JUNE 2, 1923]. 
NATURE 
761 

institution abroad selected by the Corporation. | | 
Particulars of the studentships and forms of applica- 
tion (which must be returned by, at latest, June 18) 
may be obtained from the Secretary, The Empire 
Cotton Growing Corporation, Millbank House, Mill- 
bank, S.W.r1. 
THE annual report of the University of London 
University College Committee (1922-23) records 
important developments in several directions. The 
new Rockefeller building for anatomy, histology, and 
embryology, and the engineering building, including 
the Charles Hawksley hydraulics laboratory, begun 
in 1919, are nearing completion and will be ready for 
occupation in October. A new department of chemi- 
cal engineering will shortly be established. The 
student enrolment, abnormally swollen during the 
three years following the War, showed a decrease of 4 
per cent. in 1921-22, but has since then remained 
steady : on January 31, 1923, it was 2513. The pro- 
portion of post-graduate and research students (16 
per cent.) is very high. The undergraduates were 
distributed in 1921-22 as follows: arts 58 per cent., 
science 19, medicine 13, engineering 8, law 2. The 
number of students from abroad—518—is very large. 
Of this number 100 were vacation course students, of 
whom 33 were from France, 15 from Holland, 12 from 
Scandinavia, and 10 from Switzerland. There were 
to8 students from India, 27 from the United States, 
23 from S. Africa, 26 from Japan; 30 per cent. of 
post-graduate and research students were from abroad, 
including 54 from India. The evening work of the 
College, mainly of a post-graduate character, is 
steadily increasing, so that the buildings are now open 
five evenings a week. Free public lectures by the 
provost, 15 professors, and 20 other members of 
the college staff, and by 29 visitors, were attended by 
more than 6000 persons, the approximate aggregate 
number of attendances being 13,500. 
“ OnE of the most important events in the history 
of higher education in Belgium,” according to the 
president of the administrative council of the Univer- 
sity of Brussels, was the decision of the government 
last June to grant a subsidy of one million francs to 
each of the two “ free ’’ or non-state universities— 
Brussels and Louvain. He cites the recent grants by 
the British Treasury to Oxford and Cambridge as 
precedents justifying the acceptance of such patronage, 
and asserts that, far from being menaced, the inde- 
pendence of his university is remarkably strengthened 
—apparently because the ministers understand that 
a subsidy implies no title to exercise control over 
university teaching. In each of these two univer- 
sities five chairs have recently been endowed for 15 
years by Mr. Hoover’s C.R.B. (Commission for Relief 
in Belgium) Educational Foundation. Thanks to 
this endowment, to a grant of 20 million francs from 
the City of Brussels, and to gifts of several millions 
from the heirs of Ernest Solvay and their relatives, 
the Ecole Polytechnique of the University of Brussels 
is now excellently equipped for training in civil and 
electrical engineering. A subvention of 30 million 
francs from the Rockefeller Foundation has enabled 
the medical school to modernise its seven-years’ 
medical curriculum, more comprehensive courses 
in physics and chemistry being included in the earlier 
part, the final year being reserved exclusively for 
clinical work. Of the 24 Americans studying in 
Belgium under the ‘ Fondation Universitaire” 
(C.R.B.) ae so scheme 20 were last year at the 
University of Brussels, where also were 71 other 
cae students including only one from Great 
ritain. 
NO. 2796, VOL. 111] 
Societies and Academies. 
LoNnpDoON. 
Linnean Society, May 10.—Dr. A. Smith Wood- 
ard, president, in the chair.—Paul Kammerer : 
Breeding experiments on the inheritance of acquired 
characters (see NATURE, May 12, p. 637). 
. Physical Society, May 11.—Dr. Alexander Russell 
in the chair.—J. H. Jeans: The present position of 
the radiation problem. (Guthrie lecture.) Classical 
dynamics are in conflict with experience with respect 
to the radiation problem. The discrepancies suggest 
that the laws of Nature must be discontinuous. To 
explain the observed nature of black-body radiation 
Planck propounded the quantum theory; in the 
hands of Bohr it soon became apparent that the 
quantum theory contained also the clue to the line 
spectrum. LEinstein’s hypothesis of light quanta 
appeared to possess obvious advantages, but has 
had to give way before the destructive criticism of 
Lorentz and others, and the direct experimental test 
of G. I. Taylor. The different methods of inter- 
change of energy between matter and ether, or radia- 
tion, may be classified as sub-atomic, atomic, and 
mass transfers. Typical of the first is the emission 
or absorption of radiation by a Bohr atom; of the 
second, the motion constituting heat in a solid ; 
and of the third, the transmission of momentum 
occurring when a beam of radiation falls upon the 
surface of a perfect reflector. Physical and chemical 
transfers take place by quanta, while mechanical 
transfers take place according to the classical laws. 
Applying the general principles to a special problem, 
the case of the exchange of energy between a free 
electron e and a field of radiation X, it seems probable 
that no exchange of energy can occur. A conception 
in regard to this which was used by Einstein in 1917 
appears difficult to interpret except on the view that 
electric forces are a manifestation of a sub-universe 
more fine-grained than anything we have yet 
imagined. 
The Faraday Society, May 14.—Sir R. Robertson 
in the chair.—E. P. Perman and H. L. Saunders: 
The vapour pressures of concentrated cane - sugar 
solutions. Few measurements have been made in 
e case of concentrated solutions except at low 
temperatures. In the present observations the con- 
centrations were from 10 per cent. to saturation 
and the temperatures 70°-90° C. The vapour 
Sok was measured directly, the actual pressure ~ 
eing balanced against a column of mercury. The 
pressure-concentration graph is not a straight line, 
as in previous determinations by a dynamic method, 
and the results are in harmony with Callendar’s 
‘theory that definite hydrates are formed in solution. 
‘The results also show that Babo’s law holds for 
sugar solutions.—E. W. J. Mardles: The elasticity 
of organogels of cellulose acetate. The phenomena 
‘of the strain, variable with time and partly reversible, 
‘and the persistence of deformation and optical 
anisotropy, have been ascribed to the formation 
with time, while under stress, of a metastable phase, 
‘due to the altered orientation of the molecules com- 
posing the complexes which have aggregated to 
form the gel structure. The relation between the 
modulus of elasticity and concentration for the 
organogels of cellulose acetate is expressed (approxi- 
Saetely) by the expression E=fC", at higher con- 
centrations over limited ranges; m decreases with 
Yall in temperature. The relation between log E 
and temperature is approximately rectilinear over 
the range of temperature examined. Addition of 
substances to the gel mainly affects the modulus 
