August 20, 1896] 



NA TURE 



Throughout the reports of the inspectors the welcome in- 

 formation is made known that experimental work in science is 

 becoming more common, but there is still much room for 

 improvement. The supplv of apparatus is being largely in- 

 creased, and laboratory accommodation is being extended. The 

 chief difficulty to be contended with at the present time is the 

 insufficient education of the students who join the evening 

 classes. Especially is there a lack of knowledge of scientific 

 principles, and there is a difticulty in getting students to take 

 up subjects which lie at the bottom of all technical subjects. 

 On this point Dr. II. II. Iloftert says: "It is much to be 

 desired that as Technical Institutes multiply, and permanent 

 staffs of well-qualified teachers become appointed, more en- 

 couragement may be given to students of evening classes to take 

 up definite courses of study. Such students too frequently 

 attempt the study of the more purely technical and applied sub- 

 jects, without having the necessary knowledge of the underlying 

 sciences, and in consequence of this the teaching is largely based 

 on rule-of.thumb methods of practice, and is lacking in scientific 

 generality and educational value. There is an undue dispro- 

 portion in number between classes on such subjects as applied 

 mechanics, steam, and mining, and those in theoretical 

 mechanics, elementary physics, chemistry and geology." 



In addition to the reports on instruction in science and art, 

 the Blue-book just issued contains as appendices reports on the 

 Koyal College of Science, the South Kensington Museum, and 

 other museums in connection with the Department of Science 

 and Art, supported by the State. There is also in it the Report 

 of the Director-General of the Geological Survey of the United 

 Kingdom and the Museum of Practical Geology, and a Report 

 to the Solar Physics Committee on the work done in the Solar 

 Physics Observatory at South Kensington. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



The appointments, recently advertised, at the Northampton 

 Institute, Clerkenwell, have been filled as follows: — Mr. John 

 Ashford, Lecturer on Engineering at the Birmingham Technical 

 Schools, to be Head of the Mechanical Engineering and Metal 

 Trades Department ; Mr. John Williams to be Head of the 

 Artistic Crafts Department ; Mr. C. V. Drysdale to be Chief 

 Assistant in the Applied Physics Department ; and Miss Mary 

 A. H. Gibbs to be Head Teacher in the Domestic Economy 

 School. 



The Technical Education Board of tlie London County 

 Council has addressed a letter to the Councils of University and 

 King's Colleges on the subject of the financial assistance to these 

 institutions during the forthcoming session. It is pointed out in 

 this letter that the Board cannot undertake to ensure regular 

 annual grants towards either of these colleges. It is further 

 recommended that the Councils of the two colleges should confer 

 together before making any application for assistance, with a 

 view to coordinating the work now specially carried on in con- 

 nection with Oriental languages. A questi(m has been raised 

 with regard to King's College, as to whether the Board can 

 legally make a grant to an institution of a denominational 

 character. But since the discussion of these questions will take 

 .some time, it is proposed to continue the grants of .,£'1500 to 

 University College and ;^iooo to King's College for next year, 

 on the understanding that such a conference shall be held. 



The following complaint, which has been made by The Local 

 Gn^ernnunt Journal, is not, we think, borne out by the reports 

 of the technical education committees of those County Councils 

 which administer the affairs of the agricultural counties, and 

 which have been sent to us from time to time. The paragraph 

 runs thus: " If technical education committees would bestir 

 themselves and give lessons in thatching, hedging, ditching, 

 sheep-shearing, and so on to the men, instead of providing an 

 afternoon's amusement for labourers' wives in showing them 

 how to make butter without having a cow to produce the milk, 

 and similar instruction for farmers' wives and daughters when 

 the ladies of the farm have no intention of making butter, or of 

 bending their backs to skim the milk, much more good would 

 be done than is accomplished at jirescnt, and a great waste of 

 isure would be obviated.'' More than one committee in 



charge of technical instruction would be grateful to our con- 

 temporary for some successful method of getting farin-labourers 

 together for the purpose of agricultural instruction, though we 

 have our opinion of the wisdom 01 teaching the subjects named, 

 even if these arts are not included in the well-known restriction 

 of the Technical Instruction Act. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Amerkan Journal oj Scieiiu, August. — MoUuscan archetype 

