May 4, 1905] 



NA TURE 



last vole, but it is understood that the majority of them 

 are in favour of some alteration in the present state of 

 things. 



A \'ERBATiNt report of the proceedings of the Welsh 

 national conference on the training of teachers and pupil 

 teachers, held at Shrewsbury last November, has just 

 been published. An account of the conference appeared 

 in N.vTCRE of November 17 (p. 66). 



The council of the City and Guilds of London Institute 

 has conferred the fellowship of the institute on Mr. H. 

 Cecil Booth in recognition of the engineering work done 

 by him since he gained his diploma of Associate of the 

 City and Guilds Institute in 1892. 



On Wednesday, June 7, Viscount Goschen, as Chan- 

 cellor of Oxford University, will lay the foundation-stone 

 of the new buildings of Reading University College, to be 

 erected, at a cost of about 8o,oooL, upon a site presented 

 by Mr. Alfred Palmer. 



At the recent installation of Dr. Edwin A. Alderman as 

 president of the University of Virginia, it was announced, 

 says Science, that in addition to the conditional gift of 

 100,000/. from Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Rockefeller had given 

 20,000/., Mr. Jefferson Coolidge 10,000/., and alumni and 

 friends 10,000/. towards the endowment fund. 



Mr. C.ar.negie has added another handsome donation to 

 his many princely gifts to higher education. This time he 

 has given 2,000,000/. to provide annuities for college pro- 

 fessors prevented by old age or other physical disability 

 from continuing to earn salaries. The gift is to be for 

 the benefit of the United States, Canada, and Newfound- 

 land, and applies to all universities, colleges, and technical 

 schools without regard to race, colour, or creed, but ex- 

 cluding State or colonial institutes, and excluding also 

 purely sectarian institutions. The fund is to be vested in 

 trustees, among them Presidents Hadley, of Yale Uni- 

 versity ; Eliot, of Harvard University ; Harper, of the 

 University of Chicago ; Butler, of Columbia University ; 

 Schurman, of Cornell University ; and Wilson, of Prince- 

 ton University, all of whom have accepted. Mr. Carnegie 

 hopes that by this endowment the best men available will 

 be attracted to professorial work, since in view of the 

 retiring pension, which will now be secured, present day 

 salaries will not appear very inadequate in comparison 

 with those of other professional men. 



On his way to Simla for the summer months, Lord 

 Curzon visited Pusa and laid the foundation-stone of the 

 agricultural college there. The Pusa estate comprises some 

 1280 acres of soil on which almost any crop may be 

 grown. The Government proposes to concentrate there all 

 the agricultural skill, scientific, practical, and educational, 

 to be procured. The buildings will cost 165 lakhs of 

 rupees, of which amount the laboratory and its fittings 

 will absorb 75 lakhs. Pusa will provide for agricultural 

 students research in the laboratory, experiment in the field, 

 and instruction in the class-room, .^fter laying the stone 

 Lord Curzon, we learn from the Times, referred to the 

 circumstances in which he received from Mr. Henry 

 Phipps, the American millionaire, the munificent bequest 

 which was the origin of the institute. The college. Lord 

 Curzon continued, will form a centre of the application of 

 science to Indian agriculture, and it is hoped that each 

 province of India will in time possess its own staff, its own 

 institute for research and experiment, in fact, a properly 

 organised agricultural department. The Government has 

 no desire to monopolise the field, and will lend every 

 possible advice to great land holders conducting their own 

 experiments, improving their own seed and the breed of 

 their own cattle. Earlier in the day Lord Curzon, reply- 

 ing to an address of welcome from the Behar planters, 

 said that the problem confronting the indigo growers since 

 the synthetic indigo of Germany was perfected some eight 

 years ago is so to combine scientific methods with cheapen- 

 ing of the cost of production as to enable them to produce 

 a natural colour at a price permitting of competition with 

 the artificial product. 



