Marcu 28, 1932| 
Tue Board of Agriculture has again made an in- 
creased grant of 13001. to Wye College, and has 
promised a grant of 2621. (for six months) for the cost 
of investigations on hops, on the life-history of the 
parasitic stomach worms (Strongyli) of sheep, and on 
the disease of ‘‘struck”’ of sheep, whilst the institu- 
tion of a fresh grant of t1oool. towards the expense 
of an advisory staff in entomology and mycology— 
more particularly for fruit-growers—has also been 
officially intimated to the college authorities. 
Tue treasurer of Columbia University has reported 
to the trustees, says Science, that he has received 
about 310,000l. from the executors of the estate of 
the late Mr. George Crocker. Accordingly, the work 
of cancer research, for which Mr. Crocker gave this 
sum as an endowment, will begin at once. The re- 
search fund will be entrusted for administration to a 
board of managers, to consist of representatives of 
the trustees and of the medical faculty, together with 
a director of cancer research to be appointed. 
Tue Cambridge University Press has published a 
report by Mr. E. R. Burdon on a visit, undertalxen in 
accordarce with a resolution of the Forestry Com- 
mittee of the University of Cambridge, for the pur- 
pose of studying the research work and educational 
methods of the forestry departments and forestry 
schools in those countries in connection with the 
study of timber and other forest products. An excel- 
lent description is provided of the departments of the 
Products Branch of the United States Forest Service, 
including particularly the Forest Products Laboratory 
at Madison, Wis., and the Office of Wood Utilisation, 
Chicago. The forestry schools of Yale, Harvard, 
Michigan, and Toronto Universities were visited by 
Mr. Burdon, and the particulars here brought 
together should prove of great service in this 
country. 
In an article in the Bulletin of the Society for the 
Promotion of Engineering Education for the present 
month, Profs. W. S. Franklin and Barry MacNutt 
deal with the teaching of elementary physics. They 
confine their attention in this case wholly to lectures 
and text-book work, though they recognise fully the 
paramount yalue of laboratory practice. Comment- 
ing upon the answers of 164 freshman engineering 
students—who had taken elementary mechanics for 
half a year—to a series of simple questions, the 
writers come to the conclusion that the great majority 
of young men cannot realise the meaning of simple 
English when it is impersonal and non-anthropo- 
morphic, and a large proportion of the failures to 
answer the questions were due to the inability of the 
men to read the questions intelligibly. The object of 
elementary physics, the authors urge, should be to 
develop ‘‘rational insights.” It is not the duty to a 
teacher of elementary physics to give his students a 
survey of the science. 
Tue report of the Board of Education for the year 
Igio-It is now available (Cd. 6116). From it we find 
that though there were 768,358 students in attendance 
at evening and similar schools in tg09—10, as com- 
pared with 752,356 in 1908-9, nearly 18 per cent. of 
the students enrolled failed to complete the small 
minimum of attendances required in order to enable 
grants to be paid towards their instruction. In the 
administrative counties (excluding London) each 
student received, on an average, 45 hours of instruc- 
tion. There was reason to expect the average would 
be lower in rural than in urban areas; only in eight 
cases, however, was the average below 30 hours, and 
in three cases it was 60 or more. The total amount 
of advanced instruction of the kind provided in tech- 
nical institutions is still disappointingly small. There 
were 49 technical institutions at which courses were 
NO. 2213. VOL. 89] 
NATURE 103 
| recently found by Onnes. 
recognised as eligible for grant in 1909-10. In the 
case of 37 institutions for which alone the statistics 
are complete, there were 3032 students enrolled, of 
| whom 2664 qualified for grant, and 1806 of these took 
full courses of instruction. There is still a tendency, 
the report states, to admit students to technical institu- 
tions before they have had an adequate course of 
general education. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
Lonpbon. 
Royal Society, March 21.—Sir Archibald Geikie, 
K.C.B., president, in the chair.—Lord Rayleigh: The 
self-induction of electric currents in a thin anchor- 
ring.—Hon. R. J. Strutt: The after-luminosity of 
electric discharge in hydrogen observed by Hertz. 
Hertz observed that if Leyden-jar discharges were 
passed through hydrogen at a pressure of, say, 
Ioo mm., the gas remains luminous for a small frac- 
tion of a second afterwards. It is concluded that 
Hertz’s effect is due to the presence of sulphuretted 
hydrogen in the hydrogen employed. It is con- 
jectured that sulphuretted hydrogen is decomposed by 
the discharge, that sulphur vapour emerges in a 
specially active state, and that it then unites with 
hydrogen, the blue glow accompanying this process. 
Prof. J. H. Poynting : The changes in the dimensions 
of a steel wire when twisted, and on the pressure of 
distortional waves in steel. In a former paper (Proc. 
Roy. Soc., A, vol. Ixxxii., 1909) the author described 
experiments showing that when a loaded wire is 
twisted it lengthens by an amount proportional to the 
square of the angle of twist. In this paper it is 
| shown that if the wire is previously straightened by 
| heating it under tension, the lengthening is, within 
errors of measurement, the same for all loads which 
could be applied, so that, as was supposed, the only 
function of the load in the earlier experiments is to 
straighten the wire. In all wires examined so far, 
the lowering is symmetrical about a point a fraction 
of a turn always in the counter-clockwise direction 
from the condition of no twist.—H. S. Patterson, 
R. S. Cripps, and R. Whytlaw-Gray: The orthobaric 
densities and critical constants of xenon. Using a 
carefully purified sample of xenon prepared from 
1530 c.c. of the gas lent by Sir William Ramsay, 
measurements were made of the orthobaric densities 
between the temperature limits of 16 and —66-8° C. 
The variation of the mean density of liquid and satu- 
rated vapour with temperature was found to follow 
closely Cailletet and Mathias’s law, and the results 
are expressed by the equation D,=1-205—0-003055f, 
where D,=mean density at #2 C. The slope of the 
diameter is abnormally large, and is practically 
identical with the value for the argon diameter 
The constants T .=16-6° C. 
and P,=58-2 atms. were found, and the following 
were calculated from the results :—critical density, 
I-15 grms. per c.c.; density of liquid close to boiling 
point, 3-063 grms. per c.c.; atomic volume close to 
boiling point, 42-7 grms. per c.c.—W. A. Harwood 
and Dr. J..E. Petavel: Experimental work on a new 
standard of light. The source of light consists of a 
strip of platinum heated by an electric current. The 
thermopiles measure the radiation passing through 
(a) a plate of black fluorspar, (b) a water-trough. 
The thermopiles are connected in opposition. As the 
current through the strip is increased, the intensity 
of the luminous radiation increases more rapidly than 
the intensity of the radiation of longer wave-length. 
Therefore, for a given thickness of the absorbing 
media and distance of the thermopiles, there will be 
one definite temperature at which the reading of a 
