“‘Great fame the Duke of Marlborough won,And our good Prince Eugene.’—‘Oh, ’twas a very wicked thing,’Said little Wilhelmine.”
“‘Great fame the Duke of Marlborough won,And our good Prince Eugene.’—‘Oh, ’twas a very wicked thing,’Said little Wilhelmine.”
“‘Great fame the Duke of Marlborough won,And our good Prince Eugene.’—‘Oh, ’twas a very wicked thing,’Said little Wilhelmine.”
And every war is wicked and detestable that could consistently with national honor be avoided. When we say “honor” we do not mean “reputation.” Reputation depends on the canons of judgment prevailing among those who presume to award it. In a dueling community a man’s reputation might suffer by declining a challenge, but his honor would be intact if he declined from sincere unwillingness to do a wrong act. There is much honor sometimes in sacrificing reputation, particularly the “bubble reputation” that is won “in the cannon’s mouth.” Every appeal to the sword weakens the reliance placed upon principles of justice, and thus undoes a vast amount of the work of peace. When war is once set on foot, the national judgment is more or less blinded. True, it is the action of a majority of the people only—admitting that a majority wanted it—but who is uncompromising enough, when his country’s armies are in the field, to proclaim that they are fighting in a wrong cause? A few may do it, but they do it at their peril. In all other matters a minority may censure with any degree of severity the policy of the majority, but not in the matter of a war once entered on. Yet how perverting such a situation is to right judgment, and how injurious an effect it must have on the rising generation, are only too apparent.
These reflections may not at first sight seem to have a very direct bearing on the interests for which this magazine is supposed to stand, but to our mind science, in the broad sense, has no function so important as that of settling the education of the young upon a rightmoralbasis. No system of education deserves to be called scientific that does not place the idea of justice at the very foundation of human life. You can not do this, however, without making it a working principle, and without inculcating a belief in it as such. Applying the principle to national affairs, we see at once that a strong nation which desires to be just will take no advantage of its strength in its dealings with other nations. If it has a demand to make, it will make it simply in the name of justice, and cast no sidelong glances at its up-to-date battle ships or its well-equipped battalions. It will have unbounded patience with weaker communities, which, rightly or wrongly, may seem to think they have right on their side. It will not be ashamed to shrink from the shedding of blood. The “young barbarians” of our public schools are always only too ready to exalt might above right; but the judicious teacher into whom the true spirit of science has entered will seize every favorable opportunity for inculcating the great lesson that the moral law has a way of vindicating itself in the end, and that the inheritance of the earth has been promised not to the quarrelsome or the overweening, but to the meek. A generation brought up on these principles would be slow to make war, andtheir influence on the world would be in every way powerful for good.
The ordinary school education in language and grammar is doubtless responsible for the impression which we find existing in so many minds that, in all matters of verbal expression, there is some one absolute standard of authority to which it implies simply ignorance not to bow—some supreme court, as it were, empowered to decide for us what words we are to use, how we are to pronounce them, and what rules of syntax we are to follow. It would be difficult, doubtless, to impart to children or very young people the wider and more scientific view of language, inasmuch as they need, in the first place, clear guidance as regards usage rather than correct theory. The idea, therefore, with which they grow up, if their school studies take any hold upon them at all and if no wider culture comes to change their way of looking at things, is that some very wise man made an infallible grammar and another very wise man an infallible dictionary, and that no one need be in doubt in regard to what is orthodox in language who has access to these tables of the law. We have known grown-up persons to turn away with a very skeptical air, and a kind of look as if they had found out a weak spot in your educational armor, when they were told that really it was impossible to say which of two pronunciations of a word was right and which was wrong—that either might be employed without mortal offense against elegance of speech or good breeding.
A hidebound view of language tends so much to narrow thought on general subjects that it seems to us of importance that the true and scientific view of the subject should be brought forward whenever opportunity offers. Mr. William Archer, the well-known English critic, contributed an article not long ago to the Pall Mall Magazine which might be read with much advantage by pedants and purists, and all blind followers of authority. He takes the broad ground that language is a transcript, as it were, of life, and that as life widens and becomes more varied, language must do the same. It must reflect the fancy, the imagination, and the humor of the day, and not merely the fancy, imagination, and humor of past generations. If we want a language that is fixed and unalterable in its forms we must seek one that has ceased to be spoken by men. Even then we can not always get absolute decisions. Cicero is perhaps the best standard of Latin prose, but no competent critic would say that his writing was flawless. We know that grammatical questions were much debated among the ancients, and we have no doubt that many such questions were left unsettled. In a living language there must be unsettled questions. There is a constant struggle for life going on among the words and phrases with which men endeavor to express their ideas, and, at a given moment, it is impossible to say which shall prosper, this or that. The word or phrase that prospers—that commends itself, after adequate trial, for expressiveness, convenience, or euphony, or for any combination of useful qualities—will survive and become classic; the expression that has nothing special to commend it, beyond its novelty and slanginess, will probably pass, after a brief and partial currency, into the vast limbo of the unfit. All we can say of a word at a given moment is how far it has actually become current and what kind of society it keeps. What its fortune will be we can only guess. Just as in the financialworld great fortunes are sometimes very suddenly made and names before obscure spring into world-wide notoriety, so, in the realm of language, a word of very uncertain ancestry and no social repute may assert its right to recognition and take its place among the best.
