58 



NA TURE 



[November ii, 1909 



training, sucli as handicraft and gardening for boys and 

 needlework and cookery for girls. On behalf of the 

 deputation, Mr. Hobhouse explained that the resolutions 

 were intended to express a widespread and growing feel- 

 ing that elementary education should be brought into closer 

 touch with the practical activities of daily life. The agri- 

 cultural classes have hitherto been unduly prejudiced 

 against the present system of elementary education as 

 being mere book-learning, tending to unfit children for 

 industrial occupations and calculated to produce only clerks 

 and errand boys. The resolutions state that in the opinion 

 of the conference it is not only desirable, but essential, 

 that some form of manual training shall be given in every 

 elementary school and throughout school life. It is often 

 impossible, in the first place, to find teachers qualified to 

 give the necessary instruction. The second difficulty is 

 that of buildings and equipment. Wherever possible in 

 rural schools a room should be provided and a plot of 

 ground secured for practical instruction. Thirdly, while in 

 concentrated populations the present grants for special sub- 

 jects may be adequate, they are quite insufficient as regards 

 scattered populations. In his reply, Mr. Runciman said 

 the object of the Rural Education Conference may be 

 summed up shortly— that it is sought to make the educa- 

 tion of the children in the public elementarv schools more 

 practical and less bookish, to make it, in fact, deal more 

 with things than with ideas, and to adapt it more to the 

 special requirements of particular localities. With these 

 objects he said he is in general sympathv, and the Board 

 of Education has shown its approval of them by the 

 changes it has made in the curriculum. The Board has 

 attempted, so far as possible, to encourage the experi- 

 ments enumerated by the conference; the real pity is that 

 the experiments are so few. This is the fault of the 

 teachers and the local authorities. Even in cases where 

 the equipment is so small that it is impossible to carry 

 on the work, the Board has done what it can to encourage 

 the vvork of the peripatetic teachers. The gardening classes 

 in elementary schools, as shown in the statistics of his 

 department, have largely increased in number of recent 

 years, and only within the last few weeks an important 

 new departure has been made in arranging for the coordina- 

 tion of the work of the Board of Education with that now 

 done by the Board of .Agriculture. 



Lord Rosf.bf.rv, as Chancellor of Glasgow University 

 presided on November 5 at a dinner of the Glasgow Uni- 

 \u''^% , .. ; L°"l°"- '" proposing " The University and 

 the Club, Lord Rosebery remarked that there is nothing 

 more interesting at this moment in the non-political 

 aspect of England than the sprouting up of new universi- 

 ties all over the country. This shows an uprising of an 

 intellectual^ interest which is full of promise at a time 

 when all ,n the future of this country does not seem 

 equally happy in expectance. These universities are the 

 nn?fil /■" „''<'3' .desire on the part of the people to 

 paitake of the higher, and perhaps even more of the 

 technical, education that the universities afford The 

 universities are an outward and visible sign of a «race 

 which IS not likely to remain inward, but is likelv to show 

 itseit in the influence of our national destinies. Lord 

 Kosebery later remarked that he cannot help watchinc with 

 an intense and almost a timid interest the outcome of the 

 teaching of the universities. The destinies of this country 

 are likely to be moulded indefinitely for good or for evil" 

 in the course of the next few years," by the men of ability' 

 and still more the men of character, who rise in eacti 

 generation to mould their fellows. He hopes that the 

 University of Glasgow will have many such missionaries 

 of Empire, many men who are prepared with strong backs 

 to wrestle and to stand for the truth, to oppose error in 

 whatever place they may find it, and to remember that 

 though they may be working in their own professions for 

 their own aims most of their time, vet there is part of 

 their time which they owe to the traditions of their own 

 university and to the welfare and future of the Empire 

 Itself. Lord Rosebery believes that Oxford and Cambridge 

 have a great_ task still before them in the advancement 

 Of studies which must always appeal to a large, a leisured 

 and a learned section of the nation: but he is doubtful 

 It grafting on to the ancient institutions newer technical 

 NO. 2089, VOL. 82] 



schools is likely to answer to them or to the schools which 

 they are attempting to found. Every university has, or 

 should have, a character of its own, and the characters 

 of Oxford and Cambridge are so strongly marked out, and 

 they have so venerable a tradition to support them, that 

 they need no special modern adjuncts, and Lord Rosebery 

 doubts that they are likely to profit by them much, for, 

 in truth, on the new grounds they cannot compete with 

 the newer universities. The newer universities were 

 founded with the object of promoting those practical and 

 technical branches of knowledge for which the increasing 

 demands of the age have gradually called. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society. November 4 — Sir Archibald Geikie, 

