404 



NATURE 



[February 22, 1900 



the wind of its force. It is anticipated that the long lines of 

 plantation bordering parts of the Suez Canal will check the 

 drift of the sand from the west, causing it to pile up in a rampart 

 parallel to the canal. The trees should live and grow even when 

 nearly buried in sand, being nourished by the water at their roots. 

 The largest of the dunes described by the author are those 

 bordering the old Pelusiac branch of the Nile, eastward of the 

 Suez Canal. The height of these dunes is reckoned at 300 



Fig. 3.— a Fulj. 



eet and upwards. Once enveloped within the labyrinth of 

 sandhills, however, the dimensions appear to be much greater. 

 Under a low sun the scenery is especially remarkable. The 

 startling contrast of light and shadow, the absence of detail on 

 the smooth surfaces of pure blown sand, the steep slopes and 

 bold forms, together with great clearness of definition and a 

 death-like stillness, combine to produce a mountainous im- 

 pression. It requires an effort of reason to correct the illusion 

 of being surrounded by mountains of three thousand metres 

 rather than by hills of three hundred feet. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCA TIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



CajMBRIDge. — Mr. Frederic Harrison has been appointed 

 Rede Lecturer for the present academical year. 



The Chancellor has given official interpretations of certain 

 statutes, respecting which doubts had been raised by the Council 

 of the Senate. It appears that a Deputy Professor is declared 

 competent and bound to perform all the functions of the Pro- 

 fessor, and that it is not possible for the latter to reserve or to 

 resume any of his duties during the term for which the Deputy 

 is appointed. It also appears that the statutes give the 

 University no power to forbid Readers or Professors from 

 taking private pupils. 



The grace for limiting the scope of Part I. of the Mathe- 

 matical Tripos was rejected by 151 votes to 130; and that for 

 abolishing the order of merit, and with it the Senior Wrangler- 

 ship, was rejected by 161 votes to 129. A considerable num- 

 ber of non-resident members of the Senate attended to register 

 their votes. The other readjustments proposed by the Mathe- 

 matical Board, chiefly affecting Part II. of the Tripos, were 

 carried without a division. 



We learn from Science that the Regents of the University of 

 California have adopted the policy of giving the professors of 

 the University one year's leave of absence in seven. The 

 Sabbatical year is widely recognised by American universities, 

 and the opportunity it affords the professors of visiting distant 

 countries and fellow-workers is invaluable. The custom could 

 be introduced with advantage in our own universities and 

 colleges. 



NO. 1582, VOL. 61 j 



The London Technical Education Gazette announces that 

 botanical gardens have been laid out in Battersea, Ravenscourt 

 and Victoria parks. Good collections of plants, representing 

 various natural orders, have been obtained, and the more im- 

 portant trees and shrubs in the parks have been labelled. These 

 gardens have been specially provided for the use of teachers and 

 students of botany. Teachers who desire to obtain tickets 

 should apply to the secretary of the Board, 116, St Martin's- 

 lane, W.C, giving their names in full and the name of 

 the school where they are teaching. 



At the distribution of the prizes and certificates gained 

 by the students in connection with the City and Guilds 

 of London Institute, on Thursday last. Sir Douglas Fox, 

 addressing the students, said that to specialise in study 

 too early was a great mistake. The great point was to 

 lay the foundation as wide and as broad as possible. That 

 done, the next thing was to properly apply what had 

 been learned. Mr. Watney afterwards made a statement 

 as to the results obtained during the past year, and men- 

 tioned that in one way or another the Clothworkers' 

 Company had subscribed 85,000/. towards the main- 

 tenance of the institute. At the invitation of the Royal 

 Commissioners appointed by Parliament to reorganise 

 the University of London, the executive committee 

 have recently accepted the position of a " school of the 

 University " for its Central Technical College. 



The results of an inquiry into the development of 

 technical education in connection with English Se- 

 condary Schools during the past decade, made by the 

 National Association for the Promotion of Technical 

 and Secondary Education, are given in the current num- 

 ber of the Record. It appears from the report that in 

 England alone, smce 1889, 81 new public secondary 

 schools have been established, while 215 existing 

 schools have been extended mainly for the purposes of science 

 teaching. As regards the schools in the latter category, the 

 extensions to 195 of them have resulted in the addition of 251 

 physical and chemical laboratories, 77 workshops for manual 

 training, 76 lecture-rooms, and 50 class-rooms. The total sum 

 of money involved by these developments is 764,449/. Of this 

 sum, local authorities have voted an amount of 147,496/., the 

 rating and borrowing powers of the Technical Instruction Acts 

 being utilised to raise 20,707/. and the Residue Grant supplying 

 the remainder. Taking technical and secondary schools together, 

 as many as 664 schools have been affected by the efforts of 

 County and County Borough Councils and other municipal 

 authorities and of responsible public committees. Of this 

 number of technical and secondary schools, 385 have been or 

 are being established, while there are 279 existing schools 

 which have been or are being extended or adapted. The 

 capital expenditure incurred for these purposes now reaches in 

 the aggregate 3,302,221/., of which a sum of 1,896,110/., or 

 57^ per cent., has been or is being supplied by local authorities 

 from Imperial Funds or from local rates. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (December i, 

 1899- January 2, 1900). — (i) The proceedings of the October 

 meeting in New York City are summarised, and abstracts of 

 some of the twelve papers read are given by Prof. F. N. Cole. — 

 Note on the simply transitive primitive groups, by Dr. G. A. Miller, 

 contains some theorems and corollaries which are closely con- 

 nected with a paper by the author in the Proceedings of the London 

 Mathematical Society (vol. xxviii. pp. 533-544)- The same 

 writer contributes a short note on the commutators of a given 

 group. Two theorems given are, every substitution of the alter- 

 nating group of degree n (« > 4) is a commutator of two substitu- 

 tions ot the same group. ' ' If the order of a cyclical group is odd, 

 it is the commutator sub-group of its holomorph, and all its opera- 

 tors are commutators of this holomorph. When this order is 

 even, the commutator sub-group of the holomorph includes half 

 of the operators of this cyclical group, and all these operators 

 are commutators of this holomorph." These results are partly 

 supplementary to those contained in Dr. Miller's paper on the 

 commutator groups {Bulletin, vol. iv.). — Dr. Lovett gives an 

 account of Oltramare's Calcul de generalisation. From it we 

 learn that this is the magnum opus of the writer, who is probably 



