JUNE 10, 1915] 
NATURE 
415 


Tue authorities of the University College of Wales, 
Aberystwyth, at the request of several county educa- 
tion committees, have organised a series of short 
courses for teachers and others at the college during 
the month of August next. Classes in the following, 
among other, subjects have been arranged : geography 
and nature study, rural science, and hygiene and 
temperance. A special course in geographical survey, 
nature survey, and allied subjects will be held under 
the joint auspices of the Provisional Committee for 
the Development of Regional Survey and the Depart- 
ment of Geography in the Aberystwyth University 
College. Prof. H. J. Fleure will give a course of 
lectures on the. geography of western civilisation, and 
Mr. W. E. Whitehouse courses on map-reading, and 
local climatic surveys. The course in rural science is 
intended primarily for teachers in rural schools, and 
will include lectures on agriculture and land surveying 
by Mr. A. E. Jones, on agricultural chemistry by Mr. 
J. J. Griffith, and on school horticulture by Mr. J. L. 
Pickard. All inquiries with regard to the summer 
school should be directed to the registrar at the 
college. 
COMMEMORATION day at Livingstone College was 
celebrated on June 3. The former principal and 
founder of the college, Dr. C. F. Harford, who is at 
present an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps, 
presided. The secretary of the London Missionary 
Society, in the course of an address, said the training 
given at the college enables men to look after their 
own health, and that is an important point. In the 
first ten years of the history of the London Missionary 
Society’s mission in Central Africa, eleven of the mis- 
sionaries died and six were invalided home, and with 
one exception were never able to return to their 
work. In the last twelve years there has not been a 
single death in the mission, nor a single case of a 
man being invalided home. The average term of 
service of the first ten men who were sent to Central 
Africa was well under three years; for the last ten 
men sent to Central Africa, already their average term 
of service is more than fourteen years, and their 
average age about forty. The men have learned what 
Livingstone College teaches, the care of their own 
health, hygienic conditions, the need for building their 
houses in a healthy position and not on the side of a 
lake because it is a beautiful spot, the need for trying 
to drain the land round their houses, to avoid mos- 
quitoes, the need for taking care of their heads when 
they are out in the sun. 
Tue pamphlet entitled ‘‘ Suggestions for the Teach- 
ing of Elementary Science, including Nature Study,” 
just issued by the Board of Education (Circular 904, 
price 1d.), is intended to supersede earlier suggestions 
on the same subject. It is a clear and practical guide, 
which embodies the experience of the most enlightened 
teachers of elementary science, and particularly of 
nature study. The needs of both teachers and scholars 
are considered sympathetically, and no more gratify- 
ing recognition of the value of nature study has, so 
far as we know, ever been printed in this country. 
Experimental science is, of course, treated slightly in 
the earliest stages of school life, but the beginnings 
of all kinds of science are here discussed with know- 
ledge and insight. Hints to those who are called 
upon to prepare lessons in nature study are much more 
abundant than in the earlier editions, and being both 
practical and engaging, may be expected to kindle 
enthusiasm for the work. Of the many distinct merits 
which. we find in the suggestions before us, none is 
more salutary than the spirit in which they are con- 
ceived and expressed. The Board of Education does 
NO. 2380, VOL. 95} 



much to encourage those who, during the last five-and- 
twenty years, have striven to improve school methods 
in elementary science, and we warmly recommend its 
counsels, not only to teachers in public elementary 
schools, but to all who teach children. Had the sug- 
gestions been locked up in a big report, we should 
have quoted some of the more remarkable passages, 
but the whole document can be bought for a penny 
and read in an hour; to enthusiastic teachers the task 
will be a pleasant one. 

SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
LONDON. 
Zoological Society, May 25.--Prof. E. W. MacBride, 
vice-president, in the chair.—S. Hirst: A minute 
blood-sucking mite belonging to the family Gamasidz. 
The mite was found on Couper’s snake in the Society’s 
Gardens, and is described as a new species of the 
genus Ichoronyssus.—H. R. Hogg: The spiders of 
the family Salticidae, collected in Dutch New Guinea 
by the British Ornithologists’ Union and Wollaston 
expeditions. One new genus and eleven new species 
were described.—G. A. Boulenger: The snakes of 
Madagascar, Comoro, Mascarenes, and Seychelles. 
The fauna of these islands is remarkable for the 
absence of snakes dangerously poisonous to man, with 
the exception of two sea-snakes known from the 
western part of the Indian Ocean. The paper con- 
tained a complete list of the species known to inhabit 
these islands, with keys to the identification of the 
genera and species.—Dr. F. E. Beddard: Toenia 
tauricollis of Chapman and on the genus Chapmannia. 
Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell: The anatomy of the Grui- 
form birds, Aramus giganteus, Bonap., and Rhino- 
chetus kagu. It was shown that A. giganteus re- 
sembled A. scolopaceus very closely in the details of 
its muscular and bony anatomy, and that the genus 
Aramus, in these respects, was very close to the true 
cranes. 
Physical Society, May 28.—Dr. A. Russell, vice- 
president, in the chair.—Dr. H. S. Allen; Numerical 
relationships between electronic and atomic constants. 
Jeans has pointed out that he, where h is Planck’s 
constant and ¢ is the velocity of light, has the same 
physical dimensions as the square of an electric charge. 
Lewis and Adams have suggested a relation between 
these quantities of the form 
3/05 
ch = ah a larel 
which may be written 

where q is 728077x10-%. The square of this 
numerical constant is p=5 30096x10-°. The charge 
e on an electron in E.S.U. is found to be, within 
or per cent., 9p x 10-°. The ratio e/m of the charge 
to the mass is found to be pxt1o0**, with the same 
order of accuracy.—H. Moore: A method of cal- 
culating the absorption coefficients of homogeneous 
X-radiation. The action of X-radiation when passing 
through a gas is to liberate electrons from the gas. 
The number of electrons emitted by any atom in a 
beam of X-rays is proportional to the fourth-power 
of its atomic weight (or possibly its atomic number). 
Thus, equal numbers of atoms of different elements, 
when subjected to similar X-ray beams, will liberate 
amounts of electronic radiation proportional to the 
fourth powers of the atomic weights of the elements. 
