128 



NATURE 



[April 3, 19 13 



tional bearing. The kinematograph trade would be 

 well advised to consult educationists in order that 

 its films may be produced with the requisite essen- 

 tial of scholarship and art, without which they may be 

 only entertaining or useless or positively harmful. 

 The Educational Conference, organised by Mr. A. P. 

 Graves, was most successful. Addresses dealing with 

 the various educational uses of the kinematograph 

 were, delivered by Canon Lyttleton, Mr. A. P. Graves, 

 Miss Yon Vyss, Dr. Sleight, Mr. F. W. Sanderson 

 (headmaster," Oundle School), Mr. A. Burrell, Mr. 

 Morley Dainow, Dr. Hayward, Prof. R. A. Gregory, 

 and Miss Marsh. Amongst the chairmen were Sir 

 A. K. Rollit, Dr. Kimmins, and Prof. Lyde. The 

 discussions were vigorous, and many headmasters, 

 teachers, doctors, civil servants, and representatives 

 of educational organisations took part, while amongst 

 the audience were two representatives of the Board 

 of Education. The essence of the discussion was that 

 the power of the kinematograph as an educational 

 force is enormous. Every attempt should be made to 

 guide and control it. Three important resolutions 

 were passed embodying these views, and a committee 

 was appointed to carry them out. The proceedings 

 of 1 It . conference are being compiled by Mr. Morley 

 Dainow. 



Lord Haldane addressed a large joint meeting of 

 secondary- and technical-school teachers on March 29 

 at the University of London. There is a notion in 

 the head of the man in the street, said the Lord Chan- 

 cellor, that secondary education is a luxurv with 

 which he need not trouble himself, and so long as 

 that notion is in his head it will be very difficult to 

 get him to pay any taxes for secondary education. 

 But if it can be brought home to him that the state 

 of the education question in this country is at this 

 moment a peril to the nation and that it is a question 

 of national safety with which we are dealing, then he 

 will take a larger view. Y\Y are behind the level 

 which has been reached by several of our competitors, 

 a level which will put us in peril. We cannot disso- 

 ciate national progress from the basis of knowledge 

 even when it comes to the question of making money ; 

 and if the level of the national income is to be main- 

 tained, if our industrial pre-eminence is to stand, 

 Lord Haldane said deliberately that the nation will 

 have to make an effort to put its educational system 

 in order. One reason why the universities have 

 suffered is because we have never understood fully the 

 significance in the educational system of the secondary 

 school. In Germany it has been different. The 

 whole educational fabric there rests upon the basis 

 of the secondary school. The boy goes into the 

 secondary school young, and remains there if he goes 

 through the full course for about nine years, and at 

 the end of that time he is so qualified that he goes 

 straight to the university. There is no matriculation 

 examination, but the student has to produce his en- 

 trance certificate showing that he has gone through 

 the mill and has been in the atmosphere of the 

 secondary school. We have, continued Lord Haldane, 

 outgrown the period of the old-fashioned examination. 

 \Yhat we want is a record, and everybody who goes 

 to the university should have that record. The time 

 has not vet come when we ran deprive the external 

 student of his chance of gettintr an external degree. 

 If will come when people realise that the external 

 degree means nothing comparable to the degree which 

 is the hall-mark of having lived in the atmosphere of 

 ih' university. Education is the greatest reform we 

 can take in hand, and expenditure on education is 

 productive expenditure which we are justified in 

 making a sacrifice to incur. 



XO. 2 2 66, VOL. 91] 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Physical Society, March 14. — Dr. A. Russell, vice 

 president, in the chair. — Dr. J. A. Fleming: (1) Some 

 oscillograms of condenser discharges and a simple 

 theory of coupled circuits. A short method for arriv- 

 ing at a formula for the time of free electrical oscilla- 

 tion of a leaky condenser in series with an inductive- 

 resistance, the oscillations being damped. The 

 formulae can be confirmed by oscillograms taken at 

 low frequency with a Duddell oscillograph. (2) Some 

 Braun kathode-ray tubes used as high-frequency oscil- 

 lographs, and an electrostatic influence machine, 

 giving a steady current of 300 to 350 microamperes 

 for working them. The Braun tubes have electro- 

 static deflection plates in them and an embracing field 

 coil for providing a longitudinal field to keep the 

 kathode spot in a central position on the screen. — 

 B. B. Baker : Stretching and breaking of sodium and 

 potassium. Wires made of metallic sodium and 

 potassium collapse when stretched, not to a point, as 

 is the case with most plastic substances, but from 

 two opposite sides only, into a chisel end. Wires 

 made bv running the metal, molten under nil, into 

 .1 glass tube and allowing it to solidify, also showed, 

 on extension, two sets of equidistant rings on th?ir 

 surface, each inclined at an angle of 45 to the axis, 

 the rings of opposite sets touching along the line of 

 greatest thinning and bisecting one another along the 

 line at which no thinning takes place. — R. G. I.unnon j 

 The latent heat of evaporation of steam from salt 

 solutions. The experimental method wa.'j to supply a 

 measurable quantity of heat electrically to the solution 

 boiling inside a calorimeter. The steam from the 

 inner vessel passed into a detachable condenser, which 

 was weighed at intervals. The difference between the 

 measured heat L, and 7 T the known heat of evapora- 

 tion of water, is the heat of solution Q; and the 

 present results indicate that for salts of the same 

 acid O is proportional to the concentration. 



Zoological Society, March 18.— Mr. E. G. B. Meade- 

 Waldo, vice-president, in the chair. — Miss Edith E. 

 Bamford : Variations in the skeleton of the pectoral 

 fins of Polypterus. An examination had been made 

 of the material brought back by Budgett from his 

 West African expeditions, in order to account for the 

 discrepancies which occur in the descriptions of the 

 fins of Polypterus as given by different investigators. 

 These discrepancies were found to be due to the very 

 numerous variations in the fins and to the previous 

 scarcity of material. A description is given of the 

 variations found in the radials, mesopterygium, pro- 

 pterygium, metapterygium, and the distal cartilages, 

 and their bearing on the different descriptions and the 

 theories of other investigators is indicated. — Dr. H. H. 

 Stirrup : A descriptive study of an Oligochaste worm of 

 the family Enchytraeida?. A number of new and in- 

 teresting observations were recorded, including an 

 account of the structure and significance of the un- 

 called "septal glands," which had been found to con- 

 tain two definite anatomical components. — Dr. W. 

 Yorke : The relationship of the big game of Africa 

 to the spread of sleeping sickness. The author stated 

 that sleepine sickness in Nyasaland and Rhodesia is 

 due to a different parasite from that causing the 

 disease in other parts of tropical Africa. In these 

 countries the disease is transmitted by Glossina morsi- 

 tans and not by G. palfialis. As G. morsitans is 

 ubiquitous, and not limited in its distribution to water- 

 courses, this fact has an important bearing on the 

 measures that can be recommended with a view to 

 prophylaxis. 



