June 30. 1910] 



NATURE 



545 



The electors have appointed Mr. Raphael Meldola, 

 F.R.S., professor of chemistry in Finsbury Technical 

 College, City and Guilds of London Institute, to deliver 



e Herbert Spencer lecture in the course of next 



ichaelmas term. No more appropriate selection could 

 have been made than that of Prof. Meldola, whose wide 

 range of scientific knowledge and interest, extending far 

 beyond the bounds of his special subject, and whose well- 

 known sympathy with everything which can tend to further 

 the progress and popularise the results of physical and 

 biological research, justify the expectation that his lecture 

 will be of exceptional interest and value. The subject and 

 date of the lecture will be announced later. 



Mr. Selwyn Image, who has recently been elected to 

 the Slade professorship of fine art, is well known to 

 naturalists as a keen student and collector of the British 

 Lepidoptera. He is a Fellow of the Entomological Society 

 of London, and is at present serving on the council of that 

 society. 



The delegates of the common university fund propose 

 shortly to appoint a reader in social anthropology. 



At the tercentenary festival of Wadham College, held on 

 June 23, allusion was made both by Lord Curzon and by 

 Sir Archibald Geikie to the connection of the college with 

 the early history of the Royal Society. The latter speaker 

 gave it as his opinion that but for Dr. John Wilkins, the 

 warden of Wadham, under whose auspices the Oxford 

 meetings of " the association of certain worthy persons 

 inquisitive in Natural Philosophy " (Walter) began about 

 1648 or 1649, the Royal Society might never have come 

 into existence. 



Sheffield. — Dr. J. Robinson has been appointed junior 

 lecturer and demonstrator in physics, and Mr. J. Miller 

 assistant in the architectural department. 



Mr. H. S. Jackson, research assistant in plant pathology 

 at the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station, has been 

 appointed professor of botany and plant pathology in the 

 Oregon Agricultural College. 



The Speech Day of the Merchant Venturers' Technical 

 College, Bristol, will be Friday, July 22, when Colonel 

 F. C. Ord, C.B., the master of the Society of Merchant 

 Venturers, will distribute the prizes. 



Dr. H. S. Jennings, hitherto professor of experimental 

 zoology at the Johns Hopkins University, has been 

 appointed professor of zoology and director of the bio- 

 logical laboratorv of the same University, in succession to 

 the late Prof. W. K. Brooks. 



The Cleveland College of Phj'sicians, now the medical 

 department of Ohio Wesleyan University, is to be consoli- 

 dated with the medical department of Western Reserve 

 University at the close of the present college year. Mr. 

 H. M. Hanna has given the sum of 50.000Z. as an addi- 

 tional endowment fund for the medical department. 

 j It is announced in Science that two more industrial 

 fellowships for the investigation of the diseases of plants 

 (making four in all) have been established in the New 

 York State College of Agriculture. They are to be known 

 respectively as the Herman Frasch fellowship and the 

 John Davey fellowship. The first-named provides for the 

 investigation of the use of dry sulphur as a fungicide both 

 to the plants and in the soil, and the second provides for 

 the investigation of heart-rot of trees. 



A NEW University for Natal is, says the Westminster 

 Gazette, to be opened formally in August next. It is 

 anticipated that a large number of students will be enrolled 

 at once. Under the South Africa Act of Union the 

 University will come under the jurisdiction of the Union 

 Government, while education, other than higher education, 

 will be vested in the Provincial Council for a period of at 

 least five years. The Act establishing the University pro- 

 vides that instruction shall be given in classics, literature, 

 law. science and art. and other studies. Designs for a 

 handsome building have been approved by the Natal 

 Government. Already Mr. W. N. Roseveare has been 

 appointed professor of mathematics and Mr. Bews pro- 

 fessor of botany and geology. 



The Rural Education Conference, which has been con- 

 stituted by the Presidents of the Board of Agriculture and 



NO. 2122, VOL. 8$] 



Fisheries and the Board of Education, for the discussion 



of all questions connected with education in rural districts, 

 and for the periodical exchange of views between repre- 

 sentative agriculturists and the two departments, will be 

 composed as follows : — Lord Moreton, Lord Barnard, the 

 Right Hon. Lord Belper, the Right Hon. Lord Reay, 

 G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., the Right Hon. A. H. Dyke Acland, 

 the Right Hon. H. Hobhouse, Sir Francis A. Channing, 

 Bart., M.P., Sir A. K. Rollit, Major P. G. Craigie, C.B., 

 Mr. Graham Balfour, Mr. C. Bathurst, M.P., Mr. G. A. 

