Fuly 30, 1885] 
NATURE 
309 
the most part. Four volumes will thus be added to this remark- 
able work, making in all twenty-six, with 2000 plates of 
illustrations. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
INTELLIGENCE 
Tue Bristol Merchant Venturers’ School of Science, Tech- 
nology, and Commerce, erected at a cost of nearly 50,000/., to 
replace the old Trade and Mining School, was formally dedi- 
cated by the merchants to the city on Saturday, when their 
handsome gift, including the complete charge of the school, 
estimated at 1000/. a year, was received by the Mayor on behalf 
of the citizens. After the Trade and Mining School was handed 
over to the Colston Trust by the Endowed Schools Commis- 
sioners, this science school, which had already won a very distin- 
guished position in the country, made such rapid progress that 
the building was soon found inadequate for the 500 scholars 
attending it, and the Merchant Venturers, who constituted the 
chief part of the governing body known as the Colston Trust, 
determined to build a new school on the plan of the newest and 
best equipped English and foreign school, with the best-known 
methods and appliances for science and art instruction. Find- 
ing that the Colston Trust funds assigned for the purpose were 
inadequate to the demand of such a large building, they under- 
took the entire charge, so that the scholastic institution will 
henceforth be known as the Bristol Merchant Venturers’ School. 
Sir Frederick Bramwell, C.E., Chairman of the Council of the 
City Guilds Institution for the Advancement of Technical Edu- 
cation, the Mayor and High Sheriff of Bristol, the Bishop of 
Gloucester and Bristol, Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., Mr. Lewis 
Fry, M.P., Col. Donnelly, Capt. Abney, and others took part 
in the inaugural ceremony, which was prefaced by a luncheon 
given by the master of the Society, Mr. R. W. Butterworth, at 
the Merchant Venturers’ Hall. After the luncheon the party 
repaired to the new schools, and the opening ceremony took 
place in the examination hall. The Master (Mr, Butterworth) 
presided, and in opening the proceedings gave a history of the 
growth of the old Trade School and its development into the 
present great establishment. The Master then called upon Sir 
Frederick Bramwell to declare the building open. Sir Frederick 
Bramwell said he thought that he might safely say that almost 
by universal agreement the training to be given in schools such 
as that was held to bea training that ought to be given, and 
was a national benefit and blessing. That meeting, he said, 
was not to initiate something new, for, as had been said, the 
work had gone on for thirty years ; it was not to mark a birth, 
but to mark progress ; not the full development, or anything 
like it, but a stage—for they would hope that not many years 
would elapse before an andience as numerous and as earnest as 
that he saw before him would meet in Bristol to celebrate some 
further marked step in the development of technical education in 
the city. What was the object in giving this technical educa- 
tion? The primary object was to enable men and women to 
earn their living better than they could otherwise do. The 
primary object of such education was to teach men engaged in 
industrial pursuits to conduct them in a manner which would 
redound to their happiness and material prosperity, and this 
would redound to the prosperity and welfare of the whole nation. 
A man instructed as he would be there would be enabled to 
carry on his industry in a totally different manner from those 
who had to begin the battle of life fifty years ago. At that time 
they had to profit by what could be taught them derived from 
experience, but without understanding the principle on which 
the things depended. They should remember the great things 
which for the first sixty years of this century were done by men 
who had not the advantage of technical education. But when a 
man had that advantage he was enabled to look at the experience 
of the past in a totally different manner, because he knew the 
principles on which that experience was based, and knew when 
it was applicable or inapplicable. Whatever his determination, 
the Englishman was badly weighted in his struggle with his 
foreign competitor if the latter had the means of applying science 
to his industry when the former had not. In London they were 
doing good work of this sort, one of the branches being techno- 
logical examination, and during the past three years the number 
of those that came up more than doubled—from 1900 to 3900. 
That increase did not arise from the governing body relaxing the 
examination ; on the contrary, they thought it right to add to 
he stringency of the examination. So the best judges of all, 
the very men whom they wished to instruct, themselves proved 
that they valued this instruction. It could not be said that this 
was a question where they were endeavouring to force on an 
unwilling people the advantages of education the value of which 
they did not recognise ; and thus they had the encouragement 
arising from appreciation of their efforts. 
