May 28, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



479 



the papers were by other than British subjects. 

 Dr. Sorby's paper on the application of very high 

 powers to the study of the microscopical struc- 

 ture of steel was probably the paper of most 

 purely scientific interest. 



On May 12 occurred the annual presentations 

 for degrees at the University of London, when a 

 very large number of graduates of both sexes had 

 their degrees formally conferred. The chancellor, 

 Lord Granville, being in atteDdance on the queen 

 at Liverpool, the ceremony was performed by the 

 vice-chancellor, Sir James Paget, who, after re- 

 ferring to the loss sustained by the university in 

 the deaths of Dr. Carpenter and Dr. Storrar (both 

 noticed at the time in this correspondence), gave 

 some interesting statistics of its growth. It was 

 now fifty years old, and 54,630 students had 

 graduated. In 1838 it only had 23 candidates ; 

 in 1860, 788 ; and in 1885, 3,477. With its num- 

 bers its influence had increased, and it attracted 

 students from all the colonies and from India, as 

 well as from England. Among its distinguished 

 graduates were Sir H. Roscoe, Sir W. Jenner, 

 Lord-J ustice Fry, and the present lord-chancellor. 

 At the meeting of convocation on the previous 

 day, a scheme for degrees in engineering science 

 was, on the motion of Prof.W. C. Unwin and Mr. 

 W. Lant Carpenter, unanimously adopted, and 

 sent up to the senate for consideration. A move- 

 ment is in contemplation to celebrate the jubilee 

 of the university. 



In an interesting paper given last night before 

 the Society of telegraph engineers, upon long- 

 distance telephony, by Mr. W. H. Preece, the sys- 

 tem of trunk-line (American, 'extra territorial') 

 working was described, and some very curious 

 statistics were given. At the end of 1877, 780 

 telephones existed in the United States, and at the 

 end of 1885 there were 325,570 telephones, and 782 

 telephonic exchanges. In England at the same 

 date there were only 13,000, or about as many as 

 were used in New York and Brooklyn alone ; 

 while Canada, with its population of three mil- 

 lions, employed 18,000. Of European cities, Ber- 

 lin possessed the most, 4,248, London coming sec- 

 ond with 4,193. The most complete development 

 he had seen in any country was in the group of 

 towns of which Newcastle-on-Tyne was the centre. 

 Long-distance speaking was entirely a question of 

 line wire, not of instruments. M. Van Ryssel- 

 berghe spoke in the discussion, and detailed some 

 of his recent experiments in the states. He is 

 about to connect Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, and 

 Rotterdam by his simultaneous telegraphic and 

 telephonic arrangements. 



The report for 1885, of the inspectors on experi- 

 ments on living animals, under the vivisection 



act, has just been issued. The total numbers of 

 experiments was 800 ; 210 being done under the 

 restrictions of the license alone, and 82 lecture 

 demonstrations under similar restrictions. In all, 

 except those under a special certificate, the animal 

 is rendered insensible during the whole of the ex- 

 periment. In most of the experiments where an- 

 aesthetics were dispensed with, the operation was 

 simple inoculation or hypodermic injection : so 

 that the number of animals that suffered any ap- 

 preciable pain was 35 or 40, and these, for the 

 most part, frogs. Although the number of experi- 

 ments in 1885 was nearly double that in 1884, there 

 was no increase of suffering to the animals em- 

 ployed. 



The report of the inspector of fisheries has just 

 been issued, and gives interesting details on the 

 trade in eels between London and the continent. 

 From Holland 1,000 tons are sent annually to 

 Billingsgate (London) alone, the total annual value 

 of eels consumed in England being about two and 

 a half million dollars. An admirable contrivance 

 is described for reviving them from their exhaust- 

 ed condition on arrival. At the Society of arts 

 this week, Mr. J. Willis Bund read a paper on the 

 proposed fishery board for England and "Wales, 

 showing that their fisheries had relations at pres- 

 ent with at least five government departments : 

 viz., the home office, the foreign office, the ad- 

 miralty, the customs, and the board of trade. The 

 total value of the English and Welsh fisheries 

 was probably bet ween eight and ten million dol- 

 lars, but an annual statistical account of them was 

 a very great want. 



Mr. W. Bateson of St. John's college, Cambridge, 

 is about to proceed to Central Asia for the purpose 

 of investigating the fauna of the Sea of Aral 

 and the smaller lakes in its neighborhood. Mr. 

 Bateson is already well known as a morphologist, 

 having paid two visits to the Chesapeake zoologi- 

 cal laboratory of the Johns Hopkins university for 

 the purpose of studying the development of the 

 American species of Balanoglossus ; and he now 

 proposes to collect large numbers of the Mol- 

 lusca and Crustacea of the Central Asian lakes, for 

 the purpose of studying the range of variation 

 within specific limits. W. 



London, May 14. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 

 Although the university of the state of New 

 York exists only on paper, yet its annual convo- 

 cations are meetings of considerable scientific in- 

 terest and importance. This year the convocation 

 will be held at Albany on July 6, 7, and 8. The 

 announcement includes the following important 

 papers, all of which will be followed by a discus- 



