November 26, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



481 



above that of other dealers whose product was 

 very active in the conversion of albuminoids into 

 peptone. His experiments also included the re- 

 tarding effect on digestion of many of the reme- 

 dies which physicians prescribe to be taken at 

 meal-time. 



— Colonel Majendie, the English inspector of 

 explosives, is now in this country, studying the 

 methods here adopted for the regulation of the 

 storage and sale of inflammable materials. During 

 his stay he will visit the oil-regions of Pennsyl- 

 vania and examine the oil-wells. 



— As a supplement to the last number of the 

 Rivista di filosofia scientiflca, is issued an inter- 

 esting prospectus of a new Rivista pedagogica 

 Italiana, to be issued Nov. 1, under the direction 

 of Prof. Francesco Veniali, general inspector for 

 the minister of public instruction. Each issue 

 will contain several articles on theoretical and 

 applied pedagogics, a resume of the progress of 

 educational Ihought and activity in Italy and 

 throughout the world, correspondence, and the 

 full text of all official documents on education. 

 Professor Veniali has secured as co-operators the 

 principal professor of pedagogics in Italy, the 

 chief government inspectors of schools, and the 

 directors and professors of the larger normal 

 schools. There is every reason to suppose that 

 the new Rivista will be a most valuable acquisi- 

 tion to educational literature. 



— The new rules promulgated by the educa- 

 tional department in France present several 

 changes. Women are admitted as teachers at the 

 age of seventeen, but men not until eighteen. A 

 very important clause provides that in public 

 schools of every description all instruction is to 

 be given exclusively by laymen. This takes from 

 the clergy their last hold on elementary education, 

 for hitherto they have had the right to nominate 

 in the schools a certain number of teachers who 

 were not subject to the regulations under which 

 the government teachers worked. These teachers 

 were under the direct control, not of the minister 

 of education, but of the superior of the religious 

 society by whom they were appointed. In the 

 new rules, too, the regulations respecting the 

 qualifications of teachers, both public and private, 

 have b^n made more stringent. 



— The committee of the school museum at 

 Berlin proposes to celebrate in 1890 the centenary 

 of the birth of Diesterweg by founding a Diester- 

 weg pedagogical museum. 



— The first volume of the Deutsche encyclopddie, 

 ein neues universal-lexicon fiir alle gebiete des 

 wissens, has been published by Grunow of Leip- 

 zig. It comprises ten hundred and seventy pages 



devoted to topics whose names begin with the 

 letter A, 



— The English historical reviexv for October 

 contains an erudite and valuable article on the 

 ' Origines of the University of Paris,' by Rev, H, 

 Rashdall. 



— The London Journal of education draws the 

 following lessons from Mr. Matthew Arnold's re- 

 cent report on education on the continent of Eu- 

 rope : 1. All teachers must be trained, no more 

 acting certificates must be granted, and the col- 

 lege course must be extended to at least four 

 years. 3. The demoralizing system of annual 

 grants, dependent mainly on individual papers 

 in the three R's, must be abohshed. If the fixed 

 capitation grant were doubled, and the remainder 

 assigned by general merit, we should have a 

 workable but not a perfect system. 3. The 

 school-years must be extended. At present, in 

 England, school-life ends, on an average, at eleven 

 years of age : on the continent it ends at fourteen. 

 4. Schools miist be graded. 



— The first report of the Royal commission 

 (English) to inquire into the working of the ele- 

 mentary education act is a large folio of 543 pages, 

 and contains 13,684 questions and answers, in ad- 

 dition to voluminous appendices. 



— The law by which it is forbidden in Germany 

 to give instruction in any subject without a proper 

 certificate or other qualification, has lately been 

 extended to cover the case of private teachers. 



— Mr. Albert V. Dicey and Mr. Harold B. Dixon 

 have been elected fellows of Baliiol college, Ox- 

 ford. Mr. Dicey is Vinerian professor of English 

 law and a well-known writer, and Mr. Dixon is 

 lectiu-er on physics. 



— The recent election for rector of Edinburgh 

 university resulted in the choice of Lord Iddes- 

 leigh over Sir Lyon Playfair. 



— Rev. Dr. Montagu Butler, lately head mas- 

 ter of Harrow school, has been appointed master 

 of Ti'inity college, Cambridge, in succession to the 

 late Dr. Thompson. This position is one of the 

 most eminent in England, and is in the immediate 

 gift of the crown. The income is £2,670 per year. 



— The Deutsche geographische blatter of Bremen 

 publishes several original papers on the natives of 

 North America. Mi\ Henry T. Allen reports on 

 the Atnatanas, or Indians of the Copper River, 

 who, to the number of 366, occupy a territory of 

 25,000 square miles ; Mr. Charles N. Bell of Win- 

 nipeg deals with the Ojibeways in north-western 

 Canada ; and Dr. H. Rink summarizes the infor- 

 mation recently collected by Danish travellers 

 respecting the Eskimo of eastern Greenland. 