 K.C.B., president, in the chair. — Colonel Sir David Bruce, 

 Captains .A. ¥.. Hamerton and H. R. Bateman, and Cap- 

 tain F. P. Mackie : (i) The development of Trypanosoma 

 flavjhicnse in Clos.sina palpajis ; (2) a note on the occur- 

 n-nre of a trypanosome in the African elephant. — The Lord 

 Rayleierh : The perception of the direction of sound. — 

 Prof. H. M. Macdonald : The diffraction of electric 

 waves. — R. Houstoun : The mechanism of the absorption 

 spectra of .solutions. — Hon. R. J. Strutt : (i) Note on the 

 spontaneous luminosity of a uranium mineral ; (2) the 

 accumulation of helium in geological time, ii. The second 

 paper is a continuation of that published in Proc. Roy. 

 Soc, A, vol. Ixxxi., 1908, p. 272, the object being to 

 determine the ratio of helium to radio-active matter in 

 minerals as a means of measuring their age. The data 

 given refer chiefly to the iron ores of sedimentary strata. 

 Even some of the most recent are found to contain quanti- 

 ties of helium, denoting great antiquity. Thus ironstone 

 from the Eocene beds of Co. Antrim contains, per gram, 

 2'64Xio-^ grs. uranium oxide (U,Oj), S-jyxio-'' grs. 

 thorium oxide, and 12-1x10-* c.c. helium. This, inter- 

 preted according to the best available data, would imply 

 an age of thirty million years. Experiments of a pre- 

 liminary character have been made to determine directly 

 the rate of growth of helium in thorianite and in pitch- 

 blende. The data thus obtained will give the rate of forma- 

 tion of helium by the complete series of uranium and 

 thorium respectively, and thus make it oossible to interpret 

 more definitely the results of experiments on other minerals 

 for which a direct determination is not feasible ; 400 grams of 

 thorianite was found to yield in seven weeks a quantity 

 of helium certainly less than 2x10-° c.c. The annual rate 

 of production per gram of thorianite is. therefore, certainly 

 less than -^-yxio-' c.c. The g c.c. initially present can- 

 not, therefore, have accumulated in a less time than -"Jo 

 million years. An experiment on pitchblende of a similar 

 character was consistent with Rutherford's estimate of 

 the rate of production by the uranium series, hut was not 

 on a sufficient scale to afford complete confirmation. 

 Experiments on a larger scale are in progress. — J. C. 

 Chapman and H. L. Porter : The nhysical pronerties of 

 fold leaf at high temperatures. — Dr. H. C. Pocklington ; 

 The dimensions and function of the Martian canals. The 

 nature of the bed of the canals is guessed from Lowell's 

 valu" of the velocity of flow along them, and then the 

 depth is calcukated from the technical formulfe, assuming 

 that the r.inals are horizontal and carry water from pole 

 to pole. The depth is soo feet if the canals are as narrow 

 as possible, or 370 feet if thev are 4^00 feet wide. The 

 amount of water required to fill the canals is determined. 

 To find the function of the canals, it is assumed that their 

 arrangement is the most economical, and it is deduced that 

 they are essentially lines of communication, though, of 

 course, they may also serve to carry water for irrigation. 



Physical S"cietv, October 22.— Dr. C. Cbree, F.R.S., 

 president, in the chair. — F. E. Smith : Cadmium amal- 

 gams and the Weston normal cell. Cadmium amalgams 

 may be solid, liquid, or a mixture of solid and liquid 

 phases, the comoosition of the phases depending on the 

 temnerature. When a liquid amalgam is cooled below the 

 lower transition temoerature, the centre of the resulting 

 solid is of high cadmium concentration, and the outer skin 

 of low cadmium concentration. Diffusion tends to pro- 



