July 28, 1904] 



NA TURE 



311 



While in South Africa Koch has studied horse-sickness, 

 and in a recent report on his work he speaks of 

 " encouraging results which . . . impress me with the con- 

 viction that a practical method of protective inoculation 

 against Horse-sickness is within our reach." A serum has 

 been prepared which has slight curative but high pro- 

 tective properties. Unfortunately, the immunity conferred 

 by the serum lasts only for some fifteen days, so that a 

 horse cannot be " salted " by inoculation, and to be safe 

 from an attack the animal must have already had horse- 

 sickness in some form. The " practical method " which 

 Koch proposes consists in producing horse-sickness by an 

 injection of virus, and then arresting its progress by in- 

 jections of the protective serum before it becomes dangerous. 

 The method has been practised successfully on more than a 

 dozen animals. .As the result of his experiments Koch re- 

 commends the following treatment : — Seven injections of 

 virus at intervals of twelve days, the doses increasing from 

 o.oi c.c. to 5 c.c. Four days after each of the first three 

 injections of virus, doses of loo c.c, 50 c.c, and 50 c.c. 

 of protective serum to be given. The injections of both 

 virus and serum are made subcutaneously in the neck. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 

 C.AMBRIDCE. — The Frank Smart studentship in botany has 

 been awarded to Mr. A. M. Smith, of Emmanuel College. 



Mr. E. R. Burdon, of Sidney Sussex College, has been 

 appointed assistant curator of the botanical museum. 



Science announces the resignation of Prof. G. Trumbull 

 Ladd as head of the department of mental philosophy and 

 metaphysics of Yale University. 



Lord Stratiicona has given 4000/. to the scientific de- 

 partment of the Manitoba University. A block of land 

 sufficient to yield a large annual income is also to be placed 

 at the university's disposal. 



The chair of chemistry in University College, Sheffield, 

 has been accepted by Dr. W. P. Wynne, F.R.S., at present 

 professor of chemistry in the School of Pharmacy of the 

 Pharmaceutical .Society of Great Britain. 



Dr. C. Schuchert, of the U.S. National Museum, has 

 been appointed professor of historical geology in the 

 .Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, and curator 

 of the geological collections in succession to the late Prof. 

 Beecher. 



The " Year-book " for the session 1904-5 of the Armour 

 Institute of Technology, Chicago, a copy of which has 

 reached us, contains full particulars of the course in fire 

 protection engineering instituted last year. The course is 

 arranged to furnish instruction in modern methods of fire 

 prevention and extinction. Since fire insurance interests 

 are closely connected with the work of the course, a portion 

 of the time of senior students is devoted to the study of 

 modern practice of fire underwriting. Prof. Taylor, who 

 is in charge of this department of the institute, has rightly 

 given great prominence in his syllabus to the scientific 

 principles upon which successful work in fire extinction 

 depends. 



The consultative committee to the Board of Education 

 has submitted a number of suggestions to the board for 

 a system of school certificates. The committee is of 

 opinion that, with the object of diminishing the multiplicity 

 of examinations affecting secondary schools, and of pro- 

 viding a test of adequate general education which may be 

 widely accepted, a general system of school certificates is 

 desirable. The committee does not think it is desirable that 

 examinations for such certificates should be conducted by 

 means of papers set for the whole country from a single 

 central organisation. It suggests that such examin- 

 ations should be controlled by a recognised examining body, 

 which should be either a university or a combination of 

 universities, or an examination board representative of a 

 university or universities, and of the local authorities which 

 are prepared to cooperate with them. It proposes that 

 recognition of these examining bodies should mean recog- 

 nition by the Board of Education, acting on the advice 

 of the consultative committee. The establishment is 

 NO. 18 I 3, VOL. 70] 



suggested of a central board for England consisting of 

 representatives from the Board of Education and from the 

 different examining bodies, the duty of which should be to 

 coordinate and control the standards of these examinations, 

 to secure the interchangeability of certificates, and to 

 consider and, as far as possible, to adjust the relations of 

 the examining bodies and their spheres of external action. 

