6 NATURE 
| May 1, 1902 
17°.. The moon remained bisected by it throughout the entire 
visibility. 
Only the brighter stars were visible, on account of the thick- 
ness of the sky, and hence its exact dimensions could not be 
accurately determined from the want of comparison stars. An 
endeavour was made to secure pointings on different portions 
of the ring with the 12-inch equatorial by sighting along the 
tube, but this was found to be impossible because of the narrow- 
ness of the slit in the dome, which prevented its being seen with 
sufficient distinctness. 
At oh. 17m. Algol was on the inner edge of the extra ring 
near its junction with the ring surrounding the moon. 
At gh. 20m. Castor was central on the ring, and at gh. 24m. 
this star was on the inside edge. By this time the ring had 
almost entirely disappeared, only a fragment of it being visible 
at Castor. After this it was not seen again, though the ordinary 
ring remained visible for several hours. When the extra ring 
was disappearing, the ordinary ring became brighter, and at 
Ioh. 30m. a bright spot (a moon dog?) became visible on its 
north edge. 
At 8h. 50m. a Orionis was bisected by the ordinary ring, from 
which the diameter was found to be 48°*9. 
Following are some estimations of the position of the extra 
ring. At 8h. 50m. a line prolonged through Pollux and Castor 
would touch the extra ring 84° from Castor. At this time 
Capella was by estimation (a difficult and rather uncertain 
determination) about one-fifth of the radius of the ring north- 
east of its centre. At gh. om. the ring passed 7° from Castor 
in the line to 8 Aurigz, at which time Capella was by estima- 
tion 4}° north of the edge of the regular Ifinar ring. 
The phenomenon was witnessed by Mr. Frank Sullivan, 
assistant in the large dome, and myself. I do not know that 
anyone else saw it. 
I have never seen a similar phenomenon to this, and as it 
must be a rare one with reference to the moon I have thought 
it worth while to record the observationsin NATURE. I under- 
stand that something of the kind has been seen previously with 
reference to the sun. 
A careful drawing was made of the phenomenon, a copy of 
which is reproduced in Fig. 1. The exact time of the drawing is 
8h. 50m. (6h. om. slow of Greenwich). This will explain itself. 
In making the drawing the two rings have been assumed to be 
of the same size. E. E. BARNARD. 
Yerkes Observatory, Williams Bay, Wis., U.S.A., April 8. 
Longitude 5h. 54m. 13s.°2 W., Latitude + 42° 34’ 13”. 
The Education Bill. 
THE Education Bill now before Parliament is of so compre- 
hensive and important a character that it deserves to be con- 
sidered from various points of view. That which is most 
germane to the readers of NATURE is perhaps the influence it 
may have upon advancing or retarding the progress of natural 
knowledge. 
It is generally now admitted that the old notions of educa- 
tion, both as to subject and method, require to be improved, 
and that the recent advance of science, and of the applications 
of science to industry, claim a much larger share of attention 
than in days of yore. The best schools are opening their doors 
to this knowledge, if not welcoming it, and any change in the 
management of schools ought to be in this direction. How far 
will the present Bill fulfil this requirement? It says nothing 
about the curriculum of the schools, and concerns. itself solely 
with the constitution of the local education authority, and the 
machinery for raising and distributing the necessary funds and 
for appointing representatives on the management of the schools. 
The personnel of the managers in the first instance may not be 
much changed, but their powers may be seriously limited by 
their superior authorities, who have the revision of the expen- 
diture and the settlement of the rate to be levied. The influ- 
ence of the electors in School Board districts will be lost ; an 
influence which at the present time is generally directed towards 
rendering the schools of as much practical value as possible. 
The Act of 1870 secured the coming forward of men or women 
sufficiently interested in the subject to stand the ordeal of a 
popular election, and who, when elected, worked under the 
stimulus of public responsibility ; whereas under the present 
Bill the managers of transferred schools will apparently retain 
their office indefinitely, and the nominees of the new local 
educational authority will always be ina minority and there- 
NO. 1696, VOL. 66] 
fore unlikely to be able to develop the newer ideas of edu- 
cation. 
