January 25, 1906] 



NA TURE 



3" 



electrical engineering, and has voted a sum of 2600/. toward 

 the equipment of electrical engineering laboratories. At 

 the end of the current session two fellowships of 125/. a 

 vear will be offered for competition, on condition that the 

 holders should spend their time in the prosecution of 

 definite research or in the pursuance of a definite line of 

 advanced study. Mr. H. Morris-Airey, lecturer and demon- 

 strator in Dhysics in the University of Manchester, has been 

 appointed lecturer in phvsics at the college in succession 

 to Mr. R. J. Patterson. 



The movement for extending higher education in the 

 Potteries has received (says the Lancet) a great impetus 

 from the offer by the Duke of Sutherland of Trentham 

 Hall to the Staffordshire County Council for higher educa- 

 tional purposes: For some time a scheme to establish a 

 university college for North Staffordshire has been 

 energetically brought forward, and promises of help have 

 been received from the North Staffordshire Institute of 

 Mining and Mechanical Engineers, from a joint committee 

 of china and earthenware manufacturers, and from various 

 1 thei sources. The scheme commended itself so much to 

 the county council that it offered to contribute 12,500/. to 

 the building fund, and to undertake the maintenance of 

 the college. The hall is considered to be in every way 

 admirably adapted for the purposes of a university college. 



The following gifts in aid of higher education have 

 been announced in Science. The Pennsylvania College for 

 Women in Pittsburg has succeeded in raising 38,000?. to 

 pay off a mortgage resting upon its property, and to make 

 a beginning in securing an endowment. After the mort- 

 gage has been paid, the college will possess as the nucleus 

 of an endowment fund the sum of 25,000/. Mr. Andrew 

 Carnegie has promised to contribute 10,000/. toward the 

 endowment fund of Bates College when 20,000/. shall have 

 been raised for the same purpose by friends of the college. 

 The University of Pennsylvania received last month an 

 anonymous gift of 10,000/. Lake Forest University has 

 received 12.000I., and the University of Wisconsin 

 a bequest of 2000/. by the will of the late Mrs. Fannie 

 Parker Lewis, for the establishment of scholarships for 

 needy young women students. 



Sir Philip Magnus, the new Member of Parliament for 

 the University of London, after the formal announcement 

 of the result, proposed a vote of thanks to the Vice- 

 Chancellor for the manner in which, as returning officer, 

 he had conducted the election. During the course of his 

 remarks. Sir Philip Magnus said that during the last two 

 years he has served on a departmental committee presided 

 over by Mr. Haldane to inquire into the working of the 

 Royal College of Science and Royal School of Mines, in 

 relation to other educational institutions. The report of 

 the committee is settled, and Sir Philip Magnus said he 

 was disclosing no secrets when he announced that, if effect 

 is given to the recommendations, London will before long 

 possess an institution, closely connected with the Uni- 

 versity, for the higher scientific training, and for the 

 annlication of science to engineering in all its branches, 

 which will compare favourably with anv similar school in 

 Europe or America. 



At the meeting of the Sociological Society on January 22, 

 Prof. R. M. Wenley, of the University of Michigan, read 

 a paper on sociology as an academic subject. Sociology, 

 although taught in all the great universities of the United 

 States, is academically in an experimental stage. Like 

 other new subjects, it has received much criticism as being 

 unsuitable for inclusion in the university curriculum. It 

 is said to lack disciplinary value, and it is urged, more- 

 over, that students come to it without the necessary basis 

 in previous knowledge. Prof. Wenley attaches little im- 

 portance to the first objection, but admits that the second 

 is of real weight. Answering the auestion, What ought 

 sociology to be as an academic subject? Dr. Wenlev sug- 

 gested that at Cambridge it might well form a part of 

 the moral science tripos ; at the Scottish universities, it 

 might be attached to the practical training of the theo- 

 logical faculty : in London the opportunities for ethno- 

 logical, linguistic, and economic research are in need of 

 its complementary aid. Wherever ethics, psychology, 

 NO I 89 I, VOL. 73] 



economics, anthropology, or the various forms of ethnology 

 have a place, sociology is needed as a coordinate discipline. 

