524 
NATURE 
[APRIL I, 1897 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
INTELLIGENCE. 
OxrorD.—Prof. W. J. Sollas, F.R.S., Professor of Geology 
in the University of Dublin, and late Fellow of St. John’s 
College, Cambridge, has been elected to succeed the late Prof. 
Green as Professor of Geology. 
In a Convocation to be held on Tuesday, May 11, the decree 
will be proposed that the gift of a very large and valuable 
collection of butterflies, offered by Mr. F. du Cane Godman, 
F.R.S., and Mr. Osbert Salvin, F.R.S., to the Hope Depart- 
ment, be accepted by the University. Prof. E. B. Poulton, the 
Hope Professor, states that the specimens in this collection are 
of especial value because of the excellent geographical data 
which accompany them. Although specimens from all countries 
are included, the collection is especially rich in species from 
Central America, a district of peculiar interest, hitherto but 
poorly represented in the Hope Collection. Many specimens of 
historic interest are also present—the captures of Bates in Brazil, 
of Belt in Nicaragua, and of Wallace in the Malay Archipelago. 
The majority of the more recently captured specimens were 
taken by the greatest living collectors, such as G. C. Champion 
and H. H. Smith (Central America), and C. M. Woodford 
(Solomon Islands) ; so that all localities can be entirely depended 
upon. No conditions are attached to the gift, so that the 
specimens can be at once incorporated with those of the General 
Collection, as soon as they have been adequately labelled. The 
collection also contains a large amount of material which will 
be available to illustrate the principles of protective mimicry, 
geographical distribution, isolation, Xc. 
AN anonymous donor has given 25,000 dols. to the Brooklyn 
Polytechnic Institute. 
Dr. WALLIS BunDGE has received the ad eundum degree of 
D.Litt. from the University of Durham. 
THE chair of Natural Philosophy in Queen’s College, Belfast, 
vacant by the retirement of Prof. Everett, has been filled by the 
appointinent of Mr. W. B. Morton, of Queen’s College, Belfast, 
and St. John’s College, Cambridge. 
THE Congres International de I'Enseignement Technique has 
accepted an invitation from the Society of Arts, and certain of 
the City Guilds, to hold its meeting this year in London. The 
‘Congress will be opened on June 15. 
Pror. C. C1iaus, Professor of Zoology at the Vienna 
University, has resigned ; Dr. B. Hatschek, of Prague, has been 
made his successor in Vienna; and Prof. R. van Leudenfeld has 
been appointed to fill the chair of Zoology in the latter’s place 
at Prague. 
THE University of St. Andrews has conferred the honorary 
degree of LL.D. upon Mr. J. Scott Keltie, Secretary to the 
Geographical Society; Prof. H. S. Hele-Shaw, Professor of 
Engineering in University College, Liverpool ; and the Rey. 
Alfred Merle Norman, F.R.S., Hon. Canon of Durham. 
A MEETING will be held at Hugh Myddelton Board School, 
‘Clerkenwell, on Saturday next, April 3, at 3.30, to consider 
improvements in the methods of teaching domestic economy as 
commonly practised in schools. It will be proposed that in 
future the teaching should be of an exact nature, and such as to 
make the scholars think for themselves about the ordinary 
affairs of the household. For this end to be attained, simple 
but accurate experimental work dealing with domestic matters 
should be introduced into girls’ schools. The Education 
Department have given their recognition to this view by intro- 
ducing a new subject—domestic science—into the Code of 
Elementary Schools. 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Sotiety, February.— 
Prof. A. W. Phillips contributes an obituary sketch of Prof. H. 
A. Newton, who died August 12, 1896. After pointing out, in 
some detail, his various lines of work, he closes thus :—‘* The 
achievements of Prof. Newton, great as they were from a 
scientific standpoint, give no adequate idea, taken in themselves, 
NO. 1431, VOL. 55} 
of his power and influence. He built up, during a leadership of 
forty years, a strong and symmetrical department of mathematics, 
by his comprehensive grasp of the trend of mathematical thought, 
and by his wonderful power of divining the paths which lead out 
to fruitful fields of research, both within the domain of pure 
mathematics and in its applications to other sciences. Nor was 
the first part of his academic activities merely in his own depart- 
ment of studies. In moulding the general policy of the institu- 
tion, his counsel was invaluable ; in establishing and maintaining 
the moral and intellectual standards, his influence was pre- 
eminent ; the University bears the indelible impress of a life 
consecrated to the development of the noblest ideals.” — 
Transcendental numbers is the translation, by Prof. W. W. 
