702 
NATURE 
fall. Unquestionably very important results have been 
obtained from the establishment of Dr. Mawson’s 
wireless meteorological station at Macquarie Island 
in the sub-Antarctic. The Federal Government is 
so much impressed with the importance of the results 
that it has decided to maintain this station for a time, 
experimentally, at its own cost. 
In the coming expeditions it will be important to 
get meteorological data as to the location of the chief 
cold pole of Antarctica, and as to whether the low- 
pressure area of Ross Sea ever leads to air being 
sucked over from the Weddell Sea region, or vice 
versd. Both are low-pressure areas, so that, when 
their seas are ice-free, air obviously would stream into 
them normally from the high polar plateau. The 
trend of the dominant Sastrugi should be systematic- 
ally mapped en route by all sledging expeditions. 
Measurements of the upper-air currents to supplement 
the work of G. C. Simpson, so admirably carried out 
on the Scott expedition, are much to be desired, as 
well as studies of evaporation and ablation generally 
in regard to precipitation. A meteorological observa- 
tory at the head of Weddell Sea should greatly enhance 
the value of the Argentine southern observatories. 
Glaciology.—These problems are also interesting 
and important. The Weddell Barrier, as shown by 
the soundings, has, like the Ross Barrier, recently 
retreated at least 100 miles south of the position 
which it once occupied in late geological time. 
It will be important to ascertain whether in the 
Weddell Sea, as at Gaussberg, at Adélie Land, at 
Termination Land, as well as in the Ross Barrier 
region, the ice has everywhere been recently retreat- 
ing. The importance of the evidence of moss ice 
(‘‘respirator ice”) in the lids of crevasses, as indicat- 
ing sea-water underlying barrier ice, should not be 
overlooked. The position of the Main Ice Divide on 
the south polar plateau should be carefully determined, 
as well as the directions and rate of movement of the 
inland ice and of the outlet glaciers. The origin and 
history of the outlet valleys—amongst the deepest in 
the world—which transect the Antarctic Horst, offers 
a most fascinating problem. Shafts of moderate 
depth should be sunk .in the far inland snowfields to 
determine the crystallinity of the material. 
Biological, physical, including magnetic, observa- 
tions, as well as chemical, and particularly oceano- 
graphical investigations should, of course, 
neglected. In regard to oceanography, it may be sug- 
gested that not only should a general survey be made 
to develop the continental shelves, submarine ridges, 
and banks and deeper basins, but detailed surveys 
should be made in the neighbourhood of large floating 
piedmonts, so as to determine the existence or not 
of ice-scooped rock-hollows where such glaciers reach 
the sea floor, and of something like a terminal 
moraine where the barriers ended when at their maxi- 
mum extension. Careful sets of serial temperatures 
should be taken at close vertical intervals in the sea 
around such floating glacier piedmonts and barriers 
at various seasons of the year. These should throw 
much light on the amount of annual loss, through 
melting at their base, that such floating barriers must 
undergo. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
INTELLIGENCE. 
CamBRIDGE.—The council of the Senate has issued 
certain regulations relating to the directorship of the 
observatory. It is proposed that the director shall be 
appointed by the Observatory Syndicate at a stipend 
of 1501. a year. He will be expected to reside at the 
residence attached to the observatory, which will be 
free of rent, rates, and taxes. It is assumed that 
NO. 2312, VOL. 92] 
not be- 
[FEBRUARY 19, I914 
the director will in future, as in the past, be one of the 
professors of the University. 
‘Mr. R. A. Peters has been re-elected to the Benn W. 
Levy studentship for one year. 
The master and fellows of Sidney Sussex College 
have offered sol. a year for five years toward the 
stipend of a University lecturer in forestry. The 
General Board of Studies is of opinion that the offer 
should be gratefully accepted, and that the lecturer 
should be appointed for a period of five years. The 
General Board has consented to a request from the 
forestry committee that it should have power to 
appoint Mr. H. Jackson as University teacher in 
Indian forestry. 
Dr. E. E. Fournier D’ALBE, assistant lecturer in 
physics in Birmingham University, has been appointed 
special lecturer in physics in the University of the 
Panjab, Lahore. 
Tue following advanced lectures, to which admission 
is free without ticket, are announced in the London 
University Gazette. A course of four lectures on the 
theory of wave-motion, with special reference to earth- 
quake waves, will be given at the University by Prof. 
Horace Lamb, on Fridays, beginning on February 
20. A course of four lectures on the Assouan 
Dam will be given at the Institution of Civil 
Engineers, Great George Street, Westminster. by Mr. 
J. S. Wilson, on Wednesdays, beginning on March 4. 
Ir is announced in Science that the General Educa- 
tion Board of the United States has given 150,000l. 
toward an endowment of 300,0001. for the medical 
department of Washington University, St. Louis, to 
create full-time teaching and research departments in 
medicine, surgery, and pediatrics. The conditions of 
the gift provide that all teachers in these departments, 
while free to render any medical or surgical service, 
must not derive therefrom any personal gain. Their 
entire time must be devoted to hospital work, to teach- 
ing and research, as it is believed that medical educa- 
tion in the past has suffered from the fact that the 
teachers have had to rely on private work for the 
greater part of their income. The General Education 
Board has also made conditional grants of 20,0001. 
each to Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., and to Wash- 
burn College, Topeka, Kan. 
In the issue of Science for January 23 last Prof. 
Rudolf Tombo, jun., of Columbia University, publishes 
another of his useful articles on American university 
statistics. On this occasion he deals with the regis- 
tration returns for November 1 of last year of thirty 
of the leading universities in the United States. Prof. 
Tombo points out that these universities are neither 
the thirty largest’ universities in the country, nor 
necessarily the leading institutions. The only univer- 
sities which show a decrease in the grand total attend- 
ance (including the summer courses) are Harvard, 
Western Reserve, and Yale, the attendance of the 
two institutions last named having remained -prac- 
tically stationary. The largest gains, including the 
summer attendance, but making due allowance by 
deduction for the summer course students who re- 
turned for instruction in the autumn, were registered 
by New York University (965), Illinois (944), and 
Columbia (927). This year twelve institutions exhi- 
bited an increase of more than 200 students in the 
autumn term attendance, as against eight in 1912. 
According to the figures for 1913, the institutions with 
an attendance of more than 5000 Students, inclusive 
of the summer courses, rank as follows :—Columbia 
(9,929), California (7,071), Chicago (6,834), Michigan 
(6,008), Pennsylvania (5,968), Wisconsin (5,890), Har- 
