166 
NATURE 
{JUNE 15, 1899 
The tables given by Dr. Wadsworth are not complete, but so 
far as they go they show that ‘tin mining engineering the lead- 
ing schools in the world, so far as shown from the records here 
published, are Freiberg, Leoben, Clausthal, Berlin, Paris, St. 
Etienne, Schemnitz, Przibram, Michigan College of Mines. 
California, Columbia, Lehigh, Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, and Colorado.” 
AN account of the proposed Institute of Scientific Research 
for India, which Mr. J. M. Tata, of Bombay, has undertaken to 
endow with an annual income of a lakh and a quarter (125,000 
rupees), is given by Sir Henry Acland in the second edition of 
his little volume, ‘‘ Medical Missions in their Relation to 
Oxford” (London: Henry Frowde). As already announced, 
it is intended to found an institution which shall be, or 
correspond to, a Teaching University for India, concerning 
itself principally with post-graduate studies and scientific re- 
search. A committee has been organised to take the matter 
in hand and appeal for funds; and Mr. Tata’s commissioner, 
Mr. B. J. Padshah, is making inquiries in Great Britain, in 
Europe, and in the United States, how best to carry out the 
scheme. Sir Henry Acland utilises the opportunity which 
the proposed scheme affords to accentuate his appeal that ‘‘a 
generous benefactor, or some great National Company, should 
complete in Oxford the Public Health Department for University 
Education in the subject of public health and anthropology, with 
special reference to Mr. Jamsetji M. Tata’s great scheme for 
natural science in general, and sanitary science in particular, in 
India.” 
AN exhibition of practical work executed by candidates at the 
recent examinations of the City and Guilds of London Institute 
was opened at the Imperial Institute, on Friday, by the Duke of 
Devonshire. Referring to the character of the instruction given 
under the direction of this institute, His Grace remarked : The 
object of this instruction is to familiarise a student with all the 
processes and all the details the use of which is required in the 
trade he is going to undertake, and to show to him how the 
knowledge he has acquired in lectures or in books may be ap- 
plied to the practical performance of his business. This exhi- 
bition, I hope, will help those who see it to realise the real need 
of the technical instruction now being given. If you sent 
students direct from the classes of the Science and Art De- 
partment into a workshop they would be utterly incapable, in all 
probability, of applying in a practical way the knowledge which 
they have acquired in the classes. If you separate by too long 
an interval the lecture-room from the workshop, the work will 
be lost, but if you combine the lecture-room with the workshop, 
you have the material from which we may reasonably expect 
that expert finished artisans will be provided, although, of 
course, perfect workmen can only be produced by long and 
continuous practice. The artisan students in the registered 
classes of the institute now number over 34,000, in addition to 
nearly 2000 students in its manual training classes, and of these 
numbers 13,800 were examined last year, showing an increase of 
$00 over any previous number. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
LONDON. 
Royal Society, April 20.—‘‘ Note on the Fertility of dif- 
ferent Breeds of Sheep, with Remarks on the Prevalence of 
Abortion and Barrenness therein.” By Walter Heape, M.A., 
Trinity College, Cambridge. Communicated by W. F. R. 
Weldon, F.R.S. 
The paper is a brief abstract of information obtained from 
397 sheep-breeders, who have supplied records of flocks con- 
taining 122,673 ewes for the breeding season of 1896-7. 
The information obtained referred especially to the following 
eight pure breeds of sheep: Suffolk (7506 ewes), Kent (9931), 
Southdown (9134), Hampshire (26,400), Oxford Down (3555), 
Dorset Horn (10,285), Shropshire (8492), Lincoln (17,880). 
Besides these, returns were received for a small number of 
flocks for each of ten other pure breeds, referred to below as 
“various pure breeds” (10,010), and for certain cross-bred 
flocks (19,480). 
