546 



NA TURE 



[April io, 1902 



observation and investigation into such problems as those of 

 plant disease is likely to be of the greatest value. 



The Report of the Technical Education Committee of the 

 Derbyshire County Council states that the Technical School at 

 Glossop, erected by Lord Howard of Glossop, has durinjj the past 

 year been furnished and equipped by the Glossop Town Council, 

 aided by a grant of 600/. (in addition to the loan of chemical 

 and physical apparatus) from the County Council. There are now 

 nine schools of science in the administrative county, of which 

 seven are co-educational schools for boys and girls. It is some- 

 times complained that the " school of science " curriculum is not 

 sufficiently commercial, but early specialisation in purely commer- 

 cial subjects, such as bookkeeping, commercial geography and busi- 

 ness letter writing, should certainly not be encouraged. The Com- 

 mittee quotes in this connection Mr. Sydney Webb's remarks 

 that "English business is not being driven to the wall because 

 of a dearth of qualified clerks and trained office boys. . . . 

 What we have to do is to train our business men, be they clerks 

 or partners, not merely or even chiefly to discharge their othce 

 routine, but to let their intellects play round their business, to 

 put into their work, not only brains, but brains of the highest or 

 inventive kind. This is where they seem at present to fall 

 behind the German and the American. Now we may take it 

 for granted that we cannot get busine.ss men of wider minds by 

 narrowing their education, nor produce that heightening of the 

 imagination which makes discoveries by carefully shutting out 

 all knowledge of the world that is not business. The most 

 efficient business man, in this highest sense of the word efficient, 

 will, we may be sure, not be an uncultivated man nor a man of 

 narrow range." 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, February. — 

 Prof. F. N. Cole is the chronicler of the proceedings at the 

 eighth annual meeting, in New York City, of the Society on 

 December 27, 28, 1 901. Though now two days are devoted 

 to the conference, owing to the large number of papers sent in 

 (twenty-seven), this time is hardly adequate, and it is becoming 

 a serious question whether it will not be necessary to adopt a 

 practice of selection, permitting the presentation, even then in 

 condensed form, of more important papers only. The meeting 

 was largely attended, the number of members present amounting 

 to fifty-nine. \ social feature was the dinner on the Friday 

 evening. The officers and members of council were elected. 

 Sir Robert Ball was present, and amongst the abstracts of the 

 papers communicated is that of his recent researches in the 

 theory of screws. Miss Scott's paper on a recent method for 

 treating the intersections of plane curves investigates the nature 

 of the set of equations discussed in Dr. F. S. .Macaulay's paper 

 in the London Mathematical Society's Proceedings, vol. xxxi., 

 giving different and simpler proofs of the theorems obtained by 

 Dr. Slacaulay. — Prof. Ilolgate gives an account of the pro- 

 ceedings at the January meeting of the Chicago section, held at 

 Evanston, Illinois, January 2, 3, 1902. Here also the at- 

 tendance was unusually large. Nineteen papers were presented, 

 and abstracts of them are here given. " The Vector Analysis " of 

 Dr. E. B. Wilson is reviewed tjy Prof A. Ziwet. Prof. Cdbbs's 

 " p;iements of Vector Analysis" (18S1-4) attracted wide atten- 

 tion, though it was only a pamphlet (83 pp. ) printed for the use of 

 his students. This Mr. O. Heaviside adopted, with slight modi- 

 fications, and expounded fully in his " Electroniagnelic Theory" 

 (1893). Dr. Wilson's work is founded upon Prof. Gibbs's course 

 of lectures delivered in 1899-igoo, and gives the first generally 

 accessible authentic record of Prof Gibbs's sy.stem. The 

 additions to the theory of the (1881-4) pamphlet are not 

 extensive, though Dr. Wilson's book runs into 436 pp. This 

 bulkiness is due to the lavishly open print and partly to the 

 author's effort to make the subject easily intelligible by supplying 

 numerous illustrations and applications. A good index is a 

 desideratum, and the printing details lack the advantage of 

 external aids now so common in carefully printed matliemalical 

 text-books. — Mr. J. L. Coolidge gives an interesting notice of 

 Dr. Max Simon's "Euclid und die sechsplanimetrischen Buchur" 

 and of Prof. M. J. M. Hill's "The Contents of the Fifth and 

 Sixth Books of Euclid." — The notes and new publications give 

 the usual interesting information. 



