July io, 1913] 



NATURE 



495 



collection of not less than 333,333'- 1" t»is amount 

 may be included the capitalised value of the property 

 mentioned by the Maharaja, and the perpetual grants 

 by three ruling chiefs, provided that the documentary 

 title is satisfactory in the case of the latter, and the 

 possession of the property has been made over in the 

 case of the former. The further conditions are that 

 the constitution of the University should proceed on 

 lines to be indicated by the Government, and that a 

 committee be appointed to report whether the Central 

 Hindu College is fit to be developed into a residential 

 and teaching university. 



The unusual increase in the number of women 

 attending German universities, as shown by statis- 

 ts al returns recently issued in Germany, is of par- 

 ticular interest in view of the fact that women were 

 only admitted as students in the summer of 1905. A 

 note in the issue for July 4 of the Journal of the Royal 

 Society of Arts states that during 1912 the number of 

 women students in German universities has grown 

 from 2795 to 3213, and the percentage of women now 

 in the universities, as compared with the whole 

 student body, is 5-4 per cent., as against 2-7 per cent. 

 three years ago. Of the present body of women 

 students the great majority — 2900 — come from Ger- 

 many. Of the foreign women, Russia furnishes more 

 than a third, America about a fourth, and other 

 European countries most of the others. Few women 

 students come from Asia, Africa, or Australia. The 

 University of Berlin alone has more than one-fourth 

 of the total women students of the Empire, the exact 

 number of women in the large universities at present 

 being: — Berlin, 904; Bonn, 289; Munich, 262; Got- 

 tingen, 237; Heidelberg, 219; Freiburg, 189; Miinster, 

 172; Breslau, 150; Leipzig, 129; Marburg, 126; 

 Konigsberg, 107; Greifswald, S3; Halle, 81; Jena, 

 65; Strassburg, 52; Kiel, 40; Tubingen, 38; Giessen, 

 24; Erlangen, 21; Wtirzburg, 16; Rostock, 6; all 

 others, 3. The departments of study to which the 

 women students give preference are about the same 

 as in former years, the enrolment in certain courses 

 being : — Medicine, 702 ; mathematics and natural 

 sciences, 579; economics and agriculture, 91; dentis- 

 try, 17; and pharmacy, 8. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, June 26. — Sir Ronald Ross, K.C.B., 

 vice-president, in the chair. — F. S. Phillips : Phos- 

 phorescence of mercury vapour after removal of the 

 exciting light. — Dr. G. J. Burch ; Light sensations and 

 the theory of forced vibrations. — P. W. Burbidge : 

 The fluctuation in the ionisation due to y rays. — 

 J. G. Leathern ; The force exerted on a magnetic par- 

 ticle by a varying electric field. — Dr. W. Watson ; The 

 luminosity curve of a colour-blind observer. — Prof. 

 W. M. Hicks : A critical study of spectral series. 

 Part iii. : The atomic weight term, and its import 

 in the constitution of spectra. — L. C. Martin ; A band 

 spectrum attributed to carbon monosulphide. A com- 

 plex band system occurring in the spectrum of the 

 electric discharge through carbon disulphide vapour 

 in addition to the bands due to sulphur, is also found 

 in the spectrum given by sulphur in the carbon arc. 

 These bands only occur in the presence of both sulphur 

 and carbon, and are probably due to carbon mono- 

 sulphide. — Igerna B. J. Soflas and Prof. W. J. 

 Sollas : The structure of the skull of Dicynodon as 

 revealed by serial sections. The structure of the skull 

 has been demonstrated in a remarkably complete 

 manner by reconstructions built up from serial sec- 

 tions. A single example has afforded nearly all the 

 information which has been slowly accumulated from 

 NO. 228O, VOL. 91] 



numerous specimens during the past half-century and 

 has added the following facts, which are either new 

 or were in need of confirmation : — (1) The vomer 

 is grooved on its dorsal surface ; (2) the basis 

 cranii is continued forwards between the orbits as a 

 median vertical plate, which lies in the groove of the 

 vomer, and is itself grooved on the dorsal surface 

 to receive the ventral edge of the mesethmoid ; (3) the 

 form of the mesethmoid is such as to suggest that it is 

 an early stage in the formation of a cribriform plate; 

 (4) septo-fnaxillary bones are present, lying within the 

 internal nares without appearing on the face. They 

 are not connected by suture with neighbouring bones 

 and might easily be lost in fossilisation ; (5) the pre- 

 parietal bone is present, situated entirely in front of 

 the pineal foramen and forming its anterior border; 

 (6) a transverse bone exists, clearly marked off from 

 the neighbouring bones by sutures ; (7) the root of the 

 tusk, invested by a thin layer of the maxillary bone, 

 lies in a large cavity, to the walls of which the 

 maxillary, lachrymal, jugal, and palatine bones con- 

 tribute ; (8) the sutures separating the pro-otic from 

 neighbouring bones are clearly exhibited ; (9) the 

 labyrinth of the ear shows all the three canals with 

 their ampulla and a long vestibule; (10) the articular 

 surface of the lower jaw is complex, there is a small 

 inner portion which is concave — as in reptiles, and a 

 large outer portion which is convex — as in mammals. 

 — W. Cramer and R. A. Krause : Carbohydrate-meta- 

 bolism in its relation to the thyroid gland. The effect 

 of thyroid feeding on the glycogen content of the liver 

 and on the nitrogen distribution in the urine. — Dr. 

 G. W. C. Kaye and D. Ewen : The sublimation of 

 metals at low pressures. — Dr. R. T. Beatty : The 

 energy of Rontgen rays. — Dr. C. Chree ; Some 

 phenomena of sun-spots and of terrestrial magnetism. 

 Part ii. The paper is a continuation of one termed 

 for brevity S.M., which appeared in the Phil Trans., 

 A. 212, p. 75. It is mainly devoted to the question 

 i>i tin- existence of a period of approximately twenty- 

 seven days in terrestrial magnetic phenomena. In- 

 dependent studies of magnetic storms during a very 

 long period of years at Greenwich and Toronto led 

 Mr. Harvey and Mr. Maunder a good many years 

 ago to the conclusion that an interval of about 

 twenty-seven and a quarter days could be recognised 

 between the commencements of successive magnetic 

 storms in a greater number of cases than could 

 reasonably be ascribed to pure chance. S.M. showed 

 that whether one took the daily range of horizontal 

 force at Kew, or the magnetic character of the day, 

 there undoubtedly existed for the epoch 1890 to 1900 

 a period of twenty-seven days or slightly more, in 

 the sense that if an individual day were highly or 

 moderately disturbed, days twenty-seven or twenty- 

 eight days later were on the average more disturbed 

 than usual. The result was not peculiar to the large ' 

 disturbances usually termed " magnetic storms," and 

 appeared in all the years examined, whether quiet or 

 disturbed. The present paper finds the same result 

 to hold true of the years 1906 to 191 1 when use is 

 made of the magnetic "character" figures which 

 have been published since iqo6 at de Bilt, under in- 

 ternational auspices. It is also found that the result 

 is as true of quiet as of disturbed characteristics. 

 The paper also investigates whether the phenomena 

 presented by the twenty-seven-day period vary with 

 the period of the year, and what the relationships are, 

 if any, between magnetic "character" and Greenwich 

 measures of sun-spot area and facula? and YVolfer's 

 sun-spot frequencies. The apparent sun-spot relation- 

 ships are found to vary a good deal from year to 

 year. — A. Fowler : New series of lines in the spark 

 spectrum of magnesium. From experiments on the 

 spectrum of the magnesium arc in vacuo, it has been 



