66 
NATURE 
[May 18, 1899 
College, in presenting Prof. Kowalevsky, of St. Petersburg, 
for the honorary degree of Doctor in Science :— 
Russorum ab imperio maximo legatus ad nos subito advectus 
est vir illustris, qui investigandi rationes novas inter primos 
secutus, animantium formas quasdam inferiores ex alia in aliam 
paullatim mutatas identidem indagavit; qui in confinio inter 
genera vertebris instructa et vertebris carentia iampridem 
moratus, Amphioxi speciem ambiguam primus explicavit ; qui 
larvae denique Ascidianae cum vertebrato animalium genere 
affinitatem imprimis indicavit. Atqui, ne talium quidem 
virorum praeceptis attonitus, larvae illius degeneris propin- 
quitatem reformidabit homo non terrestris tantum sed etiam 
caelestis originis conscius, qui angelis paullo minor, gloria et 
honore est coronatus, super oves et boves, super feras omnes, 
super volucres et pisces, super omnia quae maris per vias 
pererrant, a Deo constitutus. 
Duco ad vos Zoologiae Professorem Petropolitanum, ALEX- 
ANDRUM KOWALEVSKY. 
The General Board have issued a report recommending that 
the stipends of the Reader in Botany (Mr. F. Darwin), the 
Lecturer in Organic Chemistry (Mr. Ruhemann), the Lecturer 
in Experimental Psychology (Dr. Rivers), and the Curator in 
Zoology (Mr. D. Sharp), should be increased; and that new 
Lectureships in Paleozoology and in Physical Anthropology 
should be established. 
A University Lectureship in Applied Mathematics will be 
vacant at Michaelmas by the resignation of Mr. Love, now 
Sedleian Professor at Oxford. Candidates are to send their 
names to the Vice-Chancellor by May 30. The stipend is 50/. 
a year. 
The new Professorship of Agriculture, with a stipend of 800/. 
a year contributed by the Drapers’ Company, was established by 
grace of the Senate on May It. 
THE Board of Education Bill was read for a third time, 
and passed, in the House of Lords on Monday. 
THE foundation-stone of a new school and technical insti- 
tute, connected with the Sir John Cass Foundation, in Jewry 
Street, Aldgate, was laid on Thursday last by the Bishop of 
London. The plans of Mr. A. W. Cooksey have been accepted 
for the new buildings, which will be in English Renaissance 
style, and will cost 45,000/. 
Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE has written to the Right Hon. 
Joseph Chamberlain with reference to the proposed establish- 
ment of a University at Birmingham. and the correspondence 
is published in the Bzrmingham Dazely Post. Mr. Carnegie 
refers in the correspondence to the great advantage which the 
iron and steel industries of the United States have derived from 
the Cornell University, and goes on to remark that ‘‘if Bir- 
mingham were to take that University as its model, where the 
scientific has won first place in the number of students, and 
give degrees in science as in classics, I should be delighted to 
contribute the last 50,000/. of the sum you have set out to raise 
to establish the scientific department.” In addition to this Mr. 
Chamberlain, writing to the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, 
announces that an anonymous friend who had _ previously 
promised 25,000/. has agreed to increase his offer to 37,500/. on 
condition that the full amount of 250,000/. required for the 
minimum endowment is obtained. There still remains 12,000/, 
to be raised before the quarter of a million required is reached. 
AY the annual celebration of Presentation Day of London 
University, held on May 10, the Earl of Kimberley presided 
for the first time as Chancellor. Referring to the Act passed 
last year, the Chancellor remarked that under the provisions of 
that Act and under the statutes made, the examination part of 
the University, by which the University had hitherto been 
known and in which it had done most excellent work, would be 
duly preserved. What was to be added was very important 
indeed, and it would become, he hoped, a great teaching Uni- 
versity. They were at last beginning to appreciate the great 
changes which had taken place in the world, and in the advance- 
ment of science especially. Those changes had required others 
in the framing of the highest education. Not that they should 
for one moment abandon the old system of laying a good broad 
foundation of education, but that they should add to it the 
greater cultivation of the sciences, of economic science, and of 
all those arts which had grown to be of such great importance 
to this country.. What they wanted was to bring together, as 
NO. 1542, VOL. 60] 
far as possible, all those various agencies provided for higher 
education in the metropolis. 
