NA rURE 



[May 



1 90 1 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Oxford. — Dr. W. T. Brooks has been appointed Litchfield 

 clinical lecturer in medicine. 



Prof. II. A. Miers has been nominated to be a delegate of 

 the Univer.sity Press. 



Mr. P. A H.irnett has been appointed an examiner in the 

 theory, history and practice of education. 



Profs. II. A. Miers and \V. K. K. Weldon have been ap- 

 pointed examiners for the liurdett-Coutts Scholarship. 



The Report of the Bodleian Library, just issued, shows that 

 the accessions to the library during 1900 were the second largest 

 on record. 



The Junior Scientific Club held their 225th meeting on Friday, 

 May 10. Prof. I )dling read a paper upon the detection of 

 arsenic. 



Mr. E. L. Gill, of the Owens College, Manchester, has been 

 appointed curator of the Hancock Museum by the committee 

 of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham 

 and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 



The late Mrs. Morton Sumner has by her will bequeathed to 

 Bedford College for Women 4000/. and a large number of books 

 specially relating to geology, general literature and art ; also a 

 valuable collection of mineralogical specimens. 



A Facu'i.ty 01- COMMICRCE is to be established in connection 

 with the University of Biriningham, and the council of the 

 University are prepared to appoint a profe.ssor, at a .salary of 

 750/. a year, to organise a course appropriate for students pre- 

 ]5aring to take a lead in commercial pursuits or to become 

 consular representatives or holders of administrative posts 

 abroad or in the colonies. The aims and scope of the work of 

 the new Faculty are outlined in a document drawn up by the 

 principal, Dr. Oliver Lodge, and containing suggestions which 

 should meet with general approval. There can be no reasonable 

 doubt as to the need for the cultivation of scientific sympathies 

 among men engaged in manufacture, commerce and public affairs. 

 '• If our country is to keep pace with others," remarks Dr. Lodge, 

 " we have to provide in every post a highly-educated man, 

 skilled in many business relations, as Consul, whose duty it shall 

 be to understand the conditions of each trade, to realise how it 

 may be improved or increased, and to make annual or more 

 frequent reports, either to the Board of Trade or to local 

 Chambers of Commerce, or both." The more administrators, 

 officials and men of business we have capable of realising this 

 ideal the better it will be for our national welfare ; but the best 

 way to provide the educational b.asis has yet to be decided. Dr. 

 Lodge suggests that commercial education must centre round a 

 school of Economics — understood in its widest sense — but this 

 may be doubted, and we believe that it w-ould be better to keep 

 this school out of the early stages of the scheme. Too much 

 importance seems to be attaclied to preliminary knowledge of 

 "Arts" and other subjects required of .students in the Com- 

 mercial Faculty. It is suggested that "The preparatory train- 

 ing in fact should be a wide and comprehensive one including a 

 little science as well as a good deal of Arts." To our thinking, 

 however, a little science is not enough, and what is essential in 

 the preliminary education is not the accumulation of information 

 so much as the training of the mind to acquire and assimilate 

 knowledge. Geography is not to be considered as a separate 

 science in the new Faculty, and its various aspects will be sur- 

 veyed by the professors of history, economics and geology. Dr. 

 Lodge makes a number of other suggestions which, if adopted, 

 will give the new Faculty a character worthy of the new 

 University. 



The paper on "School Work in Relation to Business" read 

 before the Society of Arts on May S, by Sir Joshua Fitch, and 

 printed in the Society"syi)»r«<j/ for May 10, contained an ex- 

 pression of views with which many jieople « ill find themselves 

 in agreement. The fundamental idea, illustrated by reference 

 to several subjects, seems to be that too much attention is given 

 in schools to the application of rules and too little to the develop- 

 ment of common sense. For instance, in arithmetic the pupils 

 are given a number of empirical rules and are drilled in working 

 questions based upon them, but they are taught next to nothing 

 of the theory of number or of arithmetical operations. The 

 average pupil is happy if the teacher will tell him whether he 

 has to multiply or divide to work a simple question, and he .asks 



NO. 1 647, VOL. 64J 



helplessly what rule he should use when he is given a problem. 

