2 
14 
ARG IE 
[ DECEMBER 31, 1896 
be traced. Food or water exposed to the danger of sewage or 
fecal contamination, as for instance Thames water, containing 
a certain percentage of &. cold commune, cannot be said to be 
freed from all pollution. Further we cannot go. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
INTELLIGENCE. 
Tue Head Masters’ Conference at Rugby last week passed the 
following resolution unanimously :—‘‘ That the Conference de- 
plores the time wasted in teaching boys the present system of 
weights and measures, and would welcome the introduction of 
a more rational system.” 
AmoncG the French Universities which, in accordance with 
the new Act, will at the end of next year be permitted to dis- 
pose of the money accruing from students’ fees, &c., the richest 
will be that of Lyons, which will thus have an annual income of 
over 5000/7. According to the Paris correspondent of the 
Chemist and Druggist, schemes are already on foot for important 
educational extension in the capital of the centre. The Lyons 
Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, as well as the Faculty of 
Sciences, will probably be enlarged, and new laboratories built 
or the present ones extended. But the most important project 
is the construction of a Chemical Institute, in which will be re- 
united the various chemistry services of the two above-named 
faculties ; and the already flourishing School of Commercial 
and Agricultural Chemistry will be also installed in this new 
building. The erection of this Institute will, it is hoped, be 
commenced next spring, and the cost is calculated at 60,000/., 
but the municipality will give the site, valued at 16,000/., and 
possibly other aid. The department has voted 2000/., and 
the State, it is hoped, will contribute over 25,0007. The head 
of the University states that, while laboratory research will not 
be neglected, the University will seek ‘‘to incorporate itself 
more and more with the industrial city” and ‘‘develop the 
technical instruction that may serve the commercial and manu- 
facturing interests of a great city of half a million souls.” 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 
Wiedemann’s Annalen der Phystk und Chemie, No. 12.— 
Directed electric surface conductivity, E. Braun. Continuous 
transition of electric properties in the separating surface of solid 
and liquid bodies.—Conduction of electrified air. Magnetic 
currents. By thesameauthor. Crystals have a different electric 
conductivity in different directions. This was proved by Wiede- 
mann by dusting lycopodium powder on a cleavage surface and 
sending a spark from a wire into it. An elliptic area was 
cleared, with axes in a ratio varying from 1:2to1:3. The 
author obtained different surface conductivities with a steady 
current, through a layer of condensed moisture. The effect 
vanished when the thickness of the layer exceeded 50 uu. A 
steady transition from the polarisation properties of a solid to 
those of a fluid body may be traced in the surface layer.— 
Polarisation phenomena in vacuum tubes, by C. A. Mebius. 
When the current through a gas increases, the rate of fall of 
potential at the kathode increases more rapidly than at the 
anode. When secondary terminals are introduced, so as to give 
a transverse current, the rate of fall of potential at these 
decreases with an increase of the main current, when a current 
of a certain strength is sent through the secondary terminals. — 
On the transition of carbon from the non-conducting to the 
conducting condition, by G. Brion. The conductivity of carbon 
depends upon the highest temperature to which it is exposed, 
the time since elapsed, and the present temperature. It is 
acquired very rapidly at temperatures between 800° and 1000° C. 
The conductivity decreases rapidly during the first few hours 
after heating, and then more slowly.—On electro-capillary light, 
by O. Schott. On sending the sparks from an induction coil 
through a capillary tube 0°05 mm. in diameter containing air 
at ordinary pressure, an intense light is observed in the tube. 
The latter soon gets roughened and blown out into spherical 
bulbs. Wider tubes gavea less intense light, and are less altered. 
Electrodes of various metals may be used with the same effect. 
In the spectroscope, the light shows a continuous spectrum crossed 
by bright lines, and dark lines along the spectrum which shift 
their position at every discharge.—Glow-worm light, by H. 
