f 



March 30, 1905] 



NA TURE 



527 



England. He insisted that in considering the future educa- 

 tion of a boy who has completed his primary education — 

 say, at thirteen — the subject must be regarded from the 

 point of view of his future livelihood. .Mr. Lineham 

 sketched what he called an ideal scheme of technical educa- 

 tion. After the child has followed a good primary 

 education from the ages of si.x to thirteen, his education 

 must be continued with some idea of his future occupation. 

 H he is to be educated for a commercial pursuit he should 

 now attend a purely secondary school ; but if he is to 

 enter a trade or technical profession he should attend what 

 is known as a day technical school until the age of 

 sixteen, having spent three years therein, the first part of 

 which should be mainly literary, the middle scientific, and 

 the last technical. His apprenticeship should then begin. 

 But the apprentice must not now lose the lessons learnt in 

 the technical day school. On the contrary, he must con- 

 tinue his studies to an even higher level by attendance 

 at an evening technical school simultaneously with his 

 apprenticeship. As to the apprenticeship itself, its 

 character should entirely depend upon the trade or pro- 

 fession to be followed. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Anthropological Institute, March 14. — SirT. H. Holdich, 

 K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., in the chair. — Manners and customs 

 of the Melanesians : Rev. W. H. Edgell. The ethno- 

 graphical objects and lantern slides shown included views 

 of the different types of people, and illustrated the de- 

 velopment of canoes and houses. One of the finest of the 

 slides illustrated a Melanesian waiting to shoot a fish. He 

 was poised on one leg, and the lecturer stated that he 

 had seen natives waiting motionless for hours by the side 

 of the rivers waiting for an opportunity to shoot. Of 

 particular interest was the lecturer's statement that some 

 of the natives have entirely lost the art of canoe making, 

 although they still make paddles, which they use to propel 

 rafts made of bamboos. 



Entomological Society, March 15. —Mr. F. Merrifield, 

 president, in the chair. — Exhibits. — Butterflies from Natal 

 presented by Mr. G. A. K. Marshall to the Hope Depart- 

 ment at O.xford : Dr. F. A. Dixey. Dr. Dixey read a 

 note upon his experiments conducted with a view to 

 ascertaining whether the assumption of the wet or dry 

 season form of various African butterflies could be con- 

 trolled by exposure in the pupal state to artificial conditions 

 of temperature and moisture. — Drawings of the genitalia 

 of noctuid moths, and also a number of slides showing the 

 respective peculiarities of many members of the genus : 

 F. W. Pierce. Among other things, attention was 

 directed to the fact that in the case of the Taeniocampidse 

 the genitalia were widely dissimilar, while the author's 

 investigations had led him to conclude that Ashworthii, at 

 present ranked as an Agrotis, should more properly be 

 included in the Noctua group. — A specimen of the North 

 .American longicorn, Neoclytus erytJiroccphahis, discovered 

 in a sound ash tree in the neighbourhood of St. Helens, 

 Lancashire : W. E. Sharp, Some palings of American 

 ash in the vicinity suggested the origin of the progenitors 

 of the colony, but it was not known how long they had 

 been erected. The beetles were taken in their galleries 

 in the summer dead, which seemed to indicate a weaken- 

 ing of the species under the conditions in which they 

 found themselves. Mr. Sharp also showed examples of 

 Amara anthohia, Valle, new to the British list (with a 

 series of A. familiaris, Duf., and A. Iiicida for compari- 

 son) from Leighton-Buzzard, where they occurred not in- 

 frequently at the roots of grass in sandy places. — Muti- 

 lated Stenobothrus from the Picos de Europa, Spain : M. 

 Burr. These grasshoppers were taken at a height of 

 about 1300 metres, on turfy ground exposed to north wind 

 from the .Atlantic, and covered with tufts of a short, 

 dense, tough, and spiky shrub, together with heather. 

 Of the grasshoppers occurring on this spot, almost every 

 specirnen had the wings and elytra more or less mutilated, 

 sometimes actually torn to shreds, entirely altering their 

 appearance. A notable exception was St. bicolor, of which 

 no single specimen was found mutilated. 



NO. 1848, VOL. 71] 



P.^RIS. 



