NA rURE 



[July 25, 1907 



Ihd great value to the community of universities endowed 

 from State funds may lead them to emulate American 

 praclice in this respect. 



The regulations for secondary schools (Cd. 3592) issued 

 by Ihe Board of Education, to come into force on August i, 

 niarlc a distinct advance in educational administration. 

 More elasticity is to be allowed in the Board's dealings 

 with secondary schools ; more encouragement is to be given 

 to local initiative and local effort; and certain defective 

 features in older regulations are removed. 'I'he additional 

 funds now available for secondary education have made it 

 possible to abolish the limited four years' course on which 

 alone grants have been paid hitherto. A uniform grant 

 will in future be paid on pupils between twelve and 

 eighteen years of age who are following an approved 

 curriculum, and, what is of prime importance from the 

 point of view of the schoolmaster, the term instead of the 

 year is to be taken as the unit in assessing grants. The 

 subjects to be studied and the time to be devoted to each 

 has in the past been prescribed by the Board ; for the 

 future the head teacher and local authorities are to be 

 encouraged to submit to the inspector for approval courses 

 of work designed precisely to suit local needs and con- 

 ditions. In the payment of grants it is interesting to note 

 that the Board is prepared in certain cases to augment 

 the grant due to a school by a further sum towards meeting 

 expense incurred by the school in respect of approved 

 educational experiments. There is ground for hope that 

 this arrangement may hasten the methodical building up 

 of a science of education. This adoption of the plan fol- 

 lowed in all other scientific work of basing conclusions 

 upon experiment and observation should lead to many 

 improvements, and it is to be hoped that much thought 

 and the best talent will be devoted to the inauguration of 

 the age of scientifically arranged experiments in education. 

 The regulations will, if sympathetically and intelligently 

 interpreted, greatly improve' English secondary education. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, June 6. — "The Mechanical Effects of 

 Canal Rays." By A. A. Campbell Swinton. Communi- 

 cated by Sir William Crockes, F.R.S. 



This investigation was undertaken in order to discover 

 whether the so-called canal rays, which at suitable pres- 

 sures can be seen streaming through the apertures in a 

 perforated kathode, backward away from the anode, share 

 with kathode rays the property of causing small and 

 light mill-wheels to rotate. 



Experiments were conducted with tubes in which there 

 were a number of perforations in the kathode, so that the 

 canal rays, after passing through these, impinged on the 

 vanes of a mill-wheel of screw-propeller form, and also 

 with other tubes in which there was only a single perfora- 

 tion in the kathode, and the canal rays acted on the 

 vanes of a mill-wheel of water-wheel type. In both these 

 forms of tubes mill-wheels with vanes of mica, as also 

 with vanes of aluminium, were employed, and in every 

 case rapid rotation of the mill-wheel occurred at suitable 

 pressures in the direction corresponding with that of the 

 canal rays. That this was due to the canal rays was 

 proved by closing the apertures in the kathodes by means of 

 aluminium shutters, when rotation could not be produced, 

 as also bv subjecting the tube to a powerful magnetic field 

 so as to "deflect to one side all direct or reflected kathode 

 rays. 



Experiments were also made with screw-propeller mill- 

 wheels mounted in front of the kathode. In this case, when 

 th= vanes of the mill-wheel were of mica, the rotation 

 obtained alwavs corresponded with the result being due 

 to bombardment bv kathode rays proceeding away from the 

 kathode; whereas, when the vanes were of aluminium, 

 rotation in the contrary direction invariably took place, 

 this corresponding with the effect Jjeing due to canal rays 

 proceeding towards the kathode. 



It was further ascertained by means of two^ thermo- 

 junctions of Constantan copper — one on each side of a 

 mica vane, arranged so as to oppose their E.M.F.'s, and 

 connected to a mirror galvanometer — that under canal-ray 



NO. 1969, VOL. 76] 



bombardment the two sides of a mica vane may acquire 

 differences of temperature amounting to as much as 

 2oo° F. It is suggested that the heat insulating pro- 

 perties of mica and the high thermal conductivity of 

 aluminium have probably an important bearing on the 

 divergent results obtained with these two materials, as 

 mentioned above. 



