422 
The usual announcements of lectures and practical 
work have been issued by the various scientific depart- 
ments. The number of undergraduates resident 
during the term is not expected to exceed four hundred. 
Dr. JOHANNA WESTERDIJK has been appointed extra- 
ordinary professor of phytopathology in the University 
of Utrecht; she is the first woman to receive such an 
appointment in Holland. 
THE University of Stockholm has received from Mrs. 
Amanda Ruben the sum of 50,000 kronor (circa 2700l.) 
to found a readership in experimental zoology, the 
first post of the kind in Sweden. 3 
AccorDinG to the Niewwe Courant, Dr. P. N. van 
Kampen, University lecturer at Amsterdam, has been 
appointed professor of zoology and comparative 
anatomy in the University of Leyden, in succession to 
the late Prof. Vosmaer. 
Four lectures will be delivered on ‘‘Climate and 
Health,” on January 30, January 31, February 1, and 
February 2, by Dr. H. Campbell, at Gresham Col- 
lege, Basinghall Street, E.C. The lectures are free to 
the public, and will begin each evening at six o’clock. 
Dr. H. B. Fanruam, Christ’s College, Cambridge, 
recently chief protozoologist to the British Forces in 
Salonica, has been elected to the professorship of 
zoology in the South African School of Mines and 
Technology, Johannesburg, University of South Africa, 
and is shortly proceeding to take up the appointment. 
A SPECIAL introductory medical course in physics, 
chemistry, and biology for students desirous of begin- 
ning their medical studies will be held at University 
College, and will begin on March x. Intending 
students should communicate forthwith with the 
a eee University College, Gower Street, London, 
_ THE staff of the new Flemish University of Ghent 
includes six of the old professors and seven ‘Dutchmen, 
but for the most part Flemings of various standing 
have been appointed by the Germans. A considerable 
number of Dutchmen refused. The students at pre- 
sent are chiefly between eighteen and twenty years of 
age; the older students who were at the University 
when war broke out are mostly at the front. } 
“THE Value of Drawing to the Scientific Worker" 
was the subject of a lecture, with lantern illustrations, 
given by Dr. F. A. Bather at the January Conference 
of Educational Associations, on the invitation of the 
Royal Drawing Society. As a means of expression, 
said Dr. Bather, drawing is no less useful than writ- 
ing to the scientific worker. It is also an important 
method of scientific work. In the descriptive branches 
of science the researcher should be able to draw be. 
cause he alone understands the points that are to be 
brought out. Even if he employs a draughtsman, he 
must make sketches for the artist’s guidance, and 
must have sufficient knowledge of the craft to be able 
to control the result. The act of drawing directs his 
attention to features that might otherwise escape 
notice, and forces him to consider structural relations 
and meanings. In formulating and checking hypo- 
theses, a drawing or model is of the greatest assist- 
ance. This is exemplified in such diverse fields as the 
restoration of extinct animals and the presentation of 
crystal structure. The power of visualisation, trained 
by the practice of drawing, enables one to appreciate 
verbal descriptions with rapidity and accuracy, and to 
translate them when necessary into concrete form. 
Accuracy of observation and an ‘understanding of struc- 
ture are more important in professional illustration 
than the skilled conventional technique of the pictorial 
artist. It is doubtful whether the scientific draughts- 
NO. 2465, VoL. 98] 
NATURE 
[JANUARY 25, 1917 
| man can be trained elsewhere than in the laboratory. 
At any rate, the necessary training does not at present 
appear to be obtainable elsewhere. It should include 
the various modes of measurement and drawing to 
scale, the use of the simple and compound microscope, 
of the camera lucida and the photographic camera, a 
thorough knowledge of all process work, lithography, 
and working on photographs. Above all, the 
draughtsman must have a loving comprehension of 
the objects he portrays. : 
A report from Manchester on ‘‘ Engineering Educa- 
tion and Research,’”’ reviewed in Nature for espe 
24, 1916, carefully distinguished between the problem 
of educating workmen on one hand, and members 
of the higher engineering staff on the other. Observ- 
ing this distinction, another report, primarily con- 
cerned with the education of workmen, has been pre- 
pared by a committee of the Manchester Association 
of Engineers. The report recommends compulsory 
part-time day classes for all apprentices up to the age 
of seventeen, and suggests that the best apprentices 
should then be selected for further attendance at part- 
time day classes, evening classes being provided for 
the remainder. The recommendation that attendance 
at part-time day classes should be made compulsory 
for all employed persons under seventeen or eighteen 
years of age has already been made in the report on 
“Engineering Education and Research’? mentioned 
above, as well as in the programmes of educational 
reconstruction issued by the Education Reform Coun- 
cil, by the Workers’ Educational Association, and by 
the British Science Guild. Its repetition in the pre- 
sent report affords additional evidence of the willing- 
ness of employers to co-operate in giving effect to an 
Act of Parliament on these lines. This is excellent. 
So also is the advocacy of further co-operation between 
employers and education authorities. The principle 
upon which one paragraph in the report is based will 
not, however, meet with general acceptance; it is that 
all boys who are to leave school at fourteen should 
receive the same education up to that age. But the 
course at the Royal Naval, College, Osborne, has 
taught us that general education improves by being 
focussed, especially on post-school .activities. Objec- 
tion may also be raised to the ‘‘ Diagram of Scheme 
of General Education” that accompanies the report. 
The diagram shows separate schools (as in le pe 
instead of separate ‘‘sides” (as is usual in England). 
for classics, modern studies, and other departments of 
higher secondary education. It also reproduces the 
complete divorce, from which Germany suffers, be- 
tween technology and other university work, 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
Lonpon. 
Aristotelian Society, January 8.—Dr. H. Wildon Carr, 
president, in the chair.—C. D. Broad: Hume’s theory 
of the credibility of miracles. Hume’s general argu- 
ment against miracles is weak. On his definition two 
miracles of the same kind (e.g. two raisings from the 
dead) could not occur. Yet believers in miracles hold 
this to be possible. If one reported exception to an 
alleged law ought to make no difference to the strength 
of our belief in it, why should two or more? But if 
one reported exception makes some difference in the 
strength of our belief in the law, how can we be sure 
a priori that it may mot in certain cases reduce our 
belief to doubt or disbelief? If people had acted on 
Hume’s theory, many scientific discoveries would not 
have been made. For exceptions to many alleged 
general laws ought, if Hume be right, to have been 
treated, except by their discoverers, as alleged miracles 
and disbelieved. Since those who observe the excep- 
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