July 19, 1917] 



NATURE 



-419 



August 17, Mr. R. G. Hatton, on the problem of the 

 rural continuation school; and on August i8, Mr. 

 W. G. W., Mitchell, on some new ideals in geometry 

 teaching, and Miss Dewdney, on self-instruction in 

 elementar)- arithmetic. The committee invites 

 teachers conducting experiments in education to 

 communicate with the secretary, 24 Roval Avenue, 

 Chelsea, S.\V.3. 



At the meeting of the London County Council 

 Education Committee on July 11 the applications of 

 the governing bodies of the London polytechnics for 

 grants from the Council were considered. The com- 

 mittee decided to recommend that grants for the year 

 1.9 1 7- 1 8 only be made, as it was felt that in the cir- 

 cumstances of the present times it is impossible to 

 forecast the position three years ahead. Eventually 

 the following block grants for 1917-18 were de- 

 cided upon: Battersea Polytechnic, 11,133/.; Birkbeck 

 College, 7100Z. ; Borough Polytechnic, 9100I. ; City of 

 London College, 4040L ; Northampton Polytechnic, 

 4400Z. ; Northern Polytechnic, 9650/. ; Regent Street 

 Polytechnic, 14,300/. ; Sir John Cass Technical In- 

 stitute, 4000/. ; South-Western Polytechnic, 7300Z. ; 

 Woolwich Polytechnic, 9700/. A special grant of 

 1567Z. was made to the gov^erning boidy of Battersea 

 Polytechnic for the establishment of a superannua- 

 tion fund for the teachers in the secondary school. 



We have recently noticed with satisfaction the signs 

 of an improved temper on the part of professed 

 "humanists" with respect to the position to be 

 accorded to natural and experimental science as an 

 element in general education. The attention of our 

 readers has been directed within the last few months 

 to articles by writers so important as Mr. A. C. 

 Benson and Lord Bryce. Now we have another even 

 more sympathetic utterance from the Master of Balliol 

 College, Oxford, who contributes to the English 

 Review an expression of his views on " Natural 

 Science in Education," beginning with the following 

 words : " If there is one lesson more than another 

 which the war is going to teach us, it will be the 

 lesson as to the future place of natural science in our 

 education." This is fairly obvious, and from one 

 point of view almost a commonplace, for the majority 

 of the public look to science merely for the sake of its 

 practical application. It is not so much the invention 

 of new flying machines or the discovery- of new explo- 

 sives that the world requires, but more exact knowledge 

 in every direction. Science purifies common observa- 

 tion and teaches the nature and use of evidence. 

 By science we learn something of the rules of the 

 universe, and their control of the conditions under 

 which human life exists. These rules cannot be 

 ignored, and, as the writer remarks, " how powerless 

 against them is even the best Parliamentary debat- 

 ing." Then there is the further and deeper influence 

 which can only be justly expressed by the term 

 "spiritual" — that effect of mingled awe and exultation 

 which is produced when science opens out some pro- 

 found vista of the universe. All the methods to be 

 used in education require good teachers, and therein 

 lies one of the difficulties of the time immediately 

 ahead of us. The author touches on many of the 

 questions concerning which debate is still going on, 

 such as, for example, the already generally overloaded 

 curriculum. While it is comforting to reflect that the 

 best classical teachers admit that there has been a 

 great deal of wasted drill in grammar and composi- 

 tion, it is the ignorance and apathy of the public 

 which are to blame in having so long accepted without 

 stronger remonstrance the purely bookish character 

 of the system under which our boys and girls have 

 been brought up. 



NO. 2490, VOL. 99] 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Royal Society, June 28. — Sir J.J. Thomson, president, 

 in the chair.— Sir Robert Hadfield, Ch. Cheneveau, and 



Ch. Geneau : A contribution to the study of the magnetic 

 prof>erties of manganese and of some special man- 

 ganese steels, (i) The research has had for its object 

 the investigation of the mass-susceptibility of man- 

 ganese metal, and of certain of its alloys with iron and 

 other metals. The work was carried out on a Curie- 

 Cheneveau magnetic balance. (2) Manganese itself, 

 when free from occluded gases, is para-magnetic, its 

 value of X being + iiox io-'±2 per cent. This corre- 

 sponds on Weiss 's theory to a number of magnetons 

 equal to 6. The removal of occluded gases is essen- 

 tial, as the ferro-magnetic properties ot certain speci- 

 mens of manganese are shown to be due to the presence 

 of hydrogen. (3) The manganese alloys investigated, 

 with one exception, are all para-magnetic, x varying^ 

 from 17-0x10-* to 2590x10-'. The exception men- 

 tioned is a silico-manganese steel containing 6 per cent, 

 of silicon, which is distinctly ferro-magnetic. (4) An 

 endeavour is also made to correlate the values of the 

 mass-susceptibility with the composition of the alloys. 

 In this connection it has been shown that the quantity 

 of manganese within the limits investigated has very 

 little influence upon the susceptibility', whilst increase 

 of carbon tends to decrease it. In general it is con- 

 cluded that in these special steels the susceptibility 

 decreases as the carbon-manganese ratio increases. 

 (5) The carbon-manganese ratio being constant, addi- 

 tion of chromium, nickel, or tungsten raises the sus- 

 ceptibility. (6) The addition of copper to a manganese- 

 nickel steel also raises the susceptibility — this notwith- 

 standing the diamag^etism of copper. — W. R. 

 Bonsfield : Note on the specific heat of water. Reply- 

 ing to criticisms by Callendar (Bakerian Lecture, Phil. 

 Trans., A, 212, p. i, 1912) on the methods for inves- 

 tigating the specific heat of water described in a 

 former paper (W. R. Bousfield and W. Eric Bousfield, 

 Phil. Trans., A, 211, p. 199, 1911), it is pointed out 

 that the observations of Callendar do not substantially 

 affect the question as to which figures are more correct in 

 the lower range of temperature from 0° to 40° or 50° C. 

 Callendar and Barnes differ from other observers in 

 placing the minimum value for the specific heat of 

 water in the neighbourhood of 40° C, whilst other ob- 

 servers put it at about 25° C— W. R. Bousfield and 

 C. Elspeth Bousfield : The specific heat of aqueous 

 solutions with special reference to sodium and potass- 

 ium chlorides. The specific heats of solutions of NaCl 

 and KCl ranging from saturated solutions to quarter- 

 normal solutions at mean temperatures of 7°, 20°, and 

 33° C. have been determined by the method and appa- 

 ratus used for the determination of the specific heat of 

 water and described in a former paper (Phil. Trans., 

 A, 211, p. 199, 1911). The corresponding densities have 

 also been determined. The relation of the specific heat 

 of the solution to the specific contraction of the water 

 is studied, and it is shown that the specific heat of a 

 series of solutions of different concentrations may be 

 reckoned on the hypothesis that the sf>ecific heat of 

 the solute is constant, whilst the mean specific heat 

 lowering of the water is proportional to the specific 

 contraction of the water. The temperature variations 

 of the specific heats of the solutions are also compared 

 with the temperature variations of the specific heat of 

 water. The minimum value on the temperature- 

 specific heat curve, which occurs at about 25° C. in the 

 case of water, disappears altogether in solutions of 

 half-normal to normal strength. This curv-e for the 

 most concentrated solutions becomes a straight line. — 



