Sept. ii, 1884] 



NA TURE 



47 7 



quently obtaining a diploma, will be required to pass an entrance 

 or matriculation examination, which will include mathematics, 

 [Hire and applied, chemistry, physics, drawing, and French or 

 German. On the results of the examination the following 

 scholarships will be awarded to students who are prepared to 

 attend the complete course of instruction in any one department, 

 provided that the merits and circumstances of the candidate 

 justify the Committee in making the award : — ( 1 ) The Cloth- 

 workers' Scholarship of 60/. a year, tenable for two years and 

 renewable for a third year, entitling the successful candidate to 

 free education. (2) The Siemens Scholarship of 50 a year for 

 three years, founded by Lady Siemens in memory of her husband, 

 the late Sir William Siemens, LL.D., F.R.S. This Scholar- 

 ship will be competed for in October 1885. (3) The Royal 

 Albany Scholarship of 50/. a year for three years, founded by 

 the Corporation of London in memory of the late Prince Leo- 

 pold, Duke of Albany. (4) Two Mitchell Scholarships of 30/. 

 a year for two years, one with and one without free education, 

 to be awarded to candidates who have attended a public ele- 

 mentary school within the City of London, or whose parents 

 are or have been resident or engaged in some trade or occupa- 

 tion within the City of London. The Siemens Medal, founded 

 by Lady Siemens in memory of her husband, the late Sir 

 William Siemens, LL.D., F.R.S., will be annually awarded to 

 the student of greatest merit in the department of electrical 

 engineering. The professors in charge of the several depart- 

 ments are :— Chemistry, Prof. H. E. Armstrong, Ph.D., F.R.S.; 

 Engineering, Prof. W. C. Unwin, B.Sc, M.Inst.C.E. ; Me- 

 chanics and Mathematics, Prof. O. Henrici, Ph.D., F.R.S. ; 

 Physics, Prof. W. E. Ayrton, F.R.S., A. M.Inst.C.E. 



The Paris Journal Officiel announces the formation of a 

 Commission to investigate all matters connected with mines and 

 mining in Tonquin and Annam. It is composed of various 

 officials of experience in Indo-China, and their instructions are 

 to draw up the programme of work to be executed by the mining 

 party which is about to be sent out from France, and to draw 

 up a draft agreement regulating the management and working 

 of mines in conformity with the treaty of June last with Annam. 



A subject which, according to the Japan Mail, is engaging 

 the attention of native scientific men in Japan is the method of 

 translating or transferring into Japanese the technical terms of 

 European science. Hitherto Chinese words and characters have 

 been employed for this purpose ; in many cases the translations 

 existed, we believe, in Chinese, and were simply adopted by the 

 Japanese — such as the equivalents for telegraph and railway 

 appliances, but in the great majority of cases a process of manu- 

 facture had to be resorted to. Given the sound of the technical 

 term and its meaning, the problem was to find among existing 

 Chinese characters one, two, or three, which suited one or other 

 of these best ; and thus a new word was formed. The scientific 

 journal of Tokio attacks this system, saying that, whatever may 

 be said on the score of the unity and adaptability of Chinese in 

 transcribing technical terms, the clumsy and complex graphic 

 system renders it unsuitable for youthful students, as the difficulty 

 of committing to memory so many hundreds or thousands of 

 arbitrary characters is still greater than the pursuit of a scientific 

 or technical course of study. Prof. Yatabe, of the Tokio 

 University, lays special stress on the use of the original 

 foreign technical terms, instead of translating them into Chinese. 

 In a lecture on the subject, this gentleman told the pupils of a 

 normal school near Tokio that, in order to comprehend the 

 scientific achievements of Europe, it was necessary to be con- 

 versant with one or more European languages, for, seen through 

 the medium of the Chinese tongue, science lost much of its sim- 

 plicity, and was at best but clumsily reproduced. Another 

 native Professor of the University argued in a similar strain. 



