164 



NA TURE 



[June 18, 1908 



they have failed to receive any systematic education. The 

 remedy for this blanl< period lies in the continuation 

 school. At present, however, the continuation schools, 

 except in a few isolated cases like Manchester, Leeds, 

 Bradford, and Birmingham, fail almost completelv in this 

 aspect of their work. This is particularly the case in 

 London, where one of the many pressing questions is the 

 improvement of the evening continuation schools and the 

 correlation of the schools to the polytechnics. 



(5) Technical institution teachers are, naturally, keenly 

 interested in the Lnperial College of Technologv. They 

 look forward to sending their best students (day ani even- 

 ing)- by means of scholarships or bursaries, to this institu- 

 tion for the highest technical training and research. Judg- 

 ing by the present rate of progress, this will be impossible 

 for a number of years. There is danger that, instead of 

 the college being a " college of technology," it will 

 merely be an organised group of institutions doing prac- 

 tically the same kind of work as that which is done in an 

 ordinary university college. The governing body of the 

 college needs to be brought more closely into touch with 

 the main current of English technical education than it 

 is, apparently, at present, in order that the work of the 

 college may be properly coordinated with that of existing 

 technical institutions. The " preliminary " work now being 

 done in the college, which is done also by a consider- 

 able number of institutions all over the country, should 

 cease at the earliest possible opportunity, and the w-hole 

 energies of the college concentrated on the highest possible 

 technical training and research. We need an institution 

 which shall bear the same proportion to the Manchester 

 Municipal .School of Technology as the latter docs to the 

 technical institute of a small provincial town. 



(6) There is^ a pressing need for the establishment of a 

 common matriculation or school leaving examination for 

 admission to all British universities, the professions, and 

 the (day) technical colleges, in place of the multiplicity of 

 examinations and examining bodies existing at present. 

 Coupled with this is the need for a revision in the 

 syllabus of some of the chief matriculation examinations as 

 at present conducted. 



(7) Reference \vas made during the conference to the 

 scheme recently put forward by the King's College 

 (London) authorities for instruction in " household 

 economics," based upon a thorough introductory course of 

 chemistry, physics, elementary bacteriologv, phvsiologv, 

 &c. While this would be undoubtedly beneficial in many 

 ways, for example, in raising the status of " domestic 

 science " teaching, it is felt by many technical institution 

 teachers engaged in similar teaching in polytechnics and 

 technical schools that the promoters of the King's College 

 scheme have hardly done justice, in their preliminary 

 publications and notices in the Press, to those engaged in 

 such work in technical institutions. The. impression given 

 in these publications is that, up to the present, domestic 

 science teaching has been empirical, " rule of thumb," and 

 not based upon a knowledge of scientific " first principles." 

 This is scarcely correct. For the last fifteen years the 

 training schools of domestic economy attached to the polv- 

 technics and technical institutions have increasingly, year 

 by year, laid stress upon attendance at compulsory courses 

 of chemistry, elementary physics, theory of education, and 

 in some cases elementary bacteriology. 



J. Wilson. 



SOUTH-EASTERN UNION OF SCIENTIFIC 

 SOCIETIES. 



'X'HE thirteenth annual congress of the South-Eastern 

 Union of Scientific Societies was held at Hastings 

 on June 10-13. 



Sir .Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., F.R.S., who followed 

 Prof. Silvanus P. Thompson, F.R.S.. in the presidential 

 chair, took as the subject of his address " The Weald." 

