412 



NATURE 



[February 4, 1909 



before the degree is to pit a man against competitors a 

 year older. 



As regards " medical chemistry " or " medical physics," 

 it should be stated, clearly and with emphasis, that we 

 want students to be grounded in the fundamental principles 

 of chemistry and physics, and that " medical physics " is 

 an utter delusion. A competent teacher will use such 

 illustrations as will bring his teaching into close relation 

 with the interests and ambitions of his pupils, whether 

 medical, engineering, or other. Only in this sense can we 

 allow any branch of science to be " medicated." 



Domestic Training and Science for Girls. 



(3) The Incorporated Association of Assistant Mistresseti 

 in Public .Secondary Schools devoted the afternoon of their 

 twenty-fifth annual meeting to a discussion of the science 

 curriculum for girls. mTss Laurie (Cheltenham Ladies' 

 College) read a paper dealing with the principles to be 

 followed in planning a science course. They wanted to 

 train children in scientific method and management ; they 

 should not cram facts, but develop faculties. Much de- 

 pended upon proper grading of experimental woric, and it 

 was important to use simple apparatus. There was a 

 danger of providing technical education without a .scientific 

 training. This led to the British workman being beaten 

 by the German. 



Miss Wood (Leeds Girls' High School) described a course 

 of " science applied to domestic life " which had been 

 carried out at Leeds. In addition to laboratories for 

 chemistry and physics, the school possessed a " kitchen 

 laboratory." Her object w-as to make common things and 

 ordinary phenomena the very centre of the teaching, to 

 develop scientific principles, ' and inculcate the scientific 

 habit in the closest possible connection with the facts of 

 evervday life. The household, and above all the kitchen, 

 abounded in things and problems that could be made the 

 object of simple scientific inquiry ; their study stimulated 

 the interest of girls. For a home task Miss Wood had set 

 high-school girls to clean the flues of the kitchen range, 

 light the fire, and arrange to have the water hot. In that 

 sort of way the cooperation of home and school was 

 secured. 



During the discussion which followed several speakers 

 feared the danger of making scientific instruction too 

 utilitarian ; the domestic training might be acquired at 

 the expense of, and not in addition to, the training in exact 

 thinking. 



So great a majority of girls will become better and more 

 efficient women by acquiring domestic knowledge and skill, 

 and the spread of such acquirements is so important to 

 national physique, that there can be little hesitation in 

 encouraging domestic training in our girls' schools — it 

 being obvious that in very many cases the home cannot 

 meet the need ; but in actual laboratory work the choice 

 of subject and method must have unity of aim. Which is 

 10 be the dominant ideal in the teacher's mind? Some 

 experience of girls' schools, and a careful observation of 

 the plan pursued in some of the most successful technical 

 classes, lead me to suggest that it will be found best to 

 develop a science course, using domestic phenomena for 

 illustrations wherever suitable, "to be followed in the last 

 year by a course frankly and directly aiming at domestic 

 tr.aining, narallel with, or in place of, the science course. 

 This would mean that science and domestic training would 

 be correlated, but have separate places in the time-table. 



G. F. D. 



A PROPOSED NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION. 

 P^ the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society on 

 January 25 Captain Roald Amundsen read a paper 

 explaining his plans for a proposed north polar expedition. 

 Mr. .Amundsen urges the necessity for another crossing of 

 the Arctic Ocean, not merely in order to gain further know- 

 ledge of the ocean itself, bi'it to study the general problems 

 of oceanography with the greatly improved methods which 

 have come into use since the date of the Tram expedition, 

 under the favourable conditions of an ice-covered sea, 

 NO. 2049, VOL. 79] 



which gives a fixed undisturbed surface from which to 

 work. He brings forward in his paper many interesting 

 examples of the progress which has been made during the 

 last twelve years in improving the apparatus and methods 

 of deep-sea investigation, and many arguments in support 

 of his contention that the polar ocean offers unequalled 

 opportunities for settling vexed questions connected with 

 the cause of currents, the effects of tidal action, the 

 reciprocal action of plants and animals at various depths, 

 and so on. .\ thorough examination of Nansen's old ship, 

 the Fraw, has shown that the vessel is, or can easily be 

 made, as sound as ever, and fit for another voyage similar 

 to that of the famous expedition of 1893-6. 



The plan of the expedition is stated as follows : — " With 

 the Fram equipped for seven years, and a capable crew, 

 I shall leave Norway in the beginning of 1910. We shall 

 malie for San Francisco round Cape Horn, taking in coal 

 and provisions at the former place. We shall then shape 

 our course for Point Barrow, the most northerly point of 

 North America, which I hope to reach by July or August. 

 From this place the last news will be sent home before the 

 real voyage begins. On leaving Point Barrow it is my 

 intention to continue the voyage with as small a crew as 

 possible. We shall then make for the drift-ice in a direc- 

 tion north by north-west, where we will then look for the 

 most favourable place for pushing farther north. When 

 this has been found we shall go as far in as possible, and 

 prepare for a four or five years' drift across the Polar sea. 

 Throughout our voyage up to this point, I intend to make 

 oceanographic observations ; and from the moment the 

 vessel becomes fast in the ice, a series of observations will 

 be begun, with which I hope to solve some of the hitherto 

 unsolved mysteries. What I expect to find in the un- 

 known part of the Polar sea I will say nothing about at 

 present. Some people have put forward theories of great 

 masses of land, others of small. I ought perhaps also to 

 have put forward my theory, but thinii it wiser to refrain 

 from doing so until I have investigated matters at closer 

 quarters." 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF GL.ASGOW. 



'T'HE jubilee of the Geological Society of Glasgow was 

 ■'■ celebrated on January 28, when a conversazione was 

 held in the University of Glasgow. An address was de- 

 livered by Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., president of the 

 Royal Society, and now the senior member of the Glasgow 

 society. Prof. J. W. Gregory, F.R.S., the president, said 

 the Geological Society of Glasgow has been fortunate in its 

 roll of distinguished members. For twenty-two years the 

 late Lord Kelvin was its president. The name which has 

 been longest on the list of members is that of Sir Archi- 

 bald Geikie. In 1862 he read to the society a paper which 

 occupied three-fourths of the first volume of the Trans- 

 actions, and at once lifted British glacial geology on to 

 a new plane. 



Sir Archibald Geikie, during the course of his 

 address, said it was not until some fifty years ago that 

 the number of men following a geological bent grew 

 large enough in Glasgow to call for the formation of a 

 geological society. It is a curious fact, he said later, that 

 some of the earlier writers on .Scottish geology were 

 foreigners, some of them having been attracted to this 

 country by the fame of the wonders of Staffa and the 

 Western Isles. One of the earliest and most celebrated 

 of these visitors was the Frenchman Faujas de Saint- 

 Fond, who in the year 1784 travelled from the south of 

 France to see the marvels of Fingal's Cave. On his way 

 back from the West Highlands Faujas de Saint-Fond 

 passed through Edinburgh, and met there the illustrious 

 James Hutton, who, he tells us, " was at that time 

 engaged, in the calm of his study, writing a work on the 

 theory of the earth." Little could the French traveller 

 have divined that "this modest philosopher," as he called 

 him, would in after years be imiversally acclaimed as 

 one of the great founders of modern geology. In the year 

 1810 there appeared the monumental " Description of the 

 Western Islands of Scotland," by John Macculloch, in 