Mr. ARTHUR SMITHELLS, B.Sc. (London), assistant lecturer 
and demonstrator in chemistry at the Owens College, Manches- 
ter, has been elected to the Professorship of Chemistry at the 
Yorkshire College, Leeds, rendered vacant by the appointment 
of Dr. Thorpe to the Chair of Chemistry in the Royal School 
of Mines and Normal School of Science, South Kensington. 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
Journal of Franklin Institute, No. 713, May.—Prof. C. F. 
Himes, actinism. A lecture delivered at the Philadelphia 
Electrical Exhibition, giving a succinct account of modern in- 
vestigations. —F. E. Ives, isochromatic photography. Describes 
his blue-myrtle chlorophyll process.—C. J. Hexamer, fire 
hazards in textile mills. Deals with relative risks of cotton, 
wool, and shoddy of various qualities: —W. B. Le Van, economy 
in the use of high-pressure steam. Describes a new high-pres- 
sure boiler.—-Prof. Pliny E. Chase, further experiments in 
weather forecast. Of interest to meteorologists.—Prof. E. J. 
Houston, glimpses of the International Electrical Exhibition, 
No. 7, Drawbaugh’s telephonic inventions. Description and 
drawings of the instruments of this notorious person. 
No. 714, June.—Dr. Persifor Frazer, the World’s Indus- 
trial and Cotton Centennial exposition. Gossip about the 
New Orleans Exhibition.—Prof. J. Burkitt Webb, a simple 
form of draught gauge; a simple instrument for mea- 
suring the decrease of pressure in a flue directly by scales.—Dr. 
Werner Siemens, on the electromotive action of illuminated 
selenium, discovered by Mr. Fritts. In this communication, 
which is translated from the German, Dr. Siemens describes 
as being entirely new and scientifically of the most far-reaching 
importance, the phenomena discovered by Mr. Fritts, which 
were, at Philadelphia, condemned by Prof. Rowland as un- 
worthy of being brought before the Physics section of the 
American Association. Dr. Siemens agrees with Mr. Fritts that 
in his experiments there is a direct conversion of the energy 
of light into electrical energy.—E. L. Corthell, the Tehuantepec 
Ship Railway.—Prof. E. J. Houston, facsimile telegraphy.— 
Appended to this number are the reports of the examiners of the 
Philadelphia Electrical Exhibition on electric arc lamps, and on 
carbons for arc lamps. 
Annalen der Physik und Chemie, xxiv. No. 4, April.—Prof. 
F. Melde, experimental researches in acoustics. Gives account 
of new experiments with a phonic wheel and other electro- 
magnetic means of exciting vibrations. —G. Tammann, on the 
yapour-pressure of salt solutions. Gives many hundreds of deter- 
minations of lowering of pressure of aqueous vapour by addition 
of some soluble salt. The author concludes that for a given 
salt the product of the relative pressure-reduction into the 
volume of the solution relatively to that of the water it 
contains is a constant. Exceptions are attributed to poly- 
merisation. — Prof. W. von Bezold, on current-figures in 
liquids. The method consists in observing the forms which 
result from putting aniline dyes (such as are used for ink in 
hectograph) upon the liquids. The present paper deals with the 
internal currents set up by differences of temperature produced 
by surrounding with a ring of ice, &c. The figures are curious 
and instructive.—Prof. E. Kittler, on measurement of strength 
of currents. Describes the method of taking strength of currents 
by measuring potential when the current is passed through a 
known resistance.—Prof. G. Quincke, electrical researches, 
No. xi. This series deals with the constants of electromagnetic 
rotation. For sodium light, Quincke finds the constant for 
bisulphide of carbon to be 4°409' at 21°C. Becquerel found 
4°630' at 0°, and Lord Rayleigh and Mrs. Sidgwick found 4°2002' 
at 18°. Quincke gives tables of statistical results for other 
liquids, agreeing in the main with those of Perkin and of 
Becquerel.—A. Gockel, on the relation of the Peltier-heat to 
the efficiency of galvanic elements. A discussion of the work 
of Braun, Chaperon, Czapsky, Bouty, and others, with redeter- 
minations.—W. Herman Schultze, on the reaction between two 
mutually perpendicular magnetic distributions. Very careful ex- 
periments confirm Siemens’s result that longitudinal magnetism 
