374 



NATURE 



[June 29, 1916 



was accepted with considerable applause and gratitude, 

 and led to other members of the meeting making 

 further offers. Messrs, Bell Bros., Ltd., and Messrs. 

 Dorman, Long and' Co., Ltd., and their allied firms 

 offered io,ooo2., and Messrs. Sir Bernard Samuelson 

 and Co., Ltd., 5000Z., towards the equipment. It is 

 expected that the sum of 100,000/. will be obtained 

 without difficulty. The minor scheme of establishing 

 a metallurgical laboratory is being proceeded with, 

 and part of its equipment may come out of the 

 generous donations which have been made, and at 

 the end of the war the equipment will be transferred 

 to the new Constantine Technical College. 



It is somewhat of a novelty to find in a paper such 

 as the Manchester Guardian, in its issue of June 19, 

 a full-column advertisement urging the claims of 

 education. But "it brings hope with it and forward- 

 looking thoughts," since it gives welcome evidence 

 that- the value of education has at last come home to 

 the British business man, who now sees that "national 

 education of the broadest possible kind is the onlv 

 method by which we can secure permanent British 

 trade supremacy." The advertiser, Mr. C. F. Higham, 

 realises that this cannot be done unless measures are 

 taken to ensure for every child of the nation "a 

 sound, efficient education " at the hands of more and 

 much better paid teachers, and that such effective 

 training should be followed by specialised teaching in 

 every branch of industry for both employers and 

 employed. He further urges a closer co-operation 

 between capital and labour, and a better appreciation 

 of their respective functions. " National education is 

 a fundamental need." It " should be the national 

 extravagance after the war." Let us maintain the 

 same energy of organisation and of production for 

 the purposes of peace that we have shown in equip- 

 ment for war. The cost will be heavy, but it is the 

 price demanded for efficiency, and, as the war has 

 clearly shown, our financial resources are fully equal 

 to any demands required for the well-being of the 

 nation. This is a timely plea that British industrial 

 enterorise shall be fostered and maintained upon a 

 sound footing, namely, that of an " all-round en- 

 lightenment," and that no mere " tinkering with 

 tariffs or makine mild concessions after strikes will 

 ensure it." .Amidst all this strife it might, perhaps, 

 be as well to listen to a voice of the eighteenth 

 century, that of Rousseau in his " Emile " : "To live 

 is the trade I would teach him." 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Meteorological Society, June 21. — Major H. G. 

 Lyons, president, in the chair.^ — J. E. Clark and H. B. 

 Adames: Report on the phenological observations for 

 1915. The year, as a whole, approxirhated closely 

 to the mean for the twenty-five years over which 

 records now extend, being, if anything, a shade 

 earlier; but this new mean for England and Wales, 

 falling on May 18 (taking the whole British Isles, 

 the mean date is May 21), is a day earlier than that 

 for the twenty years. Every one of the intervenin.c^ 

 years was early, whilst the four preceding these had 

 been late; 1914 was seven days earlier than 1915, of 

 which the outstanding features were the mild and 

 very wet winter; the following period of drought, 

 interrupted in most parts through July and early 

 August, in others almost continuous through October ; 

 the genial conditions, as a whole, in April and June, 

 but with cold spells and frosts in May and June ; the 



NO. 2435, VOL. 97] 



cold, sunless, wet Jjjly, followed by a genial autumn 

 ending in the unprecedented November frosts. The 

 cold periods in spring affected migrants adversely, 

 the mean date being April 26, compared with April 24 

 in 19 14 and April 23 for the twenty years' mean of 

 the Natural History Journal records, 1877 to 1896. 

 An important appendix deals with a communication 

 by Dr. Ihne, of Darmstadt, extending to the British 

 Isles the mean date, in six weekly zones, of the 

 coming of spring in various parts, such as he has 

 carried out for the Continent. The map representing 

 this roughly shows that Central England corresponds 

 to Belgium, North England and the Lowlands of 

 Scotland to Holland, and the northern Highlands to 

 Denmark. Ireland has similar zones, except the last, 

 the southern parts, as also in England, coming under 

 the two earlier zones, starting from April 17. — M. 

 Christy and W. Marriott: Audibility of the gun-firing 

 in Flanders over the south-east of England, Sep- 

 tember, 1914-April, 1916. The sound of the fighting 

 in Flanders has been repeatedly heard in many parts 

 of the south-east of England since an early period of 

 the war. From the records collected it appears thatj 

 the gun-firing has been heard at one time or another! 

 over the counties of Essex, London, Kent, Surrey, andl 

 Sussex, the most distant place being about 150 miles] 

 from Ypres. The weather charts show that gener-* 

 ally there is a somewhat irregular or not definitely 

 defined distribution of barometric pressure, but mostly 

 with a region of high pressure wedged in between 

 areas of slightly lower pressure. These conditions 

 are such as to produce light winds at the surface, 

 mostly between north and east, over the neighbour- 

 hood of the North Sea. Aspect and elevation are also 

 important factors for the hearing of the firing. — 

 Lieut. F. H. Chapman: The relation between atmo- 

 spheric pressure and rainfall at a single station. In 

 this paper the author deals with the relationship 

 between (i) actual pressure values and rainfall, and 

 (2) mean pressure values and rainfall Itotals. The 

 former relationship is small, and the author deals 

 with it by the method of probability values. Curves 

 are given showing the chances of rain at Kew 

 during the hour 6.30 a.m.-7.3o a.m., and during the 

 twenty-four hours 7.30 a.m.-7.3o a.m., according to 

 the height of the barometer at 7 a.m. These curves 

 are based on data for Kew for the ten years 1904-13. 

 The relationship between mean pressure and rainfall 

 totals is dealt with by the method of correlation. 

 The coefficients obtained are high, and the correspond- 

 ing regressions are shown to be very nearlv linear. 

 In this latter part of the paper, data for Kew and 

 Valencia for the forty-seven years 1869-1915 are 

 used. 



Mineralogical Society, June 20.— Dr. A. E. H. Tutton, 

 past-president, in the chair. — Dr. J. W. Evans : The 

 relations between different laws oif twinning giving 

 the same twin-crystal. If the untwinned crystal has 

 no symmetry, different twin-laws give different results. 

 In the presence of a centre of symmetry an axis of 

 rotation-twinning is an axis of reflection-twinning. 

 An axis of rotation-twinning lying in a plane of sym- 

 metry has at right angles to it in the same pfane 

 an axis of reflection-twinning. If the normal to a 

 plane of symmetry be an axis of rotation-twinning, or 

 if a line of symmetry (axis of even symmetry) be an 

 axis of reflection-twinning, the same result may be 

 obtained by the complete inversion of the structure ; 

 vice versd, in an inversion-twin the normal to every 

 plane of symmetry is an axis of rotation-twinning, 

 and every line of symmetry is an axis of reflection- 

 twinning. If a twin-axis be at right angles to an 

 axis of n degrees of symmetry, there will be in all 

 n twin-axes of the same kind at right angles to the 