Fertility.—The importance of fertility as a factor in the sur- 
vival of a species is referred to, and some of the influences 
attending domestication which tend to reduce that importance 
are pointed out. Reference is made to Prof. Karl Pearson’s 
account of the racial characteristic of fertility in the human 
NO. 1546, VOL. 60] 
species, and it is demonstrated that, in spite of the equalising 
effects of domestication, fertility in different breeds of sheep is 
also of a racial character. j 
Owing to the fact that the returns supplied by flock-masters 
of the number of lambs born are admittedly not always cor- 
rect, and in view of the fact that the record of twins produced 
is considerably more accurate, statistics of the latter have been 
chiefly utilised for generalisations regarding fertility. These re- 
cords show that the pure breeds dealt with stand in the following 
order :— 
Suffolk (52°22 per cent. of twins), Shropshire (46°84), Dorset 
Horn (37°55), Oxford Down (35:02), Kent (31°38), Lincoln 
(29°09), various pure breeds (28°09), Hampshire (2409), South- 
down (18°67) ; that the average percentage of twins for these 
breeds is 30°02; and that the cross-bred flocks produce 31°04 
per cent. of twins. 
From this return, it is seen that the value of the Suffolk and 
Shropshire breeds, as prolific breeds, is incontrovertible, while 
the records of the Southdowns is so low as to show urgent need 
for close attention to the subject on the part of breeders. It is 
to be noted that several of the pure breeds show a higher rate 
of fertility than the cross-bred flocks. 
The fertility of certain of the pure breeds is then examined 
with regard to locality, and it is demonstrated that while 
locality may affect the fertility of a breed, it does not do so toa 
sufficient extent to alter the racial characteristic of the fertility 
of the breed. The chief possible exception to this is found 
among flocks of Lincoln sheep kept in Yorkshire, in which the 
percentage of twins recorded is practically double the percentage 
obtained in the home county ; but it is pointed out that, in this 
case, there are circumstances which indicate the difference is due 
to an abnormally low percentage of fertility in the Lincolnshire 
rather than to an especially high rate of fertility in the Yorkshire 
flocks. 
The influence of management, of the condition, kind and 
amount of food available, of the season, weather, subsoil, and 
the age of breeding ewes upon the fertility of a flock was 
referred to. 
Considering the percentage of lambs produced by the pure- 
bred flocks individually, it is seen that the percentage ranges, 
in 306 flocks, from 203°8 to 59°09 per cent., the most frequent 
percentage being between 110 and 120 per cent. 5 
As regards the different breeds, the most prominent points 
demonstrated by this inquiry are the value of the Suffolk breed 
from a point of view both of fertility and low rate of loss from 
abortion and barrenness ; the unsatisfactory condition of South- 
downs, both as regards fertility and loss; the urgent need for 
investigation of the fertility of Dorset Horn ewes with rams of 
their own breed; and of the conditions affecting both fertility 
and loss in flocks of Lincolns in the home county. 
Physical Society, June 9.—Prof. Lodge, President, in the 
chair.—The Secretary read a paper, by Mr. C. G. Lamb, on 
the distribution of magnetic induction in a long iron bar. A 
Lowmoor iron rod, whose length was 250 times its diameter, 
was taken, and a B-H curve plotted by ballistic measurements 
made with a search coil at the centre of the bar. The search 
coil was then moved along the bar, and the distribution of in- 
duction was determined for magnetising forces varying from 
H='74 to H=35'0. Up to fields of 3°35 the induction leaks 
out more and more quickly as H increases, but above this 
value the induction tends to keep in more and more. From 
the curves obtained, the mean induction was deduced as well 
as the distance of the resultant pole from the middle of the bar. 
It is shown that this distance first decreases and then increases 
with the rise in field strength. According to the ellipsoidal 
theory, it should be constant. The bar was then made into a 
ring, and the B-IL curves again determined. From these 
curves, together with known relations between B, H and uy, 
curves showing the variation of «along the bar were constructed. 
The Chairman gave a general explanation of the way the leak- 
age depended upon the permeability in the case of a long iron 
bar.—A paper on the absolute value of the freezing point was 
read by Mr. Rose-Innes. The corrected values of the absolute 
value of the freezing point determined by Lord Kelvin from 
experiments on hydrogen air and carbonic acid contain dis- 
crepancies amounting to 1/3 per cent. between the carbonic 
acid and the hydrogen, while the separate measurements for 
carbonic acid agree among themselves to about 1/6 per cent. 
Starting with Lord Kelvin’s equation for the forcing of a gas 
through a plug, the author has obtained a formula tor the ab- 
