164 



NA TURE 



[June 15, 1905 



iiiE announcement is made in Engineering that Mr. 

 Yarrow has placed at the disposal of the council of the 

 Institution of ("ivil Engineers the sum of 10,000/. to be 

 applied to the education of necessitous members of the 

 engineering profession. It is pointed out that the engineer- 

 ing industry of the country will benefit from this help to 

 technical education. The old system of premium 

 apprenticeship is passing away, and it is coming to be 

 recognised that the prosperity of any manufacturing nation 

 rests on engineering, and that a foundation for the com- 

 mercial success of a country cannot be maintained without 

 the aid of a body of scientific engineers. The era of 

 happy-thought invention is fast passing, and the oppor- 

 tunity for original work must chiefly depend on the appli- 

 cation of science to perfecting known principles. Gratitude 

 should, therefore, be felt for the public spirit which has 

 placed in the hands of the Institution of Civil Engineers 

 the means of giving a better training to a class that has 

 had few opportunities in the past. 



The foundation-stone of the new buildings of University 

 College, Reading, was laid on June b by Lord Goschen, 

 Chancellor of the University of Oxford. The freehold of 

 the new buildings is a gift to the college by Mr. Alfred 

 Palmer. The erection of the college hall and the build- 

 ings for the practical study of various branches of pure 

 and applied science will be undertaken immediately, but 

 substantial additions must be made to the building fund 

 before the scheme as a whole can be carried out. At the 

 luncheon following the ceremony, Mr. W. M. Childs, the 

 principal of the college, said the day would be memorable 

 in the annals of the college because of a splendid benefac- 

 tion. I'hroughout its history the college had been ex- 

 posed to peril by the absence of endowment. He then 

 announced that Mr. George William Palmer had informed 

 the president of the college of his intention to offer a sum 

 of 50,000/. as a permanent endowment fund, to be called 

 "The George Palmer Endowment Fund." In a letter to 

 the president announcing his intention, Mr. Palmer said : — 

 " .My intention is to provide that the capital fund of the 

 endowment shall not be applied to the erection of build- 

 ings, but shall be permanently invested, and that the in- 

 come shall be applied to the educational work of the 

 college. I al.so desire to make it a condition of mv gift 

 that the college shall maintain its status as a university 

 college in the town of Reading, and that it shall alwavs 

 give higher teaching in literature and in science, and, 

 further, that it shall carry on evening classes, open at 

 inodcrate fees to those engaged in earning their living 

 during the day-time." Lord Goschen, in the course of 

 a few remarks, referred to the direct missionary work 

 which had been conducted by the old universities through 

 the university extension lecturers. They were, he said, 

 the missionaries of culture throughout a great part of our 

 islands, and they had carried the flag of culture into many 

 a town. A great variety of subjects is now taught in the 

 college, but all that is taught, said Lord Goschen, is 

 taught in a thorough, academic, and scientific manner. 

 It is for the professors to see that the cause of culture, 

 the cause of scientific study, shall not be neglected in these 

 days. " Amid the hustling of those who champion various 

 causes," continued Lord Goschen, " mav I at least put in 

 a word for higher culture? May I echo' what Mr. George 

 William Palmer has written, that literature and science 

 may hold their own in this country apart from useful 

 knowledge? " The president of the college announced 

 that 80,000/. is required for the building fund, and of 

 that sum 35,700/. has been subscribed. 



SOCJEIJES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, May 11. — "On the Resemblances existing 

 between the ' Plimmer's Bodies ' of Malignant Growths, 

 and Certain Normal Constituents of Reproductive Cells of 

 Animals." By Prof. J. Bretland Farmer, F.R.S., J. E. S. 

 Moore, and C. E. Walker. 



The authors, continuing their investigations on malignant 



growths, have examined the so-called " Plimmer's Bodies" 



of cancer cells in connection with the cytological changes 



that occur in cancer and in reproductive' cells respectively. 



NO. 1859, VOL. 72] 



The " Plimmer's Bodies " are found in many cancerous 

 growths, and are most commonly encountered in the 

 younger or growing regions of the tumour. They appear 

 in the form of vesicles, and they consist essentially of a 

 fairly well defined wall containing a clear space in which 

 is suspended a small darkly staining granule (Figs, i 

 and 2). They are most commonly to be met with in 



ndz.-Examplesof "Plim 

 small " Hodies " in an archopla 

 of the "Bjdies." 



Fig. 2. 

 s " from carcinoma, i. Three 

 er stage in the development 



/ 



/ 



tumours of a glandular or glandular-epithelial origin. 

 They lie in the cytoplasm of the cancer cell, and usually 

 in close proximity to the nucleus. In size, thev vary fron'i 

 e.xcessive minuteness to that of the nucleus itself. 



The special interest attaching to them depends on the 

 fact that they have commonly been riegarded as peculiar 

 to cancerous cells, although Honda believes he has 

 occasionally also encountered them in inflanimatorv tissues. 

 They have been variously in- 

 terpreted. Some investigators 

 have regarded them as para- 

 sitic organisms, more or less 

 intimately connected with the 

 etiology of the disease, whilst 

 others have seen in them a 

 differentiation of the cyto- 

 plasm of the cancerous cell 

 itself. It has been suggested 

 also that they might be de- 

 rived from the centrosomes 

 within the archoplasm, but 

 the observations of Benda 

 that centrosomes coexisted in- 

 dependently of them in the 

 ceil have rightly been held to 

 disprove this hypothesis. 



The authors' investigations 

 indicate, however, that there 

 are good grounds for re-con- 

 sidering the whole position, 

 and a comparison of the pro- 

 cesses that normally obtain 

 during the final stages of de- 

 velopment of the reproductive 

 elements in man and the other 

 mammalia appears stronglv to 

 suggest that a parallel be- 

 tween the " Plimmer Bodies " 

 of cancer and certain vesicular 

 structures occurring regularly 

 in the gametogenic, but not 

 in the ordinary somatic, 

 cells, may be found to hold 

 good. 



It was shown in 1895 'hat during the prophase of the 

 heterotype (first maiotic) mitosis of the spermatogenetic 

 cells, the archoplasm undergoes a highly characteristic and 

 peculiar metamorphosis. In normal somatic, or pre- 

 maiotic, cells, the archoplasin is seen to lie beside the 

 nucleus as a dusky mass of protoplasm in which are con- 



'IG. 3.— .Archoplasm with centro- 

 somes l>ii'g outside It in pro- 

 phase of Iherirst maiotic division 

 in testis of mouse. 