Our methods are undergoing a slow but very real change >. 
good object-lessons from the infant classes upward, involving the 
proper use of eyes and hands, are coming to the fore ; with a 
training afterwards in such branches of natural history and 
physical science as may bear on the probable occupations of 
after life—agriculture, mining, manufactures, trade, &c.—or on 
domestic pursuits. Much of England’s prosperity in the future 
will, in fact, depend upon the proper adaptation of this funda- 
mental training to the wants of the various sections of the: 
community. Hence the paramount importance of selecting 
such persons as shall not only be acquainted with the wants of 
the neighbourhood, but shall also be imbued with the impor- 
tance of this kind of teaching. 
It is interesting in this connection to observe that the statis- 
tical returns of the Board of Education show that in the schools. 
under the management of popularly elected bodies the attention 
given to the scientific subjects of instruction is more than twice 
as great proportionally as that in the ‘‘ voluntary”’ schools. 
These returns have shown a gradual advance in this respect 
since 1890, except that in 1899-1900 there is a small retro- 
gression perceptible in most of the subjects, including mechanics, 
animal physiology, chemistry and general physics. (See 
British Association report on ‘‘ Teaching of Science in Elemen- 
tary Schools,” 1901.) The cause of this is not obvious, and 
it is impossible to say whether it continues, as the figures for the 
year 1900-1 are not yet issued. 
Small schools are always worked at a great disadvantage, as 
the children attending them cannot be properly divided into 
classes and have almost necessarily to be taught by one teacher. 
This cannot be avoided in districts of very sparse population ;. 
but the Government Bill gives direct encouragement to the 
multiplication of small schools, each of which will be recog- 
nised as necessary provided it can draw thirty children from 
some neighbouring school. 
The Bill is defective in not providing that the education com- 
menced under the code in the elementary schools should be 
continued in the department of higher education, whether in 
evening, ‘technical or secondary schools. The only correlation 
attempted consists in the putting all schools within a given area. 
under one local authority ; but it does not ensure that there 
should be any organic connection or unity of aim between the 
lower and the higher schools. 
I cannot help thinking that men and women elected for the 
express purpose, and subject to periodical re-election, are the- 
most likely to support the more modern and practical views of 
education and so to enable the children under their charge to 
become more intelligent and valuable members of the com- 
munity. J. H. GLADSTONE, 
17 Pembridge Square, April 26. 
Resultant Tones and the Harmonic Series. 
Miss DicKiNns’s method of determining from the harmonic 
series the resultant tone would be of more worth than it is if it 
did not yield results which are untrue to the facts. 
is, or ought to be, well known from the observations of the late 
Dr. Koenig, in some cases differ from those assumed. For 
example, the combination of two pure tones of the ratio 9:4 
does vot yield as the resultant tone 5. And in the case of the 
ratio 8:5 the resultant tone actually heard is just as likely to be 
2 as 3, or both may be heard. The remark that the method is 
evidently as applicable to summational as to differential resultant 
tones is evidently made in ignorance of the circumstance that 
the ‘*summational” tones are not, in fact, ever heard if the: 
They are one of the myths of 
Si.vanus P. THOMPSON. 
two fundamental tones are pure. 
science, 
April 19. 
Thin Floating Cylinders. 
IN a letter to NATURE of February 18, 1897, I pointed out 
that a thin cylindrical floating shell was in equilibrium under 
the actions of its own weight and the external fluid load, the: 
shell having its axis horizontal and just touching the surface or 
else completely submerged. The method was that of Rankine’s 
conjugate load-areas, and building on this Dr. Thomson and 
myself made practical graphical ; 
masonry arch ; these were privately printed and circulated, and 
These, as. 
solutions of the circular 
Pip 
