236 



XA TURE 



[December 23, 1909 



defective, and educational experiments in . schools. No 

 charge is made for admission, and tickets may be obtained 

 from the Chief Inspector, Education Department of the 

 London County Council. 



I, A LiGUE DU L'liDL'CATiON Familialle was founded in 

 iSqg, with the cooperation of the Belgian Government, to 

 secure closer association between parents and teachers in 

 the study and practice of educational methods. .'\n inter- 

 national congress was held at Li^ge in 1905 to discuss the 

 relationship of home life to education in school and college. 

 .A second similar congress was held in Milan in 1906. .At 

 the request of the Belgian Government a committee has 

 been organised to bring to the attention of the British 

 public the third International Congress, to be held in con- 

 nection with the Brussels Exhibition, -August 21-25, 1910. 

 The Marquess of .Londonderry has accepted the presidency 

 of the committee, and Mr. .Walter Runciman, President of 

 the Board of Education, and Mr. Charles Trevelyan, 

 Parliamentary Secretary to the Board, have been appointed 

 vice-presidents. The necessity for , intimate association of 

 h.ome and school influences if we are to obtain efficiency 

 in education is becoming increasingly recognised, and the 

 committee desires that parents and teachers will take full 

 advantage of such an interchange of opinion as is offered 

 bv this congress. 



The prize distribution at the Imperial College of 

 Science and Technology, South Kensington, on Thurs- 

 day, December 16, was chiefly noteworthy for the interest- 

 ing address by Prof. Sedgwick, F.R.'S., on scientific 

 research, reprinted in another part of this issue. Lord 

 Crewe, the chairman of the governing body, presided, this 

 being the first occasion on which he has attended this 

 annual function. In his opening remarks the chairman 

 referred to the resignations of the rector (Dr. Bovey), 

 Sir William Tilden and Prof. Gowland. The proceedings 

 were enlivened by numerous interruptions from students of 

 the Royal School of Mines, who, by shouting the name of 

 the school, demonstrated that the individuality of the school 

 has not been lost by the establishment of the Imperial 

 College, of which it forms an " integral part." The vote 

 of thanks to Lord Crewe for presiding was proposed by 

 Sir Julius Wernher and seconded by Mr. Arthur Acland, 

 who stated that the governing body has set aside the sum 

 of 12,000?. for the establishment of a students' club. Lord 

 Crewe, in responding, appeale.! for a double loyalty among 

 the students — for their respective colleges on tlie one hand, 

 and for the Imperial College on the other, the relation of 

 which to the component colleges he compared to that of 

 his own University of Cambridge to the Cambridge 

 colleges. The associateship of the Roval College of 

 Science was granted to forty-four students, and the 

 associateship of the Royal School of Mines to thirty-four 

 students. 



The Mathemalical .Association and the .Association of 

 Public School Science Masters will hold their annual meet- 

 ings next January in common, to a large extent. The 

 meetings of both associations are to be held at West- 

 minster School. On January 12, 1910, the Mathematical 

 .Association will hold its own meeting in the morning, 

 when, after the business part of the agenda has been com- 

 pleted, addresses will be delivered bv .Mr. C. Godfrey on 

 different methods in algebra teaching for different classes 

 of students, by Prof. P. J. Harding on elliptic Trammels 

 and Fagnano points, and by Mr. W. J. Dobbs on a patent 

 inexpensive balance. During the afternoon of the same 

 day a joint meeting will be held of both associations for 

 the consideration of the report of the committee on the 

 correlation of mathematical and science teaching. On 

 January 13 the science masters will hold their annual meet- 

 ing. The president for the year. Prof. H. E. Armstrong, 

 F.R.S., will deliver his address, taking for his subject 

 "The Future of Science in Our Schools." .Afterwards 

 Mr. Eccles, of Gresham's School, Holt, will read a paper 

 dealing with the confusion existing in the symbols used in 

 text-books on physics, and urging that "some uniform 

 system be introduced. In the afternoon Mr. L. Gumming, 

 of Rugby School, will read a paper on the desirability of 

 teachmg all boys geology or biologv during some portion 

 of their school life; Mr. Cross, of" King's School, Peter- 

 NO. 2095, VOL. 82] 



borough, will deal with laboratory equipment and design, 

 and iMr. Oldham, of Dulwich College, on teaching. o.xida- 

 tion and reduction. The usual exhibition of books and 

 apparatus will be held. 



