526 



NATURE 



[April 2, 1896 



tention is to decentralise the administration of school grants by 

 the Education Department, and to throw upon those bodies the 

 duty of administering the Parliamentary grant. Should the Bill 

 become law, the general inspection of schools will be undertaken 

 by the county authority, and the Committee of Council — the 

 central government — will only have inspectors who will visit the 

 schools from time to time in order to see that the county educa- 

 tion authority is properly fulfilling its duties, and that the edu- 

 cation is up to the proper standard. It is proposed to hand 

 over to this committee the powers of the county council under 

 the Technical Instruction Act, 1889. The money received under 

 the Local Taxation Act, 1890, will be specially applicable 

 to secondary education, and will be administered by the edu- 

 cation authority, and may be accumulated. It is hoped that 

 the Bill will create a system under which all those parts of a 

 county in which there are public schools will be connected with 

 and under the authority of the county education authority, and 

 will be maintained out of the general county rate. As regards 

 secondary education, the new authority will be able to aid schools 

 out of the money at its disposal and to establish them ; and with 

 the assent of the Education Department it may take a transfer 

 from the School Boards of their higher grade schools. The 

 Bill contains numerous proposals which will revolutionise the 

 system of elementary education in this country, and greatly 

 change the positions of Board Schools and voluntary schools. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Syinons' s Moithly Meteorological Magazine, March. — Extreme 

 heat in Australia in January 1896. Mr. Russell, Government 

 Astronomer of New South Wales, writes: " We are having a 

 very hot summer. . . . Those who hold that icebergs cool the 

 weather will have a nut to crack with the icebergs on one hand, 

 and these excessive heats on the other." On January 13 the 

 temperature in the shade at Sydney rose to 108° "5. This is the 

 greatest heat recorded there since 1859 ; the highest previously 

 registered there was io6°'9 in January 1863. A temperature of 

 108° was also registered in Melbourne, but this temperature had 

 been exceeded on three occasions : in January 1862, the shade 

 temperature reached iii°"i; in 1876, iio°7, and in the 

 summer of 1882, iio°"5. In some inland parts of Victoria, 

 even higher temperatures were recorded. — Severe frost in North 

 America. Unprecedently severe weather has been experienced 

 over the Eastern States of America, and in Newfoundland. On 

 February 17 the thermometer registered 39" of frost at New 

 York, a lower reading than has been recorded so late in the year 

 since observations were begun. In the interior of the State of 

 New York a record of 49° below zero was obtained. In New- 

 foundland the winter is said to be more severe than has been 

 known for forty years. Snow was lying on the ground to a 

 depth of fifteen feet at St. John's. At Fortune Bay the entire 

 failure of the herring fishery has brought the people to the verge 

 of starvation. 



Wiedemann s Annalen der Physik tind Cheniie, No. 3. — In- 

 fluence of light upon the form of discharge of an influence 

 machine, by J. Elster and E. Geitel. The brushes and sparks 

 from a Holtz machine passing between a kathode plate of 

 amalgamated zinc and an anode sphere of any metal, are re- 

 placed by a glow discharge when the kathode is illuminated 

 with short-wave light. A smaller quantity of electricity passes 

 by this glow discharge than by the brushes and sparks in the 

 dark. — Change of resistance due to electric radiation, by E. 

 Aschkinass. Gratings made of strips of tinfoil have their series- 

 resistance lowered by electric rays. The original resistance is 

 restored by shock or heating. It is most likely that the strips 

 are bridged by free metallic particles, but certain experiments 

 tend to show that the process is molecular rather than purely 

 mechanical. — Interference of electric waves, by Viktor von 

 Lang. This was shown by an apparatus constructed on the 

 plan of that used by Quincke for sound waves. The electric 

 waves enter a tube which divides into two branches, and then 

 recombines. The length of the branches can be adjusted. 

 After recombination the waves impinge upon a Lodge " coherer" 

 which indicates interference by changes of resistance. Well- 

 defined maxima and minima were obtained, and the apparatus 

 was used for obtaining the velocity of the waves in paraffin and 

 in sulphur. The electrical index of refraction was thus found 

 to be I "648 for paraffin, and 2*333 for sulphur. These values are 

 higher than those hitherto obtained. — Fluorescence of sodium 



and potassium vapour, by E. Wiedemann and G. C. Schmidt. 