It does not follow from this that it can ever be a matter of indifference what words we use or what tricks we play with language, any more than it can be a matter of indifference what personal habits we adopt. Language is the clothing of our thoughts, and as such it may exhibit the same qualities which attach to the clothing of our bodies. It may be marked by neatness and propriety, or by slovenliness and want of taste. Some men are over-dressed, and some affect over-fine language. Some go after the latest novelties in the tailoring world, and some after the latest slang, asserting thereby their resolution to be up to date. It is needless to draw the parallel further, but it is evident that there is wide scope in the choice of language for the exhibition of personal preference and personal character. We think it safe to say that the interests of a language, considered as an instrument of thought, will be best promoted by those who pay due respect to its established forms, and only countenance such neologisms as make good their claim to acceptance by supplying a real want. Mr. Archer, in the article we have referred to, states, and we do not doubt with truth, that the English language has been greatly enriched and strengthened by the fact that it has been spoken and written by millions of people on this side of the Atlantic, leading an intense and vigorous life of their own, under conditions very different in many respects from those prevailing in the mother country. The language moves with a freer step, beats with a stronger pulse, and assumes a more imperial bearing from the fact that it expresses the activity and sums up the life of the foremost communities of the human race in both hemispheres.
A great classical scholar not long ago wrote a letter to an English weekly newspaper expressing a very contemptuous estimate of the French language, as being only a degraded form of Latin. He thought it a great disgrace to the language that it had no better word for “much” thanbeaucoup, which, as he learnedly explained, came from two Latin words meaning “fine” and “blow.” The most cursory examination of any language will show that it abounds in just such verbal devices. We do not in English put the words “great” and “stroke” together, but, using them separately, we say “a great stroke” of luck and of many other things when there is no question of “striking” at all. In the same way we would say “a great hit,” when there is no question of hitting, except by remote analogy. Languages grow rich and flexible precisely by the adoption of such convenient combinations. What they may originally have meant becomes a matter of little moment when once they have become thoroughly accepted and thoroughly expressive. After they have become welded together, as sometimes happens, in one word, it is an advantage rather than otherwise if the separate meanings of their constituent parts become lost to all except the professional etymologist. As long as the separate parts retain their separate meaning some sense of incongruity will sometimes arise in connection with the use of the term. Thus to say “a handful of corn” is all right, but one might feel that it was not all right to say “a mere handful of men.” Yet it would be futile to criticise the expression which has become idiomatic English.If the word “handful” had parted with its essential meaning as completely as say the word “troop” has, for all but etymologists, there would be no kind of incongruity in its employment for any small number or quantity whatsoever.
The scientific view of language, then, is that it represents the effort of mankind to use audible symbols for the expression of thought; that it follows the development of man’s activity and enlarges with his enlarging knowledge, and comprehension of things; that while its object is essentially a practical one it gathers beauty with use and age, and begins to react on the minds of its makers; that its makers are the people, not the grammarians, these being merely its policemen, who, useful in general, are sometimes too officious; that great writers are the architects who felicitously arrange materials which the people have gathered and shaped, placing the best of such materials where they can be seen to best advantage; finally, that the language of each nation is its most precious possession, the record of its civilization, and the repository of all that is best in its moral and intellectual life, and that it is therefore the duty of all who make any pretensions to liberal training to watch over their heritage and, while allowing all reasonable scope for further development, to guard it by all means in their power against degradation and pollution. A great people will have a great language: when a language shows signs of weakness or declension, there is reason to fear for the civilization of which it is the expression.
