February 19, 1903] 



NA TURE 



369 



found his bee went to the blue glass first thirty-one times, 

 and last only four times, while the plain glass came in for 

 first notice only five times, and last twenty-four times. The 

 other colours occupied intermediate positions in the bee's 

 favour. 



Here we have a case of which the bee could not possibly 

 have had previous experience, and where every precaution 

 was taken to avoid any undue advantage of position, &c, 

 being given to any particular colour, with a result going far 

 to prove that all other conditions being alike, colour does 

 play an important part in deciding an insect's choice. 



I would suggest that the correct method of settling the 

 question would be to cut away, not the petals, but the 

 stamens, &c. Then if insects continued to visit flowers so 

 mutilated we should have grounds for thinking that petals 

 exercise some attraction, or vice versd. 



E. Ernest Lowe. 



Municipal Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth, 

 February 9. 



Science and the Education Act of igo2. 



In two letters to you last year, I drew the attention of scientific 

 men and of others interested in the welfare of our country and 

 empire to the inferior position which scientific studies continue 

 to hold in the education of the youth of this country (see 

 Nature, vol. lxvi. pp. 3150, 459). One hoped that the 

 Education Act of 1902 would do something to remedy present 

 defects. That hope, it is to be feared, is in a poor way of being 

 realised, so far as any inference can be drawn from the com- 

 position of the " Education Committee" recently appointed by 

 the Council of a county so near to the metropolis as Hertford- 

 shire. The whole thing is little better than a jumble, the sort 

 of thing one would expect from the manipulation of a county- 

 directory in a solicitor's office. So little did the County 

 Council appear from the newspaper report to realise the gravity 

 of the task before them that they adopted en bloc and without 

 criticism the list prepared for them by the Clerk of the Peace, 

 whose first-hand knowledge of education can only be at the best 

 extremely limited. The committee-list bristles with names of 

 county respectability, including a noble earl, a few M.P. 's, a fair 

 sprinkling of J.P.'s, and among the C.C.'s elected very few 

 appear to have taken a degree at any university, while one 

 solitary name appears as a representative of science in that of 

 Sir John Evans, F. R.S., who might have been a little more 

 vigilant in this matter. 



Outside the Council, we find the name of the Dean of St. 

 Albans, a scholarly, clear-sighted, large- minded man, an acquisi- 

 tion to any committee ; then the names of the two classical 

 head-masters of Haileybury and Berkhampstead, men of the 

 type referred to in my previous letters (supra), who cannot be 

 expected to appreciate the importance of scientific education, 

 but whose position in the educational world will give adventi- 

 tious value to their opinions among the rank and file of the 

 educational ignoramuses. In a list of some twenty-one, one 

 solitary name, that of the young head-master of a not very 

 important school in this neighbourhood, appears as a repre- 

 sentative of science. It does not appear that a single repre- 

 sentative of the Army or Navy or a single graduate in science 

 or medicine finds a place on the committee ; and such men 

 resident in the county as my neighbour the principal of the 

 Diocesan Training College (who is zealously engaged in 

 attempting to train elementary teachers on scientific lines), or 

 the official secretary of University College, or myself (with a 

 record of more than a quarter of a century of public-school and 

 scientific work) seem to have been the last people to be 

 thought of. 



In the light of the above facts, can it be unfair to say that the 

 cause of progressive education in the county of Herts has 

 drifted ? And if this can happen in a county so near London, 

 what is likely to happen in the more remote counties, where 

 provincial ideas prevail more strongly? Is it not time that the 

 leading scientific societies, led by the Royal Society or by the 

 British Association, should draw up a memorandum impressing 

 upon the county and borough councils of the country the 

 serious call made to them by the Education Act to do their 

 best to strengthen the sinews of the intellectual war, which 

 (nolens volens) this country must be prepared to carry on ? 

 Had there been a single man of light and leading in the 

 Cabinet, such instructions might have been included in the Act 



NO. 1738, VOL. 67] 



or its preamble as to render such action unnecessary. But so- 

 beclouded were the minds of our legislators in the long, dreary 

 strife of bigotry and partisanship of last autumn that they seem, 

 to have lost sight of higher intellectual issues altogether. Let 

 us hope that in the great provincial centres such an important 

 point as the due representation of scientific education on the 

 educational committees will not be lost sight of. A. Irving. 

 Hockerill, Bishop's Stortford, February 6. 



RADIO-ACTIVITY OF ORDINARY MATERIALS. 



IT is now well recognised that the air in any ordinary- 

 vessel possesses the power of conducting elec- 

 tricity, although to a very slight extent. It has been 

 usual to refer to the effect as the " spontaneous ionisa- 

 tion " of the air. This name suggests that the con- 

 ductivity is in some way an essential property of the 

 air, just as the electrical conductivity of metals is in- 

 separably connected with the nature of those bodies. 

 Mr. C. T. R. Wilson, however, has found (Proc. Roy. 

 Soc, vol. lxix. p. 277) that, when other gases are substi- 

 tuted for air, the relative ionisations are in nearly the 

 same ratio as those which I observed for the same gases 

 under the action of Becquerel radiation (Phil. Trans., 

 1901, p. 507). Further, Mr. J. Patterson (Proc. Camb. 

 Phil. Soc, vol. xii. p. 44) has found that, when a large 

 vessel is used, the amount of ionisation is not propor- 

 tional to the pressure, but tends towards a limit, when 

 further increase of pressure no longer affects it. This 

 is exactly the behaviour that might be expected if the 

 effect was due to a feeble radio-activity of the walls of 

 the vessel, the radiation being easily absorbed by the air. 



I have recently carried out a series of experiments 

 with a view to decide whether the nature of the walls of 

 the vessel had any influence on the rate of discharge of 

 a charged body inside it. 



The various materials were made into cylinders, 

 13 cm. long and yq cm. in diameter. A central wire, 

 charged, and connected with an electroscope, formed 

 the leaking system. The electroscope was exhausted, 

 so as to avoid any leakage through the air in it, and, 

 before each experiment, the insulation, which was of 

 lead-glass tube, dried by the exhaustion of the vessel in 

 presence of phosphoric anhydride, was tested. No leak- 

 age could be detected. On admitting dried air, a small 

 leakage immediately set in, and its amount could be 

 measured by timing the movement of the gold leaf over 

 the scale division of a microscope with micrometer eye- 

 piece focussed upon the leaf. 



The leakage in scale divisions per hour, with various 

 materials surrounding the charged wire, is given 

 below : — 



Tin foil 3-3 



Ditto, another sample 2'3 



Glass coated with phosphoric acid i'3 



Silver, chemically deposited on glass ... ... i'6 



Zinc 12 



Lead 22 



Copper (clean) 2'3 



Ditto, thoroughly oxidised ... ... ... r'7 



Platinum (various samples) 

 Aluminium ... 



20, 29, 3-9 

 i'4 



It appears, then, that there are very marked dif- 

 ferences in the rate of the leak, when different materials 

 constitute the walls of the vessel. There can therefore 

 be little doubt that the greater part — if not the whole — 

 of the observed ionisation of air is not spontaneous at 

 all, but due to Becquerel rays from the vessel. 



It is, I think, interesting to find that the phenomena 

 of radio-activity, which have generally been regarded? 

 as rare and exceptional, are really everywhere present. 



The rate of leak with various pieces of tin foil from 

 the same stock was always the same, as nearly as the 

 experiments could show — that is, to within about 6 per 