 The vapours of these metals show bright fluorescence when 

 illuminated with bright sunlight. Sodium vapour shows a con- 

 tinuous band in the red, a fluted band in the green, and the 

 bright sodium line in the yellow. Potassium vapour shows an 

 intense red band. These vapours also show electro-luminescence. 

 These results are of importance to astrophysics. The va]X)urs 

 in the solar atmosphere probably owe part of their luminosity to 

 fluorescence, and this kind of radiation would not obey Kirch- 

 hoft's law. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



NO. 1379. VOL 53] 



London. 



Royal Society, March 19.—" On the new Gas obtained 

 from Uraninite. (Seventh Note.) Remarks on Messrs. Runge 

 and Paschen's Diffusion Experiment." By J. Norman Lockyer, 

 C.B., F.R.S. 



I pointed out in a previous communication [Hoy. Soc. Proc, 

 vol. Iviii. p. 193) that, from evidence afforded by the behaviour 

 of the lines under different conditions of the spark, the gas 

 obtained from cleveite is in all probability compound. 



Some time afterwards (July 11, 1895) Messrs. Runge and 

 Paschen published {Sitz. der K. Preus. Akad. der Wiss. zu 

 Berlin, vol. xxxiv. , 1895) the same conclusion, and, as a result 

 of a diffusion experiment (Nature, vol. Hi. p. 321) described in 

 their paper, they came to the conclusion that the gas giving the 

 line Dj was heavier than the gas giving the line 50157. As 

 they themselves, however, pointed out, the result was not final, 

 because the pressures were not the same. As it is important for 

 stellar classification to settle this matter, I have recently made 

 some experiments in which the pressures remain the same. The 

 experiments are not yet finished, but the first, which was made 

 on January 22, 1896, seems to leave no doubt on one point of 

 the investigation. 



An U-tube was taken, and at the bend was fixed a plaster of 

 Paris plug about f5 cm. thick; in one of the limbs two platinum 

 wires were inserted. The plug was saturated with hydrogen to 

 free it from air ; the tube was then plunged into a mercury trough, 

 and fixed upright with the limbs full of mercury. Into the leg 

 (A) with the platinum wires a small quantity of hydrogen was 

 passed, and as soon after as possible another small quantity of a 

 mixture of helium and hydrogen from samarskite was put up the 

 other limb (B) of the U-tube. 



Immediately after the helium was passed into the limb (B), 

 spectroscopic observations were made of the gas in the limb (A); 

 D3 was already visible, and there was no trace of 50157. This 

 result seems to clearly indicate that if a true diffusion of one 

 constituent takes place, the component which gives D3 is lighter 

 than the one which gives the line at wave-length 50157. 



Athough this result is opposed to the statement made by 

 Runge and Paschen, it is entirely in harmony with the solar and 

 stellar results. In support of this I may instance that of the 

 cleveite lines associated with hydrogen in the chromosphere, and 

 the stars of Group III7, those allied to D3 are much stronger 

 than those belonging to the series of which 50157 forms part. 



Physical Society, March 27. — Prof. Carey Foster, Vice- 

 president, in the chair. -pPr^LJ.^. Fleming read a paper on 

 the Edison effect: — tW Edison effect alluded to in the title of 

 the paper is that if a metal plate is placed inside the loop of an 

 incandescent lamp, then a galvanometer of which one terminal 

 is connected to this metal plate, and the other to the positive 

 lead of the lamp, will indicate a current passing from the lead 

 to the plate. If, however, the galvanometer is connected to the 

 plate and the negative lead, no current passes. Prof. Fleming, 

 by connecting the poles of a condenser, firstly to the two leads, 

 secondly to the plate and positive lead, and thirdly to the plate 

 and negative lead, and in each case discharging the condenser 

 through a galvanometer, has shown that after the lapse of a cer- 

 tain time, depending on the position of the plate, if the lamp is 

 working at about four watts per candle, the potential of the 

 plate falls to that of the negative lead. If the plate, instead of 

 being inside the loop of the filament, is outside, then the time 

 taken by the plate to acquire the potential of the negative lead 

 is considerably longer. The space between the plate and the 

 negative lead exhibits a kind of unilateral conductivity, for a 

 battery having a low voltage is able to send a current from the 

 plate to the negative lead, but not in the opposite direction. If 

 instead of using a cold metal plate a second filament, maintained 



