Nov. 15, 1883] 



NATURE 



63 



Prof. Huxley and Sir Joseph Hooker having been elected 

 members of the Salters' Company, were present at a dinner given 

 by the Company on Tuesday evening, and both took praise- 

 worthy advantage of the opportunity to remind our " City men " 

 of some wholesome truths. Prof. Huxley said he had no doubt 

 that an immense field of usefulness' lay open for the Guilds and 

 the Corporation of London. Happily it was a field which was 

 not altogether unploughed, and one in which the road had been 

 practically shown towards doing an immense amount of good. 

 He wished to express an opinion which he had formed with 

 great care, and which he uttered with a full sense of responsi- 

 bility, that the work which had been undertaken in the name of 

 the City and Guilds of London, and which had at present re- 

 sulted in the foundation of an institute for technical education, 

 was one of the greatest works, if properly comprehended, which 

 had ever been taken in hand, whether they viewed it with refer- 

 ence to the commercial prosperity of the country, to its social 

 organisation, or to the preservation of the condition of poli- 

 tical equilibrium ; for at the present time the wealth and 

 prosperity of the country were a cloud generated out of the 

 application of physical science, and taking that science away the 

 cloud would vanish like any other baseless fabric of a vision- 

 The future predominance of the commercial power of England 

 depended upon whether its merchants had the wisdom to appre- 

 ciate the gifts which science gave them. If, however, these 

 elements were disregarded, London would perish as surely as 

 Carthage. The social state and the preservation of the condi- 

 tion of political equilibrium depended, he argued, upon a proper 

 knowledge of science. The institution to which he had referred 

 provided for all those requirements, and it was one of the 

 greatest privileges of the office which he at present held that he 

 should be associated with those engaged in the organisation of 

 this system, and who, he trusted, would carry on the enterprise 

 to a successful conclusion. 



The death is announced of the well-known American minera- 

 logist, Mr. Lawrence Smith, at Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. 

 Smith devoted himself mainly to the investigation of meteorites, 

 and did much to increase our knowledge of these bodies. He 

 was a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. 



Capt. Dawson and party of the British Circumpolar Expe- 

 dition, which wintered at Fort Rae, Great Salt Lake, arrived 

 safe and well at Winnipeg on November 2, having succeeded in 

 crossing the height of land at Portage la Loche before the 

 closing of the navigation by ice, which some of the resident 

 authorities of the Hudson's Bay Company in the north-west 

 thought they would be unable to do if detained on Slave Lake 

 until the end of August. 



M. Charcot, the chief surgeon of La Salpetriere, in Paris, 

 has been nominated member of the Academy of Sciences. 



It has beeen arranged that the tercentenary of Edinburgh 

 University shall be celebrated on April 16, 17, and 18 next. 



The results of the late Cambridge higher local examination 

 were very discouraging as regards Group E (Natural Science). 

 Only two out of sixty-six candidates gained a first class, and 

 thirty-one failed. The following are extracts from the Exa- 

 miners' reports : — Elementary Paper : The answers indicated an 

 imperfect comprehension of principles, and an inadequate prac- 

 tical acquaintance with the subject-matter of the various sciences. 

 In Chemistry the papers as a whole were markedly inferior to 

 those of last year, showing want of knowledge of any practical 

 arrangements for the simplest experiments. In Physics the work 

 of all the canditlates was very poor. The general want of 

 clearness and definiteness of expression was very noteworthy. 

 No marks were gained for answers to the numerical questions, 

 and in but few cases were they attempted. In Physical Geo- 

 graphy and Geology the answers were on the whole unsatisfac- 



tory. The candidates seemed to have studied the subject chiefly 

 in books, for though one or two showed proofs of having 

 acquired some practical knowledge in the Museum, nearly all, 

 when describing the physiography and stratigraphical geology of 

 an English district, gave indications that their knowledge was 

 gained by reading, and not by actual observation in the field. 

