May 2>\, 1877] 



NA TURE 



95 



deceased baronet, who was born at Rochdale on July 20, 1S04, 

 was for some time secretary to the Committee of Council on 

 Education, and whilst fulfilling the duties of this post he was 

 mainly instrumental in establishing a system of school inspection 

 by officers appointed by the Government. On his resignation he 

 was succeeded by Mr Lingen, now permanent secretary of the 

 Treasury, wlio was succeeded in liis turn by Sir P'rancis R. 

 Sandford. Under Sir James's scheme teachers were divided into 

 nine grades, and received money grants, not according to the 

 number of their scholars or of their passes, but largely, according 

 to the grade they had obtained by examination or service. He 

 was hostile to the Revised Code, which was introduced, about 

 twelve years after his resignation, by Mr. Lowe and his successor. 

 It is undoubtedly to Sir James that we owe the training col- 

 leges and the pupil teacher system, without which it would have 

 been impracticable for us to advance educationally even as we 

 have done. At the close of the year 1S49 he received a baronetcy 

 at the recommendation of Lord Russell, then Prime Minister. 

 In iS'ohe received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from the 

 University of Oxford. 



Spelling Reform. — An influential Conference on English 

 Spelling Reform was held on Tuesday at the Society of Arts, 

 under the presidency of the Rev. A. H. Sayce and Sir Charles 

 Reed. Many weighty reasons were urged against the present 

 system, and a deputation consisting ot Prof. Max Midler, the 

 Rev. A. n. Sayce, Dr. Morris, Mr. El is, Mr. Sweet, Dr. 

 Murray .and others, was appointed to wait upon the Education 

 Department in reference to the subject. A proposal having the 

 support of such names as we have mentioned deserves at least 

 serious consideration. 



A SiBERtAN Universttv. — It has been finally decided that 

 the New Siberian University, to which we referred some time 

 since, is to be established at Omsk. So long ago as 1S03 a 

 wealth)' Uralian landowner named Deniidoff gave 100,000 

 roubles to the Treasury, to be expended in the establishment of 

 a University. This sum has now swollen to 150,000 roubles, to 

 which a Siberian merchant has added 100,000 roubles more. 

 Orders have been issued to begin the construction of the uni- 

 versity buildings at once, so as to have them ready for occupation 

 by July, 1S80. The estimated cost of the future professional 

 staff, together with other incidental expenses connected with the 

 university, is 307,000 roubles yearly. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



London 

 Mathematical Society, M.ay 10. — Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S., 

 president, in the chair. — Mr. Tucker communicated a short 

 account of a paper by Dr. Hirst on the correlation of two 

 planes. In a former paper on the subject {^Proceedings, vol. 

 v., p. 40), the nature and properties were described first, of 

 an ordinary correlation satisfying any eight given conditions ; 

