542 
with this it was gratifying to note the large number 
of new members, particularly so of those working in 
connection with the Board of Agriculture and 
Fisheries, and in the newly established university de- 
partments. 
It is hoped that with the increase in the number of 
meetings there will be a still further increase in the 
membership, and that the association will take its 
position amongst the numerous other learned societies, 
thoroughly representative of all branches of applied 
biology. 
To a very much larger extent than hitherto, the 
association will in the future play no unimportant part 
in defining the scope of economic studies in biology, 
and having now definitely taken up its headquarters 
in London, it will be more in touch with Governmental 
departments. Representative as its membership is of 
the universities of the country, and not a few of our 
Colonial departments, the possibilities that lie before 
it are endless, and should exercise a very profound 
influence upon the future of economic biology in this 
country, tending to raise its status to the level it 
occupies in other countries, and to become still more 
beneficial to the people of this country and its great 
Colonial Empire. Wie Be Ge 
FATIGUE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK. 
ae London County Council’s annual Conference 
of Teachers, held last week, vielded some 
notable pronouncements. On the opening day, 
January 1, Canon Masterman laid stress upon the 
training in morals and in imagination which pupils 
gain when history is properly taught. History pro- 
vides an education in sympathy not only with our 
forefathers, but with ‘“‘the brotherhood that binds the 
brave of all the earth.” The true historian always 
cares supremely for the truth; the critical faculty of 
the pupil must be carefully trained. To the gréat 
deed they must offer their admiration, their gratitude 
if they could, and, if not, then their silence. The 
historian differs from the antiquary in his constant 
thought of the present; the boy who rides in imagina- 
tion with the knight to the Parliamentum at West- 
minster will have a clearer idea of the responsibility 
of citizenship. The pageantry of history is sacra- 
mental; it has an inward and spiritual import, and, 
unless the teacher feel something of the spiritual 
significance of history, he had better teach algebra or 
mechanics all his life. 
On the second day, Mr. W. H. Winch gave the 
results which had attended a few experiments he had 
made in testing the fatigue of adolescents who were 
in attendance at evening continuation schools. He 
pointed out that his experiments in connection with 
the fatigue of day-school pupils had yielded no satis- 
factory result, while he had found distinct evidence of 
fatigue in adolescents who continued their education 
in the evenings. His experiments indicate that, in 
the cases he examined, adolescent students suffered 
a loss of ability as the period of instruction drew to 
a close. He instanced six sets of experiments, and 
in the only case which did not show the results of 
fatigue subsequent inquiry showed that 75 per cent. 
of the students were not occupied during the daytime. 
From such evidence he concluded that evening con- 
tinuation schools were not places of serious continued 
education for adolescents; they were a waste of educa- 
tional appliances. The chairman, Dr. W. McDougall, — 
Wilde reader in mental philosophy, thought these 
conclusions somewhat premature, as it did not follow 
that work which caused a measurable amount of 
fatigue was work -which should, therefore, not have 
been undertaken. 
NO. 2306, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
[January 8, 1914 
Mr. T. H. Pear described an experiment in con- 
nection with the fatigue which ensues from loss of 
sleep in which it was demonstratéd that the fatigue 
persisted long after the subject was of opinion that 
the effects of the lack of sleep had disappeared. He 
suggested that, on account of fatigue, the teacher 
who energetically changed from a strenuous lesson 
on one subject to a lesson of equal strain on another 
subject lost efficiency; the early lesson caused fatigue, 
and should have been followed by a period for re- 
cuperation. ; 
The conference closed with a description of six 
educational experiments; it was announced, as 
evidence of the wide latitude for experiment allowed 
in the elementary schools, that no fewer than sixty 
descriptions of such experiments had been offered for 
the consideration of the conference, 
ENGINEERING . AT THE BRITISH 
ASSOCIATION. 
ie Engineering Section of the British Associa- 
tion met under the presidency of Prof. Gisbert 
Kapp, who took for the subject of his address the 
electrification of railways. The address, which was 
printed in full in Nature of October 9 (p. 184), was 
followed by an interim report of the committee on 
gaseous explosions, which very briefly chronicled the 
work accomplished during the year, and described the 
steps which are being taken to carry on further re- 
search work at the Imperial College of Science. One 
of the notes presented to this committee was also read 
by the authors, Profs. Petavel and Asakawa, and 
described some experiments on the effect upon gas- 
engine efficiency of varying compression ratio. In 
these experiments the brake-horse-power increased in 
the same proportion as the theoretical air efficiency, 
but the mechanical efficiency decreased as the com- 
pression ratio increased. 
The concluding paper of the first meeting was read 
by Prof. Burstall on solid, liquid, and gaseous fuel, in 
which he discussed the various advantages obtained 
from each kind of fuel, and outlined a scheme for 
utilising, to the best advantage, a large daily supply 
of coal at the pit mouth by the production of coke, 
fuel gas, sulphate of ammonia, and various by- 
products of the tar obtained from the retorts. 
The first paper on the Friday morning dealt with 
the application of the internal-combustion engine to 
railway locomotion, and described a bogie-coach of 
60 ft. in length propelled by two six-cylinder Daimler 
engines through the medium of gears affording six- 
speed ratios. Recent trials demonstrate the feasibility 
of maintaining a high speed over long distances at a 
reasonable cost, and the author, Mr. F. W. Lan- 
chester, advocated the’ running of such vehicles on 
main lines at frequent intervals as much more 
economical and satisfactory than a service of long 
trains at considerable intervals. In the paper which 
followed, Dr. Hele-Shaw described a new type of 
hydraulic weighing-machine of the piston type, in 
which packings are dispensed with, while friction and 
leakage are practically eliminated by ingenious 
mechanical devices. 
The propulsion of barges on canals by aérial pro- 
pellers was described by Mr. L. B. Desbleds, and 
although the possible efficiency of this system of pro- 
pulsion was shown to be very small, the author con- 
sidered there: was a limited field for its application 
in cases where submerged propellers could not be 
employed. 
Mr. Lanchester directed attention to the various 
‘factors which cause instability in aéroplanes, and with 
the aid of models demonstrated the important features 