The annual prize distribution of the Sir John Cass 

 Technical Institute was held on December 16, when the 

 awards were distributed by Dr. H. .A. -Miers, F.R.S., prin- 

 cipal of the University of London. In the course. of his 

 address. Dr. Miers pointed out that success in .competition 

 is to be regarded as a special gift, because it is not every- 

 one who is born to succeed in competing with his fellow 

 men and women, and, moreover, success is not to be 

 measured by the faculty of excelling others. No. pleasure 

 can surpass that of success in one's own work, and the 

 problem in modern life is how to combine this conscious 

 spirit of pleasure and pride in work with the totally 

 different conditions in which it is carried out now as com- 

 pared to those which existed in the old days of the guilds 

 and apprenticeship in the City of London. The aim of 

 technical institutions should be to make the students less 

 of specialists and to give them more versatility and adapt- 

 ability so as to enable them to find out new ways of pur- 

 suing their own work. It is true that in order to effect 

 this many subsidiary subjects of study are necessary, fjut 

 such subjects should be regarded as only representing the 

 different principles of the more .special subject of study, and 

 should be worked out with enthusiasm and keenness from 

 the point of view of their bearing upon the specific science 

 or industry in question. New methods of work which may 

 have a bearing in many directions of science are not made 

 as accessible as they should be, owing to the extreme 

 difficulty of reading r'^search papers outside one's own 

 special subject, a difficulty due to the fact that those 

 who are pursuing scientific research and are studying 

 scientific methods do not devote sutTicient attention to 

 expressing themselves in simple English. The student 

 who goes out into the world with a keen interest, not only 

 in his special work, but also in the other subjects .which 

 he had to learn as a student, and with some knowledge of 

 the general principles underlying them all, will never feel 

 helpless when he finds himself in new conditions and con- 

 fronted by new problems. In conclusion. Dr. Miers pointed 

 out that no educational work could be quite successful 

 unless it is inspired by the spirit of research, and he 

 welcomed the encouragement of research in the Sir John 

 Cass Technical Institute, referring especially to the prizes 

 awarded by the Goldsmiths' Company in metallurgy, and 

 to the award by the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy 

 of the " Consolidated Goldfields of South .Africa premium 

 of forty guineas " jointly to Mr. C. O. Bannister, the 

 head of the metallurgy department, and to Mr. W. N. 

 Stanley, a student in the department. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



LO.NDON. 

 Roval Society, D'cemb'r 9.— Sir Archibald Geikie, 

 K.C.B., president, in the chair. — W. J. Young : The hex- 

 osephosphate formed by yeast-juice from hexose and phos- 

 phate. — L. S. Diidgreon and H. .A. F. Wilson : On the 

 presence of ha?m-agglutinins, ha?m-opsonins, and haemo- 

 lysins in the blood obtained from infectious and non- 

 infectious diseases in man (third report). These results 

 are based upon some hundreds of experimental observa- 

 tions which have been made upon normal and palhological 

 blood, and are as follows : — (1) .Auto-agglutination of the 

 red blood cells, as tested for by the methods which we 

 have employed, may be shown to occur with specimens of 

 pathological blood only occasionally, but never with normal 

 blood ; and auto-ha-molysis has not been met with. (2) 

 Iso-agglutination is often met with in specimens of blood 

 obtained from patients suffering from the same disease. 

 (3) Haem-agglutination is largely a specific phenomenon, 

 both in normal and pathological blood, and the specific 

 effect can be shown to persist even if the red cells have 

 been subjected to high degrees of temperature or to com- 

 plete drying. (4) Ha'm-agglutination and bacterial agglu- 

 tination are distinct phenomena. (5) Well-marked iso- 

 liEemolysis in specimens of normal and pathological blood 

 is not common, although some degree of hemolysis can 



