§94 



NA TURE 



[December 30, 1922 



Mackinder on Wednesdays at 5 p.m., beginning 

 January 24, at the London School of Economics 

 and Political Science, Houghton Street, W.C.2. 



Part I., consisting of ten lectures, of a course on 

 Oil Well and Refinery Technology and Geology of 

 Petroleum, will be given at the Sir John Cass Technical 

 Institute, Jewry Street, Aldgate, E.C.3., during the 

 coming term. The opening lecture, on Monday, 

 January 15, at 7 p.m., will be by Sir John Cadman 

 on " Imperial Aspects of the Petroleum Question." 



The Bureau of Education of the Government of 

 India has just issued a second volume of " Selections 

 from Educational Records," edited by J. A. Richey 

 (Calcutta, Superintendent of Government Printing, 

 India, pp. 504, rupees 6i). The period covered by 

 these selections, 1839-59, was one of great edu- 

 cational activity in India, during which provincial 

 systems of education were gradually evolved, and 

 many of the documents reproduced in this volume 

 are of great interest, as are likewise the accompanying 

 series of portraits of statesmen, administrators, 

 missionaries, and unofficial patrons of education. 

 The frontispiece is, appropriately, a portrait of James 

 Thomason, Lieutenant-Governor of the North-western 

 Provinces, 1843-53, wn0 of all the administrators 

 of those times rendered the greatest services to the 

 cause of education in India. Among these not the 

 least was the establishment of the Engineering College 

 at Roorkee which bears his name. Had his apprecia- 

 tion of the needs of the time in regard to the teaching 

 of applied science been more fully shared by the 

 court of directors and their successors, there might 

 have been in India developments comparable with 

 those which in the United States of America followed 

 the adoption by the Federal Government of the policy 

 of endowing colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts. 

 A number of interesting documents are grouped together 

 under the heading : the beginning of professional 

 education — medical, engineering, and legal — and a 

 useful bibliography is given at the end of the volume. 



Striking testimony of the excellent morale of the 

 students of the University of Hong-Kong was given 

 in the course of an address delivered on November 1 4 

 at the Royal Colonial Institute by Sir Frederick 

 Lugard, to whose initiative the inception of the 

 University was primarily due. After speaking of the 

 need for training character in African dependencies, 

 he said : "A university was founded in Hong Kong 

 in 191 2 mainly for Chinese students. In the fore- 

 front of its declared objects the principles of co- 

 operation and discipline were laid down. This year 

 the community was disorganised by a series of strikes 

 of a political nature. Trade and social life were 

 alike paralysed. It seemed inevitable that the 

 students — as in Egypt and India — would espouse the 

 cause of reaction. But the Vice-Chancellor reports 

 that though it would have been entirely in accord 

 with Chinese student practice elsewhere that the 

 undergraduates should demonstrate on the same 

 side, what actually occurred was a very striking 

 testimony to the success obtained in inculcating the 

 lessons of co-operation and discipline. When the 

 whole of the servants joined the strikers the students 

 devoted themselves with the utmost cheeriness to 

 cooking and to menial household duties. Sir W. 

 Unmgate adds that the hostels had never been 

 cleaner. When the staff of mechanics went out the 

 students manned the power station and the medical 

 students unanimously resolved to carry out hospital 

 duties, which are regarded by Chinese as especially 

 derogatory." On the re-establishment of stable 

 government in China the potential usefulness of this 

 university will be vastly increased and it is to be 

 hoped that it will be enabled to rise to the height 

 of its great opportunities. 



NO. 2774, VOL. I IO] 



Societies and Academies. 

 London. 



Aristotelian Society, December 4. — Prof. Wildon 

 Carr, vice-president, in the chair. — Gerald Cator : 

 The one and the many. Contents of monadic type, 

 which seem to occur in experience, prove on examina- 

 tion to be " convergence illusion effects." To admit 

 this, however, is fatal to the claims of logic. The 

 question, " How are synthetic judgments possible ? " 

 can only be answered by the denial that there can 

 be genuine judgments, as contrasted with psycho- 

 logical compositions of representations. The writ 

 of logic, we should have to say, does not run in 

 our world. To this dilemma the intellectualist 

 metaphysic of St. Thomas Aquinas otters a legitimate* 

 though not dialectically-necessary way of escape. 

 According to it every character of the world, correla- 

 tive to an intelligence of any grade, is a function 

 of the position of that intelligence in the scale of 

 beings, and the human intelligence is intelligence 

 at threshold value. It follows that the form of the 

 human universal will be the unification of a multi- 

 plicity by reference to a point de repere. But this 

 is precisely the structure of a " convergence illusion 

 effect." Convergence illusion effects may, therefore, 

 be genuine universals at threshold value, and con- 

 sequently our world may be continuous with the 

 intelligible world. 



Society of Public Analysts, December 6. — Mr. 

 P. A. Ellis Richards, president, in the chair. — E. W. 

 Blair and T. Shirlock Wheeler : A note on the esti- 

 mation of form- and acet-aldehydes. In investiga- 

 tions of the action of oxygen and ozone on various 

 hydrocarbons, the formaldehyde and acetaldehyde 

 present were estimated by finding the total alde- 

 hydes by Ripper's bisulphite method (Monat. jiir 

 Chem., 21, 1079), and formaldehyde alone by 

 the cyanide method. In solutions containing 

 formaldehyde, formic acid, hydrogen peroxide, and 

 a trace of ozone these substances were estimated 

 seriatim, formic acid with N/100 alkali, ozone with 

 neutral potassium iodide, hydrogen peroxide by 

 Kingzett's method (Analyst, 9, 6), and formaldehyde 

 by Romij.i's method. — H. A. Peacock : Note on the 

 presence of sulphur dioxide in cattle foods after 

 fumigation. Sulphur dioxide may be absorbed by 

 cattle cakes and meals during fumigation, but 

 after about a week the sulphur dioxide disappears. 

 The amount absorbed depends on the variety of 

 cake — the harder cakes absorbing less than the softer — 

 and the condition of the feeding stuff, i.e. whether 

 in block or powder form. — C. H. Douglas Clark : 

 A sliding scale for the convenient titration of strong 

 liquids bv dilution and use with aliquot parts. The 

 device enables the operator to see at once what 

 alternative dilutions are available in any particular 

 case in order to obtain a convenient burette reading 

 at the end of titration, and it assists in choosing 

 the most suitable dilution. — D. W. Steuart : Some 

 notes on the unsaponifiable matter of fats. The 

 proportion of sterol in the unsaponifiable matter 

 varies from 48 per cent, in maize oil to 7 per cent, 

 in palm oil ; and from 38 per cent, in lard to 9 per 

 cent, in hardened whale oil. Highly hardened fats 

 still contain sterol. The cholesterol acetate of animal 

 fats melts at 114 to 114^° C; the phytosterol acetate 

 of vegetable fats is a mixture, a fraction of which 

 melts at 125 or above, but some pure vegetable 

 oils yield a fraction melting about 114° C. These 

 facts" are utilised in analysing margarines. — Norman 

 Evers and H. J. Foster : Note on the sulphuric acid 

 test for fish liver oils. The addition of natural 

 oils increases the sensitiveness of the test to 



