NALTORE 
[Marcu 3, 1904 
418 
Number of Students in the Imperial Tokyo University. 
College, &c. 1885 1890 1895 1896 1897 
University Hall... te) 47 105 146 174 
Law : ae 217 301 472 551 9737 
Science coe 43 77 102 105 105 
Engineering nog 30 106 295 345 385 
Medicine 726 185 17 223 297 
Literature nee 129 88 219 248 278 
Agriculture a0 o 485 249 215 232 
Total 1145 1292 1620 1833 2208 
In 1898, 30 per cent. of the total number of students 
were studying law, 9 per cent. medicine, 31 per cent. 
engineering, 7 per cent. science, and 4 per cent. agri- 
culture. 
Mr. Lewis provides interesting particulars of the 
subsequent careers of the graduates from Tokyo Uni- 
versity for the year 1896. Of 308 graduates that year 
107 were given administrative or judicial positions by 
the Japanese Government, 48 were admitted to Uni- 
versity Hall there to engage in original research, 45 
obtained posts in banking houses and similar im- 
portant commercial undertakings, 44 remained un- 
occupied, 42 became instructors in the universities and 
high schools, 15 remained in the colleges for post- 
graduate work, and 7 took up various other callings. 
As regards the annual expenditure on Tokyo Uni- 
versity, the following table shows the amounts spent 
on the different constituent colleges in the year 1895 :— 
Imperial Tokyo University Expenditure for the Year 1895. 
University Hall 11,000 
College of Law 9,500 
College of Science 14,000 
College of Engineering 15,000 
College of Medicine ... 52,000 
Colleg2 of Literature 11,000 
College of Agriculture 15,500 
Total 128,000 
Now it must be remembered that the Government 
department of education is responsible for the main- 
tenance of higher education in Japan, and it is at 
once seen that in Japan the State found for the Tokyo 
University in 1895, apart from the University of Kioto, 
about 130,000l. The present State contribution to the 
whole of our universities and colleges together amounts 
only to 155,600l., and in favoured Germany the State 
endowment of the University of Berlin in 1891-2 
amounted to 168,780l., so that with educational tradi- 
tions dating back only thirty-five years Japan is well 
on the way to an equal State expenditure on higher 
education. 
The students of the Tokyo University are drawn, 
says Mr. Lewis, from all classes of society as in 
America. ‘* There seems to be no special class of men 
who were predestinated for the university. If the 
past thirty years might be taken as a basis, one may 
look forward to the time in Japan when, as in Scot- 
land, the universities may claim one from every 
thousand of the population; or when, as in Scotland, 
one man out of each five hundred will have a bona 
fide university degree.” 
Besides the institutions of higher education which 
have now been described, there are in Japan, accord- 
ing to the Japanese Government report for 1896, sixty 
technical schools of various kinds. Thirty-seven of 
these are devoted to instruction in agriculture, seven 
to branches of industry, and sixteen to commerce. 
These sixty schools employ 424 teachers, and are 
attended by 7600 students. Among the more im- 
portant of these schools the Tokyo Technical School 
takes a high place. It gives instruction in electrical 
mechanics, electrochemistry, dyeing, weaving, and 
NO. 1792, VOL. 69] 
many other branches of technology. The primary 
object of the school is to train manufacturing experts, 
and the school has already gained a high reputation 
for the amount of its original work for the improve- 
ment of manufacturing processes. Japan also has 
sixteen apprentice schools with 1875 students. 
Merely to state the number of technical schools in 
the country is to fail to give a true idea of the Japanese 
system of technical education, because in both the 
elementary and secondary schools some attention is 
devoted to instruction of a technical kind. Though 
many authorities in this country, in Germany, and in 
America would disapprove of this approach to early 
specialisation, it seems probable that the great success 
of institutions like the Tokyo Technical School may 
be due to the fact that the early introduction of 
Japanese boys to technical studies makes it possible to 
weed out those unlikely to benefit by the advanced 
courses of the technical schools, and to concentrate 
attention on those who possess natural aptitudes for 
such work. 
Such is a brief outline of the change which has taken 
place in Japan since 1868, when its first provisional 
board of education was formed. If with all the dis- 
advantages under which she laboured Japan has been 
able by persistent effort and by continuous sacrifice 
in the way of State endowment and private munificence 
to effect an educational revolution, it requires little 
enough faith to believe that if as a nation we set to 
work to put our educational house in order—to endow 
adequately our present universities, to establish others 
where they are required, to level up our secondary 
education—there would be no need pessimistically to 
contemplate the future of the Empire, and to imagine 
for it a possible third or fourth place in the world 
struggle for supremacy. A. T. Simmons. 
THE EVOLUTION OF MATTER AS REVEALED 
BY THE RADIO-ACTIVE ELEMENTS. 
N Tuesday, February 23, Mr. F. Soddy delivered 
the Wilde lecture before the Manchester Literary 
and Philosophical Society. The lecture, it may be ex- 
plained, is delivered annually, and is provided for out 
of an endowment by Dr. Henry Wilde, F.R.S. 
After referring to the three-fold character of the rays 
emitted by radium, Mr. Soddy explained that the a-rays 
contained more than 99 per cent. of the whole energy 
given off, and were of paramount importance on other 
grounds, as opening up a new field of research with 
which the ordinary methods of chemical analysis had 
no connection. The mass of the particles composing 
the @ rays was about equal to that of an atom of 
hydrogen; they carried a positive charge, and were 
deviable, though to a very minute extent, in a powerful 
magnetic field. Their velocity was about 20,000 miles 
a second, and they were easily stopped, even by a thin 
sheet of paper, or a few centimetres of air. All three 
kinds were detected by their power of exciting fluores- 
cence in certain substances, and by their action on a 
photographic plate, but their distinctive property was 
that of ionising the air and other gases through which 
they pass. Had it not been that their energy effects 
are out of all proportion to the masses of the bodies 
concerned, the radio-active property would have re- 
mained undetected. Thus uranium and thorium have 
been known for several generations, yet it is no longer 
ago than 1896 that Becquerel began the researches 
which have since proved so fruitful in the hands of 
M. and Mdme. Curie, Prof. Rutherford, Sir W. Ramsay 
and others. 
As regards the radio-active elements themselves, they 
are regarded as undergoing a slow spontaneous 
