March 17, 1910] 



NA TURE 



87 



occasion may demand, containing information in regard to 

 the work of the association and other matters of interest 

 to old students. The association has accomplished some 

 useful work during the first year of its existence. S. 

 register containing particulars of 729 old students has 

 been published, steps are being taken with a view to 

 :-cure academic costume for associates of the college, and 

 nquiries are being made with the intention of offering 

 evidence before the Royal Commission on University 

 Education in London. We notice that Sir Thomas Holland, 

 K.C.r.E., F.R.S., is the president of the association for 

 the current year. 



Mr. F. M. Denton, of the Carnegie Technical Schools, 

 Pittsburgh, has been appointed to the post of associate- 

 head of the electrical engineering and applied physics 

 department of the Northampton Polytechnic Institute, 

 ClerKeriwell, London, E.C., i-endered vacant by the resigna- 

 tion of Dr. C. V. Drysdale. Mr. Denton received his 

 technical training at the Central Technical College of the 

 City and Guilds of London Institute, and for a time he 

 occupied a position on the staff of the electrical engineer- 

 ing department of the college. He left to join the staff 

 of the General Electric Company in various departments 

 at Pittsfield, Mass., and at Schenectady. After occupying 

 these positions for one year he was, two and a half years 

 ago, appointed lecturer in electrical engineering at the new 

 Carnegie Technical Schools at Pittsburgh, a position 

 which he still occupies and is resigning to take up his 

 London appointment. 



The Department of .Agriculture and Technical Instruc- 

 tion in Ireland has distributed a circular (Form S 41) 

 giving full particulars of its summer courses of instruc- 

 tion for teachers, to be held, for the most part, in Dublin 

 during July and August next. In July, courses will be 

 conducted by the Department in, among other subjects, 

 experimental science, laboratory arts, and drawing and 

 modelling for teachers in day secondary schools, and in 

 <iay and evening science and art classes ; in domestic 

 economy and woodwork for teachers in day secondary 

 schools ; and in hygiene and sick nursing and in house- 

 wifery for domestic economy instructresses. For .August, 

 four courses have been arranged, as follows: — in metal- 

 work, practical mathematics and mechanics, and in hand- 

 railing, for teachers of wood-working ; in industr-al 

 chemistr\^ for teachers of chemistry in technical schools ; 

 in rural economy for teachers of experimental science in 

 technical schools and teachers in national schools ; and in 

 school gardening for teachers in schools with gardens. 

 The syllabuses of work contained in the circular show 

 that great pains have been taken to provide practical 

 courses dealing with subjects which will be directly useful 

 to teachers In their work, and they should also serve the 

 purpose of adding new life to their lessons when the 

 teachers return to their schools. 



On Friday, March 11, Sir William H. White, K.C.B., 

 F.R.S., distributed the certificates and prizes at the South- 

 western Polytechnic Institute, Chelsea. Mr. W. Hayes 

 Fisher, M.P., occupied the chair. After the principal had 

 read the report for the session 1908-9, and the certificates 

 had been distributed, Sir William said that in education 

 he has three articles of faith, namely : — (i) every child 

 should have an opportunity for education ; (2) all who give 

 proof of capacity of profiting by higher training must be 

 allowed to go on ; (3) in getting the best educational 

 results the natural process of gradual selection must be 

 adopted and allowed to operate. This leads to apparent 

 v.-astage : but there is no real wastage. It is necessary 

 to have educated men of all grades in all works, and this 

 has specially to be brought home to the English manu- 

 facturer, who does not yet realise the importance of higher 

 education. Sir William said that in Chelsea he felt at 

 home, for when he came from Devonshire, before he 

 joined the .Admiralty in 1867, he studied at the School of 

 Practical Shipbuilding at South Kensington, and lodged 

 on King's Parade, Chelsea, almost within a stone's throw 

 of the polytechnic. He was very pleased with his inspec- 

 tion of the polytechnic last week, and specially congratu- 

 lated the governors on the large amount of their day 

 work. From his experience of the technical colleges and 

 institutes in London he had come to the conclusion that 



NO. 2107, VOL. 83] 



; the polytechnics must be encouraged to carry on and 



, extend day courses — their work in the evening was with- 



I out parallel in the educational world. Various subjects- 



I must not be concentrated Wi special buildings, but each 



; institute should make its courses as wide and as general 



! as possible. London was so extensive, and its population 

 was so large, that there was an ample field. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 L0ND05!. 

