JULY TT GIG 15 | 

NATURE 
499 

EpinsurGH.—Since the beginning of the war the 
Officers Training Corps of the University has supplied 
686 commissioned officers: artillery, 234; infantry, 
288; engineers, 79; medical corps, 85. In addition 
many others have been under training as the Univer- 
sity Reserve. Both in the 15th Royal Scots and in the 
14th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a nucleus 
of a company has been formed by University students. 
During the summer term a large part of the engineer- 
ing building and the neighbouring class-room of 
applied mathematics have been used by the School of 
Instruction for Commissioned Officers. Systematic 
courses are being given and are being attended by 
seventy-five infantry officers and twenty-four artillery 
officers. The hours are from g a.m. to 6 p.m., and 
each officer under instruction is expected to read for 
two or three hours every night. Qualifying examina- 
tions are held at the end of each month’s instruction. 
The adjutant who has charge of the School of In- 
struction is Major Mackenzie, one of the University 
lecturers in chemistry, and one of the instructors is 
Lieut. Todd, lecturer in engineering. These facts will 
give some idea of the way in which Edinburgh Univer- 
sity men are answering to the call. 
Giascow.—The Senate has appointed Dr. S. Alex- 
ander, professor of philosophy in the University of 
Manchester, to the post of Gifford lecturer for the 
period 1916-18. 
Lonpon.—Mr. G. F. Goodchild, principal of the 
Wandsworth Technical Institute, has been appointed 
to the post of registrar of the Council for External 
Students, in succession to Mr. Alfred Milnes. 

Ir is announced in Science that by the will of Miss 
Helen Collamore, of Boston, 20,0001. is bequeathed to 
Simmons College, 4oool. to Radcliffe College, and 
2000l. primarily to aid women students in post- 
Sraduate courses in the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. 
To commemorate the services rendered to the Ocean 
Steamship Company, Ltd., by the two founders of the 
company, the late Mr. Alfred Holt and the late Mr. 
Philip Henry Holt, a sum of 20,cool. has been handed 
by the company to the Holt Education Trust, and the 
income is to be applied in perpetuity by the trustees 
for the purpose of higher education in Liverpool. 
Tue successful series of public lectures on the 
Empire, by Dr. H. B. Gray, the official lecturer, will 
be continued at the Imperial Institute throughout July. 
The lectures, which are now illustrated by lantern 
slides, are followed in each case by a visit to the 
exhibition galleries of the Imperial Institute, which 
afford a unique object-lesson in the Empire’s com- 
mercial capacities. The lectures for July, which will 
be given on Wednesdays at 3 o’clock punctually, are as 
follows :—July 7, British West Africa; July 14, Fiji, 
Western Pacific, and Falkland Islands; July 21, Egypt 
and the Sudan. Admission is free by ticket, to be 
obtained at the central stand in the exhibition galleries, 
Imperial Institute, South Kensington, S.W. — 
THE recent report of the Board of Education 
(Cd. 7934) for the year 1913-14 remarks with regret 
that no improvement in the provision of higher tech- 
nical instruction in day technical classes is shown in 
the figures relating to 1912-13. In that year twenty- 
six institutions provided technical institution courses, 
the total number of separate courses in these institu- 
tions being seventy-eight. Of these, nineteen were 
courses in preparation for matriculation or other exam- 
inations forming stages towards university degrees, 
fifty-four were technological courses in engineering, 
chemistry, and subjects connected with the building, 
mining, textile, and leather trades, many of which 
were also attended by some students preparing for 
NO. 2383, VOL. 95| 
degrees, and five were scientific courses mainly in 
provision for professional qualifications. The total 
number of students enrolled in the courses was 1464. 
The number of students taking the full courses was 
; 1236, of whom 539 were in their first year, 374 in 
their second year, 269 in their third year, and fifty-four 
in later years of their courses. The number of day 
technical classes, as distinct from courses, recognised 
in 1912-13 was 281, and these were held in 110 insti- 
tutions. The students in attendance numbered 12,970. 
Of the courses held, 131 were only part-time or short 
full-time courses. The other 150 were in the nature 
of full-time day schools. While the latter was approxi- 
mately the same in number as in the previous year, 
there has been a fall of thirty-nine in the case of the 
part-time courses. 
Tue Professional Classes War Relief Council has 
issued a report of six months’ work which shows not 
only the need that existed for such an organisation, 
but the variety of means that have been employed. 
The applications during the six months which ended 
on May 6 numbered 2000, and the number of cases 
dealt with is 1600. One hundred cases were referred 
to other societies. Among the most useful forms of 
assistance have been temporary employment, educa- 
tion and training, financial help and loans, medical 
help, and hospitality. The professions dealt with have 
included authors, analytical chemists, engineers, sur- 
veyors, and teachers. In the matter of education 1120l. 
has been expended. Through the generosity of head- 
masters and various governing bodies, 134 children 
who would otherwise have lost all education are be- 
coming pupils at reduced fees, and in many cases the 
assistance given to pupils also enables schools to con- 
tinue which would otherwise have been ruined. In 
addition to this thirty-three candidates are undergoing 
training in productive professions; four have already 
qualified and have obtained remunerative employment, 
and others are about to take up their work. The 
work of the council does not perhaps lend itself to 
picturesque description, but it is filling an important 
place in our present disturbed social conditicns. The 
expenditure is now at the rate of 43c/. per week, and 
unless a sum of 25,0001. can be raised in the next few 
months the work Cannot be continued. No other body 
is doing exactly the same kind of work, in trying by 
co-ordination of existing benevolent funds, as well as 
by its own specialised forms of assistance, to tide over 
the professional classes who are so heavily penalised 
by the war. The offices of the council are 13 and 14 
Prince’s Gate, S.W. 

SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
LONDON. 
Royal Society, June 17.—Sir William Crookes, presi- 
dent, in the chair.—Dr. E. J. Russell: Soil protozoa 
and soil bacteria. In view of the claim recently made 
by Goodey that soil protozoa cannot function as a 
factor limiting the numbers of bacteria in soils, the 
author has brought together the evidence on which 
this view is based. It has been shown in numerous 
experiments that the numbers of bacteria in normal 
soils are relatively low, but they can be raised by any 
treatment that kills trophic forms and not spores. 
Starting, in the first instance, to find the properties 
of the factor which keeps down the hacterial numbers, 
and without framing any hypothesis as to its nature, 
these were found to be: (a) active, and not a lack of 
some essential; (b) not bacterial; (c) extinguished by 
heat or poisons, and after extinction does not reappear ; 
(d) can be reintroduced by adding a little untreated 
soil; (e) is favoured by conditions favourable to trophic 
i life in the These properties indicate that the 

soil. 
