June 27, 1901] 



NA TURE 



Replying to a question as to the terms of reference to the 

 Royal Commission on University Education in Ireland, in the 

 House of Commons on Thursday last, Mr. Balfour said they 

 were as follows : — " To inquire into the present condition of the 

 higher general and technical education available in Ireland 

 outside Trinity College, Dublin, and to report as to what re- 

 forms, if any, are desirable in order to render that education 

 adequate to the needs of the Irish people." The chairman is 

 Lord Robertson, and among the other members are Profs. Ewing, 

 Riicker and J. Lorrain Smith. 



In opening an exhibition of practical work done in connection 

 with the City and Guilds of London Institute, at the Imperial 

 Institute, Lord Avebury referred to the dependence of techno- 

 logical instruction upon the sound teaching of science, and 

 some defects of .school work in general, when considered from 

 an educational point of view. He pointed out that our great 

 public schools were bound under the regulations of the Public 

 School Commission to give one-tenth of the marks in all exam- 

 inations to science and one- tenth to modern languages. But 

 this obligation was systematically ignored. At the greatest of our 

 schools there were twenty-eight classical masters, thirteen mathe- 

 matical, and only four science masters for more than 900 boys. 

 The University of London, which he had the great honour of 

 representing in Parliament for more than twenty years, had always 

 taken a leading part in endeavouring to secure for science ils 

 proper place in our educational system. It was the first to give 

 science degrees. It made a knowledge of science an obligatoiy 

 part of the matriculation examination, that no University degree 

 should be given to any one who, taking the line that literature, 

 science and mathematics were necessary elements in any well- 

 though-out education, was not well grounded in all three. 

 It was difficult to over-estimate the important and beneficial 

 effect which this had had on our secondary schools, and he 

 deeply regretted that it had been proposed to drop science out 

 of the list of obligatory subjects in the matriculation exam- 

 ination. It was greatly to be hoped that the Senate would not 

 adopt a recommendation which was so retrograde and so opposed 

 to the whole traditions of the University, and which he did not 

 hesitate to say would be a national misfortune. The Chambers 

 of Commerce did not wisn, nor, he was sure, did scientific men 

 wish, to exclude classics. What they pleaded for was that 

 science, the knowledge of the beautiful world in which we 

 lived, should not be e.xcluded. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Btdklin of the American Mathematical Society, June. — The 

 number opens with an account of the proceedings at the two 

 April meetings of the Society. The Chicago section held its 

 meeting at the University of Chicago on April 6. Ten papers 

 were read, and abstracts of the papers are edited by Prof. T. F. 

 Holgate. The other meeting was held in New York City on 

 April 27. To relieve the increasing burden of administration. 

 Dr. Edward Kasner was appointed assistant secretary, to serve 

 until February 1902. This gentleman reports the proceedings 

 and gives abstracts of several of the .'ieventeen papers which 

 were communicated. — The value of 



I '(log 2 cos <p)"'q>"drp 



Jo 

 IS a notelet which was read before the April (1899) meeting of 

 the Society by Prof. F. -Morley.— Dr. Kasner's paper on the 

 algebraic potential curves (read February 23, 1901) has for its 

 object the derivation of the characteristic geometric properties 

 of a class of curves which are of interest in connection with the 

 theory of equations and of the potential function. .Vnalyticaliy, 

 these curves are obtained by equating to zero the rational 

 integral solutions <p(ji,y) of Laplace's equation 



. ^ 9-> , 9-1* 



9.1 - dy 

 or, what is equivalent, the real (or imaginary) parts of the 

 rational integral functions of x + ij'. — Various geometric pro- 

 perties are given in Briot and Bouquet's " Theorie des Fonctions 

 Elliptiques" (book iv. chap, ii.), but none are completely 

 characteristic. The several sections treat of (i) apolarity with 

 respect to a point pair, (2) polar properties of potential curves, 

 (3) focal properties, (4) the asymptotes, and (5) the connection 

 with the theory of equations. Several useful references are 

 given in footnotes. — The reviews are of Steinmetz's "Alter- 



nating Current Phenomena," by J. B. Whitehead, jun., and oi 

 de Tannenberg's " Le9ons Nouvelles sur les Applications Geo- 

 metriques du Calcul Differential," by L. P. Eisenhart.^The 

 usual information follows in the notes and new publications. 



