April 7, 19 10] 



NA TURE 



179 



'v, and the health of the children in this country should 

 e less cared for than that of the children in German 

 jLiiuols. The care of adolescents came in for careful 

 iebate. Sir Henry Hibbert, chairman of the Lancashire 

 County Education Committee, said the duty of providing 

 er discipline and training for all children during the 

 > which follow the day-school period is receiving atten- 

 uon in many countries, all of which seem to be moving 

 towards three conclusions : — (i) that increased effort should 

 be made by the State to compel local authorities to organise, 

 according to the needs of different localities and of different 

 trades, courses of instruction useful to any child, and so 

 planned as to train them for healthy living and for the 

 duties of citizenship ; (2) that there should be a further 

 ' litation of the hours of juvenile labour; and (3) that 

 nployers, Government as well as private, should be 

 -ui impelled by law to enable any persons of less than seven- 

 Iteen or eighteen years of age employed by them to attend 

 |»urses of instruction, general or technical, for a specified 

 number of hours per week at times during which the pupils 

 [would not be too tired to profit by the instruction. Deal- 

 jing with the same subject. Miss Adier, of the London 

 tCounty Council, explained that the aim of the trade schools 

 the London County Council is not entirely to supersede 

 jrenticeship, but to reduce the period of indenture, and 

 enable the lad to enter the workshop already equipped 

 take an intelligent interest in workshop processes, to 

 die tools effectively, and to be in a better position to 

 [earn by observation than the lad who enters the workshop 

 ;direct from school. The development of handicraft side by 

 side with the general intelligence is the primary aim of 

 Tthe trade school, and when this is possible on practical 

 (lines postponement of entry into the workshop is a distinct 

 (advantage, more especially when the trade side of the 

 work is to some extent supervised by members engaged in 

 ■*■ industry taught in the school. It was pointed out 

 ig the conference that the cost of compulsory attend- 

 between fourteen and seventeen would be some 

 |»625,oooZ., and if the age were increased to eighteen 

 j,5oo,oooJ. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES, 



London'. 

 Royal Microscopical Society. March 16.— Prof. J. A 

 Thomson, president, in the chair. — Miss L. S. M. 

 Summers : Antipatharians from the Indian Ocean. 

 Fourteen species were dealt with, including three which 

 are new, viz. Cirripathes indica, Antipathes salicoides, 

 Pteropathes simpsoni. In several cases the presence of 

 well-preserved polyps made it possible to remove some of 

 the doubts which Brook expressed in regard to various 

 species. The paper referred also to certain peculiarities 

 in the polyps and spines. The collections were made at 

 Ibo, in Portuguese East Africa, and in the Mergui Archi- 

 "0.— -E. M. Nelson : The visibility of the tertiaries 

 oscinodiscus aster omphalus in a balsam mount. The 

 uthor directed attention to the continued improvement in 

 icroscope objectives, and particularly to a new |-inch 

 ijective by Zeiss. Twelve years ago he received a slide 

 Nottingham deposit mounted in sulphide of arsenic, and 

 then saw, for the first time, the tertiaries in Coscino- 

 aster omphalus. He had had a balsam mounted 

 ted slide of this diatom since 1876, and had tested 

 'reds of objectives upon it, but these tertiaries had 

 been visible. Recently he received from Messrs. 

 a long tube |-inch apochromatic object-glass of 

 1-4, and it was tested on this balsam-mounted slide. 

 tertiaries which had for so many years eluded the 

 >r;r) of all kinds of lenses were conspicuous. This 

 ipochromatic J-inch was more sensitive to tube length, 

 "i a larger axial cone, bore a deeper eye-piece, and 

 sharper definition than any microscope lens he had 

 iously seen. — A. A. C. Eliot Merlin : The measure- 

 it of the diameter of the flagella of the cholera bacillus 

 •ared by LofHer's method. Slides of bacteria are pre- 

 ^ by LofHer's method to render the flagella more 

 . demonstrable, as the organism and its appendages 

 ire greatly distended by the process, thus rendering them 

 "omparatively coarse objects. Little has been attempted 



as regards the measurement of these appendages since 

 Dr. Dallinger, read his paper on the measurement of the 

 diameter of the flagella of Bacterium termo in 1878. The 

 author of the paper obtained his results by what are 

 termed extinction measurements, the resulting measure- 

 ments being for the finest flagella 1/ 64725-inch and for the 

 coarser i /62226-inch. He checked these results by 

 measuring, by means of a filar micrometer, the flagellum 

 of a selected specimen, the measurement by this method 

 giving a diameter of i /66756-inch as against i /64725-inch 

 of a flagellum of approximately similar fineness measured 

 by the extinction method. 