 There can be little doubt that some such plan as the con- 

 sultative committee proposes would enable schoolmasters to 

 utilise in the better education of their boys much of the 

 time now absorbed by the preparation for numerous special 

 examinations. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, July 1 1.— M. Mascart in the chair. — 

 Thermochemical investigation of the solution and poly- 

 merisation of cyanogen : M. Berthelot. Potassium cyanide 

 has considerable thermal effect on a solution of cyanogen 

 whether in water or alcohol. — Note on the heat of trans- 

 formation of black crystalline sulphide of antimony into 

 the orange coloured precipitate : M. Berthelot. — Con- 

 densation of glycol bromoacetate with acetoacetic and 

 acetone dicarboxylic esters : A. Haller and F. March. — 

 Origin in food of the arsenic normally found in man : 

 Armand Gautier and P. Clausmann. Practically all food 

 materials, particularly fish, contain traces of arsenic, the 

 total arsenic received by an average man in a year being 

 7-66 mg. — The relation between external work and total 

 expenditure of energy in a muscle in dynamic contraction, 

 when the muscle is doing negative work, against the fall 

 of a load, by gradually elongating as the load falls : A. 

 Chauvcau. It is concluded that the expenditure of energy 

 is greater in negative work than in fixed contraction, but 

 less than in positive work under the same conditions of 

 load, stimulus, &c., and that in negative work the expendi- 

 ture of energy increases more rapidly, when the work is 

 increased by increase of load, than by increase of movement. 

 — Note on a new method of observing n-rays : R. Blondlot. 

 — -Analysis of the ashes contained in the urns of Materpa 

 (Thebes, eighteenth dynasty) : MM. Lortet and 

 Hug^oumenq. — Regulation of watches at sea by wireless 

 telegraphy : J. A. Normand. — The academy appointed MM. 

 -Mascart, Troost, Moissan, Guyon, and Lacroix to assist at 

 the inauguration of the Pasteur monument in Paris. — Two 

 problems on isothermic surfaces : L. RalTy. — E.xplosion 

 waves : E. Jonguet. — Kathode rays and magnetofriction ; 

 reply to Villard : H. Pellat. — Note on the refractive indices 

 of solutions : Edmond Van Aubel. — The relation between 

 the pressure of a gas in a vacuous tube and the length of 

 the spark produced : Gaston Seguy. As the pressure 

 decreases in geometric progression the length of the spark 

 increases in arithmetic progression. — The densities of 

 sulphurous anhydride and of oxygen : Adrien Jaquerod 

 and Alexandre Pintza. Morley's method of weighing the 

 gas by the loss in weight of the generating apparatus was 

 used with concordant results in the case of sulphurous 

 anhydride. — The heat of combustion of organic sulphur 

 compounds, and a note on that of compounds containing 

 halogens : P. Lemoult. Results of experiments are com- 

 pared with those obtained by calculation according to the 

 position of the sulphur. — Reactions of the esters of 

 2 : 3-butanonic acid. (i) Action of phenyl hydrazine : 

 L. Bouveault and A. Wahl. The phenyl hvdrazone 

 obtained in the cold is proved to be that in the a'-position 

 by the formation of the paranitrophenyl hydrazone of 

 methyl phenyl acetopyrazolone previously obtained by 

 Billow. — Researches in the pyrane series : 'E. Blaise and 

 H. Gault. — On some phenolic ethers of the pseudo allyl 

 chain R— C(Cnj=CH, : M.M. Behai and Tiffeneau. 

 These bodies are obtained by the magnesium methiodide 

 reaction on the corresponding esters, using one or two 

 molecules in excess of the magnesium methiodide, and are 

 intermediate between the corresponding allyl and isoallyl 

 compounds in boiling point, density, and refractive index. 

 — Action of traces of some salts, and of caustic alkalis on 

 diphenyl carbonic ester : R. Fosse.— Mechanism of the 

 action of the cytoplasm in seeds during germination, and 

 the synthetic realisation of this mechansm in vitro : Maurice 

 Nicloux. The development of acid in oily seeds, when 