 In Physiology the answers of different candidates were very 

 unequal. Some were extremely good, while a considerable number 

 showed ignorance of the most rudimentary facts. There was very 

 little evidence of a personal acquaintance with minute anatomy. In 

 Zoology most of the answers were characterised by vagueness, want 

 of precision, and a marked, often grotesque, ignorance of the 

 meaning of the most ordinary technical terms. The reading of 

 most of the candidates seems to have been very diffuse and un- 

 intelligent, while not one of the candidates had any real grasp 

 of the principles of the subject. In Botany the answers were 

 very weak. They indicated a tendency to neglect the external 

 morphology and anatomy, and to pass on to special morphology 

 and life-histories of the lower forms before the above-named 

 branches of the subject had been properly mastered. 



Among the lectures to be given at the London Institution 

 during the coming season are the following : — December 3, Mr. 

 G. J. Romanes, F.R.S., Instinct ; 6, Rev. W. Green, the High 

 Alps of New Zealand; 13, Prof. G. W. Henslow, the Glaciers 

 of the Alps; 20, Prof. W. H. Flower, F.R.S., Whales; 27, 

 Prof. H. Armstrong, F.R.S., Water (juvenile lecture) ; 31, Dr. 

 Rae, F.R.S., the Eskimos and Life among them. January 3, 

 Dr. Donald MacAlister, How a Bone is built ; 7, Mr. H. See- 

 bohm, Arctic Siberia ; 10, Mr. Alfred Tylor, Celtic and Roman 

 Britain; 17, Mr. H. Dixon, Explosives. February 7, Mr. 

 Norman Lockyer, F.R.S., the last two Eclipses of the Sun; 

 iS, Mr. J. Bryce, M.P., D.C.L., an Ideal University ; 21, Prof. 

 R. S. Ball, F.R.S., the Doctrine of Evolution applied to the 

 Solar System; 25, Dr. E. B. Tylor, F.R.S., the Three Sources 

 of History — Records, Monuments, and Social Laws. March 6, 

 Prof. Schuster, F.R.S., the Aurora Borealis. 



Herr Carl Rohrbach of Leipzig has lately described a 

 method of procuring a fluid having extraordinarily high refrac- 

 tive and dispersive powers. 100 parts of iodide of barium are 

 mixed with 130 parts of scarlet biniodide of mercury. About 

 20 c. c. of distilled water are added to the powders, and they are 

 then stirred up with a glass rod while heated in a test tube 

 plunged into an oil bath previously warmed to 150° or 200" C. 

 A fluid doable iodide of mercury and barium is formed, which 

 is then poured into a shallow porcelain dish and evaporated 

 down until it acquires a density so great that a crystal of epidote 

 no longer sinks in it. When cold, even topaz will float in it. 

 It is then filtered through glass-wool. The fluid so prepared 

 has a density of 3'57S — 3'588, boils at about 145°, and is of a 

 yellow colour. Its refractive index is 1 7755 for the C line, 

 and I -8265 for the E line of the spectrum. For the two D lines 

 of sodium the refractive indices are 1-7931 and 17933 respect- 

 ively. So great is the disperson that, using a single hollow 

 prism with a refracting power of 60°, the dispersion between 

 the two D lines is almost exactly 2' of angle. 



The latest official report of the Imperial German Post Office 

 states that at the end of October the telephone was fully in 

 operation in the following thirty-six cities and towns, within the 

 Imperial postal territory (which does not include Bavaria 

 or Wurtemberg) :— Aix-la-Chapelle, Altona, Barmen, Berhn, 

 Beuthen, Brunswick, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Breslau, Burstcheid, 

 Charlottenburg, Chemnitz, Cologne, Crefeld, Deutz, Dresden, 

 Diisseldorf, Elberfeld, Frankfort-on-Main, Gebweiler, Geeste- 

 miinde, Hamburg, Hanover, Harburg, Kiel, Konigsberg, Leip- 

 zig, Magdeburg, Mayence, Mannheim, MUlhausen (in Alsace), 

 Potsdam, Stettin, Strasburg, Sulzmatt, and Wandsbeck. In 