Geological Society, March 23.— Prof. W. W. Watts, 

 F.R.S., president, in the chair. — L. Moysey : Palaeoxyris 

 and other allied fossils from the Derbyshire and Notting- 

 hamshire Coalfield. After reviewing the bibliography of 

 Palaeoxyris, the author records the finding of twenty-two 

 specimens from Shipley Clay-pit (Derbyshire) and above 

 130 from Digby Clay-pit (Nottinghamshire), also several 

 isolated examples from other localities in the district. He 

 describes Palaeoxyris helicteroides (Morris), noting especi- 

 ally the presence of a " beak," which had not hitherto 

 been adequately described. He then describes Palaeoxyris 

 prendeli (Lesquereux) from Shipley Clay-pit, again noticing 

 the formation of the " beak." The discovery of 

 Palaeoxyris johnsoni (Kidston) from Digby is noted, and 

 it is proposed that this fossil be removed into the genus 

 Vetacapsula. The author also describes a specimen of 

 Vetacapsula cooperi (Mackie and Crocker) from Newthorpe 

 Clay-pit (Nottinghamshire). 



Cambridge. 

 Philosophical Society, March 14. — Prof. Bateson, 

 president, in the chair. — Sir J. J. Thomson : The cause 

 of the phosphorescence of the glass in vacuum tubes when 

 the pressure is not very low. — ^J. A. Crowwther : Trans- 

 mission of /3 rays. — ^J. L. Glasson : Secondary X-rays from 

 metallic salts. These experiments show that the absorp- 

 tion coefficient of the secondary homogeneous X-rays from 

 the metals of the chromium-silver group is unaffected by 

 the combination of the metal with certain acid radicles. 

 The only effect of the combination is the superposition of 

 a small quantity of hard scattered radiation on the homo- 

 geneous radiation of the metal. Moreover, the valency of 

 the element has no influence on the secondary homogeneous 

 radiation from it. The absorption coefficient of the 

 characteristic radiation from manganese is deduced from 

 the absorption curve of manganese sulphate. — S. G. 

 Lusby : Some experiments on ionisation in dried air. All 

 the known properties of ions have been found to vary with 

 the amount of moisture present in the gas experimented 

 on, but in all cases the negative ion is the more susceptible. 

 Hence it was thought that if the gas were dried, it should 

 acquire a positive charge. The experiment was therefore 

 tried, liquid air being used as the drying agent. On 

 testing a stream of air which had been, ionised and then 

 dried, no indication of electric charge was detected. By 

 using another* method, it was found that both the positive 

 and the negative ionisation are increased greatly by this 

 drj'ing action, but in an equal ratio, which in some cases 

 amounted to ten. This was found to be due to decreased 

 re-combination. The effect could be eliminated by 

 previously filtering the air. 



DrnuN. 

 Royal Dublin Society, March 22. — Mr. R. U. Praeger 

 in the chair. — Prof. T, Johnson and Miss R. Hensman : 

 Agricultural seeds and their weed impurities ; a source of 

 Ireland's alien flora. The first-named author stated that as 

 under the Weeds and Seeds .\ct for Ireland he had ceased to 

 be responsible for the seed-testing station of which he had 

 been director during the ten years of its existence (1900-9), 

 the paper he communicated gave a summary of the puri^ 

 and germination percentage of the 11,000 samples of seeds 

 already tested, and of the weed-seeds found in these 

 samples. Utilising the results of Dr. Stebler's investiga- 

 tions, he showed how many of the weed-seeds serve as 

 source-indicators of the agricultural seeds sold. The paper 

 contains also a list of casuals already recorded in the Irish 

 flora, so far as these are traceable to introduction in seed. 

 A list of 120 weed-seeds is given, 75 per cent, of which 

 are the seeds of non-indigenous weeds. 



NO. 2 no, VOL. 83] 



