August i;, i8o6| 



NA TURE 



359 



A. C. Atibott (o succeed Dr. Billings in the chair of Hygiene 

 in the University of Tennsylvania : Dr. Kranz Hofnieister to 

 .succeed the late Prof. Hoppe-Seyler as Professor of Physio- 

 logical Chemistry in Strassburg University ; Prof. P. Jacobsohn 

 to be Cieneral Secretary of the Gorman Chemical Society ; j 

 Drs. Jossc and Kammerer to be Professors of Engineering in j 

 the Technical High School of Berlin ; Prof. Schmidt, of 

 Stuttgart, to be Director of the Weather Bureau at WUrtem- 

 burg. 



The Technical Education Committee, in their report to the j 

 recent meeting of the Nottinghamshire County Council, called 

 attention to rather an unlooked-for difficulty which had pre- 

 sented itself in connection with their Dairy Institute. Itappears [ 

 that the butler made there is in such request that they had a 

 demand for looo lbs. per week, and were actually producing 

 as much .is 500 lbs. in this period. The temptation is to con- 

 vert the institute into a butter-factory, and so into a money- 

 making concern ; but the Council supported the Committee in 

 their recommendation that it would be altogether inadvisable 

 to sacrifice the educational interests of the institution to such 

 pecuniary considerations, and that, as in the past, the fir.st aim 

 of the staff must be the instruction of the students. 



Pr may be thought that the experimental stage in the adminis- 

 tration of the Customs and Excise grants to education has been 

 passed, but recent reports seem to negative this idea. The 

 Lancashire committee report that they have been able to allot 

 only eight out often science scholarships, the candidates showing 

 a greater preference for the study of art. The Organising 

 Secretary for the Lindsey division of Lincolnshire tells of 868 

 candidates for technical examinations this year as compared with 

 1012 last year. We hope that this does not mean that the 

 novelty is wearing off. and that the serious demand for instruc- 

 tion of this kind is really less than had been anticipated. How- 

 ever this may be, there can be no doubt of the wisdom of the 

 grant of ^150 by this Council to the Nottingham University 

 College for the year 1896-7. 



At the recent general meeting of the Association of Directors 

 and Organising Secretaries for Technical and Secondary Educa- 

 tion the following resolutions were adopted : (l) " That, in the 

 opinion of this Association, it is desirable to ask the Government 

 to receive a deputation to urge upon them the importance of 

 bringing in a Bill early next session dealing with the subject 

 of Secondary Education." {2) "That it is inexpedient to give 

 grants to any non-county borough for building or equipment 

 except upon the terms that such grants shall be returned in the 

 event of such borough becoming a separate educational authority." 

 (3) "That this Association protests against the action of the 

 Science and Art Department in making changes in its grants 

 and regulations for the conduct of its classes without giving due 

 notice to or consulting the local authorities who are so vitally 

 interested in the efficiency of these clas.ses, and particularly 

 urges that the regulations contained in Eorm 306 be postponed 

 until the issue of the Directory for 1S97-9S." 



The Organising Secretary for Technical Instruction in the 

 county of Shropshire, in reporting a diminution in the amount 

 of work done in different parts of the county during the past 

 session, observed that it "is ascribable to the vote of the 

 Council in May 1894, by which the fund for technical instruc- 

 tion was reduced to the extent of ;^jooo."' This lessening of 

 the grant has been more particularly felt in the towns where 

 the best work was being done by science and art committees. 

 The interruption of a systematic course of training is not, he 

 finds, so serious in rural districts. The diminution complained 

 of is the more to be deplored since already it has been found 

 that the work of the Committee has been productive of prac- 

 tical results, particularly in the ornamental iron and tile manu- 

 factories and in the china works of the county. We notice 

 that this Council has provided for the training at suitable in- 

 stitutions of six women as certificated midwives, and that the 

 women have been selected with the view to their being able 

 to follow the calling in parts of the county where there is most 

 need for the services of such skilled nurses. 