 The paper concluded by urging that sociology must be a 

 science conducted by scientifically trained, competent ex- 

 perts, and not merely a pottering-round so-called problems 

 of local or even national origin by well meaning 

 enthusiasts. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, December 14, 1905. — " On the Distribution 

 of Chlorides in Nerve Cells and Fibres." By Prof. A. B. 

 Macallum and Miss M. L. Mcntcn. Communicated by 

 Prof. W. D. Halliburton, F.R.S. 



At the present day, when numerous observers are seek- 

 ing the explanation of certain nerve-phenomena on an 

 electrolytic basis, it is imperative that accurate know- 

 ledge of the electrolytes present should be first obtained. 

 Prof. Macallum has carried out previous work in this 

 direction, and has discovered methods for detecting 

 the inorganic salts microchemically. He has, among 

 other things, found that nerve cells are destitute of 

 potassium. This element, at any rate, is not revealed by 

 tests which show its presence in other tissues, though it 

 is possible, as Prof. J. S. Macdonald has pointed out, that 

 it may be present in a " masked " form, from which it is 

 liberated by injury. Another reaction at which Macallum 

 has worked is the well known reduction stain with silver 

 nitrate. The staining has been attributed by some 

 histologists to the formation and subsequent reduction in 

 sunlight of a silver-proteid compound. But this cannot be 

 the case, because proteids freed from inorganic salts do 

 not give the reaction. The test is shown to be entirely 

 due to inorganic chlorides, and thus forms a method of 

 great delicacy for the detection and localisation of chlorine 

 in the tissues. 



The present paper deals with the distribution of chlorine 

 in the nerve-units. The chlorides present are probably 

 numerous, but sodium chloride is the most abundant. By 

 the ordinary method, nerve fibres exhibit the well known 

 crosses of Ranvier. One limb of the cross is due to the 

 presence of chlorides in the cementing substance which 

 forms a ring at the junction of the neurilemmal elements. 

 The other is due to staining of the axis cylinder itself ; this 

 usually exhibits itself, not as a continuous dark stain, but 

 as a series of transverse stria; known as Frommann's lines. 

 It is, however, show-n that the same appearance can be 

 produced by suitable modifications of manipulation at any 

 portion of an axis cylinder, and that its greater intensity 

 at the nodes is simply due to the fact that at these spots 

 the reagent can penetrate more readily ; the sheath of the 

 fibre presents considerable impediment to the passage of the 

 reagent inwards and of chlorides outwards. 



The next question that arises is whether Frommann's 

 lines indicate a definite preexisting arrangement of the 

 chlorides in layers, or whether the appearance is an 

 accident explicable on a physical basis. It is quite con- 

 clusively shown that the latter explanation is the correct 

 one. The appearance can be most successfully imitated in 

 capillary tubes filled with chromate-holding gelatin or 

 white of egg, and is merely the result of physical processes, 

 as Boehm and Liesegang were the first to point out. 



Nerve cells also contain chlorides, but the intensity of 

 the reaction is less, and is usually limited to the peri- 

 pheral portions of the cell, principally because of the 

 difncultv the reagent has of penetration. The nucleus, 

 however, like other nuclei, is apparently free from 

 chlorides. 



The distribution of electrolytes such as sodium chloride 

 in the colloid material of an axis cylinder would not 

 permit ions carrying an electrical charge to travel un- 

 impeded, and in consequence the change of potential trans- 

 mitted would progress with diminished velocity. This 

 diminution would bring into line as parallel phenomena 

 the nerve impulse and the electrical current of action. It 

 must, however, be freely admitted that caution should be 

 shown in drawing conclusions of this kind where so much 

 is still unknown. 



