776 



NA TURE 



[December 9, 1922 



tion, the standard of which is intended to be that of the 

 matriculation examination of an English university, 

 and evidence of having passed such a matriculation 

 examination, or other equivalent test, may be accepted 

 by the College in lieu of its own entrance examination. 



The one-year course is intended for those who 

 require a less extensive acquaintance with the scientific 

 aspects of agriculture, and the standard required from 

 such entrants will be based mainly on a satisfactory 

 school record indicating that they are able to profit 

 by the instruction offered. 



Special facilities will be afforded to officers selected 

 for the tropical agricultural services, whether under 

 government or otherwise, such as should enable them 

 to obtain (through courses planned to meet individual 

 needs) familiarity with the applications to tropical 

 conditions of the principles they will have already 

 acquired in Europe or elsewhere. It is difficult to 

 exaggerate the value and importance of such training 

 to men of this class before they proceed to take up the 

 duties of the posts to which they may have been 

 appointed. Hitherto there has existed a gap, largely 

 unbridged, between the university at home and the 

 work that awaits the scientific officer in his district, 

 where the conditions that embrace his problems and 

 affect their solution are so widely different from those 

 within the range of his previous experience. The 

 new College enables this hiatus to be short-circuited, 

 and it should now be possible for a man in a few 

 months to build effectively on his previous knowledge 

 of principles. In short, he is now in a position to 

 obtain easily, and under exceptionally favourable 

 conditions, just that kind of wide outlook over, and 

 reasonably intimate familiarity with, the material 

 and environment of his prospective problems so 

 necessary for ultimately attacking them with good 

 prospects of success. 



Perhaps, however, a word of caution may not fie 

 out of place here. In order to secure the best type of 

 scientific officer, whether for government or for other 

 services, it is fundamentally important that he should 

 have received that kind of broad and thorough scien- 

 tific training which only a first-rate and well-equipped 

 university is in a position to give. It is not contended, 

 and it must' not be expected, that the training now 



available for scientific officers at the West Indian 

 Agricultural College can replace this university type 

 of education. What it can and will do is to utilise the 

 results of that education, and to make it of more 

 immediate and practical value. The motto of the 

 College, Via colendi hand Jacilis, emphasises the 

 difficulty of agricultural problems, and they are not 

 going to be best attacked unless the best means are 

 employed in the process. The combination of the 

 home university and the tropical college unquestion- 

 ably offers the best means at present in sight. 



Finally, in its provision for research students the 

 College is pursuing an excellent course. The Wes1 

 Indies, with the fine botanic gardens of Trinidad and 

 Dominica, offer unrivalled opportunities to the botanist 

 using Trinidad as a centre, and it would be difficult 

 to find better facilities anywhere in the tropics. The 

 relative freedom from noxious pests, the absence of the 

 annoyance caused by the leeches of the eastern jungles, 

 the variety and wealth of the vegetation, together with 

 the striking ecological character it exhibits, combine 

 to form a mo c t attractive prospect for any young man 

 who desires to secure that indispensable acquaintance 

 with tropical vegetation without which no botanist can 

 be said to be fully qualified to hold one of the more 

 important chairs in the universities at home. 



But it is, after all, by its success in promoting the 

 welfare of agriculture, and of the industries that arise 

 directly out of it. that the College will be finally judged. 

 In this last connexion it is well to learn that techno- 

 logical courses are contemplated to prepare men to 

 take their part in manufacturing processes. Some of 

 these, for example sugar, are already of considerable 

 importance in the West Indies and elsewhere. The 

 establishment of a sugar school will constitute the 

 first step in this direction, and gifts of up-to-date plant 

 and machinery have already been generously promised 

 by several engineering firms in Great Britain. 



It will be obvious from the foregoing sketch— neces- 

 sarily but an imperfect one — that the institution is 

 making a good start. Sir Francis Watts and the 

 little band of professors, all of whom have made their 

 mark in various directions, will carry with them the 

 best wishes of every one interested in the success of the 

 great enterprise on which they have embarked. 



The Flow of Steels at a Low Red Heat. 



RECENT developments in chemical engineering 

 have called for the provision of metallic con- 

 tainers capable of withstanding considerable stress at 

 high temperatures and for long periods. The in- 

 vestigation of the mechanical properties of steels and 

 alloys at these temperatures has accordingly become 

 a matter of very direct practical importance. The 

 existing literature of the subject almost invariably 

 consists of graphs, in which tensile test results are 

 plotted against the temperature at which the test was 

 made, care being taken to eliminate the disturbing, 

 but very important, factor of time, by carrying out 

 each test under as nearly the same conditions as possible, 

 the duration of each test being at most a few hours, 

 with an actual loading time of a few minutes. It can 

 not fairly be claimed that such information gives more 



NO. 2771, VOL. I ioj 



than a general indication of the relative ability of 

 different materials to meet the working conditions 

 usually encountered by the exhaust valve of an aero- 

 engine or the retorts, catalyst tubes, etc., of the 

 engineer. Certainly it does not enable a designer to 

 construct a container which can be depended upon to 

 maintain its shape indefinitely, at super-atmospheric 

 temperatures when in a state of stress. 



To remedy this defect in existing knowledge. Mr. J. 

 H. Dickenson, of the Research Laboratories of Messrs. 

 Vickers, Ltd., Sheffield, has carried out an experi- 

 mental investigation, and communicated his results 

 at the September meeting of the Iron and Steel Insti- 

 tute. His general conclusion is, that all the steels 

 upon which he has worked behaved very much like 

 highly viscous fluids at temperatures well below the 