 considered as a veliger-X\\.^ form, by A. E. A'errill. In the 

 form of moUuscan larva known as veliger, and in its slightly 

 younger stages, we have organisms that swim free, often .seek 

 their own food, and .seem to have claims to be considered the 

 nearest living representatives of the ancestral moUuscan arche- 

 type, or archetypes, for it is quite probable that the different 

 classes of Mollusca have descended from distinctly differentiated 

 er/^'i'^-like organisms. In general, it may be stated that nearly 

 all Gastropoda, except certain terrestrial and fresh-water forms, 

 pass through veliger stages. The same may be said of Bivalvia, 

 Scaphopoda, and Pteropoda. Cephalopoda, on the other hand, 

 seem to have an abbreviated development, like terrestrial Gas- 

 tropoda, and leave the egg with the general structure of the 

 adult. It is probable that each of these great classes were 

 originally small, free-swimming forms, furnished with a ciliated 

 locomotive organ similar to the velum of modern veligers. The 

 primitive Cephalopoda had probably a similar origin from a 

 proz'eliger like that of some pteropods and gastropods. On the 

 other hand, it seems impossible to derive a cephalopod or a 

 bivalve from a creeping chiton-like archetype such as Lankester 

 has proposed. — An apparatus for the rapid determination of the 

 surface tensions of liquids, by C. E. Linebarger. The apparatus 

 is based upon Jiiger's method of employing two capillary tubes 

 of different bore immersed in the liquid, and measuring the 

 difi'erence of the depths to which they were plunged when air 

 bubbles forced out of them at the bottom required the same air 

 pressure. The tubes employed had bores ranging from o"i to 

 I '5 mm. Two tubes were mounted in clamjis in a stand over 

 a test tube containing the liquid, and immersed in a water or 

 glycerine bath. Air pressure was applied, and the orifices were 

 shifted until the liquid was pushed down to the orifices, and 

 there the heights were carefully adjusted until equal streams of 

 Ijubbles issued from both orifices. The surface tensions were 

 found by the formula 



7 = i/is + s" 



when 7 is the surface tension in dynes per cm., c the apparatus 

 constant, /; the distance between the ends of the tubes, and s 

 the specific gravity. — Wardite, a new hydrous basic phosphate 

 of alumina, by J. M. Davison. Mr. Packard's "variscite' 

 from Utah occasionally leaves on decomposition some cavities 

 in the nodules, and encrusting the.se cavities is i hydrous basic 

 phosphate of alumina, which appears to be a new mineral. It 

 is a light green or bluish green, with vitreous lustre, con- 

 cretionary structure, hardness about 5, and density 277. Its 

 formula is AL(OH)3POj, and it forms a series with Peganite 

 and Turquois. — On the existence of selenium monoxide, by 

 A. W. Peirce. The author has been unable to find evidence 

 of the existence of the monoxide, either gaseous or solid, and 

 his experiments go to show that the peculiar smell of decayed 

 cabbage, attributed by Berzelius to the monoxide, is only de- 

 veloped when selenium is heated in presence of moisture, if 

 only a mere trace, and is probably due to selenium hydride. 



Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. ii. No. 9, 

 June. — The motions of the atmosphere, and especially its 

 waves, is a translation, by Prof. Cleveland Abbe, of an address 

 by Dr. E. Hermann, which was delivered before the Meteoro- 

 logical Section of the Association of German Naturalists at the 

 annual meeting held in Vienna, September 25, 1894. The 

 author states that the inadvisability of the views according to 

 which the motions of the atmosphere consist in the develop- 

 ment of independent cyclones and anticyclones is, of late 

 years, more and more plainly recognised. This conclusion has 

 been arrived at, not so much through a severe criticism of the 

 fundamental basis upon which these erroneous views had been 

 established, as by the power of the facts that resisted introduc- 

 tion into this artificial ,~ystem. He traces this change of view 



NO. 1399, VOL. 54] 



