164 



NA TURE 



[December 14, 1899 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Oxford. — A statute will be promulgated early next term 

 •with the intention of instituting degrees of Doctor of Letters 

 and Doctor of Science. The present statutes provide for the 

 degree of Bachelor of Letters and Bachelor of Science, for 

 which a course of special study or research, and a residence of 

 two years, are required. Several of these research degrees have 

 been granted during the last four years. It is now proposed 

 that the Doctorate should be instituted, for which a candidate 

 shall submit published papers or books containing an original 

 contribution to the advancement of learning or science. A 

 candidate for the degree of Doctor of Science must either be a 

 Bachelor of Science of twenty-six terms standing, or a Master 

 of Arts of thirty-nine terms standing. 



The B.Sc. degree has been granted to Mr. H. N. Dickson, 

 of New College ; his dissertation consisted of a chemical and 

 physical examination of the surface waters of the North Atlantic 

 collected during 1896 and 1897, and contained 4000 estimations 

 of the salinity. 



The lecture list announced for next term contains those to be 

 delivered under the newly instituted School of Geography. 



Dr. John Scott Haldane has been reappointed lecturer in 

 physiology for a period of three years 



The newly instiiuted John Locke scholarship in mental 

 philosophy has not been awarded. 



The following alternative subjects are recommended for the 

 Johnson MemoriaL Prize in 1903: (l) periodic orbits ; (2) 

 meteors ; (3) an investigation of the image of a star in a 

 telescope as afifected by the physical properties of light. 



Dr. J. A H. Murray, editor of the "New English 

 Dictionary," has been appointed Romanes lecturer for 1900. 



The annual grant of 300/. to the chemistry department of the 

 University Museum has been renewed for five years, and the 

 sum of 170/. is to be spent on cases for the Pitt-Rivers Museum. 

 \ Cambridge. — Prof. Marshall Ward has been elected a 

 member of the General Board of Studies. 



Mr. Timothy Holmes and Prof. W. Burnside, F.R.S., have 

 been elected Honorary Fellows of Pembroke College. 



A Shuttleworth Scholarship in Botany and Comparative 

 Anatomy will be awarded at Caius College in March next. The 

 value is 55/. a year for three years, and candidates must be 

 medical students of the university of not less than eight terms' 

 standing. Application is to be made to the senior tutor before 

 March i. 



Mr. R. T. Glazekrook's successor as principal of University 

 College, Liverpool, is Mr. A. W. W. Dale, Fellow and Tutor 

 of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 



Sir William C. Macdonald, of Montreal, has founded a 

 Chair of Geology for McGill University in that city, as a 

 memorial of the late Sir William Dawson. According to the 

 terms of the gift, the income of the endowment will be paid to 

 Lady Dawson during her lifetime, and on her death will become 

 available for the maintenance of the new Chair. 



At University College, London, a course of eight lectures 

 dealing with the methods of spectroscopy especially in connec- 

 tion with the photography of the spectrum will be given on 

 Friday evenings, at 5.30, by Mr. E. C. C. Baly, commencing 

 on January 19, 1900. Among the subjects to be treated and 

 illustrated by experiments are :^The history of the determin- 

 ation of the modern standards of wave lengths ; the comparison 

 of spectra and determination of wave lengths visually and photo- 

 graphically with prism apparatus ; the determination of wave 

 lengths with the grating ; and methods of producing emission 

 and absorption spectra. 



A COPY of the special report on the new department of 

 agricultural chemistry of the University College of Wales, 

 Aberystwyth, recently submitted to the Court of Governors, has 

 been received. The work of this promising department of the 

 College is carried on in premises specially designed for the pur- 

 pose. This accounts for the convenient arrangements for access 

 and inter-communication shown upon the plan which accom- 

 panies the report. The rooms and the laboratory fittings give 

 evidence that much care has been taken to design arrangements 

 which will conserve the energies of the staff, and give facilities 

 for good practical work by the students. 



