358 



NATURE 



[January 21. igcg 



Prof. A. L. Lowell, professor of political science in 

 Harvard University, has been selected to succeed Dr. Eliot 

 as president of the University. Prof. Lowell was born in 

 Boston in 1856, and represents a family which has been 

 prominent in Massachusetts affairs for a century. 



A Reuter message from Berlin states that a professor- 

 ship of aeronautics has been instituted at Gottingen 

 University. The Minister of Education has appointed 

 Prof. Prandtl, professor of applied mechanics at Gottingen, 

 to lecture on the whole field of aeronautics. 



Capt.hin H. G. Lyons, F.R.S., Director-General of the 

 Survey of Egypt, has been appointed lecturer in geography 

 at the University of Glasgow from the beginning of the 

 next academic year. Captain Lyons, who was vice-presi- 

 dent of the geographical section of the British Association 

 last year, has also been appointed by the West of Scotland 

 Provincial Committee to be lecturer in geography to 

 teachers in training. 



As an instance of practical science at universities, the 

 New York correspondent of the Times states that the 

 Columbia Wireless Club, composed of students of the 

 scientific department, will soon be prepared to inaugurate 

 inter-collegiate wireless telegraphy with the students of 

 Princeton University, New Jersey, and with the University 

 of Pennsylvania. The novel experiments will be watched 

 with interest as a method of teaching practical develop- 

 ments of science. 



The Board of Education has issued as a Blue-book 

 (Cd. 4440) the reports from those universities and university 

 colleges in Great Britain which participated in the Parlia- 

 mentary grant for university colleges in the year 1906-7. 

 The present volume is the first of a series in which all 

 the reports in any one volume relate to the same academical 

 year. It is much to be regretted that the Board of Educa- 

 tion makes no attempt to collate the particulars provided 

 concerning the seventeen institutions participating in the 

 annual grant, which now amoimts to 100,000/. It is at 

 present a long and tedious process to compare, say, the 

 income, the endowments, number of stafT, and students 

 of one institution with those of another. The arrange- 

 ment of the volume, in fact, compares very unfavourably 

 with the similar report of the U.S. Commissioner of 

 Education published at Washington. The Board of Educa- 

 tion may earn very easily the gratitude of students of the 

 progress of higher education in this and other countries 

 by including in the report of next year a series of tables 

 summarising and comparing the educational condition of 

 things in the universities and university colleges here con- 

 cerned. It would then prove possible to understand more 

 precisely why certain institutions are selected to receive a 

 Treasury grant while others are precluded. For instance, 

 we have before us the report for the session ending in 

 August last of the East London College, which the Senate 

 of the University of London recognises as a school of the 

 University. The Treasury appears to be the only body 

 which as yet has not accorded full recognition to the East 

 London Colle.ge of its status as the Universitv College for 

 East London. During the session 1905-6 the governors 

 made a formal application for the college to participate in 

 the Treasury grant. The inspectors appointed Ijy the 

 advisory committee of the Treasury visited the college and 

 a favourable report was published. Yet no grant was 

 awarded. If the tables suggested were available, it might 

 be easier by careful comparison to understand this and 

 other decisions. .At present it is nossible onlv to puzzle 

 over the question. The number of students of university 

 standing, the number of university successes, and the out- 

 put of research work nt the East London College seem to 

 compare favourably wilh those of several of the university 

 colleges receiving grants. 



The annual meeting of the Malhenialical Association 

 was held at King's College, London, on January 12. The 

 association now consists of 496 members, representing an 

 increase of more than 20 per cent, on the preceding year. 

 The year which has just ended has been characterised by 

 unusual activity. The formation of local branches has for 

 many years been considered desirable, and a first move in 

 this direction has been made by the formal recognition of 

 a North Wales branch under the local secretaryship of 

 NO. 2047, VOL. 79] 



Mr. T. G. Creak, of Llanberis. The association has 

 appointed representatives on a joint committee wilh the 

 Public Schools Science Masters' .'\ssociation to consider the 

 best means of coordinating teaching in mathematics and 

 science. Dr. Bovey, F.R.S., read a paper on the mathe- 

 matical training of technical students, in the course of 

 which the necessity was pointed out of teaching such 

 students to realise the value and utility of the theoretical 

 training which they were receiving. Dr. Bovey considered 

 the influence of the teacher, the text-book, the mental 

 powers of the student, and carefully planned courses. 

 The question further arose as to whether the teaching of 

 technical students should be in the hands of mathematicians 

 or engineers. While favouring the latter choice. Dr. 

 Bovey quoted the opinion expressed by Prof. Slichter, who 

 considered that the most competent teacher should be an 

 engineering graduate, but that it would be necessary for 

 him to have at least three years of post-graduate study in 

 advanced mathematics. It was, however, impossible to 

 induce graduates of technical schools to give this amount 

 of time to preparation for instructional work when other 

 fields of work offered such far better and more immediate 

 prospects. Dr. Bovey thinks that in these circumstances 

 the best plan at present is to secure an excellent mathe- 

 matician, and to induce him to fit himself for the post 

 by making himself in some degree familiar and sympa- 

 thetic w-ith the engineer's point of view and with the 

 class of problems with which his students will have to 

 deal in after life. Papers were subsequently read by Prof. 

 .Alfred Lodge on homography and cross-ratio, and by Prof. 

 Bryan on the need of a new symbol, in approximate 

 calculations, to denote digits the values of which are un- 

 known, and which at present are represented by zeros. In 

 his retiring address the latter directed attention to the 

 serious danger of the extinction of the English mathe- 

 matical specialist, and the necessity of fighting against 

 this tendency. Engineers and others had plenty of 

 problems for which all the resources of the mathematician 

 were needed, but the latter found that this work interfered 

 with his means of earning a livelihood. In defending the 

 specialist against the attacks of the outside public — attacks 

 essentially peculiar to Great Britain — Prof. Bryan pointed 

 nut that men who had specialised in part ii. of the mathe- 

 matical tripos were prominently to the front on all com- 

 mittees appointed by the association for reforming mathe- 

 matical teaching on common-sense, practical lines. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, Received August 10, 190S.—" Reciprocal 

 Innervation of .-Vntagonistic Muscles. Twelfth Note. 

 Proprioceptive Reflexes." By Prof. C. S. Sherrington, 

 F.R.S. 



Whereas inost reflexes are excited by environmental 

 changes acting directly as agents on the receptive organs, 

 by proprioceptive reflexes are meant reflexes excited 

 habitually by the organism acting as agent upon itself, 

 and thereby applying its own organs or parts as stimuli 

 to its own nerves. In propioceptive reflexes the organism 

 applies itself as a stimulus to itself. By its own act and 

 in its own substance it excites one or more of its own 

 receptor organs. In the bending of the knee, the 

 organism, by executing the movement of a part of itself, 

 supplies by that means an alteration of the condition of 

 that part, and so stimulates certain reflex arcs, propio- 

 ceptive arcs, arising in that part. The reaction thus 

 excited is causally less directly related to the environment 

 than are reflexes excited directly by the surrounding world. 

 In other words, an important difference between propio- 

 ceptive and other reflex reactions is that the former stand 

 only in secondary relation to the external world, whereas 

 the latter stand always in primary relation to it. One 

 outcome of this is, as has been previously ' pointed out, 

 that the proprioceptive reflexes tend to ally themselves 

 to, fuse with, and habitually reinforce other reflexes of 

 exteroceptive and interoceptive origin. 



It is shown in the present paper that the bending of 



System." (London 



