October io, [918 



XATURE 



109 



As regards the first, shi is striving b) • 

 means t'i maintain hei ascendancy. Not only 

 have the great colour-p I concerns banded 



themselves together to work in common and pool 

 their profits, thej have also taken steps to assure 

 themselves of a continued and. indeed, increased 

 supply of the trained material upon which the 

 ultimate success and development of their industry 

 depend. This they have sought to further by 

 the establishment ol scholarships or bursaries, 

 known as the Liebig bursaries, to hi- awarded to 

 deserving young chemists who have graduated at 

 the polytechnics, on condition thai the) serve as 

 assistants to the professors and are trained in 

 the work '-1 research. The necessarj capital oi 

 2 million marks to found these bursaries lias been 

 entirelj subscribed by the leading colour-makers. 

 Similar anion has been taken by the Tech- 

 nico-scientific Union, which acts as an inter- 

 im between industry and th< scientific 

 trnents ol the universities and the poly- 

 technics, and arranges for the investigation 



of special problems which the Smaller or less 



wealthy industrial concerns maj desire to have 

 solved. There is also an organisation known as 

 the "Society of Friends and Benefactors ol the 

 Rhenish University of Bonn," which seel 

 make generally known the knowledge acquired 

 during the war in the domains of agriculture, 

 commerce, and industry, and to further their 

 progress by the active collab 51 ience and 



industry. Thesi instances an remarkable as indi- 

 cating that German) is al length seeking to 

 emancipate itself in educational matters from 

 official thraldom. Hitherto efforts of this kind 

 have been largel) initialed 01 controlled by State 

 authority. It is curious that whilst that country 

 as the result of war-experience is moving towards 

 a more democratic control in this matter, our own 

 action in national educational cftort as the out- 

 come of the same experience t nils more and more 

 towards bureaucratic direction. 



The Stassfurl potash deposits are, no doubt, a 

 greal German asset. Prof. Ostwald, indeed, has 

 declared thai it rests with Germany to decide if in 

 the future tin- world is to be nourished or starved. 

 Four years' experience will, however, convince 

 most people that the learned professor's assertion 

 is on a par with much of the rodomontade to 

 which he has accustomed us. There are many 

 signs that the German potash monopoly will be 



broken, and, as Mr. Kenneth Chance has shown 

 in the paper which he read at the recent annual 

 meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry, the 

 production ol potash in this country is far from 

 being an insoluble problem. With the passing ol 

 Usace to France, Germany's control ol the main 

 supply will be jeopardised. Moreover, theri a 1 



other untapped sources thrOUj out the world. It 



has been asserted that the chance of finding 



soluble potash in British geolo ical deposits is at 



as great as thai of discovering mineral oil. 

 What is wanted is a systematic scheme of ex- 

 ploration which has never yet been attempted. 

 There is no ,i priori reaso 

 '554. vol. 102" 



v hii li 1 1 . , , 1 lei 1 il tin- German 



deposits should bi 1 thai country. It 



s, -cms only yesl deposits were dis- 



covered in Usace, and what has happened in 

 Usace may well be found to have occurred else- 

 where. 



DR. HENM 



WITH the death of Dr. Hem. D; on Sep- 

 tember 25, there passes fron midst, 

 at the age Of seventy, one whose name will i 

 be associated with the rise of Japan as an indus- 

 trial Power. He had barely finished In nstin- 

 guished student career in the Timeasia o 

 you when, on the recommendation of Prof. Mai - 

 quorn Rankine, he was appointed principal of 

 the newly constituted Kobu Daigakko or College 

 oi Engineering in Tokyo. This was in [872, • 

 hi' was onl) twenty-four years of age. An account 

 of the college in th.-sc' early days will be found 

 in Nature, vol. xvi., p. 44 (May, 1877), and its. 

 marked success as an educational institution up 

 to the date of its amalgamation in 1 'SO with the 

 Teikoku Daigaku or Imperial University .f Tokyo 

 was an eloquent tribute to the clearness of pur- 

 pose ind the- organising skill of its hrst principal 



In considering the part Dyer played in this 

 yrc.it venture we should bear in mind not only his 

 own direct work, but .also the remarkable staff of 

 young professors he- gathered round him. Most 

 o! these he outlived, such as Ayrton, the elec- 

 trician; Edward Divers, tin- chemist; John Milne, 

 the seismologist; and C. D. West, the engineer; a 

 man of the wide culture so characteristic of the 



aduates of Trinity College, Dublin. Prof. John 

 Perry and Prof. Thomas Alexander are- still with 

 us, as an- also two of the professors of English, 

 tin Rev. W. G. Dixon, now of Dunedin, and 

 Prof. J. M. Dixon, of the University of South 

 California, Los Angeles. The inclusion of English 

 as an essential subject of study in the engineering 

 curriculum showed the far-sighted policy of the 

 early organisers of the college. From within its 

 walls there went forth a greal body of graduates 

 to whom English was almost a second mother 

 tongue, so well were they trained in the use of 

 our idiom and in the knowledge of our best 

 books. Many of these- graduates held important 

 Government posts, and their influence must have 

 been considerable in shaping Japan's destinies. 



After ten years of 'strenuous work Henry 

 Dyer retired from the principalship and 

 settled in Gl "". where he soon identified 



himself with progressive educational develop- 

 ments. He threw himself with charaeti i 

 ardour into ie organisation of what is now the 



Royal ' e hni al < lollege, of which he was 

 gbvernoi lb- became a member of the- Gl 

 School Board in 1891, and had acted as I man 

 since - ■ i- lb- was pat ticularly int< re 

 work of the continuation classes diffi- 



cult problems of industrial r< »n and 



education. As deputy-chairn -Mid of 



ion ami Arbitratioi miifactured 



