary- schools without exemption will 

 be fixed for the present not earlier than the last dav 

 of the term in which a pupil reaches the age of four- 

 teen vears, and th-it the leaving age mav be raised 

 to fifteen within the next few vears; that the con- 

 tinued education of young persons who have left school 

 and are below the age of eighteen vears mav occupv 

 not fewer than t^-enty hours of the' davtime' in each 

 week, and may be largelv of a e^eneral rather than 

 a technical character. That this conference is of 

 opinion with regard to universitv education that 

 there should be a common standard of entrance, 

 accepted by all the universities of the British Empire, 

 and Greek should not be a compulsor\- subject." 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Geological SocietA', June 6.— Dr. Alfred Harker, presi- 

 dent, m the chair.— Dr. E. J. Garwood and Edith 

 Goodyear: The geology of the Old Radnor district, 

 with special reference to an algal development in the 

 Woolhope Limestone. The district 'comprises an inlier 

 of Archaean grits and Woolhope Limestone forming 

 an elongated dome bounded bv Wenlock Shale. It 

 was regarded by Murchison and' the Geological Survey- 

 as consisting of Mavhill Sandstone succeeded con- 

 tormably by Woolhope Limestone, and thev attributed 

 the unfossiliferous character of the sandstone and the 

 abnormal facies of the limestone to alteration bv 

 Igneous intrusions. Dr. Callawav, in 1900, first sug- 

 gested that the so-called "Mavhill Sandstone" was of 

 Archaean age, and recorded an unconformitv at the 

 NO. 2486, VOL. 99] 



base of the limestone. The authors confirm Dr. Calla- 

 way's views, and give evidence for correlating these 

 Archaean rocks with Prof. Lapworth's " Bayston 

 Group " of the Longmyndian. The unconformable rela- 

 tion of the limestone to the Archaean is established in 

 several portions of the district, while a study of the 

 trilobite and brachiopod fauna of the limestone and 

 included shale confirms the Wenlock age of the de- 

 pdsit. The most interesting fact brought out by a 

 study of the limestone is the important part played in 

 its formation by the calcareous alga Solenopora (of 

 which a new species is described), the deposit consti- 

 tuting by far the most striking development of algal 

 limestone yet recorded from British rocks. — S. S. 

 Bnckman : Correlation of Jurassic chronology. This 

 paper owes its inception to certain discoveries made by 

 the officers of the Scottish Geological Survey during 

 their investigations of the Jurassic deposits of the 

 Isles of Raasay and Skye. The ammonites and 

 brachiopods were sent to the author for examination, 

 and the sequence of faunas which they disclosed neces- 

 sarily led to comparison with results obtained in other 

 areas. The paper is chiefly concerned w-ith the Liassic 

 ages hitherto known as Domerian, Charmouthian, and 

 Sinemurian. In all of them there is proposed a con- 

 siderable increase of the number of faunal horizons 

 indicative of consecutive time-intervals, or hemerae. 

 One of the most interesting discoveries which have 

 resulted, partly from the great thickness of Scottish 

 strata investigated and collected from, partly from 

 comparisons with, other areas, is that the. so-called 

 ''armatum zone" of the English midlands and that of 

 the Radstock district, of Yorkshire, and of the Scottish 

 Isles are not isochronous, but are separated bv a 

 time-interval which corresponds with a thickness of 

 some 300 ft. of deposit in the Scottish area. 



Royal Astronomical Society, June 8. — Major P. A. 

 MacMahon, president, in the chair.— A. S. Eddington : 

 Further notes on the radiative equilibrium of the stars. 

 In the author's previous paper the calculations had been 

 made on the assumption of an average molecular weight 

 of 54 for the material of a star— representing the hypo- 

 thesis that the ultimate particles are atoms. He was 

 now convinced that under the hieh temperatures in 

 question an extreme state of disintegration is more 

 probable, and in the calculations in the present paper 

 the average molecular weight is taken as 2. — Rev. 

 T. E. R. Phillips : Micrometrical measures of double 

 stars. Special attention was directed to the rapid 

 motion of Bootis. in which the angle diminishes 

 about a degree in six weeks, v.hile the distance has 

 shown little change during the last few years. He 

 had also specially noted the star 70 Ophiuchi, which 

 shows a small progressive diminution both in angle 

 and distance, while the latter should be increasing. 

 He suggested that in this case there may be evidence 

 of a systematic error due to the changing slant of the 

 line joining the two stars as observed before and after 

 opposition.— Mrs. E. W. Maunder : Sun-spots in high 

 southern latitudes. These spots were found on the 

 Cape photographs. Some of them were in more than 

 60° S. latitude, but they are mostly evanescent; they 

 are also small, and it was often uncertain whether 

 thev were real sun-spots, or only " pores," which are 

 found on all parts of the solar surface. But in one 

 case the marking had all the characteristics of a true 

 sun-spot, and on the whole the evidence showed that 

 markine^s of the' order of sun-spots can persist in ver>- 

 high latitudes. — R. A. Sampson : Notes on the southern 

 mas'nitude distribution, with special reference to the 

 Perth astrographic zone. In a recent paper Mr. Seares 

 had contended that the galactic condensation of small 

 stars, arrived at by Chapman and Melotte from a study 