 Royal Society, March 10. — Sir Aichiba'd Geikie, K.C.fe., 

 president, in the chair. — C. Gordon DoukIa* and Dr. 

 J. S. Haldane : The causes of the absorption of oxygen 

 by the lungs (preliminary). A short preliminary account is 

 given of experiments affording clear evidence of a secretory 

 activity of the lungs in the absorption of oxygen. — V. H. 

 Veley and A. D. Waller : The action of nicotine and other 

 pyridine bases upon muscle, and on the antagonism of 

 nicotine by curarine. Nicotine (mol. wt. = 162) as such, or 

 in the form of salt as nicotine tartrate, produces a very 

 characteristic effect upon the contraction of isolated muscle. 

 Its toxic power upon muscle, as compared with that of 

 other substances that the authors have dealt with, is of 

 the following order, i.e. approximately one-third that of 

 quinine and considerably greater than that of curarine : — 



Aconitine .. 10,000 



Quinine 100 



Nicotine 33 



Strychnine ... ... ... ... iz 



Curarine 5 



The effect on muscle, characteristic- of nicotine, is not pro- 

 duced by its parent base pyridine, nor by picoline, nor by 

 piperidine. The order of toxicity upon muscle of these 

 substances as compared with that of nicotine is as 

 follows : — 



Nicotine ico 



Piperidine ... ... ... ... 5° 



Pyridine ... ... ... . . 10 



Picoline ... ... ... ... 10 



.As has been indicated by Langley, there is an antagonism 

 between nicotine and curare. Using a solution of pure 

 curarine iodide prepared by Prof. Boehm, we find that 

 the characteristic effect of nicotine upon muscle is abolished 

 when the proportion of curarine to nicotine, reckoned by 

 molecules, is 2 to i, 30 to i, and 160 to i. With this last 

 proportion a trace of nicotine effect can still be detected. 

 In the case of other poisons, viz. strychnine, quinine, and 

 aconitine, of which the effect per se upon muscle consider- 

 ably exceeds that of curarine, there is, in a sense, an 

 antagonism, as shown by abolition of the characteristic 

 nicotine effect, but the abolition requires a greater mass 

 of . these more powerful poisons than is sufficient in the 

 case of the less powerful poison — curarine. Thus, approxi- 

 mately, whereas i mol. of curarine can overpower upwards 

 of 100 mols. of nicotine, it requires i mol. of strychnine or 

 of quinine to overpower i mol. of nicotine, and i mol. of 

 aconitine can overpower at most 10 mols. of nicotine. But 

 in these cases the result appears to the authors to be intelli- 

 gible as an effect of subdivision of muscle stuff between wo 

 poisons similar to the case of the subdivision of an add 

 between two bases ; but this explanation is hardly applic- 

 able to the case of the antagonism of the strong poison 

 nicotine by the weak poison curarine.^Prof. H. E. 

 Armstrong: and E. H. Horton : Studies on enzyme 

 action, xiii., enzymes of the emulsin type. — Miss M. P. 

 FitzGeraid : Preliminary note on the origin of the hydro- 

 chloric acid in the gastric tubules. — C. J. T. Seweii : The 

 extinction of sound in a viscous atmosphere by small 

 obstacles of cylindrical and spherical form. The results 

 obtained in this paper are only valid when the dimensions 

 of the obstacles are small compared with the wave-length 

 of the incident sound. For cylinders and spheres the 

 radius of which is not less than 10- * cm. it is found that 

 the ratio of the lost energy to that incident upbn the 

 obstacle is at most of order 10-^ ; this is a very much 

 larger proportion than is obtained in the case of a non- 

 viscous air. The results obtained for a single Obstacle are 

 extended without difficulty to the case of a large number 



