Marcu 12, 1914] 
NATURE 
4G 
Times, included toool. from the Drapers’ Company 
and 5ool. from the Clothworkers’ Company, 
Tue presidency of Johns Hopkins University, Balti- 
more, which has been vacant since the resignation of 
Dr. Ira Remsen in 1912, has been filled by the appoint- 
ment of Dr. Frank J. Goodnow, recently professor of 
administrative law at Columbia University, New York. 
In choosing an expert in this subject to succeed a 
chemist, Johns Hopkins has precisely followed the 
example of Harvard a few years ago, when Prof. A. 
Lawrence Lowell took the place of Dr. C. W. Eliot. 
Tue Local Lectures Summer Meeting will be held 
this year at the University of Cambridge on July 31- 
August 24. The new University examination halls 
and lecture-rooms will be used. The inaugural lecture 
will be delivered at 8 p.m. on July 31 by Sir J. J. 
Thomson. The lectures will be grouped round the 
general subject, **Some Aspects of Modern Life,” and 
among the courses announced we notice one by Dr. 
L. Doncaster on heredity in animals and man. Forms 
of entry and further information about the meetings 
will be supplied by the Rev. Dr. Cranage, Syndicate 
Buildings, Cambridge. 
Last year Messrs. Harrods, Ltd., established a 
scheme of scholarships providing the holders with a 
year’s training at their stores in commercial English, 
handwriting, arithmetic, French or Spanish, short- 
hand, typewriting, business routine, and salesmanship, 
with free meals. The scholarships are awarded on 
the nomination of shareholders; the nominees must be 
between the ages of fifteen and eighteen years, have 
had a fair education, and be able to pass a medical 
examination. They will secure a commercial educa- 
tion in which practice and theory will be combined ; 
for the mornings are given to class instruction, and 
the afternoons to work in the departments, the holder 
of-a scholarship being attached to a different depart- 
ment each month. This arrangement has worked 
admirably during the past year. Fifty scholarships 
will be available in September next, and the test 
examination for the nominees will be held in June or 
July. Messrs. Harrods’ enterprise in establishing this 
system of training young people in the principles and 
practice of business-building is to be commended, and 
we believe it will achieve notable success. 
AN article in the Westminster Gazette of March 3, 
by the Berlin correspondent of our contemporary, 
reveals a growing demand in Germany for more 
universities. It is alleged that existing universities 
are overcrowded owing chiefly to the invasion of 
foreign and of women students, and the more general 
need of university education for officials. The num- 
ber of such institutions is smaller than it was a century 
ago. Cologne, Trier, Duisburg, Helmstedt, Witten- 
berg, Frankfurt-on-Oder, Mainz, Erfurt, Altdorf, and 
Ingolstadt have all been university towns. Since the 
empire was founded the number of students has in- 
creased fourfold. In 1880 there were 30,000 students ; 
in 1905, 42,000; and last year more than 60,000. There 
are 5300 foreign and 3500 women students, and about 
4000 non-student auditors. The agitation for new 
universities came to a head last year when Hamburg, 
Frankfurt-on-Main, Dresden, Posen, Cologne, and 
some smaller towns proposed to establish universities. 
The impulse in some cases was the desire of existing 
special and technical high schools to expand into 
universities with full university status, but with a 
reduced number of faculties. The advocates of new 
universities complain that the universities have recog- 
nised with ill-will the increasing specialisation of 
NO.2405, vor. 93 | 
science; and that specialisation is now hopelessly 
ahead of them. Some reformers want not only 
specialisation within universities, but specialisation of 
the institutions themselves. Each university, while 
keeping its faculties and its general culture system, 
should aim at a predominant position in a particular 
branch of science; and should be specially well sup- 
plied with professorial chairs, seminaries, libraries, 
and collections bearing on its speciality. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
LONDON. 
Royal Society, March 5.—Sir William Crookes, presi- 
dent, in the chair.—Harold Wager: The action of light 
on chlorophyll. When chlorophyll is decomposed by 
light, at least two distinct substances are formed, one 
of which is an aldehyde or mixture of aldehydes, and 
the other an active oxidising agent, capable of bring- 
ing about the liberation of iodine from potassium 
iodide. The decomposition of chlorophyll appears to be 
due directly to the action of light and is not an after 
effect of the photo-synthesis of carbon dioxide and water. 
It takes place only in the presence of oxygen, and it 
appears to be a case of photo-oxidation, for oxygen 
is used up so completely in the process that chlorophyll 
can be used instead of pyrogallol and caustic potash 
to determine the amount of oxygen in a given amount 
of air. In the absence of oxygen no bleaching takes 
place. Carbon dioxide is not necessary to the photo- 
decomposition of chlorophyll and is not used up in the 
process, even when present in considerable quantities. 
—C. H. Warner: Formaldehyde as an oxidation pro- 
duct of chlorophyll extracts.—Franklin Kidd: The 
controlling influence of carbon dioxide in the matura- 
tion, dormancy, and germination of seeds. Experi- 
ments are described showing that germination of 
seeds can be completely inhibited by carbon dioxide in 
the atmosphere (20-30 per cent., varying with the 
temperatures used). This inhibition is not accom- 
panied by injury. The seeds germinate at once after 
removal from inhibitory CO, pressures. Experiments 
in the field showed that this action of CO, may 
actually occur in nature. If a quantity of green plant 
material is buried deep in the ground, seeds planted in 
the soil over this decaying material are inhibited in 
their germination by the CO, produced beneath them. 
This is of agricultural significance, and the fact that 
in the case of mustard seeds suspension of vitality 
continues, even after the external CO, has been re- 
moved, suggests an explanation of the common occur- 
rence of dormant seeds of this plant in fields, and 
possibly of other natural cases of delayed germination. 
-—J. Hammond and F. H. A. Marshall: The functional 
correlation between the ovaries, uterus, and mammary 
glands in the rabbit; with observations on the cestrous 
cycle.—Dr. J. F. Gaskell: The chromaffine system of 
annelids and the relation of this system to the con- 
tractile vascular system in the leech, Hirudo medi- 
cinalis. The possession of a chromaffine system, con- 
sisting of cells which take a yellow stain with chrome 
salts, is a common property of almost all members of 
the vertebrate kingdom. The presence of this reaction 
is coincident with the secretion of the pressor sub- 
stance, adrenalin, and is probably dependent upon it. 
Even in the lowest vertebrate, Petromyzon, the system 
is well developed, being diffusely though segmentally 
arranged throughout the body. Chromaftine cells 
have also been observed in certain annelids by Sommet 
and Poll, reaching their highest development in the 
Hirudinea; the reaction is given by six nerve cells in 
each segmental ganglion. The conclusion is drawn 