NO. 1693, VOL. 65] 



Memoir! (Trttdy) of the Kazan Society of Naturalists, vol. 

 xxxiii., 5 and 6. — Researches into the soils and flora of the 

 Penza and (Jorodische districts, by [. Sprigin. — On the 

 Erinace.-e of Russia, by K. Satunin (with one plate). The 

 following five species, found in Eurjpean Russia, Caucasia and 

 Transcaspian territory, are described : — Erinaceiis eurofiaeiis, 

 E. aiiritus, E. allnilus, R. macracanthtis zXiA E. hypomelas. 



Vol. xxxiv. — This volume is dedicated by the Society to the 

 professor of geology, Alexander Antonovitch .Stuckenberg, whose 

 portrait is given. — The Plagioclase-augile rocks between the 

 Yenisei and the Lena, by A. Laversky. A large collection of 

 350 specimens of these rocks was made thirty years ago by 

 Czekanowski and is now described, the author giving also a 

 general geological review of the region. Cambrian and Silurian 

 deposits constitute the frame of the plateaus. They are covered 

 with coal-bearing, brown Jurassic deposits (perhaps also 

 Miocene), and the latter are pierced and covered with basalts, 

 breccias and volcanic tufis, which in their turn are occasionally 

 covered with post- Pliocene deposits. The sheets of basalt seem 

 to have been ejected immediately after the deposition of the 

 coal-bearing sandstones, and cover an immense space — larger 

 than anywhere else on the globe — and are similar to the basalt 

 sheets of Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Greenland, Jan 

 Mayen, Iceland and the north-western portion of Great Britain. 

 .\ map and several plates, as also a summary in French, 

 accompany this excellent and very elaborate work. — Materials 

 for the fauna of the Devonian deposits of the Urals, by P. Ka- 

 zansky, with one plate (summed up in German). — Materials 

 for the knowledge of the soils and the vegetation of Western 

 Siberia, by A. Gordyaghin, part i. Under this modest name 

 the author gives, as an introductory chapter, an excellent 

 description, geographical, geological and botanical, of the 

 region in the basin of the Irtysh (from 49' to 61" N. lat.), where 

 we see the gradual transition from the black-earth steppes to 

 the forest region. Some very interesting discussions about 

 desiccation and the periodical changes in the precipitation in 

 Western Siberia'are incorporated in this chapter. — On the Tur- 

 bellarix of the Solovetsk Islands, by I. P. Zabusoff. Descriptions 

 of the thirty nine species, some of which are new, which were 

 found in this part of the White Sea, and anatomical descriptions 

 of four especially interesting forms (long summary in German, 

 and three large plates). — The fauna of the Carboniferous lime- 

 stone on .Shartymka River, on the eastern slope of the Urals, by 

 M. lanishevsky (seven plates and one map). No less than 328 

 different species, some of which are new, are described, and the 

 conclusion is that these limestones (described already by 

 Verneuil and Murchison) seem to belong to the Lower Carbon- 

 iferous age. — First addition to the " Fauna of the Permian 

 Deposits of Eastern European Russia," by A. Nelch.ayeff, with 

 three plate-s. Eighteen species, of which nine are new, are 

 described in Russian and in CSerman. 



Bulletin de l' Acadimie des Sciences dc St. PJtcrsbourg, 

 5'' serie, tome xi. , 1-5. — Observations of minor planets, made at 

 Pulkova with the ij-inch refractor in iSgSand 1S99, by W. Sera- 

 phimotT. The positions of thirty-five minor planets are given. — 

 Observations of terrestrial magnetism at Obdorsk and Samarovo 

 (North Siberia), by H. Abels. — On the products of oxidation of 

 the new alkaloid cotarnine, by G. Wulft'. — On the deter- 

 mination of the form of the solar disc, by W. Ceraski. — 

 Actinometric measurements at Ekaterinburg, by P. Muller. — 

 Determination of the velocity and direction of motion of clouds, 

 by \'. Kouznetsov (according to PomortsefTs method), with a 

 plate. — Researches into the coefficient of refraction of 

 ethyl ether in the vicinity of the critical point, by Prince 

 B. (iaiilzin and J. Wilip (in German). The chief results of this 

 elaborate work are: the critical temperature is 103 '61 C. : 

 critical pressure. 36'2S atm. ; critical volume, 3'84 c.c. 

 The formula of Lorentz represents very well the relations be- 

 tween the refr,action-coefticient and the volume, ami covers a 

 wide range of temperatures (10° to 100°), both for the liquid 

 and the gaseous states. The Lorentz constant is C —- o'3025. 

 " It must also be admitted that in certain circunstances the 

 li(|uid state may persist above the critical point — a phenomenon 

 which is quite analogous to the retardation of evaporation." — 

 Contributions for explaining various information from oriental 

 sources about ICastern Europe, by F. Westberg. .\ learned and 

 very interesting series of researches about the information found 

 in these sources about different nations— the Riis, the Madjars, 

 the Vyes. and so on. —On the classification of the Chrysomonades, 

 by L. IwanofT (in German). Certain peculiarities of structure 