 secondly, of an exceptional correlation of the first order, pos- 

 sessing either a singular point or a singular line in each plane, and 

 satisfying seven conditions ; and thirdly, of an exceptional cor- 

 relation of the second order, having in each plane not only a 

 singular point but also a .lingular line passing through that 

 point, and satisfying six conditions. Moreover, the two follow- 

 ing numerical relations were established between the (7r,A) excep- 

 tional correlations of the first order, with singular points and 

 singular [lines respectively, which satisfy any seven conditions, 

 and the {/t, v] ordinary correlations, which, besides satisfying 

 these same conditions, possess a given pair of conjugate points or 

 conjugate hnes respectively (2f = /*-(- tt, i{i — v\'h]. It was by means 

 of these relations that the number of ordinary correlations was 

 determined which satisfy any eight elementary conditions. Be- 

 fore they could be applied, however, the exceptional correlations 

 of the first order which satisfy any seven elementary con- 

 ditions) had to be directly determined, and this determination not 

 unfrequently necessitated the consideration of the projective pro- 

 perties of curves of high order. In the present paper the 

 writer shows that the object just referred to can be attained in a 

 very much simpler manner by means of two general relations, 

 hitherto unobserved, connecting the number ol exceptional cor- 

 relations of the second order, which satisfy any six conditions, 

 with the numbers of exceptional corrtlations of the first order 

 which, besides satisfying the six conditions in question, possess 

 a given pair either of conjugate points or conjugate hnes.— The 

 secretary then read part of a paper by Prof. II. Lamb, of the 



University of Adelaide,'on the free motion of a solid through an 

 infinite mass of liquid. Suppose that we have a solid body of 

 any form immersed in an infinite mass of perfect liquid, that mo- 

 tion is produced in this system from rest by the action of any 

 set of impulsive forces applied to the solid, and that the system 

 is then left to itself The equations of motion of a body under 

 these circumstances have been investigated independently by 

 Thomson and by Kirchhoff, and completely integrated for 

 certain special forms of the body. The object of the present 

 communication is, in the first place, to examine the various 

 kinds of permanent or steady motion of which the body is capable, 

 without making any restrictions as to its form or constitution ; 

 and, in the second, to show that when the initiating impulses 

 reduce to a couple only, the complete determination of the motion 

 can be made to depend upon equations identical in form with 

 Euler's well-known equations of motion of a perfectly free rigid 

 body about its centre of inertia, although the interpretation of 

 the solution is naturally more complex. Free use is made 

 throughout the paper of the ideas and the nomenclature of the 

 theory of screws as developed and established by Dr. Ball. — 

 Herr Weichold (Head-master of the Johanneum, Zittau, Saxony) 

 sent a paper (read in part by the secretary) containing a solution 

 of the irreducible case, i.e., of the problem to express the three 

 roots of a complete equation of the third degree, in the case of 

 all these roots being real, directly in terms of its cuefficients, by 

 means of purely algebraical and really performable operations, 

 whose number shall always be limited, except in the case where 

 all these roots are incommensurable. — Mr. H. Hart made three 

 communications; First On the "Kinematic Paradox." — Prof. 

 Sylvester has described a system of Peaucellier's cells, the poles 

 of which all move in a straight line, but two of which not 

 directly connected always remained at a constant distance. Such 

 a result is very easily obtained by means of the following rela- 

 tions connecting six points A, B, C, D, E, F, lying on a straight 

 line. If 



E D . _ , F 

 A ■ ' C B 



AB.AC= a") 



BC.BD = 4«H ti,=„ J7r 



E-z> ETi « /■ then /</> = a. 



EB . ED = o- 1 



FA . FE = 2a" ) 



He then spoke on the solution of the algebraical equation 



/(-y) = o by linkwork, considering three points, the preparation 



of the equation (put under the form + + . . .—k), 



^ '^ X + a X -\r l> 



the representation of the terms of this equation, and the method 



of adding these terms. He showed that for the solution of the 



cubic x^ + p .r- -i- q x + r = e, treated under the form — 



+ / + 



(-j) 



+ - 



two reciprocators alone are required. He then spoke on the 

 production of circular and rectilinear motion. The particular 

 problem considered, he thus enunciated " to 

 find if possible the relations that must exist 

 "f between the fourteen segments of the bars 

 C I placed as in, the figure in order that 

 the system may be capable of free mo- 

 '' *- ** tion." He showed that seven equations can 



be obtained connecting the fourteen quantities only, so that any 

 seven being given, the remaining seven can be determined in 

 terms of them.— Mr. Hart then proceeded to the application to 

 the cases of 5-bar motion, laid befoie the Society at its April 

 meeting. Mr. Kcmpe stated that the cases submitted by Mr. 

 Hart at the previous meeting had also occupied some of his 

 attention, and he proceeded to remark that he had determined 

 the positions that the lines G E, AM/ must have, and that the 

 determination of one involved the determination of the other, as 

 the position of either turned upon the fact that the angles at A 

 and // must be equal. Prof Cayley also made a few remarks 

 on the subject. Mr. J. W. L. Glaisher stated that he had had 

 all the cases in which there are more than fifty consecutive com- 

 posite numbers looked out from Burckhardt's and Dase's tables, 

 which cover six millions, and that he had found that in the first 

 million there is a stretch of 1 1 1 numbers without a prime (about 

 310,000), and a stretch of 113 numbers without a prime (about 

 500,000) ; so that there are two very long sets of composite 



