March 20. 1913] 



NATURE 



intentions of the Government with regard to education. 

 He said the Government are not pledging themselves 

 to carry an Education Bill this session ; their proposals 

 are to be placed before the House of Commons with 

 a view to their discussion. In the next session of 

 Parliament it is hoped to pass the proposals— with 

 such alteration as may have been thought expedient— 

 into law. It is proposed to add considerably to the 

 powers that local authorities already possess in educa- 

 tional affairs. The Government wish to induce every- 

 body- to cooperate so as to make the boy and girl 

 better fitted to render the best possible service to the 

 State. They wish to bring the best brains to the top, 

 and to provide for those not included in that category 

 an education from which they will get most advantage 

 in connection with the factories, or the workshops, 

 or whatever vocation they adopt in after life. Account 

 must be taken of the conditions of youth from the 

 cradle up to the universities, and all the nation's edu- 

 cational energies must be marshalled on a strategic 

 plan. The Government's scheme is not going to be 

 limited to an attempt to solve what Mr. Pease believes 

 to be an insoluble denominational problem. The 

 general principle of the Government's scheme is to 

 secure that the best brains of the whole community 

 should get to the top, and to provide a general 

 diffusion of knowledge, so that we shall possess an 

 educated democracy. 



Lord Haldane is to speak on the educational pro- 

 posals of the Government at a joint meeting of 

 teachers in secondary and technical schools, to be held 

 at the University of London, South Kensington, on 

 Saturdav, March 29. The meeting is organised by 

 the Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary 

 Schools. The headmaster of Eton will preside, sup- 

 ported by Mr. Arthur Acland, and the following reso- 

 lutions will be submitted :— " That this meeting wel- 

 comes the announcement that the Government pro- 

 poses to deal in the near future with the question of 

 education; hopes that the State will leave to the 

 schools all reasonable freedom in such matters as 

 time-table, curriculum, and careful educational ex- 

 periments; and, with the object of attracting into the 

 schools a sufficient supply of able and efficient 

 teachers, urges that the increase of salaries and the 

 provision of an adequate pension scheme should be a 

 first charge upon any further grants for secondary and 

 technical education." "That this meeting is of 

 opinion that no pension scheme for secondary and 

 technical teachers in England and Wales can be con- 

 sidered adequate which does not provide benefits 

 approximately equal to those now secured to Scottish 

 teachers." 



The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has now- 

 established graduateship and associate membership 

 examinations, and has published the rules which will 

 govern the examinations. The institution has in this way 

 decided to cooperate with other engineering societies 

 in the endeavour to define and raise the status of the 

 iftgineei-. The examinations will be held in London 

 twice annually, in April and October. The "graduate" 

 is defined as a person, not under eighteen years of 

 age, who has passed the graduateship examination 

 or reached some exempting standard, and has satisfied 

 the council that he has received or is receiving regular 

 training as a mechanical engineer with the necessary 

 practical and scientific experience. No person is to 

 be elected a graduate after twenty-five years of age. 

 The institution's examination for graduates covers 

 English, elementary mathematics, and scientific know- 

 ledge, and matriculation and similar certificates 

 exempt the candidate from the test. The associate 

 membership examination is ordinarily for candidates 

 of from twenty-five to thirty years of age, and covers 

 NO. 2264, VOL. qi] 



general, scientific, and technical knowledge. General 

 knowledge includes an essay on some subject in litera- 

 ture, science, technology, or economics and workshop 

 organisation; scientific knowledge is tested by papers 

 in applied mathematics, physics, and chemistry; and 

 a choice of two technical subjects must be made from 

 seven specified. Several recognised examinations 

 exempt candidates from the institution's associate 

 membership examination, and for candidates over 

 thirty years of age special arrangements are made. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, March 13.— Sir Alfred Kempe, vice- 

 president and treasurer, in the chair.— A. Mallock : A 

 simple method of finding the approximate period of 

 stable systems— Prof. J. S. Townsend and H. T. 

 Tizard : The motion of electrons in gases.— Prof. T. R. 

 Lvle : The self-inductance of circular coils of rect- 

 angular section.— Dr. A. E. H. Tutton : Ammonium 

 ferrous sulphate and its alkali-metal isomorphs. The 

 author has added this salt to the thirty-six salts ot 

 the series 



U..M- Se0 4 l-6H„0 

 [Cr J, 



which he has previously investigated in a detailed 

 manner, both morphologicall) and optically.- H. 

 Thirkill : The re-combination of the ions produced by 

 Rontgen rays in gases and vapours. Measurements, 

 under widely varying conditions, of the coefficient ol 

 re-combination of the ions produced by Rontgen rays 

 in gases and vapours have vielded the following re- 

 sults :— (1.) Re-combination seems to lake place accord- 

 ing to the simple law dnjdt = dn,jdt = -aii 1 v. 2 . (2) 

 For a certain range of pressure, the coefficient of re- 

 combination is proportional to the pressure.— Dr. \\ . 

 Wahl : Optical investigation of solidified gases. III., 

 The crystal-properties of chlorine and bromine. 

 Crystallised chlorine and crystallised bromine an 

 rhombic. Bromine is strongly pleochroic ; chlorine 

 less so. The ' absorption diminishes strongly when 

 the temperature is lowered. The existence of a com- 

 plete analogy in the crystalline characters of chlorine, 

 bromine, and iodine has been established.— F. B. 

 Pidduck :' The abnormal kinetic energy of an ion in a 

 gas. The abnormal rate of diffusion of negative ions 

 in dry air, investigated by Townsend, would be ex- 

 plained if the negative ions had a velocity of agitation 

 in excess of that'of an equal number of molecules of 

 the gas. The present paper investigates this from 

 the point of view of the kinetic theory of gases. 



Geological Society, February 26.— Dr. Aubrey 

 Strahan, F.R.S., president, in the chair.— Dr. C. A. 

 Matley : The geology of Bardsey Island (Carnarvon- 

 shire I, with an appendix on the petrography by Dr. 

 J. S. Flett. Bardsey, an island a mile and three- 

 quarters long, lies off the promontory of the Lleyn 

 (western Carnavonshire), and forms the isolated ex- 

 tremity of the strip of pre-Cambrian rocks that borders 

 the western coast of the Lleyn from Nevin south- 

 westwards. The rocks are principally gritty schistose 

 slates, with manv thin and some thick bands of grit, 

 quartzite, and limestone ; and they contain an horizon 

 of variolitic lava and tufaceous shale, which indicates 

 that a volcanic episode took place during their forma- 

 tion. Sills of albite-diabase also occur, as well as one 

 or more sills of a crushed granite.— E. B. Bailey : The 

 Loch Awe svncline (Argyllshire). This syncline is a 

 comparatively shallow trough, with well-marked fan- 

 structure due to small-scale isoclinal folding, in which 

 the limbs of the folds are vertical along the axial 



