94 



NA TURE 



[November 24, 1904 



bfilVERSlTV AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Oxford. — The Rhodes trustees have decided to add 200!. 

 a year for the next five years to the stipend of the reader 

 in pathology. Mr. Alfred Beit and Mr. Wernher have 

 supplied sufficient money to endow a professorship of 

 colonial history, and to appoint an assistant professor in 

 the same subject. They have also made a gift to the 

 Bodleian Library. 



Magdalen College has made a grant to the delegates of 

 the university museum of 250Z. a year for the next two 

 years for the purpose of the payment of scientific assistants. 



The following examiners have been appointed : — in 

 chemistry, W. H. Perkin, jun. ; in preliminary physics, 

 E. S. Craig; in preliminary chemistry, J. E. Marsh; in 

 preliminary animal physiology, W. Ramsden ; in pre- 

 liminary zoology, E. S. Goodrich ; in medicine, organic 

 chemistry, N. V. Sidgwick ; in human anatomy, A. Thom- 

 son ; in materia medica, R. Stockman; in midwifery, J. S. 

 Fairbairn ; in pathology, G. Sims-Woodhead ; in forensic 

 medicine and public health, J. D. Mann and A. I,. Ormerod ; 

 and in human physiology, L. E. Hill. 



The Treasury, at the instance of the Colonial Office, has 

 made a grant of 500!. a year lo the Liverpool School of 

 Tropical Medicine. 



The prizes and certificates gained by students at the 

 Sir John Cass Technical Institute during the past session 

 will be distributed by Sir William H. White, K.C.B., 

 F.R.S., on Thursday, December i. The laboratories and 

 workshops of the institute will be on view, and there will 

 be exhibitions of students' work. 



At Bedford College for Women two occasional lectures, 

 open to the public without fee, will be delivered on 

 November 25 and December 8. The first lecture will be by 

 Prof. Karl Pearson, F.R.S., on " Recent Work and some 

 Unsolved Problems in Heredity," and the second by Miss 

 C. A. Raisin on " London, its Early Foundation and Later 

 Growth, a Geological Study." 



The alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

 are collecting, says Scieiice, a fund for current expenses, 

 which now amounts to more than 20,000/., to be used in the 

 course of the next five years. We learn from the same 

 source that Harvard University has received from Miss 

 Whitney a gift of iooo(., the income of which is to be 

 applied as a scholarship to aid meritorious students in the 

 study of field geology or geography in the summer months, 

 preferably in the mountain region of the western United 

 States. 



Application will be made to Parliament in the ensuing 

 session for an ."Vet to transfer University College, London, 

 exclusive of the North London or University College 

 Hospital, the medical school, and the boys' school, to the 

 University of London, and to dissolve or provide for the 

 dissolution of the college itself. The Bill will contain a 

 clause authorising and providing for the making by the 

 Senate of the university, or by such other body or persons 

 as the Act may prescribe, of statutes and regulations for the 

 management of the college ; and provision will also be made 

 for carrying on the work of the hospital, the medical school, 

 and the boys' school. 



The new buildings of the Borough Polytechnic Institute 

 were opened by Mr. Benn, chairman of the London County 

 Council, on November 16. The buildings, which were 

 urgently needed for the large number of students, have cost 

 with equipment more than 24,000/. Toward this amount 

 the central governing body of the City of London Parochial 

 Charities contributed 3000/., the London County Council 

 16,000/., with a promise of a further sum. The council 

 also meets the cost of installation of the electric light and 

 equipment, amounting to 2950/. The total cost of the land, 

 about i\ acres, buildings and equipment, by the end of the 

 year will be not less than 96,000/. 



With the object of giving to the school children of the 

 United Kingdom better knowledge of the colonies, and of 

 giving to the school children of each colonv better know- 



ledge of the United Kingdom and of other parts of the 

 Empire, a syllabus of seven lectures on the United Kingdom, 

 each to be illustrated by about forty lantern slides, has been 

 drawn up by a committee connected with the Colonial Office. 

