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NA TURE 



[November 26, 1908 



which considers it worth its while to reprint the papers 

 written by the members of its staff, and the conclusion is 

 forced on us that no one of the dozen polytechnics of 

 London or of the score of technical schools in the large 

 towns of the provinces — Birmingham, Glasgow, Belfast, 

 and others — contributes to the advancement of science so 

 much as Manchester does. In the next place, it may 

 reasonably be asked, Is Manchester doing as much as it 

 ought to do in this direction? To answer this question we 

 must remember that the school cost a third of a million, 

 has a staff of nearly loo, and claims to be second to none 

 in the kingdom in point of equipment. Judging by Con- 

 tinental schools, about one-sixth of the staff might reason- 

 ably be expected to be doing something to solve the 

 problems met with in their own departments, and on this 

 basis Manchester does not yet produce its proper quota of 

 research ; and if Manchester does not, what must be the 

 state of the other schools of the kingdom ? and why are 

 they in this state? They were founded for the training of 

 those who intend to apply science to industry, who can 

 render no greater service to industry than the solution of 

 some of its problems. What better training for this pur- 

 pose can there be than working out one of those problems 

 under the guidance of a teacher, and how can the teachers 

 act as guides unless they themselves have been pioneers? 

 No technical school is fulfilling its highest purpose when 

 its staff is not carrying out research, but is merely retail- 

 ing text-book knowledge which, from the nature of things, 

 must be a dozen years behind the times. Yet how many 

 of the schools of the kingdom are content to do nothing 

 better than point to their records of how many thousand 

 students have passed through them, and probably learnt 

 nothing more up-to-date than Euclid or the atomic theory, 

 both of which they might have learnt just as well in any 

 primary school ? 



The seventh annual meeting of the North of England 

 Education Conference is to be held on January 7, 8, and 

 9, 1909. United conferences are to be held in the Man- 

 chester Town Hall on the mornings of January 8 and 9, 

 and sectional meetings at the Manchester Municipal School 

 of Technology in the afternoons of the same days. One 

 of the subjects for discussion in the sectional meetings 

 of the second day of the conference is the training of 

 girls in domestic subjects, concerning which papers are 

 to be read by Miss Alice Ravenhill and Miss E. J. Ross. 

 The united conference on the concluding day is for the 

 discussion of the coordination of the curricula in primary 

 and secondary schools, .and papers are to be read by 

 Messrs. J. L. Paton and J. W. Iliffe and Miss Isabel 

 Cleghorn. The following subjects are to be considered 

 in sectional meetings on the last day of the conference : — 

 the place of the higher elementary school in the scheme 

 of education, with papers read by Mr. C. H. Wyatt and 

 Prof. J. J. Findlay : the relation of the universities to 

 evening teaching in industrial centres ; papers bv Messrs. 

 R. H. Tawney and W. J. Bees; and methods of teaching 

 mathematics; papers by Messrs, T. J. Garstang and H. 

 Brotherton. The committee has deemed it desirable to 

 asi< delegates to pay a membership subscription of one 

 shilling, which will contribute in some measure towards 

 the expense involved. .Admission to the conference meet- 

 ings will be by ticket, application for which should be 

 made to the honorary secretaries at the Manchester 

 Municipal School of Technology, accompanied by a postal 

 order or stamps for one shilling as membership subscrip- 

 tion in respect of each person attending the conference. 

 The committee has arranged to display the Manchester 

 Education Committee's exhibit as shown at the recent 

 Franco-British Exhibition. It is designed to show the 

 romplete and varied educational work of a large county 

 borough, and will he set up in the examination hall of 

 the Municipal School of Technology. K comprehensive 

 exhibition of educational apparatus and books will also 

 be arranged. 



For more than a year a committee, composed of re- 

 presentatives of the "University of Oxford, on the one 

 hand, and of labour representatives on the other, has been 

 considering the question of the relation between the Uni- 

 versity of Oxford and the eduration o. working men. It 

 NO. 2039, VOL. 79] 



is expected that the report of the deliberations of the 

 committee will be published shortly. . In conneclion with 

 the same movement a conference, largely attended bj 

 delegates of trades unions and other organisations of work 

 ing men, was held on November 21 at Toynbee Hall., 

 The scheme to be recommended by the Oxford committee 

 in the forthcoming report was described by tfie joint 

 secretary. The Bishop of Birmingham delivered an 

 address, during the course of which he said it appears 

 to him to be beyond the possibility of question that the 

 proportion of young men who are at Oxford because it 

 is " the right thing " to go to Oxford and because they 

 want to have a good time is ridiculously great. No 

 serious person can think about Oxford without seeing that 

 this is a gross misappropriation of the purposes and re- 

 sources of the University, and that, by one means or 

 another, it requires fundamental alteration. K system is 

 to be desired in which it shall be understood clearly, and 

 effectively brought about, that persons , who do. not at 

 once show that they come to the University because they 

 want to be students will have to go elsewhere. If carried 

 out there would be a great displacement of well-to-do 

 young men who want to have a good time by serious 

 students who would come equally from all classes, but in 

 large measure from among the workers. There is in 

 most classes a body of people who want to be serious 

 students, and possess the requisite qualifications. These 

 persons have the right to be at the University, because it 

 exists for .such students. The endowments of the place 

 should be so re-arranged as really to be again applicable 

 to the ends for which they were first given, namely, to 

 enable those who have no means of their own, but have 

 the capacity and desire to he students, to avail themselves 

 of the resources and the ooportunities of the great centres 

 of learning. Then w'ouM follow a re-modelling in the 

 University of the whole scale and standard of living. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Challenger Society, October 28.— Mr. A E. Shiple;(, 

 F.R.S., in the chair. — Ostracoda of the Bay of Biscay 

 captured during the 1900 cruise of H.M.S. Research : Dr. 

 G. H. Fowfler. More than 7000 specimens had been 

 identified, and in the case of more than 3000 the sex had 

 been determined and the length of the shell measured. As 

 the result of these measurements the author was enabled 

 to formulate provisionally a new law of growth in 

 Crustacea : — " during early growth each stage increases 

 at each moult by a fixed percentage of its length which 

 is constant for the species and se.x " ; for this the name 

 of Brooks's law was suggested, Prof. W. K. Brooks having 

 made the first observations which led to it ; it had been 

 checked to some extent by observations on lobsters 

 (Herrick) and crabs (Waddington). In several cases it was 

 shown that two stages of the same species had been 

 described as different species. Twenty-five species occurred 

 in the collection, and in some cases as many as five stages 

 had been recognised. -As regards the vertical distribution, 

 attention was directed to an increase in the number of 

 specimens captured between 750-400 fathoms as compared 

 with those from 400-100 fathoms, and the suggestion made 

 that this was due to a check in the velocity of fall of dead, 

 and dying specimens, produced by the increased viscosity of 

 the water, which in its turn was dependent on increased 

 pressure and diminished temperature. All the four plen- 

 tiful species, which were recognised on other grounds 

 as mesoplanktonic, attained their maximum intensity in 

 this zone, which would constitute a rich food-zone. Three 

 species were apparently purely mesoplanktonic ; eleven 

 reached their maximum intensitv in or near the epiplankton, 

 but extended into the mesoplankton. and of these eleven 

 three were apparently purely mesoplanktonic at their oldest 

 stage; four were purely mesoplanktonic. The question of 

 the vertical oscillation of the species was discussed, and 

 several were shown to be more abundant in the epiplankton 

 by night than by day ; in one case an attempt was made 

 to trace the movement of the species at different times of 

 day. The proportion of males to females seemed to point 

 to the probability that one species was parthenogenetic. 



