May 14, 1914] 
NATURE 287 
Mr. Frank E. Huxley has resigned his lectureship 
in dental surgery. 
Dr. L. G. Parsons has been appointed assistant to 
the chair of forensic medicine and toxicology. 
A full-time lectureship in classics, ancient history, 
and archeology is being established. 
Miss M. Le Bour has been appointed to undertake 
a special investigation in helminthology in the depart- 
ment of agricultural zoology. 
Campripce.—Mr. E. R. Burdon has been appointed 
University lecturer in forestry. 
The Anthony Wilkin studentship in ethnology and 
archeology will be available at the end of the Easter 
term. Applicants should send their names, qualifica- 
tions, and a statement of the research which they 
wish to undertake, to the Vice-Chancellor before 
June 1. 
Mr. H. C. Haslam, of Gonville and Caius College, 
has been approved by the General Board of Studies 
for the degree of Doctor of Science. 
THE governors of the South Wales and Monmouth- 
shire University College at Cardiff have accepted 
the generous offer of an anonymous donor to provide 
funds for the erection of a great school of preventive 
medicine. The money value of this gift, together 
with that of Sir William James Thomas to erect a 
school for other branches of medicine in connection 
with the college, is estimated at 180,o000l. 
Two lectures entitled ‘‘La Catalyse et mes divers 
Travaux sur la Catalyse,’’ will be given by Prof. Paul 
Sabatier, of the University of Toulouse, at King’s 
College, W.C., on May 14 and 15, at 5 p.m. Special 
interest is attached to these lectures as the subject- 
matter is one with which Prof, Sabatier is particu- 
larly associated, and one from which he has obtained 
important results in the synthetical preparation of 
organic substances. 
Ir is announced in the issue of Science for May 1 
that the Catholic University of America, Washing- 
ton, will receive the greater part of the estate of 
200,000l. left by the late Mr. Theodore B. Basselin, 
of Croghan. From the same source we learn that 
Mr. James Deering, in a letter addressed to the 
trustees of North-western University and of Wesley 
Hospital, announces a gift of 200,000l. to the hospital. 
It is provided that Wesley Hospital shall be a teach- 
ing hospital under Northwestern University. The gift 
is made in honour of the donor’s father and of his 
sister. 
Pror. Sims WoopueaD, in his presidential address 
to the Royal Microscopical Society (Jour. Roy. 
Microscop. Soc., 1914, part 2, p. Iog), suggests that 
too little attention is paid in our medical schools to 
the education of the students in the technical use of 
the microscope. He urges that there should be sound 
teaching on the optical and mechanical principles on 
which are based the construction and use of the micro- 
scope, and that the best students, at any rate, should 
have some opportunity of acquiring facility in the 
use of the various types of substage condenser, dark- 
ground illumination, monochromatic illumination, 
methods of measurement, ultra-microscopic work, 
micro-spectroscopy, polarisation, and the like. 
FREE vacation courses in scientific instrument- 
making and glass-blowing will again be held this 
year at the University of Leyden. The course in 
instrument-making will include practice with modern 
machine tools, such as lathes, milling machines, etc., 
and will extend from August 20 to August 29; it will 
involve the cutting of screw threads, turning spheres, 
NO. 2324, VOL. 93] 
copying divided discs, and grinding various hardened 
objects. The course o1 elementary and advanced 
glass-blowing, from August 20 to September 2, will 
include the manufacture of vacuum tubes, vacuum 
flasks, and various other forms of apparatus used in 
physical and chemical investigation, and the manipula- 
tion of high-vacua pumps. The director of the course 
is Prof. Kamerlingh Onnes, and the secretary Dr. 
C. A. Crommelin, to whom all communications should 
be addressed at the Physical Laboratory, Leyden, 
Holland. : 
Tue Medical Officers of Schools Association from 
time to time issues pamphlets on problems connected 
with conditions of health in schools. ‘The latest of 
these useful publications deals with ‘‘ School Light- 
ing,’’ and is a reprint of a paper read before the asso- 
ciation by Dr. E. H. T. Nash. The author puts the 
difficulties of the problem of daylight illumination, 
and rightly asks that the Government should either 
subsidise further research or conduct a thorough in- 
quiry through the Board of Education. In the present 
regulations of the Board we read: “The light so far 
as possible should be admitted from the left side of 
the scholars. This rule will be found greatly to 
influence the planning.’’ So far all authorities agree, 
but there is great diversity of opinion and _ practice 
as regards bilateral and overhead lighting, the shape 
of class-rooms, the relative areas to be assigned to 
windows. These matters have an important influence 
on the health of the children, the class-room efficiency, 
and the expenditure of public money on school build- 
ings. As regards artificial lighting, the problem is 
vastly more simple, and Dr. Nash gives an instance of 
efficient and economic lighting by incandescent gas, 
the cost for a class-room being rather more than 3d. 
an hour. In this case the illumination at the desks 
ranged from 3-5 foot-candles to 5 foot-candles, as com- 
pared with the usually recommended minimum of 
2 foot-candles. The pamphlet is illustrated with 
diagrams, includes an account of the discussion which 
followed the reading of the paper, and is published 
by Messrs. Churchill at 1s. 
LONDON. 
Royal Society, May 7.—Sir William Crookes, presi- 
dent, in the chair.—Lord Rayleigh: (1) Some calcula- 
tions in illustration of Fourier’s theorem. (2) The 
theory of long waves and bores.—Sir Joseph Larmor 
and J. S. B. Larmor: Protection from lightning and 
the range of protection afforded by lightning rods. 
On modern ionic views discharge in the atmosphere 
should originate at a place of maximum intensity of 
electric field and spread both ways from it along a 
line which should be roughly the line of force. The 
explanation of branching, zigzag, and multiple light- 
ning discharges is to be sought on these lines. The 
introduction of a narrow linear conductor cannot 
sensibly disturb a steady field of force, and not at all 
if it is transverse to the field. Thus it would seem to 
be the top of the building itself, not of the lightning 
conductor, that attracts the discharge, and the function 
of a single rod can only be to lead it more safely away. 
But a number of rods distributed over the area of the 
roof, and effectively connected to earth by a conductor, 
can, by their joint action, lift the intensest part of the 
field from the top of the building to the region around 
their summits, and so obviate or much mitigate the 
danger of discharge from above to the building which 
they cover.- In illustration, diagrams are given of a 
vertical field of force as disturbed by vertical pillars 
of semi-ellipsoidal form and of various breadths, or by 
