22 



NA TURE 



[May 7, 1908 



being only about \\d. per head of the children of school 

 age." It was also urged that the education given had 

 been a "great deal too literary," and that the "whole 

 training had not been sufficiently scientific and practical." 

 The proposal was supported by two or three members and 

 opposed by others who are well acquainted with India and 

 with educational problems, and it W"as pointed out that " it 

 was a bad thing too frequently to pull up a plant by its 

 roots to see how it was growing." Mr. Hobhouse, who 

 replied on behalf of the Under-Secretary of State for India, 

 had no difficulty in showing that the request for a com- 

 mittee of inquiry was unnecessary. He assured the House 

 that educational questions had within the past few years 

 been thoroughly investigated and discussed in India by 

 various conferences, commissions, and committees, that 

 the educational system had been recently thoroughly over- 

 hauled and re-modelled, and that it is now on more prac- 

 tical and thorough lines than formerly, and that special 

 attention had been paid to primary, secondary, and 

 technical education. Also that the expenditure on educa- 

 tion had been almost doubled within the last ten years, 

 and that every effort would be made to increase this ex- 

 penditure, due consideration being given to other pressing 

 wants in the country. He assured the House that the 

 Secretary of State for India was in fullest sympathy with 

 the object which those proposing the motion had in view, 

 but he was unable to accede to the request, " because the 

 work of education in India had progressed and was steadily 

 being pushed forward, and any inquiry of the sort sug- 

 gested would not really expedite it." The motion was 

 then withdrawn. 



When the British Association met in Bristol ten years 

 ago, Sir Norman Lockyer referred at the closing meeting 

 to the fine educational establishments of the city, and 

 expressed the hope that at some future meeting the associa- 

 tion would find Bristol at the head of some great south- 

 western university. .Since that time the movement for a 

 University of Bristol has made substantial progress, and 

 frequent references have been made to it in these columns. 

 An important meeting was held at Bristol on April 25 

 under the auspices of the Bristol and District Workers' 

 Educational .Association, when an earnest appeal on behalf 

 of the scheme for a university for Bristol was made by 

 the Bishop of Hereford, the president of the University 

 College. Dr. Percival said he was not sure that the people 

 of Bristol at large had really grasped the extent of the 

 advantages which would accrue to the city in connection 

 with the establishment of a university for Bristol and the 

 west of England. Bristol claims to be the " lantern of 

 the west," and if she is to maintain that claim in future 

 and to maintain her position in the forefront with all the 

 other great cities of England, all grades of citizens must 

 unite in the endeavour to crown their system of educa- 

 tional institutions by the establishment of a university. 

 As local patriots he appealed to them to give their 

 sympathy and their efforts in support of the movement. 

 He put this question to himself, " Why should not I, as 

 a citizen of Bristol, be able to claim as much as if I 

 belonged to Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, or 

 Birmingham? " Every one of those great cities has 

 secured its university. But the question may naturally be 

 asked, "What are we to gain by a university?" He 

 said he could answer that question in almost a single 

 word. We need only look at a country like Scotland to 

 see what is gained by the possession of popular universities. 

 The population of Scotland is only about 45 millions, and 

 Scotland has its four ancient universities. If any part 

 of the kingdom or the Empire has profited more bv educa- 

 tion than all the rest it is Scotland, and Scotland owes 

 it's preeminence to the fact of its having enjoyed and made 

 use of those four universities. If we turn from Scotland, 

 Wales is close behind, and has profited immensely by her 

 university colleges and national university. Then in 

 Ireland we are beginning to multiplv the universities, and 

 should the citizens of Bristol be content to stand aside? 

 He assured them from a long experience that nothing they 

 could do in Bristol would be better for the education and 

 the future well-being of the working classes of the city 

 than that they should use their best efforts to secure a 

 university. 



NO. 2010, VOL. 78] 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. i 



London. 



Chemical Society, April 2.— Sir William Ramsay ' 

 K.C.B., F.R.S., president, in the chair. — Rate of hydro 

 lysis of chloroacetates, bromoacetates, and a-chlorohydrin 

 by water and by alkali, and the influence of neutral salti 

 on the reaction velocities (preliminary note) : G. Senter. 