 He chose the subject because research in the problems con- 

 nected with the Wealden area was eminently suitable for 

 that combined action which local societies and field clubs 

 are well fitted to provide. He spoke against the natural 

 predisposition of the mind, in re-constructing the geo- 



NO. 2016, VOL. 78] 



graphy of former geological periods, to be too much in- 

 fluenced by the present grouping of sea and land. He 

 sketched the part played by Godwin-.'Vusten in the dis- 

 covery of coal at Dover in consequence of his brilliant 

 generalisation, after his profound study of the geology of 

 N. France, Belgium, and S.-E. England (work which 

 recalls, too, the names of Prestwich, Ethendge, and Boyd 

 Dawkins). Having sketched the problem of ihe Palaeozoic 

 rocks, and having passed on to the deposition of the Pur- 

 beck and Wealden strata, he said that it was not easy to 

 find the place' whence the remnants of the terrestrial life 

 of the Wealden deposits were derived, but indicated his 

 belief that the crystalline and Palaeozoic rocks of Brittany 

 seem to be the greatly denuded core of an ancient land ; 

 for the Wealden deposits thin out rapidly in northerly, 

 easterly, and westerly directions, and the only quarter 

 which seems to offer itself as possibly that in which some 

 vestige of the Wealden land may still remain lies to the 

 south. Since the resources of modern petrography have 

 armed the geologist of to-day with far ampler and more ' 

 effective means of conducting the inquiry than his pre- 

 decessors possessed, it would be well for some member 

 of the union to undertake research into the origin of the 

 pebbles found in the ,-\shdown Sand, the Wadhurst Clay, 

 the Tunbridge Wells Sand, and occasionally in the Weald 

 Clay. 



The president sketched the various divisions of the 

 Cretaceous rocks above the Weald Clay, emphasised the 

 break between the Secondary and Tertiary periods, and 

 then proceeded to discuss the evidences of the Ice age 

 afforded bv the Wealden area. Prestwich was disposed to 

 think that the uplands of the Weald may have been a 

 separate source of snow and ice, but he (Sir Archibald 

 Geikie) did not think the evidence on which Prestwich 

 relied was, perhaps, strong enough to warrant that con- 

 clusion. The decaying nature of the various rocks made 

 observalion of glaciation of the Wealden area diflficult. 

 But Prestwich may be right, and there may be other 

 indications yet discoverable of " the traces of the Ice age 

 in the \\'eald." ' 



The president also directed attention to the problem of 

 the Coombe rock, and Mr. Clement Reid's ingenious 

 solution of its origin, but thought that more directly con- 

 vincing proofs of the Ice age were to be found in the 

 transported boulders — granite, syenite, and mica-schist — 

 found in such numbers along the south coast from 

 Worthing to Portsea, brought thither on floating ice, 

 perhaps from the region of crystalline rocks in the N.W. 

 of France. Before the Arctic conditions finally _ passed 

 away, there appear to have been some alternations of 

 milder seasons, and the time was further marked bv 

 oscillations in the relative levels of land and sea, indicated, 

 on the one hand, by lines of raised beach, and, on the 

 other, bv submerged forests. 



Mr. E. A. Martin read a paper on some considerations 

 concerning dew-ponds, a subject on which he has been 

 engaged some time, encouraged by a grant from the 

 Royal Society. Mr. W. J. Lewis Abbott read a valuable 

 paper on Pleistocene vertebrates of the S.E. of_ England, 

 nnd conducted an excursion to all the salient geo- 

 logical features of the district, which, after eleven years' 

 observation, he is well qualified to do. He considers the 

 Hastings uplift the most important, and his paper will 

 modify previous views on this important area. Mr. 

 Edward Connold contributed a paper on local sponges, 

 which was a valuable contribution to this somewhat 

 neglected branch of inquiry, and the same remark refers 

 to Butterfield and Bennett's paper on the spider fauna 

 of the Hastings district. Mr. W. H. IMulIens discoursed 

 on Gilbert White's connection with Sussex, and Mr. John 

 Ray on medircval timbered houses of Sussex and Kent. 

 Mr'. W'ilfred Mark Webb touched unon a lighter theme in 

 Darwinism as noplied to dress, tracing the origin of some 

 peculiar survivals in male and female attire. 



Next year the meeting place will be Winchester, at the 

 invitation of the Mayor and Corporation, and the presi- 

 dent is to be Dr. Dukinficld Scott, F.R.S., president of 

 the Linnean Society. R. A. B. 



1 Mr. Lew!'; Abtiott supplied some !n hU pnper on " Pleistocene Mam- 

 malia of S.E. England," subsequently read to the Congress. 



