158 



NATURE 



[May 20, 1909 



in certain particulars. " I found a university," he said, 

 "' lioused in the half of a building which, though splendid, 

 is entirely inadequate and bears another name, without 

 any proper accommodation for its examinations, without 

 ■ even sufficient room for its normal business or for the 

 meetings of its Senate, councils, and committees ; a uni- 

 versity which sorely needs endowments and buildings for 

 advanced teaching and research ; which has no place that 

 can become a centre for the intellectual and social life of 

 the teachers and students belonging to its numerous 

 schools ; a university mainly dependent upon examination 

 'fees for its existence, while compelled to consume one-half 

 ■of these fees in the expenses of the examinations them- 

 ■selves." The presentees included 13 Doctors of Science 

 and 261 Bachelors of Science. It is remarkable that the 

 number of B.Sc.'s presented slightly exceeds the number 

 •of B.A.'s (254). In addition, S6 B.Sc.'s in engineering 

 were presented. 



The new physiologrv institute at University College, 

 funds for the building of which were provided by 

 the generosity of Mr. Ludwig Mond and Dr. Aders 

 ■Plimmer and by the bequest of the late Mr. T. Webb, 

 will be opened on June 18 by Mr. Haldane, Secretary of 

 State for War. 



The King has signed the warrant for granting a charter 

 •establishing the University of Bristol. 



Lord Reay will open the new buildings of the Merchant 

 Venturers' Technical College, Bristol, on June 24. 



Mr. R. \. Ciiisoi.M has been appointed Greville research 

 student for research in connection with the subject of 

 ■cancer at Guy's Hospital Medical School. 



The old Gahvay students of Prof. Scnier have just pre- 

 •sented him with an address encased in a silver casket, 



■expressing their pleasure at the recent action of the Royal 

 University in conferring upon him the honorary degree of 

 Doctor of Science in recognition of his services to science 

 and to university education in Ireland. 



We learn from Science that subscriptions to the C. W. 

 Eliot fund have been received from about 2050 graduates 

 •of Harvard University and others, and amount at this 



'time to about 26,000/. The committee hoped that the fund 

 would amount to more than 30,000/. bv May 19, when 

 President Eliot retired. The subscriptions have been placed 

 in the hands of trustees, to invest and hold for the benefit 



•of President and Mrs. Eliot. The fund will eventually 

 pass to Harvard University. 



The Goldsmiths' Company recently offered a gift of 



.50,000;. to the governors of the Imperial College of Science 

 and Technology towards the cost of the proposed extension 



•of the engineering department of the college, and on 

 May 14 the-ofl'er was gratefully accepted by the governors. 

 Writing to Lord Crewe, as chairman of the governors, 

 Sir Walter Pridcaux, on behalf of the Goldsmiths' Com- 

 pany, pointed out that the gift was irrespective of the 



•company's support to the City and Guilds Institute, and 

 that their subscriptions in the latter direction would not 

 be curtailed. The letter reminded Lord Crewe that the 

 whole of the engineering department of the Imperial 



•College is to be called "The City and Guilds College." 

 The Goldsmiths' Company has expressed the hope that 

 the company will be given separate representation on the 

 delegacy which it is proposed shall administer the entire 

 department of engineering, and the governors of the college 

 have promised that the wishes of the company shall receive 

 immediate attention. The Goldsmiths' Company will pay 

 _io,oooZ. on the day whereon the contract for the work 

 is signed, and the remainder by instalments spread over 

 a period of not fewer than three'years. 



_ In his annual address as president of the Royal Institu- 

 tion of Cornwall, Dr. R. Pearce discussed the attempts 

 made by the society to provide instruction for miners in 

 the subjects connected with their occupation. One of the 

 •objects of the institution, founded in 1818, was to establish 

 a mining school, the first of the kind in England. The 

 results were at first unsatisfactory ; but in 1859 the school 

 was re-organised with the advice and assistance of Mr. 