Physical Society, June 28.— Prof. W. E. Ayrton, F.R.S., 

 past-president, in the chair. — Experiments on the produc- 

 tion of sand ripples on the sea shore : Mrs. Ayrton. Th( 

 sand-ripples of the sea-shore, although parallel to the linr 

 of the breakers, are not produced by their edges, but 

 entirely under water. The long see-saw motion of the 

 water produces the ripples, as was observed in 1882 by Mr. 

 A. Hunt. To show this, a glass trough, in which was 

 level sand, covered with a foot of water, was pushed to and 

 fro on rollers. This motion set the water oscillating, and 

 soon small ridges were seen in the sand, at nearly equal 

 distances from one another, growing larger as the oscilla- 

 tion continued. By deduction from the shape of certain 

 sand vortices, it appears that every ridge in otherwise 

 smooth sand must produce two other ridges, one on either 

 side of the first, and that these two give rise to two other 

 ripples, until the whole becomes ripple-marked. Experi- 

 ments were shown to demonstrate this fact. To show that 

 the vortices generated by the original ripple swept out 

 those succeeding, an artificial barrier was put across the 

 trough to increase the size of the vortices, a handful of 

 moist black pepper was thrown in, and the water oscillated. 

 Immediately the actual process by which the water started 

 and built up the ripples was shown. The way was illus- 

 trated in which the ripples on the sea-shore could be 

 imitated, even when the water ran in one direction alone, 

 if only the sand were sloped so that the water ran up it, 

 and if, by means of a paddle, a series of waves were sent 

 along the water in the direction in which it was running. 

 The whole of the sandy shore is ripple-marked when the 

 tide is high, hut the waves at the edge of the retreating 

 tide wipe out the ripples except where there is a pool, so 

 that the water is left over the ripples until after the sea 

 has retired. -The greatest depth at which ripple-mark can 

 be formed at the bottom of the sea depends on the violence 

 of the motion of the water. At depths of 60 feet or 70 feet 

 th':; sand is said to have been found ripple-marked. If the 

 depth of a vessel is large compared with its cross-section, a 

 depth of water can be found beneath which no sand-ripples 

 can be formed. On sprinkling a little sand in the water 

 in a small trough, and rocking it to and fro, the sand was 

 seen to assemble quickly in a straight line across its 

 middle. Watching these grains, it was noticed that the 

 result arose from every swing carrying each grain on one 

 side of the centre nearer to the middle than the next swing 

 carried it awav again. Each ripple as a whole tends to 

 move towards the middle of the trough. In troughs, the 

 water was kept oscillating so as to form a stationary wave 

 twice the length of the trough, and the place where the 

 heap of sand was formed was where the level of the water 

 changed least, and its horizontal velocity was the greatest. 

 Referring to the Goodwin Sands, Mrs. .Ayrton said she 

 found it impossible to avoid recognising the resemblance 

 between the hillocks and hollows of these sands and those 

 made in her glass troughs, and it seemed possible that they 

 were also produced by stationary waves. 

 Cambridge. 



Philosophical Society, May 20.--Dr. Hobson, presi- 

 dent, in the chair. — Exhibition of photomicrographs of 

 wood-sections made by Mr. J. .\. Weale : E. R. Burdon. 

 — Parasitic trees of southern India : C. A. Barber. The 

 sandal tree, Santalum album, was discussed ; although a 

 large tree with abundant foliage and thick stem, it is 

 dependent for its water and mineral salts on the roots of 

 other plants. The disease called locally "spike" was 

 illustrated by a series of lantern-slides. Four genera of 

 Olacacea;, Olax, Ximenia, Opilia, and Cansjera, large 

 green climbers or shrubs, are now known to be parasitic 

 like the sandal. The arrangement of the subgroups of the 

 Olacaces has been unsatisfactory for a long time. The 

 study of the haustoria endorses the arrangement proposed 

 by Van Tieghcm whereby the Opiliere are transferred to 

 near the Santalaceas. Special attention was directed to the 