INQUIRIES as to the schools in which leading men in various 
professions were educated have been made by Zhe School World, 
and the results for men of science are published in the current 
number. Of 250 representative men of science—mostly Fellows 
of the Royal Society—chosen for the present inquiry, one-fifth re- 
ceived their early education either in private schools or at home 
under tutors. The schools which claim the greatest number of 
old pupils in the selected list are Edinburgh High School, Edin- 
burgh Academy, and Aberdeen Grammar School. The Scotch 
schools are followed, as regards the number of old pupils of 
distinguished eminence in science, by the City of London School 
and King’s College School. Eton, Harrow, and Rugby succeed 
these, and are in turn followed by Liverpool College, Royal 
Institution School (Liverpool), and St. Paul’s. The remarkable 
point brought out by this comparison is the small part the great 
public schools have taken in training the leaders in science of 
the present day. When the men who are now in the foremost 
rank among philosophers were receiving their early education 
science was almost, if not quite, omitted from the public school 
curriculum, with the result that comparatively few boys from 
such schools have become eminent in the scientific world. 
The neglect of science in comparison with other subjects is 
shown by the fact that Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, 
Westminster, and one or two other public schools, though com- 
paratively poor in their scientific record, are shown by Zhe School 
World to have furnished the greatest number of leading men 
in Parliament, the Church, and the Law, Eton leading the 
way as regards numbers in each of these classes. 
THE proposal to utilise the buildings of the Imperial Institute 
for the purposes of the new London University was referred to 
in the report read at the annual meeting of the Fellows of the 
Institute on Monday. Lord James of Hereford, who has suc- 
ceeded the late Lord Herschell as chairman of the governing 
body, in moving the adoption of the report remarked thata new 
lease of life had been brought within the purview of the Insti- 
tute. Those responsible for its management had been ap- 
proached by the Government, who had to find accommodation 
for the London University. In the Institute they possessed a 
very great area of accommodation not needed by them, which 
could be devoted with very little adaptation for the purposes of 
the University. In the first place, to bring a great seat of 
learning under the roof of the Institute seemed to the governing 
body to be in accordance with the objects for which the Insti- 
tute came into existence. But it was only right that he should 
tell them that in affording this accommodation to the London 
University they were receiving from the Government a very 
substantial return. He was not in the position to enter into 
any details, because all the arrangements had not yet been com- 
pleted, but he might say that the negotiations were proceeding, 
and that by the financial return for the provision of the neces- 
sary accommodation for the University the governors of the In- 
stitute would be relieved of many burdens. The real result 
would be that they would have all anxiety removed with regard 
to the future conduct of the Institute. 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 
Meteorologische Zeitschrift, February.—Results of the inter- 
national balloon ascent, by Dr. H. Hergesell. This is the first 
of a proposed series of papers ; the present one deals principally 
with the range of temperature, as shown by observations made 
in a captive balloon at Strassburg on June 7 and 8, 1898. The 
results prove that in strata of free air, whose height exceeds a 
few hundred metres, the temperature possesses an extremely 
small diurnal range. During the night it scarcely amounts to 
a few tenths of a degree ; while in the daytime a variation of 
some three or four degrees Centigrade may occur, even at a 
height of 800 metres, when vertical air currents exist. In the 
absence of these, the range would, in all probability, sink to a 
very low value.—On the characteristics of mild winters, by 
Dr. G. Hellmann. The last two mild winters have induced 
the author to revise his previous researches upon this subject, 
and he gives particulars of the 51 mild winters experienced in 
Berlin during the last 180 years. The principal results arrived 
at are: that mild winters scarcely ever occur singly, but in 
groups of two or three; that they are usually of long duration, 
from November to February or March ; severe and long, late 
winters (February and March) seldom occur after mild mid- 
