March 22, 1883] 
Junior Chemistry obtained a favourable report; but the 
Seniors displayed lack of reasoning power, with great readiness 
to reproduce cut-and-dried statements from books, In Heat 
the results of the examination were encouraging and satisfactory. 
In Experimental Physics generally there was great lack of 
practical acquaintance with the subjects. Only one candidate 
did really well among the Seniors. In Botany the answers were 
weak throughout, showing great lack of teaching by real objects 
handled by the students. Zoology appears to have been too 
much studied by Juniors from older and worthless text-books. 
The Seniors did better, but spread themselves over too wide a 
field of work, The knowledge of Physical Geography was 
better than that of Geology, but neither was good. 
The report recently made by Mr. R. D. Roberts of his visits to 
the centres where local lectures have been established, and on 
the present state of the local lectures’ scheme, contains many 
most interesting facts regarding the high appreciation with 
which the intelligent working classes regard the lectures, and the 
difficulties which the cost of the lectures occasions. Of the results 
of a course of electricity at Newcastle, the examiner says that the 
work done in answer to a long and difficult paper of questions 
was fully equal to that attained in a scientific University course. 
The greatest difficulty that occurs is not lack of demand for or 
interest in education, but the provision of funds to meet the 
expenses. If a solution of this could be found, the scheme 
would be taken up largely in towns where it is now out of the 
question. The people who are eager for knowledge and travel 
long distances to obtain it, in all kinds of weather over the 
roughest roads, are just those who, if they must pay for the 
lectures, must have less bread for their families. This is cer- 
tainly the case with the Northumberland and Durham miners. 
Whether the State will in some way assist in providing the 
knowledge and teaching which are so eagerly desired, must be 
again made a practical and urgent question. 
The following are the lectures in Chemistry, Physics, and 
Mineralogy for the Easter Term (el. signifies elementary, ad. 
advanced) :— 
Elementary Course of Chemistry, by a Demonstrator ; General 
Course, continued, Mr. Main, St. John’s College ; Non-metals, 
continued, and Organic Chemistry, el., Mr. Pattison Muir; 
General Principles, continued, and Organic Chemistry, ad., Mr. 
Muir, Caius College ; Organic Chemistry, el., Mr. Scott (Prof. 
Dewar’s assistant) ; Demonstrations in Gas Analysis, Mr. Scott; 
Sound, Lord Rayleigh ; Heat, Mr. Trotter, Trinity College ; 
Physics, el., Mr. Glazebrook, Trinity College; Physics, el., 
Mr. Shaw, Emmanuel College; Physics, ad., papers, Mr. 
Glazebrook an dMr. Shaw ; Chemistry and Physics, el., papers, 
Mr. Pattison Muir and Mr. Shaw. 
Practical Chemistry, University, St. John’s, Caius, and Sidney 
College Laboratories. 
Practical Physics, Cavendish Laboratory ; Demonstrations in 
Light and Acoustics ; and in Optics and Electricity, el. 
Mineralogy, Course by Prof, Lewis, and Demonstrations for 
both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos. 
The following arrangements have been made by Prof. Hughes 
for lectures during the Easter term :—Local Stratigraphy, Prof. 
Hughes ; Geology (General Course, continued), by Dr. R. D. 
Roberts, Clare College; Petrology, Mr. Harker, St. John’s 
College; Palzeontology, Mr. T. Roberts, St. John’s College. 
Dr. R. D. Roberts will continue to set papers and superintend 
the course of reading of students in the Museum. 
The Strickland Curatorship being about to become vacant, 
Mr. Salvin having completed his valuable catalogue, a new code 
of regulations for the Curatorship has been drawn up. The 
Strickland Curator is to be appointed by Mrs. Strickland, the 
foundress, during her lifetime; then by Mrs. Catherine Strick- 
land in case she shall survive the foundress; and, after her 
decease, by the Superintendent of the Cambridge Museums of 
Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. In addition to caring for 
the Strickland Collection, the Curator is to take charge of any 
University ornithological collections, to catalogue them, to assist 
scientific visitors in studying the ornithological collections, and 
to aid and promote the progress of ornithological science. 
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.—Twenty lectures on Quan- 
titative Analysis will be delivered by Richard T. Plimpton, 
Ph.D., on Mondays and Fridays at 3 o’clock, during the third 
term. The first lecture will be given on April 13. 
