2y8 



NA TURE 



[August 26, 1922 



mentioned increase in the number of secondary 

 students in private schools. The increase was — 

 in Roman Catholic schools from 20,150 to 76,054 ; in 

 other denominational schools from 39,106 to 53,965; 

 in non-sectarian schools from 47,951 to 54,134 ; in 

 all from 107,207 to 184,153. The increase in the 

 number of secondary students of negro race in private 

 schools is also noteworthy — from 2774 in 1905 to 

 9526 111 1920. Less than half of the total number of 

 these schools are co-educational, 385 being for boys 

 only and 728 for girls only. 



"We should have a dynamic education to fit a 

 dynamic world ' ' is the burden of the address delivered 

 by Dr. James Harvey Robinson, on " The Humanising 

 of Knowledge," before the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, at a meeting with the 

 Pacific division in Salt Lake City on June 23-24. 

 Once it was well to dehumanise science ; now it must 

 be rehumanised. Dr. Harvey thinks there is a real 

 danger threatening the progress of science itself in 

 neglecting the protest of philosophy, that the ideal 

 of dehumanising scientific investigation loses sight 

 of the fact that the onlooker is one of the essential 

 elements in the observing and recording. The danger 

 is not that the scientific ideal is faulty, but that 

 mankind will not accept an idea unless it is attractive 

 as well as true. " The politicians in the Kentucky 

 legislature think themselves competent to decide 

 whether the State should grant funds to any institution 

 in which man's animal extraction is taught ; the 

 politicians in the New York legislature have provided 

 that no one shall teach in the schools of the State who 

 is known at any time to have expressed any distrust 

 of our institutions." We on this side may smile at 

 these fears ; but after all it is well to be reminded that 

 the scientific investigator is prone to take himself 

 for granted and not to realise " what an altogether 

 astonishing and even grotesque mystery he and his 

 doings constitute " for the general mass of social 

 human beings. 



" Co-operation and the Problem of Unemploy- 

 ment " is the title of a pamphlet issued last month by 

 the Calcutta newspaper Capital, being a reprint of a 

 series of articles contributed by Captain J. W. Petavel, 

 Principal of Maharajah Kasimbazar's Polytechnic 

 Institute, together with correspondence between 

 Captain Petavel and the Vice-Chancellor of the 

 Calcutta University. The recent establishment by 

 this university of a Poverty Problem Study Fund, to 

 meet the cost of lectures and publications devoted 

 particularly to the exploitation of a definite scheme 

 of social reform, constitutes a new departure in uni- 

 versity policy in regard to research in applied sociolog)'. 

 This scheme " to organise the children and the 

 adolescents in schools and continuation schools, so as 

 to make them form the trunk of a great tree of co- 

 operative production and exchange, whose branches 

 will extend in all directions and carry health into 

 every part of our social system," is not new. Among 

 its earliest supporters were the late Lord Roberts 

 and Sir Horace Plunkett. Of late " economists and 

 educationists in almost every part of the world," 

 says the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, have 

 been canvassed, with the result that there has 

 been a steadily increasing volume of opinion in 

 favour of the scheme, and steps are being taken to- 

 wards operating a large-scale trial application of it 

 in schools in Bengal by means of self-supporting 

 school market-gardens and school workshops. The 

 experiment cannot fail to arouse keen interest, not 

 only in India but wherever attempts are being made 

 to extend and improve education without increasing 

 its cost. 



NO. 2756, VOL. I io] 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



August 27, 1898. John Hopkinson died. — Dis- 

 tinguished as an engineer and a mathematical phy- 

 sicist, Hopkinson was a graduate of Trinity College, 

 Cambridge, and in 1871 was senior wrangler and 

 Smith's prizeman. For some years he was scientific 

 adviser to Messrs. Chance, of Birmingham, and made 

 improvements in lighthouse apparatus. As a con- 

 sulting engineer in London he took up the study of 

 electrical problems ; in 1882 patented the three-wire 

 system, and four years later, with his brother Edward, 

 published an important memoir on the principles of 

 the design of dynamos. In 1890 he became professor 

 of electrical engineering at King's College, London, 

 and on two occasions served as president of the 

 Institution of Electrical Engineers. His death was 

 the result of an Alpine accident. 



August 27, 1914. William Thomas Lewis, Lord 

 Merthyr of Senghenydd, died. — Coal owner, iron 

 master, steel maker, engineer, and a captain of 

 industry, Lewis began life as an apprentice in a 

 South Wales engineering works. In i860 he became 

 mining engineer to the estates of the Marquis of 

 Bute, and twenty years later was made sole manager. 

 He was a pioneer in the construction of steel works. 



August 31, 1751. Christopher Polhem died. — A 

 famous mining engineer of Sweden, Polhem was born 

 in 1 66 1, in 1693 became engineer of the mines at 

 Fa.hlem, and in 171 6 was raised to the nobility and 

 was made a member of the council of mines. He 

 travelled extensively, carried out important engin- 

 eering works, and was one of the original members of 

 the Academy of Sciences of Stockholm. 



August 31, 1865. John George Appold died. — After 

 amassing a considerable fortune as a fur skin dyer, 

 Appold turned his attention to mechanical pursuits 

 and at the Great Exhibition of 1851 attracted atten- 

 tion by his centrifugal pump. Among his other 

 inventions was the brake used in connexion with 

 the laying of the first Atlantic cable. 



September 2, 1834. Thomas Telford died. — The 

 son of a shepherd of Eskdale, Dumfries, Telford was 

 born on August 9, 1757. Apprenticed to a mason, 

 lie afterwards worked in Edinburgh, London, and 

 Portsmouth, became surveyor of public works in 

 Shropshire, engineer of the Ellesmere Canal, and in 

 Scotland built the Caledonian Canal and opened up 

 the country by the construction of 920 miles of roads 

 and of 120 new bridges. Many other bridges, canals, 

 and harbour schemes were due to him, and among 

 these were the Gotha Canal between the Baltic and 

 North Sea and the famous suspension bridge over 

 the Menai Straits. An acknowledged leader in the 

 world of civil engineering, in 1818 he became the 

 first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers 

 and held that position till his death. He died at 

 24 Abingdon Street, Westminster, and was buried 

 in the nave of Westminster Abbey. His statue 

 stands in the Chapel of St. Andrew. 



September 2, 1883. Cromwell Fleetwood Varley 

 died. — One of the pioneers of the Atlantic Telegraph 

 Cable, Varley as a boy entered the service of the 

 Electric and International Telegraph Company and 

 of this firm became engineer-in-chief. After the failure 

 of the first Atlantic cable he constructed an ex- 

 perimental line for studying the phenomena of 

 signalling, and during 1864-5 tested the whole of the 

 new cable for the Atlantic Telegraph Company. 

 Retiring from active work in 1868, he continued his 

 investigations and in 1870 transmitted musical sounds 

 over an ordinary telegraph wire. E. C. S. 