 The results of an investigation of the rate of displacemeni 

 of halogen by hydro.xyl for bromoacetic acid, its sodiun 

 salt, and for o-chlorohydrin, and the effect of certain neutral 

 sodium salts on the reaction velocities are given. These 

 confirm the view that the effect of neutral salts is mainly 

 due to their action on the reacting substances, and appear 

 to be incompatible with the hypothesis advocated by Arm- 

 strong and his co-workers, that neutral salt action is due . 

 to combination between salt and solvent, with consequent 

 concentration of the solution. — The constituents of Cyprus 

 origanum oil. Isolation of a new terpene, " origanum " : 

 S. S. Pickles. The oil consists mainly of carvacrol. 

 There are also present (i) a hydrocarbon, C,„H,j, appar- 

 ently a new terpene, for which the name origanene is pro- 

 posed (2.5 per cent.) ; (2) cymene, which, together with 

 associated terpenes, constitutes 8-5 per cent. ; (3) terpene 

 alcohols (35 per cent.) ; and (4) high boiling residue 

 (i'3 per cent.), besides very small quantities of a second 

 phenol, and probably iiobutyric acid. Origanene is prob- 

 ably A^'-'-p-menthadiene. — The displacement of halogen in 

 !-phenylchloroacetic acid by hydroxy- and methoxy-groups. 

 A contribution to the chemistry of the Walden inversion:. 

 A. McKenzie and G. \\'. Cloug:h. — The condensation o(- 

 epichlorohydrin with phenols : D. R. Boyd and E. R.. 

 Marie. The condensation product of phenol and epichloro- 

 hydrin is glyceryl diphenyl ether, and not phenyl glycidc 

 ether, as Cohn and Plohn suggested. Similarly, the 

 crvstalline compound obtained from p-cveso] and epichloro- 1 

 hydrin is glyceryl di-/>-toIyl ether. — A new general method 

 of preparing diazonlum bromides : F. D. Chattawiay. 

 Primary aromatic hydrazines react quantitatively with the 

 diazonium pcrbromides, producing diazonium bromides. — 

 The absorption spectrum of triphenylmethane : A. G. G. 

 Leonard. The cause of the difference between the absorp- 

 tion curve plotted by Hartley in 1887 and that plotted by 

 Baker in 1907 is shown to be due to the presence of an 

 impuritv in the sample originally examined. — The nature 

 of the impurity found in preparations of triphenylmethane : 

 W. N. Hartley. The impurity referred to in the preceding 

 paper appears to be triphenylmethyl. — The constitution of 

 coordinated compounds : S. H. C. Brigga. The existence 

 of the two compounds (Pt6NH,)Cl, and (PtClj)K,, in 

 which the platinum atom is the basis of a complex cation 

 and anion respectively, suggests the view that the platinum 

 atom has both positive and negative affinities, and formulae 

 giving expression to this view are suggested and discussed. 

 — A combined stop-cock and capillary connecting tube for 

 gas burettes : A. E. Hill. The apparatus is figured and 

 described in the original. — The hydrolysis of amygdalin 

 by emulsin, part i. : S. J. M. Auld. It has been shown 

 that Jorissen and Hairs's " emulsin " is really a mixture 

 of two enzymes, viz. true emulsin and a maltase-like fer- 

 ment, and the effect of varying the concentration of 

 amygdalin and emulsin has been investigated, as also the 

 action of many inhibitants. — Complex nitrites containing 

 potassium and lead (preliminary note) : A. N. Meldrum. 

 — The composition and formula of Wells's potassium lead 

 periodide : :\. N. Meldrum. — The molecular complexity 

 of amides in various solvents : A. N. Meldrum and 

 W. E. S. Turner. Determinations of the molecular com- 

 plexity of eleven amides in various solvents confirm the 

 Nernst-Thomson theory that the smaller the dielectric con- 

 stant of the solvent the greater is the association of the 

 solute. — The optical activity of compounds having simple 

 molecular structure : W. J. Pope and J. Read. Chloro- 

 sulphoacetic acid and chlorobromomethanesulphonic acid 

 each contain an asymmetric carbon atom in the molecule, 

 but, although their strychnine and auinidine salts crystal- 

 lise well, no evidence was obtained that the acids are 

 resolvable into enantiomorphouslv related components. — 

 Acetvlketen : a polymeride of keten : F. Chick and 

 N. T. M. Wilsmore. — Saponification of ethyl formate by 

 water in presence of acids as catalytic agents : A. Lap- 