Academy ol Sciences, March 20. — M. H. Poincare in the 

 chair. — Thermochemical researches on brucine and strych- 

 nine : M.M. Berthelot and Gaudechon. — A determination 

 of the heats of combustion and formation of the two alka- 

 loids, together with measurements of the heats of neutral- 

 isation with various acids. The equilibrium between 

 strychnine and ammonium salts was also studied thermo- 

 chemically. — On the variations of brightness and the total 

 eclipses of primary images formed on the retina by very 

 feeble luminous sources of constant value : A. Chauveau. 

 A discussion of a recent paper by M. Lullin, in which the 

 latter describes an experiment with phosphorescent screens, 

 the visibility of which depends on the visual angle, and on 

 the duration of the observation. — On the valency of the 

 atom of hydrogen : M. de Forcrand. A discussion of the 

 assumptions upon which the monovalency of hydrogen is 

 based. The author brings forw-ard the cases of 

 AgjF, Ag,0, IClj, and others, and suggests that the 

 difficulty of explaining these can best be met by adopting 

 the convention that the hydrogen atom is divalent. — On 

 the. photography of the solar corona at the summit of 

 Mont Blanc : A. Hansky. Hitherto, attempts to photo- 

 graph the solar corona at other times than during a total 

 eclipse have not met with much success. By the use of a 

 disc of blackened brass, the diameter of which is a little 

 larger than that of the image of the sun at the focus of 

 the telescope used, combined with coloured screens capable 

 of absorbing the spectrum about up to A. = 660 fifi, photo- 

 graphs of the solar corona have been obtained. — Remarks 

 on the preceding note : J. Janssen. Reproductions of 

 two of the photographs mentioned in the preceding paper 

 are given. — The notion of distance in the functional 

 calculus : Maurice Frechet. — On the calculation of closed 

 arcs : M. Pigeaud. — The distribution and control of 

 actions produced at a distance by electric waves ; Edouard 

 Branly. The three effects chosen for control at a distance 

 by means of electric waves are the starting of an electric 

 motor, lighting incandescent lamps, and producing an ex- 

 plosion. Details are given of the apparatus by which this 

 has been done in the laboratory. The succession of the 

 effects can be varied at will. — On the variation of the 

 specific inductive power of glass with the frequency : Andr^ 

 Broca and M. Turchini. Glass Leyden jars may be used 

 in the production of currents of high frequency, between 

 the limits 10'' and 3x10' per second, on condition that 

 the capacity introduced into the formula; is about one-half 

 that ineasured with charges of o-i sec, or 0.7 of the 

 capacity measured with the frequency of an ordinary 

 rotating sector. — On the coefficient of specific magnetisa- 

 tion and magnetic susceptibility of salts : Georges Meslin. 

 The results of measurements for a considerable number 

 of paramagnetic and diamagnetic salts are given. — On 

 photographic halation. Reply to a note of M. A. Gu^b- 

 hard : P. Villard. The author regards the explanation of 

 his experiments given by M. A. Gu(;bhard as inapplicable. 

 Particulars of an experiment are given for which an ex- 

 planation is at present wanting. — On the ionisation pro- 

 duced between parallel plates by the radium emanation : 

 William Duane. — The diazoamines of diphenylamine, 

 derivatives of the homologues of aniline and naphthyl- 

 amines : L^o Vignon and A. Simonet The character- 

 isation of lactones by means of hydrazine : M. Blaise and 

 A. Luttringer. The lactone is heated on the water bath 

 with a slight excess of hydrazine hydrate. The crystalline 

 mass which separates on cooling is re-crystallised from 

 boiling ethyl acetate, and its melting point, which is 

 usually well defined, serves to characterise the lactone. 

 The melting points of six of these compounds are given. — 

 On mentnone derived from the hexahydrothymols : L^on 

 Brunei. In a preceding note the preparation of two 

 thymomenthols has been described ; the present paper de- 

 scribes the thymomenthone obtained by the oxidation of 

 these products. — On monobromoacetal : P. Freundler and 

 M. Ledru. By attention to some details the yield of 

 bromoacetal by Fischer's method has been raised from 50 

 per cent, to 115 per cent, of the acetal employed. Mag- 

 nesium reacts violently on this bromine compound at 110°, 

 giving rise to vinyl ethyl ether. — Remarks on the diphenyl- 

 amine reaction with nitric acid : Isidore Bay. The blue 

 coloration is produced by a large number of oxidising 



