Marcu 18, 1915 | 
NATURE 
81 

estate was 271,0681., and about 150,000l. is devoted 
to bequests for charities and employees. 
Tue annual gathering of the South-Western Poly- 
technic was held on Friday, March 12. The chair 
was taken by Archdeacon Bevan, and Mrs. Hayes 
Fisher distributed the certificates and prizes. Vhe 
report of the principal showed that the chief feature 
of the session 1913-14 was the large number of 
scholarships gained by the past and present evening 
students. These scholarships included a Beit fellow- 
ship, the research studentship at Emmanuel College, 
Cambridge, a science scholarship and an art scholar- 
ship given by the London County Council. Amongst 
the degrees gained in London University were three 
D.Sc. degrees in chemistry. The principal also 
directed attention to the large number of present and 
past members of the institute who were serving with 
the forces. A vote of thanks was proposed by the 
Mayor of Chelsea, Principal Hudson, of St. Mark’s 
College, and was seconded by Mr. J. B. Coleman, 
who gave some account of the present condition of 
chemical industries and of what the chemical depart- 
ment of the institute was doing to help those indus- 
tries, 
Tue steady progress of education, and especially of 
scientific education, in India, has frequently been 
noticed in these columns, and we are glad to see con- 
firmatory evidence in the Presidency College Maga- 
gine, issued from the Presidency College, Calcutta, 
and edited by Mr. Joges Chandra Chakravarti. The 
magazine contains some interesting papers and notes, 
and prominent among them is an article on Prof. 
H. E. Armstrong’s visit to Calcutta as reader in 
chemistry to the University, when he delivered a 
course of five lectures. There is also a review of 
“Forty Years of Progress of Chemistry at the Presi- 
dency College,” by Dr. P. C. Ray, showing how a 
school of chemical research is being gradually built 
up, of which Dr. Ray himself is the leader. A very 
appreciative obituary notice of Prof. J. A. Cunning- 
ham, who was professor of chemistry at the Presi- 
dency College from 1906-9 is given. Further, a series 
of notices of eminent Presidency College men is pub- 
lished, and the subject of the article in this number 
is Sir Asutosh Mookerjee, lately Vice-Chancellor of 
the University, who has done much for Indian educa- 
tion. 
Tue number of undergraduates in residence at 
Oxford and Cambridge, as stated in a note on March 
4 (p- 24) is almost exactly one-third that of a year 
ago, the other two-thirds—about 2000 from each Uni- 
versity—being on active service with the Army or 
Navy. According to the Kreuz-Zeitung there are 
upon the books of the twenty-two German _ universi- 
ties—the twenty-second university being that of 
Frankfurt a/M., opened in October last—for the 
winter semester, including those at the front, 52,504 
students, of whom 4000 are women, as against 59,600 
and 3700 respectively last year. On leave—i.e. on 
military service—there are 29,882 students, including 
300 women, mostly stuaents of medicine. There are 
present in the universities 18,922 men and about 3700 
women. Of those present, 1500, including several 
hundred women, are foreigners. The number of 
students on military service is, however, larger than 
appears from these statistics, since the Technical High 
Schools have not been taken into account. The real 
number is only obtained by subtracting from last 
year’s number of German men students those of this 
semester, which gives about 32,000 students in the 
field. This does not even include those called to arms 
after the closing of the statistics Their number is 
at least one-third of those present, so that the number 
NO. 2368, VoL. 95 | 

of students under arms must be raised by a further 
6300. Seventy-five per cent. of the German students 
are therefore in the field. Of the German students of 
Technical High Schools about 80 per cent. are in the 
army. 
Tue War Office gives notice that an Army entrance 
examination will be held on June 29 next. At this 
examination there will be open to competition :—(a) 
Not fewer than 125 cadetships at the Royal Military 
Academy, Woolwich (for the Royal Artillery and Royal 
Engineers); (b) not fewer than 300 cadetships at the 
Royal Military College, Sandhurst (for the Cavalry, 
Foot Guards, Infantry, and Army Service Corps). 
The competition will be conducted in accordance with 
the regulations issued in November, 1911, except that 
no oral or practical tests will be included in the exam- 
ination. To be eligible to compete for admission to 
the academy, a candidate’s age must be such that he 
will have attained the age of 165, and will not have 
attained the age of 25, on July 1, 1915. To be 
eligible to compete for admission to the college, a 
candidate’s age must be such that he will have 
attained the age of 17, and will not have attained 
the age of 25, on that date. The contributions usually 
paid by parents of cadets will be dispensed with in 
the case of candidates admitted as a result of this 
examination. This will not affect the payment of 35]. 
required for the provision of uniform, books, etc. A 
sum not exceeding 3s. a day will be contributed from 
Army funds towards the cost of each cadet’s messing, 
washing, and contingencies. Camp kits are issued 
in kind at the academy or college. Outfit allowance 
of sol., from which the cost of the camp kit will be 
deducted, is issuable to cadets on appointment to com- 
missions. A limited number of cadetships in the 
Royal Navy and supplementary first appointments in 
the Royal Marines will also be open to competition. 

SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
Lonpon. 
Royal Society, March 4.—Sir William Crookes, presi- 
dent, in the chair—Prof. W. A. Bone, Prof. H. L. 
Callendar, and H. J. Yates: A bolometric method of 
determining the efficiency of radiating bodies. In 
view of the increasing uses of incandescent surfaces 
in heating operations of all kinds, the authors have 
investigated, as a scientific problem, the measurement 
of radiant efficiencies of such surfaces, by a bolometric 
method, which can be standardised by direct com- 
parison with a radio-balance, and which the authors 
propose to substitute for the existing water-radio- 
meter-cum-thermopile method (known as the * Leeds 
method ’’) used hitherto. The paper describes the 
construction and use of a new bolometer, specially 
designed for the purposes in view, in which the radia- 
tion from an incandescent surface, falling on a 
blackened coil of platinum wire, can be determined in 
absolute units for the increase in the electrical resist- 
ance of the receiving coil, the area of which is suffi- 
ciently small to allow of the instrument being 
standardised from a source of known intensity. And, 
by way of example, the application of the method to 
the measurement of both the absolute radiation of a 
gas fire and its ‘distribution factor,” is described and 
discussed._—E. Chappell: The simplification of the 
arithmetical processes of involution and evolution. An 
arithmetical process can be said to be completely 
simplified when it is reduced to either addition or 
subtraction. The invention of logarithms completely 
simplified multiplication and division, but involution 
and evolution were only replaced by multiplication and 
division, so that these processes may still be laborious 
even with the use of logarithms. The paper describes 
