Fesrvuaky 28, 1907] 
NATURE 
429 
Tur Gokismiths’ Company has undertaken to provide 
the 8o0ol, required for the completion of the new wing 
of Goldsmiths’ College at New Cross. The site and build- 
ings were presented “by the company to the University of 
London for educational purposes in 1904. 
Tue treasurer of Guy’s Hospital has received a bequest 
of roool. under the will of the late Dr. C. J. Oldham, of 
Brighton, for the purpose of endowing an annual prize in 
ophthalmology at the medical school. A further anony- 
mous donation of 2001. has also been received for the 
fund of the endowment of medical education and research. 
Mr. Harotp Hirton has been appointed lecturer in 
mathematics at the Bedford College for Women (University 
of London). Mr. Hilton is a former fellow of Magdalen 
College, Oxford, and has for the past five years been on 
the teaching staff of the University College of North 
Wales. He is the author of a treatise on the mathe- 
matical theory of crystallography, and of numerous papers 
published in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical 
Society and elsewhere. 
SincE the disastrous fire which partially 
main building of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical 
College, Bristol, in October last, various sites for the re- 
erection of the college have been suggested and carefully 
discussed. A report advising the retention of the present 
site was adopted by the Society of Merchant Venturers on 
Friday last, and steps will, therefore, be taken at once 
to replace the various laboratories, workshops, lecture 
theatres, &c., with all possible speed. In framing plans 
for re-building, the Merchant Venturers will bear in mind 
the possibility that at some future period the college may 
be called upon to take its proper part in the formation of 
the proposea University of Bristol. 
Tue Board of Education has issued a return showing 
the extent to which, and the manner in which, local 
authorities in England and Wales have applied funds to 
the purposes of technical instruction and other forms of 
education other than elementary during the year 1904-5. 
The total! number of authorities having powers in respect 
of education other than elementary was, for the year 
under consideration, 1203 ; of these, sixty-three were county 
councils, seventy-one county borough councils, and the re- 
mainder councils of non-county boroughs or urban dis- 
‘tricts. All the county councils and county borough 
councils, and 431 of the councils of non-county boroughs 
or urban districts, incurred expenditure for higher educa- 
tion. Particulars are provided as to money spent upon 
secondary schools, including pupil-teacher centres; even- 
ing schools and institutions for higher and technical educa- 
tion; exhibitions, including payment of fees; salaries for 
administrative officers, legal expenses, and general adminis- 
tration; and in respect of loans. The total expenditure 
in England and Wales on higher education, understood 
as including the work of institutions mentioned, was, in 
1904-5, 2,889,8711. The amounts under the more important 
headings were:—secondary schools, 736,966l.; evening 
schools and institutions for higher and technical education, 
1,382,162!.; exhibitions, 248,007/.; training of teachers, 
48,835/.; administrative and legal expenses, 152,605]. 
The detailed information provided in the tables should 
prove of great value to members of education committees 
desiring to compare the expenditure in their own districts 
with that in other areas. 
Mr. McKenna, President of the Board of Education, 
addressed a letter on February 19 to Sir Francis Mowatt, 
the first chairman of the departmental committee on the 
Royal College of Science, concerning the proposed Imperial 
College of Applied Science at South Kensington, to the 
delay in the inauguration of which we referred last week. 
Mr. McKenna says that the time which has elapsed since 
the appearance of the committee’s report has not been 
wholly wasted, because the problem has become clearer 
and the institutions concerned have become more nearly 
agreed as to the necessities of the case. After reviewing 
the alternative courses pressed upon the consideration of 
the Board of Education, the president expresses the opinion, 
maintained in these columns, that the point of deter- 
minative importance in the whole situation now is that 
there should be no further avoidable delay in bringing 
NO. 1948, VOL. 75] 
destroyed the 
about the establishment of the new institution. The 
gratifying announcement is then made that the King is to 
be petitioned for a Charter for the new institution on the 
lines unanimously recommended by the departmental com- 
mittee in January, 1906, and set forth in the draft pro- 
posals circulated by the Board of Education last July. 
The special governing body suggested by the departmental 
committee is to be appointed forthwith, and the institution 
to be developed as soon as possible. Mr. McKenna con- 
cludes his letter by requesting Sir Francis Mowatt to 
intimate to the Senate of the University of London that 
after an interval of time sufficient to permit of the full 
development of the governing body for the new institution, 
he will be prepared to advise the appointment of a Royal 
Commission to consider whether the amalgamation of the 
new institution with the University of London is desirable 
and feasible. 
SOCIETIES 
AND ACADE 
Lonpon. 
Royal Society, December 13, 1906.—‘‘ Further Observ- 
ations on the Effects produced on Rats by the Trypano- 
somata of Gambia Fever and of Sleeping Sickness.’’ By 
H. G. Plimmer. Communicated by Dr. C. J. Martin, 
PUR. S: 
From the results of 211 experiments, extending over a 
period of nearly three years, it appears that the tentative 
deductions which the author made in his preliminary note 
(Roy. Soc. Proc., vol. Ixxiv.) from the few experiments 
therein recorded, that Gambia fever and sleeping sickness 
are two distinct diseases, cannot be maintained. 
This extended series of experiments and observations goes 
to show that each of these two strains of Trypanosomata 
has produced two different effects in the same class of 
MIES. 
animals, under conditions of which we at present know 
nothing; that these effects are alike for the two 
organisms; and that the Trypanosomata found in these 
two types of disease are one and the same organism, 
modified by passage from man through monkeys to rats, 
and perhaps in the strains used by the author, by trans- 
plantation into animals of, and in, another country. 
Faraday Society, January 29.—-Prof. H. E. Armstrong, 
F.R.S., in the chair.—Discussion on osmotic pressure, 
opened by the Earl of Berkeley, who exhibited and de- 
scribed his apparatus for the direct measurement of osmctic 
pressure. The ordinary direct method of measuring 
osmotic pressures is to obtain equilibrium on the two sides 
of the semi-permeable membrane by means of the pressure 
of a head of liquid. The method devised by the author 
and Mr. E. G. J. Hartley substitutes mechanical pressure, 
which is put straight on to the solution, and equilibrium 
thus obtained. A vapour-pressure method for measuring 
osmotic 
pressure was also described.—Indirect methods 
of measuring osmotic pressure: W. CC. Dampier 
Whetham. The speaker agreed as to the importance of 
the vapour-pressure method. He discussed the formula 
used by Berkeley and Hartley, and explained the differ- 
ence between it and the van ‘t Hoff formula obtained 
from thermodynamic considerations, the expressions being 
identical where there is no change of volume of the solvent 
as it enters the solution.—Osmotic pressure from the stand- 
point of the kinetic theory: Dr. T. M. Lowry. The 
application of the equation PV=RT to the osmotic pres- 
sure of gases could be predicted on general theoretical 
grounds, but there was no a priori reason for supposing 
that it would be applicable to the case of liquids. In the 
early years of the osmotic discussion it had been assumed 
by van ’t Hoff and others that since osmotic pressures 
and gas pressures could be calculated by means of the 
same formula the conditions must be identical in the two 
cases, and it was definitely stated that in dilute sugar 
solutions the osmotic pressure was wholly due to the bom- 
bardment of the membrane by the molecules of the sugar, 
the 
the effects produced by water molecules being sub- 
stantially identical on either side of the membrane. The 
alternative view, that osmotic pressure represented a 
diminution in the activity or “active mass’’ of the 
solvent, was suggested by. Poynting in 1896, and had sub- 