Pror. STOKES, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the 
University of Cambridge, has been appointed to deliver the first 
NATURE 
499 
course of lectures on Natural Science under the auspices of the 
Burnett Literary Fund, Aberdeen, 
THE Earl of Zetland has given 500/. to the Edinburgh Asso- 
ciation for the University education of woman to found a bursary 
for the benefit of its students. This bursary will be known as 
the Earl of Zetland’s Bursary. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
LONDON 
Royal Society, March 8.—‘‘ Note on the Order of Reversi- 
bility of the Lithium Lines,” by Professors Liveing and Dewar. 
In their communications on the reversal of the lines of 
metallic vapours, the authors have several times noticed (Proc. 
Roy. Soc. vol. xxviii. pp. 357, 369, 473) the reversal of the 
lithium lines, and concluded that the blue line is more easily 
reversed than the orange line. This, however, does not appear 
to be really the case. When much lithium is introduced into 
the arc, a second blue line is developed close to but slightly 
more refrangible than the well-known blue line. This second 
blue line produces with the other the appearance of a reversal, 
which deceived the authors until they became aware of the 
existence of the second line. The blue line (wave-length 4604) 
is really reversed without difficulty when sufficient lithium is 
present, but urder these circumstances the orange line is also 
reversed, The latter line is also the one which first (of the two) 
shows reversal, and also the one which is more persistently 
reversed. Hence they place the lines in order of reversibility as 
follows : red, orange, blue, green, violet. 
Mathematical Society, March 8.—Prof. Henrici, F.R.S., 
president (and subsequently Sir J. Cockle, F.R.S., vice-presi- 
dent), in the chair.—Mr, Alfred Lodge, Fereday Fellow of St. 
John’s College, Oxford, was elected a Member, and Major Allan 
Cunningham and Mr. H. T. Gerrans were admitted into the 
Society.—Prof. Henrici feelingly announced, in a few well- 
chosen sentences, the loss the Society had sustained since its 
last meeting by the death of Prof. Henry Smith, one of its most 
distinguished ornaments, and who had been a Member almost 
from its commencement in 1865. The loss to mathematics in 
this country was almost irreparable, and it would be hard to 
find anywhere a fitting successor to him as an exponent of the 
higher geometry. It had been said that there were not half a 
dozen mathematicians in Europe who could breathe on the mathe- 
matical heights to which he was accustomed ; it was further true 
that few were so fitted as he for introducing others to those 
heights. His charm of manner and power of fixing the attention 
of his hearers were wondrous, and were as strikinvly exhibited at 
the December meeting of the Society (the last meeting at which 
he was present) as on any previous occasion. What Clifford 
once said when reading a paper by Hesse might be said with 
equal truth of Henry Smith’s papers: ‘‘This is reading 
poetry.” [Perhaps this Society will miss him more than any 
other ; he was always willing, if possible, to respond to the 
Secretary’s request for a paper, and he was a true imitator of the 
Jewish king, for he never gave us of that which cost him nothing. 
“*Everything that he did was as perfect as he could make it.” 
In a letter now before us the writer says truly: ‘‘Of all who 
‘knew’ him, none knew or saw him himself as we did at the 
Mathematical Society.” ‘‘ Very pleasant” was he to us, and h’s 
death has left a void in our ranks which time will hardly fill.] 
—Mr. J. W. L. Glaisher made a communication on the calcula- 
tion of the hyperbolic logarithm of #.—Mr,. Tucker read (in its 
entirety) a paper by Prof. Cayley entitled ‘*On Monge’s ‘ Mé- 
moire sur la Théorie des Déblais et de Remblais.’”—Mr. J. 
Hammond made a few critical remarks on a recent paper by 
Prof. Sylvester in the American Fournal of Mathematics. 
Zoological Society, March 6.—Osbert Salvin, F.R.S., vice- 
president, in the chair.—The Secretary exhibited, on behalf of 
the Rey. F. O. Morris, the drawing of a bird shot in Hampshire 
in November, 1882, which it was suggested represented a Tina- 
mou of some species that had escaped from captivity.—Mr. J. 
E. Ady exhibited some microscopical preparations of bone, in 
one case showing the growth of blood-vessels into cartilage 
previous to ossification, and in another case presenting a hard 
section in which the lacunz and canaliculi were extremely well 
shown.—Dr. Hans Gadow read a paper on the laryngeal 
muscles of birds, and pointed out first that the muscles of the 
syrinx are developed from the sterno-hyoid muscles ; and, 