 But the pupil who has learned arithmetic as a science rather 

 than as a collection of artifices for the working out of problems 

 is in a condition in which he can find his own rules. Instead 

 of regarding such processes as multiplication of fr.actions and 

 extraction of square roots as a kind of numerical conjuring and 

 legerdemain, he feels that his operations have a reasQn.able basis. 

 The advantage of such knowledge is that it enables the pupil to 

 invent his own method of dealing with problems and to adapt 

 himself readily to any arithmetical work he may have to do 

 later in a business house. Arithmetic as usually taught does 

 nothing but develop mechanical facility in working sums, 

 whereas it ought to be used to bring out thought and inven- 

 tiveness. 



Passing to measurements of length, volume and mass. Sir 

 Joshua Fitch held with most of us that ths metric .system ought 

 to take a more prominent place in the arithmetic course than is 

 usually assigned to it, because of its increasing use both in 

 science and manufactures. Then geography is a subject which 

 is held in small favour in the public .schools and in most 

 .secondary schools, yet when well taught it can be made, both 

 from the educational and commercial point of view, one of the 

 most fruitful of school exercises. Finally, no subject consciously 

 designed to meet the needs of the .shoj) or office should be 

 taught in a primary scnool. The chief object should be educa- 

 tion and the development of originality, rather than the acqui- 

 sition of information and manipulation of rules. According to 

 Sir Joshua Fitch the course of work in such a school should 

 include "arithmetic in its principles, rapid calculation, the 

 metric system, oral and written composition, industrial geo- 

 graphy, and also some exercises in thinking about social 

 economics and the way in which conduct and character tell 

 upon the future honour and usefulness of the citizen." At the 

 other end of the educational ladder are the universities, to which, 

 it svas held, we ought to look for more guidance than they have 

 yet ever aft'ordcd in the solution of the great problem — the 

 relation of scholastic culture to the duties of active life. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Ameriiaii youriml of .Science, May. — Studies of Eocene 

 mammalia in the Marsh collection, Peabody Museum, by J. L. 

 Wortman. — (Dn the velocity of chemical reactions, by W. 

 Duane. A description of two physical methods for following 

 the velocity of a chemical change occurring in solution. In one 

 of these the solution to be studied is placed in a wedge-shaped 

 hollow prism and compensated witli a similar wedge, the 

 chemical change being followed photographically. A diagram 

 is given showing the inversion of sugar as followed by this 

 method. In the second method the change of volume of the 

 solution is followed in a large thermometer. — The transmission 

 of sound through porous m.aterials, by F. L. Tufts. — On a yoke 

 with intercepted magnetic circuit for measuring hysteresis, by 

 Z. Crook. A description of a new form of yoke possessing cer- 

 tain advantages over the ordinary types. It gives practically a 

 perfect hysteresis cycle, and can be used for studying the 

 demagnetising action of electric currents without interrupting 

 the magnetic circuit or varying it by means of a solenoid. — 

 Mineralogical notes, by C. H. Warren. Crystallographic 

 measurements and chemical analyses of anorthite crystals front 

 Franklin Furnace, felsp.ar crystals from Raven Hill, Colorado, 

 iron wolframite from Dakota, and pseudomorphs of wolframite 

 after scheelite from Trumbull, Conn. — On the expansion of 

 certain metals at high temperatures, by L. Holborn and A. L. 

 Day. Bars of metal 500 millimeters long were used, and en- 

 closed in a porcelain tube heated electrically. The temperatures 

 were measured \\'ith the thermocouple and ranged from 250^ C. 

 up to looo' C. in the case of platinum, and in other cases to as 

 high a temperature as the properties of the metal under examina- 

 tion would permit. Results are given for platinum, palladium, 

 silver, nickel, constantan, wrought iron and steel. 



American Journal of Mathematics, xxiii. 2, April. — The 

 cross-ratio group of 120 quadratic cremona transformations of 

 the plane. Part 2 : Complete form-system of invariants, by 

 H. E. Slaught, is the continuation of a memoir by the author 

 which appeared in vol. xxii. (pp. 343-3SS). The text is accom- 

 panied by a large number of tables. — Memoir on the algebra of 

 symbolic logic, by .\. N. Whitehead, is a purely mathematical 

 investigation, taking its rise in Boole's laws of thought. The 



