]\1arch 30, 19 1 6] 



NATURE 



ii5 



primary — have been invited, and also well-known 

 leaders in industry and commerce. The chair will be 

 taken by Sir Henr>' Miers, and the draft prepared to 

 be submitted to the conference for approval suggests 

 the following subjects to be dealt with by committees 

 of experts : — (a) Reforms in administration, including 

 co-ordination of various grades of education; (&) the 

 relation of technical colleges, university courses, and 

 research scholarships to manufactures ; (c) training of 

 women for professional, technical, and commercial 

 occupations, and for domestic life ; (d) improvements 

 in the curricula of schools and in instructional mate- 

 rials and methods, so as to make them more purpose- 

 ful and adaptable to after life ; (e) extension of educa- 

 tional facilities to all juveniles after fourteen ; (/) 

 training and status of teachers, and research in educa- 

 tion ; (^) medical service and physical education ; (/i) 

 character training and training for leisure ; (i) reform 

 of examinations, also of methods of selecting candi- 

 dates for public appointments, and for promotion 

 within educational institutions. 



Arrangements have been made for the usual short 

 summer course at the Oxford School of Geography for 

 teachers and others interested in geography ; but the 

 meeting will not take place this year unless a pre- 

 scribed minimum number of applications is received 

 by the middle of April. If this number is reached an 

 introductory lecture will be given on the afternoon of 

 August 3. There will be two lectures and at least 

 one period of practical work or an excursion each 

 day. There will be short courses on selected topics 

 of physical, historical, and political geographv (especi- 

 ally geographical problems affecting the war and the 

 British Empire), on transport and trade routes, on the 

 teaching of geography, and on the Oxford district. 

 The fee will be 3?. for the whole course ; a number of 

 students will be accepted for lectures only at a fee of 

 2/. for the course, or of 2s. for single lectures. Fur- 

 ther particulars will be issued as early as possible in 

 May. Names cannot be sent in too soon, addressed 

 to the \'acation Course Secretarv, School of Geo- 

 graphy, 40 Broad Street, Oxford, to whom, also, all 

 requests for further information should be sent. 



The paper on -'Part-time Education for Boys and 

 Girls," which Mr. J. H. Reynolds read at the Confer- 

 ence of Educational Associations last January, has 

 been circulated in pamphlet form. The paper is rich 

 HI impressive facts, which demand the earnest con- 

 sideration of British statesmen. Mr. Revnol.ls points 

 out there are 71,000 half-time children, chiefly in the 

 textile districts of the north, to-day. There are some 

 193,000 children who have entirelv left school on reach- 

 ing the age of thirteen. The number of voung people 

 in England and Wales between the ages of fourteen 

 and seventeen was, according to the last census, 

 ^,030,195, to which must be added nearlv 200,000 who 

 had left school and entered into emplovment at 

 thirteen, giving a total of at least 2^ millions. About 

 430.000 of these were receiving some sort of education, 

 leaving a net total of upwards of i,8oo,coo voung 

 people who had ceased to continue their education at 

 day or evening schools. There are in England and 

 Wales 236,000 children below fourteen working half- 

 time or full-time, and 200,000 more working for wages 

 While attending school for full-time. As Mr. Revnolds 

 urges, there is an imperative necessitv for a compul- 

 j.or>' system of continued education "for all children 

 leaving the elementarv school at fourteen, who enter 

 into employment, and it might extend from six to 

 eight hours per week throughout the greater part of 

 tne year, meaning annuallv some 270 hours of sys- 

 tematic instruction extending over at least three vears. 

 NO. 2422, VOL. 97] 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, March 23. — Sir J. J. Thomson, presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — G. Green ; The main crests of ship 

 waves, and on waves in deep water due to the motion 

 of submerged bodies. The fundamental problem of 

 ship waves is to determine the wave disturbance pro- 

 duced by an arbitrary pressure system advancing over 

 the free surface. The present paf>er gives a general 

 method of obtaining the solution of the moving pres- 

 sure problem in the form of an integral, and proceeds 

 to the evaluation of the integral in some particular 

 cases of ship waves. — E. H. Nichols : Investigation of 

 atmospheric electrical variations at sunrise and sunset. 

 Observations were made for a period of fifteen minutes: 

 before and fifteen minutes after both sunrise and 

 I sunset, using the Wilson compensating gold-leaf elec- 

 . troscope for conductivity and earth-air current, and two 

 I Ebert electrometers for measuring the positive and 

 negative electric charges. The results show a decided 

 I uniform decrease in the value of electrical quantities 

 I throughout the sunset period, but the solar effect at 

 ! sunrise is not at all pronounced. The potential curves 

 I for Kew Observatory were analysed for the years 19 12 

 I and 1914 for the 30-minute period at sunrise and 

 I sunset, and monthly means obtained for 5-minute in- 

 I tervals, these being corrected for diurnal variation. 

 I There is a general increase in the potential at both 

 j sunrise and sunset, being more noticeable in the winter 

 months, but there is no evidence of any sudden change. 



■ It is possible that the electrical variations observed mav 

 j be of assistance in elucidating the problems of wireless 



■ transmission. 



• P.ARIS. 



Academy of Sciences, March 13.— M. Camille Jordan 

 : in the chair. — H. Douville : A family of Ammonites.. 

 ! the Desmoceratideae : an attempt at a rational classi- 

 I fication. The value and subordination of characters. — 

 ! M. de la Vallee-Poussin was elected a correspondant 

 j for the section of geometry in the place of Felix Klein. 

 I — J. Guillanme : Observations of the sun made at the 

 Observatory of Lyons during the third quarter of 

 1915. Observations were possible on eighty-five days, 

 of which fifty-one were consecutive, from July 24 to^ 

 September 12. — Arnaud Denjoy : Differentiation and its- 

 inverse. — Grace Chisholm Young : Derived numbers of 

 a function.^Maurice Le Pen and Jean Villey : The 

 measurement of the power of motors. — C. Dauzere r 

 The crystallisation of phenyl ether. — E. Briner : The 

 mechanism of reactions in aqua regia. A studv of 

 the reaction HNO, + 3HCl = NOCl + CU + 2H,0, w'hich- 

 is shown to be reversible. The svstem was proved to> 

 be monovariant, three phases and two independent 

 components. — Carl Stormer : The altitude of the aurora 

 borealis observed from Bossekop (Norway) during 

 the spring of the year 1913. A large number of 

 simultaneous photographs of the aurora were taken 

 from the extremities of a base line 275 kilometres 

 long, leading to 2500 determinations of the heights 

 The results are given, both in graphical and tabular 

 form. The heights vary from 86 to 180 kilometres, 

 with a maximum frequency at 105 to 106 kilometres. 

 — Ph. Flajolet : Perturbations of the magnetic declina- 

 tion at L\ons (Saint Genis Laval) during the third 

 quarter of 19 15. — F. Jadin and A. Astrnc : The man- 

 ganese in some springs of the Pyrenees range. There 

 is a certain relation between the amounts of man- 

 ganese and total mineral matter in a water. Ferru- 

 ginous waters usually contain a high proportion of 

 manganese. It was noted that although sodium 

 sulphide waters contain extremely minute proportions 

 of manganese, yet the algae growing round these 

 springs contain this element in relatively high pro- 