 NO. 2064, "^'OL. 80] 



R. Hunt, and at a later date by Sir C. Le Neve Foster. 

 The result has been, not so much to improve the methods 

 of Cornish mining, as to provide students qualified for 

 work in other places. Out of 221 students at the Cam- 

 borne School only forty-one are Cornishmen, the balance 

 being made up from natives of other parts of the country 

 and several foreigners. The school has supplied mining 

 engineers for the colonies and foreign countries, and the 

 president, summing up the results, remarks : — " We may, 

 I think, congratulate ourselves on the fact that, although 

 Cornwall is not deriving .any very important benefit by 

 the application of scientific instruction to Its mining 

 Industry, our colonies and our colonial mining and metal- 

 lurgical enterprises are being built up from material 

 fiu'nished from our Cornish mining schools." 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 

 Royal Society, May 13. — Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., 

 president, in the chair. — Recent solar research ; Dr. G. E. 

 Hale. — Utilisation of energy stored in springs : .A. 

 Mallock, F.R.S. The " dynamic worth " of a substance 

 Is the work which can be elastlcally stored in it, divided 

 by its mass. It may be expressed either as the square 

 of the velocity which the stored work could impart to the 

 mass, or, in gravity measure, as the height to which the 1 

 stored work could raise the weight of the mass. The I 

 dynamic worth of india-rubber is more than ten times as ' 

 great as for any other known substance, and for this 

 reason india-rubber may be used with advantage in certain 

 cases as a source of motive power. It Is pointed out in 

 the paper that if the potential energy in the strained 

 material is to be efficiently converted into mechanical work, 

 no frictional contact must occur while the strained material 

 is returning to its original shape. Thus, if the strained 

 material is in the form of a long cord wound on a reel 

 (as the most convenient method of storage), the condition 

 as to the absence of friction during contraction makes it 

 necessary to develop the stored energy in cycles. In the , 

 first place, keeping the tension of the cord constant, a 

 certain length must be unwound from the reel and the 

 reel clamped. The cord also must be clamped in two 1 

 places, first, near the place where it leaves the reel, and 

 again at the extremity of the strained part, to some 

 moving piece of the mechanism. If the part of the cord 

 included between these points is then allowed to contract, 

 the whole elastic work it contained is transferred to the 

 machine. The above cycle may be repeated as long as 1 

 any stretched cord remains on the reel. Any change of I 

 tension, however, in the process of unwinding involves 

 loss of efficiency, due to the sliding of the cord on the reel 

 or on the underlying coils, which must occur if the tension 

 in the wound and unwound parts differs. — A new kind of 

 glow in vacuum tubes : Rev. H. V. Gill. The experi- 

 ments described in the paper were made with the object of 

 investigating the nature and causes of a phenomenon 

 observed by the writer when occupied with a research 

 connected with palladium foil. A piece of palladium foil, 

 or platinum foil coated with palladium black, is heated 

 to a white heat in air at a pressure of about 0-15 mm. A 

 purple-blue glow is seen to surround the hot metal. 

 Between the glow and the palladium there is a dark space. 

 The thickness of the dark space varies with the tempera- 

 ture of the foil. The glow disappears when the tube is 

 heated to a high temperature, and returns when it is 

 cooled. It is shown that the presence of the glow depends 

 on a reaction between the gases introduced into the tube 

 when the palladium is heated and the disintegrated 

 particles of palladium. Water vapour Is required to be 

 present In the tube, and the glow can be made to disappear 

 by freezing out the vapour by means of a few drops of 

 liquid air applied to the outside of the tube, or by intro- 

 ducing some phosphorous pentoxide into the tube. The 

 spectrum of the glow shows certain regions w^hich corre- 

 spond to portions of the .spectrum of carbon monoxide 

 gas. It Is also shown that carbon monoxide is present In 

 the tube which shows the glow. No effect was observed 

 when electric and magnetic fields were applied to the glow. 

 The proliable cause of the luminosity is the luminous union 