The knowledge of some European language was, he said, 

 essential, not only on account of the closer relations now existing 

 between Japan and the West, but also because the study of the 

 technical sciences would thereby be made materially easier than 

 at present. Whatever might lie the use of Chinese as a philo- 

 sophical language, it was certainly most unsatisfactory a- a 

 vehicle for the reproduction of Western sciences. 



M. F. A. FOREL communicates to the Journal Suisse an inter- 

 esting account of the discovery of the relics of the " lintel des 

 Neuchatelois," an extemporised fastness on the glacier of the 

 Lower Aar, occupied by Agassiz and his scientific friends from 

 1840 to 1843, while they were investigating the theory of glaciers 

 and the Glacial period in the immediate factory of glaciers. 

 Herr Ritter, from Leipzig, recently on a tour through the region 

 of the Unteraar, found there a block of stone bearing the names 

 of Stengel, Otz, and Martins, with the dates 1844 and 1845. 

 In 1840 Agassiz and his friends, coming across an enormous 

 block of micaceous schist, supported by other rocks, and forming 

 a natural shelter, on the median moraine of the glacier, at the 

 junction of the Lauteraar and Finsteraar, proceeded to complete 

 the cabin thus prepared for them by runniog up some walls of 

 dry stones. In his "Excursions et Sejours dans les Alpes," 

 Desor gives a lively picture of the enthusiastic scientific life led 

 by Agassiz and his zealous fellow-students of Nature in that 

 simple yet elevated hall of science to which they gave the name 

 of Hotel des Neuchatelois during the three years 1840 to 1843. 

 The block, naturally friable, showed, as early as 1841, numerous 

 fissures, and in 1844 split into two pieces. Since then the 

 frost has rent it up into a heap of debris, and it is three pieces 

 of this which have just been identified. They are a blackish 

 micaceous schist of very fine grain. The piece highest situated 

 bears several inscriptions of the colour of minium, but these are 

 mostly illegible, and M. Forel could only make out "i84S : ' 

 thrice repeated, and " Vogt," the present Professor at Geneva ; 

 23 m. lower down is the stone discovered by Herr Ritter, bearing 

 in very legible capitals the inscriptions " Stengel " (student of 

 engineering under Osterwald), "1844"; " Otz " (Engineer at 

 Neuchatel), "1845"; "Ch. Martins" (Professor at Mont- 

 pelier), with other letters which are indecipherable. There is 

 also to be read on it " No. 2," a mark which confirms M. 

 Forel's conclusion as to the connection of the stone with the 

 Hotel, Agassiz having caused certain stones to be distinguished 

 by certain numbers, and their position to be taken by 

 Engineer Wild, the block of the Hotel der Neuchatel being dis- 

 tinguished by the number " 2 " ; 55 m. lower still is the third 

 stone with the inscription : " Solioz Auguste, 1842 ; Lieu- 

 tenant Guntren," and a few more words hardly compre- 

 hensible. These three blocks are now no longer, as in 1840, at 

 the summit of the morain?, but have been slipping down the 

 incline on the side of the Lauteraar,' which merges in the glacial 

 ravine, watered by a beautiful stream. Comparing the position 

 of the Hotel des Neuchatelois, as given by Agassiz (797 m. from 

 the promontory of Abscwhung), and as seen in Wild and 

 Stengel's beautiful map of the glacier on the scale of I : 10,000, 

 with the position which it now occupies, M. Forel calculates 

 that the block must have glided a distance of 2400 m. from 

 1S40 to 1884, or 55 m. a year. For the easier identification of 

 the three blocks of stone by later explorers, M. Forel has in- 

 scribed on them, in fresh red colour, his own name and that of 

 Herr Ritter, with the date 1SS4. 



The Institution of Civil Engineers send us the lengthy and 

 valuable memoir of the late Sir William Siemens, presented to 

 the Institution by Dr. William Pole. After a few words on the 

 incidents of his life, Dr. Pole abandons any attempt at chrono- 

 logical aria ngement as impossible because of Sir William Siem;ns's 

 " extraordinary faculty of devoting his attention to many different 