Beman, of chapter xxv. of vol. ii. of Prof. H. Weber's Lehrbuch 
der Algebra. This is a fairly elementary presentation of the 
recent methods of demonstrating the transcendency of ¢ and z. 
The sections treat of enumerable masses (a mass is said to be 
enumerable when its elements can be brought into a (1, I) cor- 
respondence with-the whole series of natural numbers, or a 
portion of the same), unenumerable masses, transcendency of e 
and of +, and Lindemann’s general theorem regarding the ex- 
ponential function.—Shorter notices are a review of Dr. 
Schwatt’s geometrical treatment of curves which are isogonal 
conjugates toa straight line with respect to a triangle. Part i. 
(Boston, 1895), by Prof. F. Morley, of the annuaire pour ?An 
1897, publié par le Bureau des Longitudes, by Prof. E. W. 
Brown.—Members of the Society resident in, or near, Chicago, 
held a mathematical conference at the University of Chicago on 
December 31, 1896, and January 1, 1897, and in future it is 
proposed to hold at least two similar meetings in the year, viz. 
during the Christmas vacation, and in the spring.-—The titles of 
the papers read are given, with notes and new publications. 
lWiedemann’s Annalen der Physik und Chemie, No. 3.— 
Behaviour of quartz towards infra-red rays, by E. F. Nichols. 
This was investigated not by a bolometer or a thermo-element, 
but by a modified form of Crookes’ radiometer, in which one of 
the vanes was screenedand the other exposed to the rays reflected 
or transmitted by quartz. The rays, which were concentrated 
by a rock-salt lens and admitted to the radiometer through a 
fluorspar window, produced a torsion of the suspending quartz 
fibre, which was indicated by a mirror attached to the vanes. 
The reflection by quartz of light of the wave-length 7°4 @ is 
only 0°29 percent. But at 8°45 uit rivals that of burnished 
silver, 75 per cent. The transmission curve is very irregular, 
and beyond 8*1 # no light is transmitted.—Heat rays of great 
wave-length, by H. Rubens and E. F. Nichols. Instead of 
using a grating or selective absorption for obtaining infra-red 
rays, the authors filtered them out by three successive reflections 
from surfaces of fluorspar or rock-salt, the source being a layer 
of the same substance on hot platinum foil. Heat rays of 
hitherto unrecorded length were thus obtained. The fluorite 
reflections gave waves of 24°5 mw, or over 30 times the length of 
the extreme red light waves. They are, reckoning by octaves, 
midway between the shortest ultra-violet waves and the shortest 
electrical waves (6 mm.) hitherto observed. Reflections from 
rock-salt gave waves of 50 z.—Thermometer for very low tem- 
peratures, by F. Kohlrausch. Such a thermometer may be 
procured by the use of petroleum ether as the thermometric 
substance. It is very viscous but still sufficiently liquid at the 
temperature of boiling liquid air (— 190° C.), and shows a con- 
traction of volume by as much as 25 per cent. from the ordinary 
to the lowest temperature. Amylene also remains liquid, but ‘is 
more viscous.—Visibility of Rontgen rays, by G. Brandes and 
E. Dorn. When the vacuum tube is highly exhausted, the rays 
produce a sensation of light in most eyes, which is, however, 
difficult to localise. Most of the humours of the eye absorb the 
rays.—Interference surfaces at the kathode, and the electrostatic 
deflection of the kathode rays, by E. Wiedemann and G. C. 
Schmidt. The deflections of kathode rays observed by Jaumann 
are a secondary effect due to a modification of the field by the 
charged body, which produces a shifting of the origin of the 
rays on the kathode.—Demonstration of the course of variable 
currents, by F. Braun. _A method by which the inertia of the 
indicator may be got rid of consists in making the current traverse 
an electro-magnet which deflects the kathode rays in a vacuum 
tube. The spot of light on a fluorescent screen vibrates, and 
the form of the vibration curve is studied by a revolving mirror. 
—Also papers by Dorn, Vollmer, Goldstein, Drude, Konig, 
Loomis, Voigt, and Glan. 