The County Committees in charge of technical instruction will 

 do well to take notice of the letter received from the Science and 

 Art Department by the Clerk of the Cornwall County Council, 

 which decides a point of some interest. The letter, which is 

 in reply to a query from the Clerk, runs as follows ; — " I am 

 directed to acquaint you that the Department, having already 



NO. 1398, VOL. 54] 



consulted the Local Government Board on the question of the 

 provision of prizes by local authorities, is of opinion that the 

 Cornwall County Council cannot properly apply funds placed 

 at their disposal for the purposes of technical education to 

 awarding prizes (through the medium of local committees) at 

 competitions in agricultural processes to persons other than 

 tho.se who have been taught in classes under the control of, 

 or aided by, the County Council." This decision will prove 

 very salutary, we should think, in view of some of the claims 

 which have been made ; for instance, from some districts 

 payinents for luncheons, refreshments, ale, spirits, &c., have been 

 demanded — things we should have thought nobody would have 

 supposed connected with technical education. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIAL. 



Ciel et Tc?-re of July 16 contains an article by M. A. 

 Lancaster, of the Royal Observatory of Brussels, on the intensity 

 of tropical rainfall. There are many points in that zone where 

 the yearly rainfall exceeds 120 inches ; such amounts clearly 

 indicate more or less continuous falls of great intensity. The 

 author quotes various excessive amounts observed in periods of 

 twenty-four hours and less, but we extract only a few of the prin- 

 cipal falls, reduced to a period of one minute and expressed in 

 inches : — Hong Kong, '047 ; Buitenzorg, '049 ; Newcastle 

 (New South Wales), '071; Lahore, "095 ; Brussels, '114; 

 London (Camden Square), '167. These figures show that the 

 falls of rain in the tropics are not more intense than the extra- 

 ordinary falls in our own parts, but the former generally exceed 

 the latter in duration ; hence the much greater absolute quantity 

 recorded in equatorial regions. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



P.A.RIS. 

 Academy of Sciences, August 3. — M. A. Chatin in the 

 chair. — Study of the diamond-bearing sands of Brazil, by -M. H. 

 Moissan. From 4-5 kilos, of sand, only 2 gr. of material free 

 from silica was obtained, and this was found to contain a small 

 quantity of gold, platinum and graphite, together with a 

 minute amount of diamond, partly black and partly transparent. 

 — On the oxidation of the organic material of the soil, by MM. 

 P. P. Deherain and E. Demoussy. At temperatures slightly 

 above 100° the organic material of soil is rapidly burnt by 

 the oxygen of the air. This oxidation still goes on, without 

 any organisms being present, at 40" to 60° C. , and hence in hot 

 climates the soil would become sterile from this cause. — On a 

 hybrid from Ovis tragelaphus, by ^L A. Milne-Edwards. — An 

 extension of the application of the law of equivalence of energy 

 in biology, by ^L A. Chauveau. — Remarks on a note of M. A. 

 Lcewy on definite quadratic forms, by M. L. Fuchs. The 

 theorem in question is a special case of a theorem given in a 

 memoir published in the Sitzungsbcrkhte of the Berlin Academy. 

 — The conditions under which the deposits of phosphate of 

 lime have taken place in Picardy, by M. Gosselet. It is re- 

 garded as established that these phosphatic deposits were formed 

 at very slight depths. — On the integration of simultaneous par- 

 tial differential equations, by M. E. von Weber. — On a class of 

 isothermal surfaces depending on two arbitrary functions, by 

 M. A. Thybaut.— On the error of refraction in geometric level- 

 ling, by M. Ch. Lallemand. The formulae given in a preceding 

 paper are for practical purposes given in a graphical form.— On 

 the non-refractibility of the X-rays by pota.ssium, by M. F. 

 Beaulard. A prism of potassium gave no appreciable devia- 

 tion of Riintgen rays, the index of refraction differing from 

 unity by a quantity less than 1/10,000. — Nitrogen and argon 

 in fire-damp and in gas from Rochebelle, by M. Th. Schkesing, 

 jun. The gas left after removal of methane and carbon dioxide, 

 consisting of argon and nitrogen, on absorbing the latter gave 

 amounts of argon varying from 1-09 per cent, to 3-27 per cent, 

 of the mixture. These figures show that this argon does not 

 come directly from the air, but it is still possible that it may 

 have come indirectly by .solution in water, in which argon is the 

 more soluble.— On the specific heat of sulphur in the viscous 

 state, by M. f. Dussy. The specific heat of viscous sulphur is 

 distinctly higher in the viscous than in the liquid state. If the 

 total quantity of heat lost by i gr. of sulphur in passing from a 

 temperature T to o' C. is plotted against the temperature, there 

 is a distinctchangeof curvature at about 230^ C— Contributions 