American Journal of Science, June. — The new spectrum, by 

 S. P. Langley. A short account of the methods adopted for 

 mapping the spectrum in the ultra-red. The paper is accom- 

 panied with a map of this spectrum for wave-lengths between 

 076 )x. and 5 '3 \L. — On the rival theories of cosmogony, by O. 

 Fisher. A discussion of the meteoric and nebular hypotheses. 

 A study of some American fossil Cycads. Part iv. On the 

 microsporangiate fructification of Cycadeoides, by G. R. Wieland. 

 It was suggested in a previous paper that the sorus-bearing axis 

 is a series of twelve fused leaves or fronds with their sorus- 

 bearing pinnacles turned inwards. More extended study of 

 additional material in a far superior state of preservation has 

 confirmed the above hypothesis as a correct one. — Studies of 

 Eocene mammalia in the JMarsh collection in the Peabody 

 Museum, by J. L. Wortman. A continuation of a previous 

 paper. — On the cassium-antimonious fluorides and some other 

 double halides of antimony, by H. L. Wells and F. J. Metzger. 

 A description of the mode of preparation and properties ol 

 five double salts of the composition CsF.3SbF3, CsF.2SbF.,, 

 4CsF.7SbF3, CsF.SbFj and 2CsF.SbF3, mohawkite, by J. W. 

 Richards.— The life-work of Prof. H. A. Rowland, by H. F. Reid. 



NO. 1652, VOL. 64] 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, February 28. — " On the Results of Chilling 

 Copper-Tin Alloys." By C. T. Heycock and F. H. Neville. 



Sir W. Roberts- Austen and Dr. Stansfield have shown that 

 the cooling curves of many copper-tin alloys exhibit well-marked 

 " arrest points," or halts in the cooling due to the evolution of 

 heat. From the temperatures at which these halts occur it is 

 certain that many important changes take place long after the 

 alloy has apparently become solid. Thus the authors find that 

 an alloy of the composition Cugj.Snjg shows well-marked halts in 

 cooling at the temperatures 754° C., 743° C. , 558° C. and 490° 

 C, the temperature at which solidification appears complete 

 being but little below the second of the numbers. The exact 

 nature of the changes causing the lower halts has until recently 

 been obscure, but Prof. Roozeboom, by his paper on " Binary 

 Systems Producing Mixed Crystals," has thrown much light on 

 these phenomena. 



The present paper is an attempt to apply Roozeboom's theory 

 to the copper-tin alloys. 



The authors, by slowly cooling small ingots of alloy to 

 definite temperatures near the " arrest points " of the cooling 

 curve, and then suddenly chilling them by immersion in water, 

 have been able to prevent the subsequent changes due to slow 

 cooling from taking place. The structures formed during the 

 slow cooling down to the moment of chilling were thus fixed 

 and could be examined. 



It follows from Roozeboom's theory that in the solidification 

 of a liquid mixture that can form mixed crystals the crystals first 

 formed will generally differ in composition from the liquid, but 

 that these crystals will change in composition as the solidifica- 

 tion proceeds, and that in many cases at temperatures slightly 

 below that of complete solidification the solid will consist of a 

 uniform mass of mixed crystals. He further discusses the 

 possibility of the solid solution thus formed breaking up into 

 separate phases by crystallisation in the solid at lower tem- 

 perature. 



This paper contains photographs of three chills of the same 

 alloy, Cu,,Snjq, which illustrate these changes. In the first case 

 the alloy was chilled at 740° C. (Fig. i), while it was still partly 

 fluid, and the photograph shows large primary combs much richer 

 in copper than the mother substance. 



Another portion of the same alloy was chilled at 630 C. (Fig. 

 2), a temperature at least 100 degrees below that of solidification. 

 Even when etched or attacked in a variety of ways this sample 

 shows no detail indicating any difference of composition ; it 

 appears to be homogeneous, or very nearly so. It has reached 

 the stage of uniform mixed crystals. 



Another fragment was chilled at 500' C. (Fig. 3), close to the 

 lowest "arrest point." The photograph shows that crystallisa- 

 tion has taken place in the solid solution and that a substance 

 rich in tin has crystallised in rosettes an J bands, leaving a 

 mother substance rich in copper. 