“Dark Lightning.”—The attention of meteorologists and photographers has been engaged to a considerable extent, within a few months past, with the appearance on photographs of lightning of what seemed to be dark flashes as well as bright ones. In the effort to account satisfactorily for the phenomenon it has been referred to photographic reversal, due to extreme brilliancy; to a predominance of infra-red radiations; to the existence of flashes deficient in actinic rays; to changes in the density of the air occasioned by the spark, when a dark line with a light line within it is shown if the air is compressed, and a light line inclosing a dark one if it is rarefied; and to some qualities of the photographic plate. The first real light was thrown on the subject by some experiments described by Mr. A. W. Clayden, who, having photographed some electric sparks of different intensities, before developing the plates exposed them to the diffused light of a gas flame. The brilliant sparks then yielded images which might either be called normal with a reversed margin, or reversed with a normal core, while the fainter images were completely reversed—or, in other words, came out darker than the background. The “fogging” of the picture, to produce this reversal, must be done after the image of the flash is impressed; for if it is done before, the image appears lighter than the background. This effect, which is called the “Clayden effect,” is accepted as a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon by two of the authors who have most studied it—Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer and Prof. R. W. Wood, of the University of Wisconsin. Professor Wood, on repeating Mr. Clayden’s experiment, obtained dark flashes without any difficulty, but as they failed to appear when the light of an incandescent lamp was substituted for the electric spark, he concludes that there is something in the spark essential to the reversal. Dr. Lockyer summarizes his conclusion by saying that dark-lightning flashes “do not exist in Nature, buttheir appearances on photographs are due to some chemical action which takes place in the gelatin film.”
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“Warming Up.”—“Warming up” is the expressive term of general currency, which Dr. E. G. Lancaster adopts to denote the process in which one starting on any work in a little while suffers a short period of fatigue, from which he soon recovers, to go on with new and increased vigor. This occurs in the course of walks, with students engaged in earnest reading or in writing, and in animals, as in dogs on the chase, the animals pursued, and racehorses. “It is said of two famous trotters, each of which has reduced the world’s record within a few years, that the period of warming up was very characteristic.... Athletes, especially ball players, realize the importance of practice just before the games, to be followed by a slight rest. A pitcher would hardly enter the box till he had got his arm in working order by a few minutes’ practice. Orators often are dull at first, but warm up. It is said that Wendell Phillips was often hissed for his slow, uninteresting speech, but rallied to the occasion at such times with his masterly oratory.” Dr. Lancaster has experimented on the phenomena, using a method like those of Mosso and of Lombard in the psychological laboratory at Clark University, and publishes the results, with details and curves, in the papers of the Colorado College Scientific Society. He tried ten or twelve subjects, experimenting on the middle finger of the right hand, and gaining most of his results from four or five persons. He finds that warming up is general, but not universal. One subject always did his best work first. He likewise showed no warming up in his mental work. The phenomenon called “second mind” is closely allied to warming up, but is not the same. The author is of the opinion that the importance of this process is greatly misunderstood.
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Sixty Years’ Improvements in Steamships.—A review of what has been accomplished in sixty years in the improvement of transatlantic traffic, given by Sir William H. White in his address at the British Association on Steam Navigation at High Speeds, shows that speed has been increased from eight and a half to twenty-two and a half knots an hour, and the time of the voyage has been brought down to about thirty-eight per cent of what it was in 1838. Ships have been more than trebled in length, about doubled in breadth, and increased tenfold in displacement. The number of passengers carried by a steamship has been enlarged from about one hundred to nearly two thousand. The engine power has been made forty times as great. The ratio of horse power to the weight driven has been quadrupled. The rate of coal consumption per horse power per hour is now only about one third what it was in 1840. Had the old rate of coal consumption continued, instead of three thousand tons of coal, nine thousand would have been required for a voyage at twenty-two knots. Had the engines been proportionately as heavy as those in use sixty years ago, they would have weighed about fourteen thousand tons. In other words, machinery, boilers, and coal would have exceeded the total weight of the Campania as she floats to-day. “There could not be a more striking illustration than this of the close relation between improvements in marine engineering at high speed. Equally true is it that this development could not have been accomplished but for the use of improved materials and structural arrangements.”
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American Advances in Forestry.—The Department of Agriculture having determined to prepare a book for the Paris Exposition, reviewing what has been accomplished in scientific agriculture in the United States, the Division of Forestry will contribute to it a short history of forestry in the United States, with an account of the efforts of private landholders to apply the principles of forestry. Much more has been accomplished in the United States in the way of forestry than has been supposed. Mr. Pinchot, the forester of the division, holds that wherever private owners have made the effort to use the merchantable timber on their woodland without injuring its productive power, and to establish new forests, there has been the intention of true forestry. The methods may have been imperfect, butthey have tended toward economic forest management so far as their object was the continued use of the land for producing woods. Among the measures looking in this direction Mr. Pinchot mentions in his circular the practice which has been adopted “because it pays,” in some of the spruce lands of the Northwest, of leaving the small trees standing, so that the lumbermen can return for a second crop earlier than would otherwise be possible; and the adoption by farmers of methods in getting their wood, for saving the best trees and promoting their growth and that of the new ones; of keeping sprout lands to be cut over regularly and systematically, for periodical renewal, and of tree planting on waste places, hillsides liable to be washed, and the banks of streams. Other forms of planting are the institution of wind breaks in the treeless West, and special plantations for fence posts, etc. A kind of forestry practice is likewise indicated in the special pains that are taken by farmers and in lumbering districts to lessen the danger of fires. Forester Pinchot desires that all the information that can be gained be communicated to him for the proposed article.