 Bellwood, Mr. J. F. Blackshaw, Mr. W. F. Brockholes, 

 Mr. G. G. Butler, Mr. A. W. Chapman, Mr. F. J. 

 Chittenden, Mr. S. H. Cowper-Coles, Mr. D. Davies, M.P., 

 Major J. W. Dent, Mr. H. J. Elwes, F.R.S., Prof. W. R. 

 Fisher, Mr. P. Hed worth Foulkes, Mr. W. J. Grant, Mr. 

 A. D. Hall, F.R.S., Mr. W. A. Haviland, Prof. C. Bryner 

 Jones, Mr. T. Latham, Mr. J. L. Luddington, Mr. H. 

 Martin, Mr. E. Mathews, Rev. R. Mever, Mr. W. Parlour, 

 Mr. C. N. P. Phipps, Mr. J. H. Sabin, Mr. A. F. Somer- 

 ville. Prof. W. Somerville, Mr. A. E. Bromehead-Soulby, 

 Mr. C. Turnor, Mr. F. Verney, M.P.. Prof. T. Winter, 

 and Prof. T. B. Wood. The Right Hon. H. Hobhouse 

 will act as chairman of the conference, and Mr. E. G. 

 Howarth, of the Board of Education, and Mr. H. L. 

 French, of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, will act 

 as joint secretaries. 



On May 28, at the Regent Street Polytechnic, London, 

 Mr. Blair (education officer to the London County Council) 

 gave an address on " The Newer Education " to the 

 members of the Federated Associations of London Non- 

 primary Teachers. Mr. Blair said that the adverse 

 criticisms sometimes passed on the results of modern 

 elementary education arise from ignorance of the progress 

 that has really been made in this direction during the last 

 fifty years. There is now hardly an illiterate person in 

 the country, and, moreover, the facts that crime has 

 decreased, that sanitary conditions have improved, that 

 the death-rate has fallen, and that the funds of savings 

 banks and provident societies show a steady increase, must 

 all be attributed indirectly to the work done in elementary 

 schools. We were in this respect far ahead of Germany. 

 An important part of the recent work of the London County 

 Council has been the institution of its scheme of scholar- 

 ships for children fit to pass from the elementary to the 

 secondary schools. The full development of this scheme 

 is yet to come, for there is a distinct need that the child, 

 leaving the secondary school at the age of sixteen and not 

 wishing to take up elementary-school teaching, shall have 

 some course of definite technical training. So far as 

 wage-earning capacity is concerned, boys and girls leaving 

 secondary schools at this age are in no better position 

 than children leaving the elementary schools at the age of 

 fourteen. After reading certain examiners' reports refer- 

 ring to the unsatisfactory work in some secondary schools, 

 Mr. Blair stated that there is still a tendency for this work 

 to be too academic in character, and he urged that 

 secondary-school teachers must strive to correlate their 

 teaching with the facts of life, and remember that upon 

 them falls a large part of the responsibility for training 

 the child for its future duties as a citizen of the Empire. 

 Some statesmen consider that before long we may be 

 called upon to meet a serious national emergency, and the 

 way in which we shall do this will depend on the work 

 of the teachers both in the elementary and in the secondary 

 schools. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, June 2^. — Mr. A. B. Kempe, vice-president 

 and treasurer, in the chair. — A. Mallock : Damping of 

 sound by frothy liquids. The object of the note is (i) to 

 explain the well-known fact that a vessel which, when 

 empty or filled with a homogeneous liquid, gives a musical 

 note when struck, ceases to do so when the liquid contains 

 bubbles of gas ; (2) to direct attention to the fundamental 

 difference between the damping of waves propagated 

 through a gas containing spheres of liquid (e.g. rain or 

 fog), and that which occurs in a liquid containing bubbles 

 of gas. The damping of sound waves by fog has received 

 considerable attention, and it has been shown that although 



