May 7, 1914] 
NATURE 259 
of Leeds University, who will deliver a course of four 
lectures on ‘‘ X-Rays and Crystals.” 
Dr. R. S. Rocers, a graduate of Edinburgh Uni- 
versity, has been appointed lecturer on forensic medi- 
cine in the University of Adelaide, and Dr. Swift 
succeeds Dr. W. T. Hayward as lecturer on clinical 
medicine in the same University. 
THE committee of Livingstone College have decided 
to appoint Dr. L. E. Wigram to succeed Dr. C. F. 
Harford as principal of Livingstone College when the 
latter resigns his post at the end of July. Dr. Wigram 
was educated at Harrow School, Trinity College, 
Cambridge, and St. Thomas’s Hospital, and he is a 
graduate in medicine and arts of the University of 
Cambridge. He was formerly a medical missionary 
at Peshawar, on the north-west frontier of India, 
under the Church Missionary Society. 
In the House of Commons on Monday, the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer explained his Budget pro- 
posals. The education grant is to be reconstituted 
on the principle of making a distinction between the 
richer and the poorer areas, and between the areas 
that spend much and those that spend little on educa- 
tion. The increased cost to the Exchequer of the 
education grant will be 2,750,o00l., but this year the 
grant will be confined to the necessitous school areas. 
The Government is to contribute one-half of the cost 
of the feeding of hungry school children, and also to 
make grants for physical training, open-air schools, 
maternity centres, and technical, secondary, and 
higher education. Referring to these grants, Mr. 
Lloyd George said:—‘t‘The grants for technical, 
secondary, and higher education are to make it more 
accessible to the masses of the children, and to extend 
its sphere of influence where children show any 
aptitude to take advantage of it. We compare very 
unfavourably with Germany and the United States of 
America in this respect. There there is adequate pro- 
vision for technical training, secondary and higher 
training for every child who shows any special gift 
for taking advantage of it, and I consider that this 
fact is a greater menace to our trade than any 
arrangements of tariffs. We propose that there 
should be a very substantial grant for this purpose 
which will include a grant for pensions for secondary- 
school teachers in order to attract the best men to 
that most important profession. There will be a 
grant for the special training of teachers already in 
schools in subjects specially appropriate to rural areas, 
manual instruction, cookery, physical exercise, and 
commercial subjects. The total cost for the first year 
will be 560,o00l. for these grants, and 282,o00l. for 
the other grants which I mentioned. That will be 
for the first full year, and will be for England and 
Wales.” There will be a special grant of 750,o00l. 
for public health purposes in connection with tuber- 
culosis, nursing, and pathological laboratories. Upon 
the subject of laboratories, Mr. Lloyd George said :— 
‘“Another deficiency has been exposed in our 
health service by the operation of the Insurance Act. 
There is no provision for the scientific diagnosis of 
disease. In Germany, in almost every town, and I 
think in France, you have pathological laboratories 
which are of enormous assistance to doctors in ascer- 
taining the real character of a disease when they are 
in any doubt upon the subject. There are a few 
boroughs in the United Kingdom where something 
has been done—even in London—but we propose to 
make a grant for the purpose of aiding the local 
authorities to set up these laboratories throughout the 
United Kingdom.” 
sNOneea2 2, VOL. 793i 
‘ 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
LONDON. 
Royal Society, April 30.—Sir William Crookes, O.M., 
president, in the chair.—Prof. B. Moore; The presence 
of inorganic iron compounds in the chloroplasts of the 
green cells of plants, considered in relationship to 
natural photo-synthesis and the origin of life.—Dr. 
J. C. Willis: The lack of adaptation in the Tris- 
tichaceze and Podostemacee.—R. P. Gregory: The 
genetics of tetraploid plants in Primula sinensis. The 
paper describes results of experiments with two giant 
races of Primula sinensis, which have been shown to 
be in the tetraploid condition—that is, the plants have 
4x (48) chromosomes in the somatic cells and 2x (24) 
chromosomes in the gametic cells, whereas in the 
ordinary (diploid) races of the species the numbers are 
2x (24) and x(12) respectively. The result of most 
general interest is the discovery that reduplication of 
chromosomes has been accompanied by reduplication 
of series of factors, so that, whereas in the diploid 
zygote each factor is represented twice, AA; in the 
tetraploid zygote it is represented four times, AAAA ; 
and there are three distinct hybrid types, namely, 
AAAa, AAaa, and Aaaa. The reduplication is made 
manifest by the occurrence of F2 ratios in the form 
15D :1R, when in the diploid races the ratio is 
3D :1R. This result recalls those obtained by Nilsson- 
Ehle in oats and wheat, and by East in maize, but 
in the tetraploid Primulas the reduplication affects not 
merely the factors for isolated characters, but all the 
factors which it has been possible to study.—J. A. 
Gunn: The action of certain drugs on the isolated 
human uterus. It has been found that the involun- 
tary contractile tissues (such as the heart, intestine, 
and uterus) of mammals can be kept exsected in 
Locke’s solution at ordinary room temperatures for 
many hours, while still retaining the power of execut- 
ing normal rhythmic movements when subsequently 
placed, under the proper conditions, in oxygenated 
Locke’s solution at body temperature. With this 
knowledge, it is possible, without difficulty, to perform 
experiments on certain isolated human tissues, re- 
moved in the course of surgical operations; and those 
experiments can be made under similar conditions to, 
and therefore entirely comparable with, experiments 
made on corresponding tissues of those mammals 
ordinarily used for investigation. In this paper this 
method of investigation has first been utilised to deter- 
mine the response of the isolated human uterus to 
certain drugs.—D. J. Lloyd: The influence of osmotic 
pressure upon the regeneration of Gunda ulvae. G. 
ulvae is capable of living indefinitely in water having 
an osmotic pressure of more than 2 and less than 33 
atmospheres. The rate of regeneration of the pos- 
terior end in G. ulvae depends on the osmotic pressure 
of the medium. This osmotic pressure has “an 
optimum value for regeneration at 18 atmospheres, 
i.e. just below that of sea-water, and limiting values 
at 5 and 33-5 atmospheres. Restoration of lost parts 
in G. ulvae is brought about entirely by the undiffer- 
entiated parenchyma cells which migrate to the region 
of the wound and build up the lost parts.—Surg.-Gen. 
Sir D. Bruce, Major A. E. Hamerton, Capt. D. P. 
Watson, and Lady Bruce: (a) Glossina brevipalpis as a 
carrier of trypanosome disease in Nyasaland. (b) 
Trypanosome diseases of domestic animals in Nyasa- 
land. Trypanosoma pecorum. Part iii_Develop- 
ment in Glossina morsitans.—H. E. Armstrong and 
H. W. Gosney: Studies on enzyme action, XXII.— 
Lipase. (IV.).—The correlation of synthetic and 
hydrolytic activity. 