NO. 1572, VOL. 61] 



On Thursday last, upon the occasion of the distribution of 

 prizes and certificates to the successful students of the Gold- 

 smiths' Company's Technical and Recreative Institute, New 

 Cross, Mr Asquith made a few remarks on the work of 

 polytechnic institutes in London. He pointed out that in the 

 metropolitan area, north and south of the Thames, there are no 

 lessthan eleven institutions of thiskind, with four or five subsidiary 

 branches, upon which a capital expenditure of no less than 

 500,000/., at the least, has been made, with an annual expense 

 to those who promoted them of something like 130,000/., and 

 with an attendance of no less than 50,000 students. The 

 Goldsmiths' Institute is not only one of the most flourishing 

 among London polytechnic institntions, but in some respects it 

 is unique. Unlike every other institution of the kind in 

 London, it does no: receive grants of money either from the 

 Technical Board of the London County Council or from the 

 Central Parochial Foundation of the City of London. The 

 whole cost, except the comparatively insignificant sum received 

 from the students' fees, is defrayed out of the funds of the Gold- 

 smiths' Company. 



The Times reports that the executive committee of the Agri- 

 cultural Education Committee has recently passed a series of 

 resolutions including the following : — (i) That, in view of the 

 importance of concentrating the control of agricultural and rural 

 education in the hands ot one Government department, it is 

 expedient that all the educational work of the Board of Agri- 

 culture should be transferred to the new Board of Education ; 

 (2) that the staff of the new Board should include an adequate 

 number of inspectors, well acquainted with the needs of the 

 agricultural classes and the conditions of country life ; (3) that 

 the Board's inspectors should be instructed to see that the cur- 

 ricula of rural schools are differentiated from those of urban 

 schools. With regard to training, the committee think that 

 provision should at once be made at certain of the teachers' 

 training colleges for giving those students who desire it practical 

 as well as theoretical instruction in subjects bearing on agri- 

 culture and horticulture ; and that a special rural teachers' 

 certificate should be awarded to those teachers who have gone 

 through a full course of instruction, practical and scientific, in 

 agricultural subjects. As to higher agricultural instruction, it is 

 suggested that the Board of Education should encourage those 

 county authorities, who have not yet done so, to provide, or to 

 contribute to, school and experimental farms, and should inspect 

 and report annually on such farms ; that no more certificates for 

 proficiency in the " principles of agriculture " should be granted 

 to persons who have not completed an adequate course of prac- 

 tical instruction ; and that the courses for Schools of Science 

 situate in country districts should be differentiated from those 

 of urban schools of science by substituting instruction in agri- 

 cultural science and experimental agriculture for that in other sub- 

 jects. Another resolution suggests that, with a view to interest 

 agricultural societies in the work of agricultural education, they 

 should be supplied with leaflets, reports, &c., to distribute 

 among their members, who should be invited to visit agri- 

 cultural schools and experimental plots in their neiglibourhood, 

 and to discuss them at their meetings. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Physical Society, December 8.— Prof. G. Carey Foster, 

 F.R.S., Vice-President, in the chair.— Prof. S. P. Thompson 

 read a paper on obliquely crossed cylindrical lenses. Any two 

 cylindrical lenses crossed obliquely are optically equivalent 

 to two other cylindrical lenses crossed rectangularly, and hence 

 to a sphero-cylindrical lens. Owing to the difliculty of manu- 

 facturing cylindrical lenses with the axes of the opposite faces 

 in different directions, it becomes of importance to the optician 

 to be able to calculate the constants of the equivalent but more 

 easily ground sphero-cylindrical lens. To a first approxima- 

 tion a surface of radius of curvature " r" will impress upon a 



Diane wave a curvature of ^ where "w" 's the refractive 



^ r 



index of (he material. If we suppose an equiconvex cylindrical 

 lens cut by two planes at right angles, the line of intersection 

 of the planes passing normally through the centre of the lens, 

 then the sections of the lens will in general be portions of 



