June 17, 1909] 



NA TURE 



477 



to-day, June 17, recommending that Mr. Smart's offer 

 be gratefully accepted. 



The special board for divinity has nominated Dr. 

 Humphry as assessor to the regius professor of physic 

 for the ensuing year, and the special board for mathe- 

 matics has nominated Sir Robert Ball as an elector to 

 the Isaac Newton studentships until September 30, 1913. 



The Cavendish professor of experimental physics 

 announces that a course of demonstrations in practical 

 physics will be given during the long vacation, beginning 

 Jui.v 5. 



The first three names in the Mathematical Tripos list, 

 part i. (old regulations), are P. J. Daniell, Trinity ; E. H. 

 Neville, Trinity; and L. J. Mordell, St. John's. 



Dr. H. k. Wilson, F.R.S., professor of physics in 

 King's College, London, has accepted the appointment of 

 professor of physics in McGill University, Montreal. 



Three lectures on " .\eronautics " are being delivered 

 at the East London College by Mr. A. P. Thurston. The 

 first lecture, on Monday, June 14, was on flying machines 

 (heavier-than-air type). The second, on Wednesday, 

 June 23, will deal with balloons, airships, and kites, and 

 the subject of the third, on Wednesday, June 30, will be 

 the mechanical principles of flight. ."Xpplications for 

 tickets of admission to the lectures should be sent to the 

 registrar at the college. 



The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction 

 for Ireland will in August next award not more than six 

 industrial scholarships to persons engaged in industries, 

 such as the woollen, linen, leather, and tanning industries. 

 The object of these scholarships is to enable selected 

 persons, who must already have been engaged in one of 

 the higher branches of the industry, to take a full course 

 of instruction in an institution providing special courses 

 of an approved character with the view of training them 

 for the management of such an industry. The scholar- 

 ships will be tenable at some higher institution, to be 

 approved by the Department, in which the industry, and 

 the principles underlying it, are taught. They will be of 

 the value of 8oi. each, and may be renewed for a second 

 or a third year at the discretion of the Department. 

 Candidates must fill in and return, addressed to the secre- 

 tary of the Department, not later than June 30, Form S. 

 192, copies of which may be had on application. 



The philanthropic aspects of the work of the adminis- 

 trators of the Children's Country Holidays Fund are 

 appreciated and understood widely, but it is not generally 

 known that, without some preliminary training, the 

 ordinary town child is unable to benefit educationally from 

 a short stay in the country. We are glad to learn, there- 

 fore, that a subcommittee, called the countryside com- 

 mittee, of the workers who organise the holidays was 

 formed some time ago to develop means of interesting the 

 children sent into the country in the natural wonders of 

 countryside life. The subcommittee has arranged for the 

 children, who will in .August be sent by the fund into the 

 country, a series of lantern lectures and nature talks about 

 common animal and plant life, and also a succession of 

 short rambles into metropolitan environs on Saturday after- 

 noons to secure for them some preliminary practice in 

 observation and general open-eyed intelligence. An appeal 

 is made to competent men and women who love children 

 to give, during the present month and the first weeks of 

 July, nature talks to the children in the schools they 

 attend, or to arrange for Saturday afternoon rambles in 

 the immediate neighbourhood of London. Similar persons 

 who live in the country and are willing to assist in making 

 the fortnight's holiday a profit.ible time physically and 

 mentally for the children are asked to communicate with 

 the honorary secretary of the countryside committee, Mrs. 

 Douglas Wilson, 17 Buckley Road, Brondesburv, London, 

 N.W. 



Bedford College (University of London), the oldest 

 university college for women, celebrates this year the 

 sixtieth anniversary of its foundation. Since 1849, when 

 it was first opened, its progress has been continuous, and 

 the number of students entered this year exceeds three 

 hundred. It is the only college exclusively for women 



NO. 2068, VOL. 80] 



which receives a Parliamentary grant. Recent develop- 

 ments in the work and the increase in numbers of students 

 have caused serious pressure on the space available in the 

 present buildings. In 1903 a building and endowment fund 

 was started, which has received generous support ; and the 

 end of the lease of a Crown property in Regent's Park, 

 known as South Villa, has been purchased, with a promise 

 from the Crown for its renewal on a further lease of 

 ninety-nine years. It is estimated that to erect on this site 

 buildings well equipped for college purposes, including a 

 library, laboratories, lecture-rooms, and a residence for 

 students, will cost about 80,000/. The council of Bedford 

 College, encouraged by the support it has already re- 

 ceived (which includes a special bequest for a botanical 

 laboratory), hopes that sufficient support may be forth- 

 coming to enable it to obtain this sum, and to build a 

 college in which the educational work so worthily begun 

 may be carried on in worthy surroundings. In order to 

 celebrate the sixtieth anniversary, and to make this 

 desirable site known to their friends, the council and prin- 

 cipal will hold a garden-party at South Villa on Tues- 

 day, June 29, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., for which cards of 

 invitation may be obtained from the secretary, Bedford 

 College, York Place. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Royal Society, June 10. — Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C. B. , 

 president, in the chair. — The functions of the pituitary 

 body (Croonian lecture) : Prof. E. A. Schafer.— A wave- 

 length comparator for standards of length : Dr. A. E. H. 

 Tutton. Two and a half years ago the author was 

 requested by the Standards Department of the Board of 

 Trade to devise and superintend the construction of a new 

 comparator, for comparing standards of length— the 

 imperial standard yard, for instance, with official copies, 

 and the latter with the copies constructed for local 

 authorities — in terms of wave-lengths of light. The instru- 

 ment now described is the result. Besides performing its 

 functions as a wave-length comparator, and being the 

 first instrument specifically constructed as such, it is also 

 the most perfect instrument yet devised for measurement 

 in wave-lengths in general. It is described to the Royal 

 Society by permission of the President of the Board of 

 Trade. The principle of the instrument is that_ of the 

 author's interferometer, described to the society in 1898 

 in connection with an interference dilatometer, and again 

 as improved in 1904 in connection with the author s 

 elasmometer or interference elasticity apparatus. The 

 interferometer, which is totally different from that of 

 Michelson or that of Fabry and Perot, is adapted, _ as 

 regards details, in a special manner for the specific object 

 in view, but with the exception that a Hilger constant- 

 deviation prism is employed instead of a train of two 

 spectroscope orisms, its principle is preserved intact. The 

 essential point of the instrument is that one of the two 

 microscopes, employed to focus the two defining lines 

 on a standard vard bar, actually carries just above the 

 objective one of' the two glass plates of the interference 

 apparatus, which reflect the monochromatic light (hydrogen 

 or cadmium red radiation) which is caused to interfere 

 and produce rectilinear dark bands. When the microscope 

 is moved the plate consequently moves with it, and the 

 amount of movement is absolutely afforded by the move- 

 ment of the interference bands, being equal to half the 

 wave-length of the light employed for every band which 

 passes the reference spot in the centre of the field of the 

 interferometer telescope. So perfectly has this fine move- 

 ment been achieved that the microscope and the bands can 

 be caused to move simultaneously, by rotation of a large, 

 fine-adjustment wheel, so steadily that each band can be 

 made to pass the reference spot as slowly as one wishes, 

 and be arrested instantly, without the slightest tremor, at 

 any fraction of its width, so that the control of the bands 

 and the counting is a perfectly simple matter. In order 

 to compare two standard bars, it is only necessary (i) to 

 place the bar of known length, supported on an elaborate 

 mechanism for the adjustment of the bars, also novel, 

 under the two microscopes, carried on massive yet deli- 