 The subjects of the lectures are : — (i) the journey from the 

 East to London ; (2) London the Imperial city ; (3) scenery 

 of the United Kingdom ; (4) historic centres and their in- 

 fluence on national life ; (5) country life and the smaller 

 towns ; (6) great towns, the industries, and commerce ; 

 (7) defences of the Empire. Mr. H. J. Mackinder will give 

 an account of the scheme, and exhibit some of the slides 

 which have been prepared to illustrate it, at the Whitehall 

 Rooms, Hotel M^tropole, on Wednesday, December 7, at 

 5 p.m. The Colonial .Secretary has consented to preside. 



At the inaugural meeting of the new session of the Royal 

 Statistical Society on November 15, the new president. Sir 

 Francis Sharp Powell, Bart., M.P., delivered an address on 

 education in which he presented specially impressive figures 

 to illustrate prominent educational features of various coun- 

 tries. The activity in educational matters of to-day was 

 commended, and attention directed to the growing convic- 

 tion that a more liberal education than that provided by 

 purely technical instruction is necessary in this country. 

 Among other interesting comparisons instituted in the 

 address was one dealing with the average e.xpenditure on 

 education per child in Prussia and in England. Exclusive 

 of central and local administration, it appears that the 

 average expenditure per child on the register is in Prussia 

 i/. 15s. 6d. if buildings are included, and i/. los. Sd. ex- 

 clusive of buildings. The corresponding figures in England 

 are 2/. 125. gd. and i/. 17s. Further, the number of scholars 

 per teacher is 66 in Prussia and 57 in England, excluding 

 pupil teachers. It seems clear from these figures that 

 Germany, with a smaller expenditure per child than our 

 own, succeeds in securing better results, and it is to be 

 hoped that English education soon may be conducted more 

 scientifically, so that the value of our education may be 

 more in accordance with our expenditure. The address also 

 pointed out that in secondary education German activity is 

 shown in the provision of technical schools for special 

 branches of metal industries, for wood-working, engineer- 

 ing, and textile industries, and for agriculture. 



NO. 1830, VOL. 71] 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, June 16. — " Hydrolysis of Cane Sugar 

 by d- and /-Camphor-;3-Sulphonic Acids." By R. J. 

 Caldwell, B.Sc. 



The rates of inversion of cane sugar by two stereoisomeric 

 acids were determined in order to compare the results with 

 the case of inversion by enzymes, which are apparently all 

 asymmetric substances. Wilhelmj's law holds accurately 

 for half normal solutions of both dextro- and laevo-camphor- 

 )3-sulphonic acids. The velocity constant k (equal to 

 10'/' login o/""-^'. where a is the initial cane sugar concen- 

 tration, and X the concentration of the inverted sugar at 

 the end of t minutes) was found to be 1007 and 1013 in 

 two experiments with the dextro-acid, and 1005 and looS 

 for the Irevo-acid. The author concludes that there is no 

 difference in the inverting power of the two acids attribu- 

 table to their asymmetric structure. This result is in accord 

 with the conclusion arrived at by Emil Fischer regardin:; 

 the d- and /-camphoric acids (Zeits. Physiol. Chem., 189S, 

 vol. xxvi. p. S3). The relative activities of hydrochloric acid 

 and camphor-^-suIphonic acid towards cane sugar are 

 100 : 90, whereas for milk sugar the ratio is 100 : 70. 



November 17. — " Enhanced Lines of Titanium, Iron, 

 and Chromium in the Fraunhoferic Spectrum." By 

 Sir J. Norman Lockyer, K.C.B., LL.D., F.R.S. , and F. E'. 

 Baxandall, A.R.C.S. 



In this paper the authors give the results of a detailed 

 study of the enhanced lines of Ti, Fe, and Cr in relation to 

 the lines of the Fraunhoferic spectrum. In previous 

 Kensington publications it had been shown that the enhanced 

 linos of some of the metals are prominent in the spectra of 

 a Cygni and the sun's chromosphere, whilst it has been 

 generally recognised that the lines in the Fraunhoferic spec- 

 trum are mainly the equivalents of lines in the arc spectra 