Muraoka. Natural glow-worm light behaves like ordinary 
No. 1418, VOL. 55] 
| 
light. But when it is filtered through cardboard or through 
copper plates, it shows the properties of X-rays or Becquerel’s 
fluorescence rays. The intensity of the action of the glow- 
worm rays is intensified by the presence of the cardboard 
near the sensitive plate. They:may be reflected, and probably 
also refracted and polarised. The author operated with 300 
glow-worms at Kyoto, Japan, during the month of June, when 
thousands of them swarm about the neighbourhood.—An 
attempt to demonstrate the existence of electrodynamic solar 
radiation, by J. Wilsing and J. Scheiner. Owing to the 
absorption of the longer waves by the atmosphere, and the 
consequent necessity for an instrument of extreme delicacy, the 
change of contact resistance between two metals was used as a 
test. But no positive results were obtained. 
Bollettino della Socteta Stsmologica Ttaliana, vol. ii., 1896, 
N. 4.—Recent observations and results on the form and mode 
of propagation of seismic waves, by Dr. A. Cancani.—The 
seismic data of Liguria, with reference to their frequency and 
periodicity, by Dr. E. Oddone.—On the after-shocks of the 
great Japanese earthquake of 1854, by Prof. F. Omori.— 
Notices of earthquakes occurring in Italy during the year 1896, 
by Prof. L. Palazzo. This catalogue, a continuation of that 
formerly compiled by Dr. M. Baratta for the Central Meteoro- 
logical and Geodynamic Office at Rome, contains accounts or 
all the shocks recorded from January 1 to June 14 The more 
important are those of Polesina on March 8, near Florence on 
April 15, in Asia Minor on April 16, and several earthquakes 
of unknown and distant origin on March 4, April 10, and May 
2, 3, and 5. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
LONDON. 
Royal Society, December 10.—‘‘On Prof. Hermann’s 
Theory of the Capillary Electrometer.” By George J. Burch, 
M.A. 
In reply to the claim of Hermann (Archiv fiir die Ges. 
Physiologie, vol. \xiii. p. 440), that his theory of the capillary 
electrometer received confirmation from the author’s experi- 
mental results, the author stated that his own theory was com- 
pleted before he saw Hermann’s paper, that it was based upon 
a totally different hypothesis, and that the identity of Hermann’s 
equation with his own is due simply to the fact that both are the 
mathematical expression of a movement which is dead beat. 
Hermann, adopting Lippmann’s polarisation theory, had 
assumed the simplest conceivable relation between the rate of 
polarisation and the acting P.D., namely, that they are pro- 
portional to one another. The author's starting point was the 
fundamental fact that in the capillary electrometer a mechanical 
effect is produced by an electrical cause. Writing Q for the 
quantity of electricity, C for the constant of capillarity, P for 
polarisation, and W for the work done, the symbolical expres- 
sion of the problem is— 
TF (Qs Ce Ps) = o( Wy). 
Hermann has passed over C and omitted to take W into 
account, confining himself to the theoretical relation between 
Q,and P,. But the term polarisation includes two phenomena, 
V1Z. = 
(a) That condition of the interface between two conductors, of 
which one at least is an electrolyte, in which the molecules are 
under a stress not greater than they are capable of supporting 
without chemical change. 7 
(4) A deposit upon the surface of a solid, or in the contiguous 
liquid, of the products of actual electrolysis. 
If one of the conductors is a solid, the inevitable local differ- 
ences of condition or of composition enable actual electrolysis to 
take place even with a P.D. smaller than that proper to the 
chemical change implied. But if both conductors are liquid 
and perfectly pure, the stress is so far equalised that no electro- 
lysis is possible until the E.M.F. reaches a certain value, more 
sharply defined in proportion as the materials are pure. The 
author holds that with differences of potential which do not 
reach this limit, the electromotive force is transmuted, without 
electrolysis, into mechanical force, and manifests itself as kinetic 
energy, until by the motion of the meniscus it becomes trans- 
formed into potential energy. The locus of transformation 
from electrical to mechanical force must clearly be the two 