We have received from the Agent-General for New South 

 Wales a copy of a " Statistical Account of Australia and 

 New Zealand, 1903-4," by Mr. T. A. Coghlan. An im- 



NO. 1853, '^OL. 72] 



portant section of the volume deals with education, and a 

 prominent place is given in this summary to university 

 and technical education. It appears that the Government 

 endowments to the universities of Sydney, Melbourne, 

 .Adelaide, and Tasmania in 1903 were respectively 15,533/-, 

 13,500/., 6611/., and 4000/. In addition to the annual en- 

 dowment, the Adelaide University has received a perpetual 

 endowment of 50,000 acres of land from the Government 

 of South Australia. The University of New Zealand — 

 which is an examining, and not a teaching, body — has a 

 statutory grant of 3000/. a year from Government, and of 

 the affiliated colleges Auckland University College is in 

 receipt of a statutory grant of 4000/. a year. The Uni- 

 versity of Otago derives a sum of about 5500/. annually 

 from rents of reserves. The Australasian universities are 

 empowered to grant the same degrees as the British 

 universities, with the exception of degrees in theology. 

 Women are admitted to all the universities. As regards 

 technical education, the State expenditure upon it in five 

 of the Commonwealth provinces and New Zealand is as 

 follows : — New South Wales, 26,500/. ; Victoria, 16,400/. ; 

 Queensland, 7200/. ; Western Australia, 5710/. ; Tasmania, 

 2500/.; and New Zealand, 21,000/. In addition to ordinary 

 technical classes throughout New Zealand, there are schools 

 of mines in the chief mining districts, and the Government 

 makes an annual grant of 500/. towards the endowment 

 of the chair of mining and metallurgy at the Otago Uni- 

 versitv. Facts such as these show that administrators in 

 Australia and New Zealand are alive to the part which 

 higher education should take in the life of the State, and 

 are willing to supply funds from the public treasury to 

 assist the work of their colleges and universities. 



A LETTER from Prof. W. Ridgeway in the Times of 

 .April 27 contains a number of wise suggestions for the 

 improvement of the education given to boys in secondary 

 schools. Referring to the recent vote on the Greek ques- 

 tion, he says, careful inquiries give reason to believe that 

 many voted to make Greek optional simply because they 

 believe that the system of education at present in vogue in 

 public schools is bad, that too much time is given up to 

 Latin and Greek, that, as a rule, science is not taught at 

 all, that the universities arc in a large measure responsible 

 for the existing state of things, and that something must 

 be done to improve matters ; and accordingly, as somebody 

 must be thrown overboard, Greek was the proper Jonah. 

 Prof. Ridgewav goes on to argue that the mere abolition 

 of compulsory Greek would not have effected any improve- 

 ment in the method of teaching the older subjects in the 

 schools or have done anything to make the teaching of 

 science general. Moreover, he rightly remarks, there can 

 be no reform worthy of the name which does not ensure 

 that boys whose tastes are literary should learn the methods 

 of science, whilst boys whose bent is to science should get 

 a literary training to give them the power of expressing 

 their ideas with lucidity and to imbue them with a taste 

 for culture. The faulty teaching of the schools, he con- 

 tinues, is due in the main to the specialisation which is 

 required by the open scholarship system, and to the sacrifice 

 of the average boys to those who show greater promise 

 and are likely to win scholarships. The universities are 

 largely responsible for this state of things, for they de- 

 liberatelv encourage premature specialisation in boys of 

 promise by their system of open scholarships, and permit 

 the interests of the average boys to be sacrificed by allow- 

 ing boys to matriculate before they have passed any ex- 

 amination to show that they have acquired a sufficient 

 modicum of liberal education to serve as a basis for a 

 university training. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, March 16. — "A Deletminalion of the 

 .\mounts of Neon and Helium in Atmospheric Air." By 

 Sir William Ramsay, K.C.B., F.R.S. 



The author had already attempted to estimate the 

 amounts of krypton and xenon in air by the evaporation 

 of relatively large quantities of liquid air. No doubt much 

 krypton and some xenon .evaporated, hence the figures 

 given were necessarily minimum estimates. Dr. Travers 



