May 30, 1907J 



NA TURE 



117 



the evolution of the angiospermous flower was a process 

 of reduction. There is thus no longer any presumption 

 that the simplest forms among the flowers of angiosperms 

 are likely to be the most primitive. The tendency of the 

 older morphologists to regard such flowers as reductions 

 from a more perfect type appears fully justified by the 

 discovery of the elaboration of floral structure attained by 

 the Mesozoic Cycadophyta before the advent of the angio- 

 sperms themselves. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Cambridge. — The special board for biology and geology 

 has approved a grant of 150/. from the Balfour fund made 

 by the Balfour managers to VV. E. .Agar, of King's College, 

 in furtherance of his proposed expedition to the Paraguayan 

 Chaco. 



The board of agricultural studies reports that the fund 

 for providing the department of agriculture with a per- 

 manent building of its own has received substantial 

 additions during the year, the conditional contribution of 

 5000/. by the Drapers' Company having been secured. 

 The fund now amounts to i3,03oZ. 105. 



Man'chester. — Mr. F. T. Swanwick, Richardson lecturer 

 in mathematics, has been appointed Fielden lecturer in 

 mathematics in place of Mr. R. F. Gwyther, who is now 

 devoting his whole time to the joint matriculation board 

 of the northern universities. Mr. J. E. Littlewood (Cam- 

 bridge) has been appointed Richardson lecturer in mathe- 

 matics ; he was bracketed senior wrangler in 1905, and 

 was placed in the first division of the first class of part ii. 

 of the mathematical tripos in 1906. Mr. H. M. Priestley 

 (Cambridge) has been appointed assistant lecturer in 

 mathematics; he was fifth wrangler in 1905, and was 

 placed in the second division of the first class of part ii. 

 of the mathematical tripos in igo6. 



Plans have been prepared for new engineering labor- 

 atories, and building will shortly be commenced on a site 

 on the north side of Coupland Street, near the present 

 physical laboratories. For some time past need has been 

 felt for this extension, and the new buildings will afford 

 ample space for the whole work of the engineering depart- 

 ment to be carried out under one roof. In addition to 

 the main laboratory of 75 feet by 166 feet, lecture rooms, 

 a large drawing room, and a boiler house are to be 

 erected. 



Sir .-Vrthur Rucker, F.R.S., principal of the University 

 of London, will distribute the prizes to the successful 

 students at Guy's Hospital on Thursday, July 4. 



Sir John Kennaway, Bart., M.P., will preside at the 

 commemoration day proceedings of Livingstone College, 

 Leyton, E., on Wednesday, June 5. Livingstone College 

 exists for the purpose of solving one of the greatest 

 problems connected with missionary effort, viz. the pre- 

 servation of the health of missionaries and others in 

 tropical climates. 



It is stated in Engineering of May 24 that the Technikum 

 at Ilmenau, in Thuringia, is one of the few technical schools 

 that are conducted in direct connection with commercial 

 works. The director is also head of a firm of engineering 

 and electrical works, and the students are, at all times, 

 when not occupied by their regular lectures and laboratory 

 practice, admitted into the works, in which advanced pupils 

 ran receive further training. The combination seems to 

 answer. 



In the Engineering Magazine (vol. xxxiii.. No. 2) Mr. 

 H. Cole Estep discusses the attitude of technical students 

 towards the engineering-apprenticeship courses which are 

 offered by the leading manufacturers of the United States. 

 He finds the attitude unsympathetic. The present low 

 flat-rate system of wages is discouraging rather than 

 encouraging to the average college student. The objec- 

 tions are also raised that the courses are too long, that 

 there is no reward at the end, and that the invention 

 clause existing in many apprenticeship contracts is unfair. 



NO. 1 96 I, VOL. 76] 



A COURSE of instruction in natural history has been 

 arranged at the Horticultural College, Swanley, for 

 students who, having passed through the ordinary training 

 m gardening, wish for additional training in natural- 

 history subjects, in order to qualify as teachers of garden- 

 ing and nature-study. Other students will be admitted to 

 the course provided they can show they are able to take 

 full advantage of the instruction. Students will be given 

 an insight into field work in natural history based on 

 laboratory instruction ; the work will be practical, and 

 students will be shown how to prepare their own material 

 and to construct their own apparatus. The course will 

 last a year, of which the first two terms will be devoted 

 to general work in botany, zoology, and geology, and the 

 third term to special subjects. Fuller particulars may be 

 obtained from the principal at the college, Swanley, Kent. 



In his presidential address to the Royal Geographical 

 Society on Monday, May 27, Sir George Goldie again 

 directed attention to the omission of geography in examin- 

 ations for^ the Foreign Office and other branches of the 

 Civil Service. For a good many years the Foreign Office 

 stood in an exceptional position amongst the Civif Services 

 of the Crown by including geography amongst the subjects 

 for the entrance examinations of candidates and making 

 a pass in this subject compulsory. .After next month, 

 however, geography will cease to be a subject which candi- 

 dates for the Foreign Oflfice may select even voluntarily. 

 So many sons of the well-to-do classes of this country 

 compete in examinations controlled by the Civil Service 

 Commissioners that the standing in the whole educational 

 sphere of any subject depends to some extent upon whether 

 it is or is not a means of gaining marks in the civil and 

 military examinations, and it may be asserted that if geo- 

 graphy is included as one of the subjects of examination, it 

 will very shortly take its place in Great Britain, as it has 

 long since done in the United States, Germany, and other 

 countries, as one of the fundamental and indispensable 

 elements in the education of childhood and youth. That 

 this has not been the case up to now is probably due to 

 the unintelligent and unmethodical manner in which the 

 subject was taught until a few years ago, with the result 

 that the majority of those who are to-day in a position 

 to speak with authority retain an entirely incorrect 

 impression of its scope and objects. It is to the University 

 of O-xford, supported. Sir George Goldie added, by the 

 Universities of Cambridge, London, Edinburgh, and other 

 great centres of education, that geographers must look for 

 a satisfactory solution of this important question : for, so 

 far as can be gathered froin the correspondence on the 

 subject which appeared some months ago, the Civil Service 

 Commissioners are willing to consider the admission of 

 geography as one of the voluntary subjects for examin- 

 ations, provided the great universities will give a lead. 

 In taking such a step, both the universities and the com- 

 missioners would have behind them the pressure of public 

 opinion, owing to the sudden awakening both of interest 

 in the Empire as a whole and of recognition of our wide- 

 spread ignorance of its geographical conditions. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Rnval Society, January 31.— "On the Thermo-chemistrv 

 of Flame Spectra at High Temperatures." By Prof. 

 W. X. Hartley, F.R.S. 



(i) The oxides of calcium, strontium, and barium are 

 not dissociated by heat alone, because they show no spec- 

 trum in a carbon monoxide flame ; (2) they are reduced 

 by the coinbined action of heat and hydrogen in the oxy- 

 hydrogen flame and by the action of cyanogen in the 

 cyanogen flame ; (3) the flame coloration is due to the 

 metal, because not only is the flame spectrum from lime 

 essentially the same as that of the metal calcium, but 

 also the heats of formation of CaO, SrO, and BaO have 

 very nearly the same value, and that where calcium oxide 

 can be reduced the other oxides could, on that account, 

 undergo a similar reduction. Whether the compound of 

 strontium or barium in the flame be a sulphide or an 

 oxide, the same spectrum is emitted, but there is some 