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Professor Putnam on the Origins of the American Races.—In his address as retiring President of the American Association, Prof. F. W. Putnam, after expressing his high opinion of the late Dr. D. G. Brinton and his scientific labors, referred to the differences of opinion that had existed between them in respect to the origin of the American peoples, and proceeded to expound his own views on the subject. He regarded the term “mound-builders” as comprehensive enough to include all the peoples who had left the marks of their former presence in this country. Even the shell heaps could not be regarded as the work of one people. From the time of the earliest deposits—which were of great antiquity—to the present, such refuse piles had been made and many of the sites reoccupied, sometimes even by a different people. So with the mounds of earth and stone; many of them are of great antiquity, while others were made within the historic period, and even during the first half of the present century. These works were devoted to a variety of purposes, and there are many different kinds of them. Besides the mounds, there are groups of earthworks of a different order of structure, that must be considered by themselves—great embankments, fortifications, and singular structures on hills and plateaus that are in marked contrast to the ordinary conical mounds, and mounds in the form of animals and of man. The considerable antiquity of these older earthworks is proved by the accumulation of mold and the forest growth upon them. “If all mounds of shell, earth, or stone, fortifications on hills, or places of religious and ceremonial rites, are classed, irrespective of their structure, contents, or time of formation, as the work of one people, and that people is designated as the ‘American Indian’ or the ‘American race,’ and considered the only people ever inhabiting America north and south, we are simply ... not giving fair consideration to differences, while overestimating resemblances.” Citing analogies between our earthworks and Mexican structures, and looking upon the Pueblos as a connecting link, “we must regard the culture of the builders of the ancient earthworks as one and the same with that of ancient Mexico, although modified by environment. Our northern and eastern tribes came in contact with this people when they pushed their way southward and westward, and many of their arts and customs still linger among some of our Indian tribes. It is this absorption and admixture of the stocks that has in the course of thousands of years brought all our peoples into a certain uniformity. This does not, however, prove a unity of race.”
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Heat Insulators.—Mr. C. L. Norton has made experiments, at the request of Mr. Edward Atkinson, in order to determine the relative efficiency of several kinds of steam-pipe covering now on the market; to ascertain the fire risk attendant upon the use of certain methods and materials employed for insulation of steam pipes; to show the gain in economy attendant upon the increase of thickness of coverings; and to find the exact financial return that may be expected from a given outlay for covering steam pipes. A method of experimentation was adopted which representedas nearly as practicable the conditions existing in the actual use of steam pipes. Of sixteen non-conducting preparations tried, the most efficient were found to be those made of cork; next was a cover composed of an inner jacket of earthy material and an outer jacket of wool felt; and next magnesia. In reference to the last substance it is, however, observed that, while it is a most effective non-conductor, the name has been applied to many compounds of which the greater part consist of carbonate of lime or plaster of Paris, materials which are not good as heat retardents. Asbestos is merely a non-combustible material in which air may be entrapped, but, when non-porous, is a good conductor of heat. Generally speaking, a cover saves heat enough to pay for itself in a little less than a year at three hundred and ten ten-hour days, and in about four months at three hundred and sixty-five twenty-four-hour days. The decision as to the choice of cover must, however, come from other considerations, as well as from that of non-conductivity. Ability to withstand the action of heat for a prolonged period without being destroyed or rendered less efficient is of vital importance. The cork coverings were found to respond to this test extremely well, and there can be no question respecting magnesia; but Mr. Norton does not consider it safe to put upon a steam pipe wool, hair, felt, or woolen felt in any form, though the danger is not likely to accrue when an inch of fireproof material stands between the felt and the pipe. In general it may be said that if five years is the life of a cover, one inch is the most economical thickness, while a cover which has a life of ten years may to advantage be made two inches thick. The method of judging a pipe cover by the warmth felt on putting the hand upon it is fallacious; the sensation depends so much upon the nature of the surface that it utterly fails to give any idea of the actual temperature.
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Effect of Sea Water on Soil.—In a paper read at the British Association, 1899, on the chemical effect of the salts of the salt-water flood of November 27, 1897, on the east coast of England, Messrs. T. S. Dymond and F. Hughes recorded the remarkable result that, although the proportion of salt left in the soil was insufficient to prove injurious to growing crops, the earthworms were entirely removed, with the consequence that very few crops were worth harvesting the following year. In the next year nine tenths of the salt at first present had disappeared from the soil, and young worms had again made their appearance, but still the condition of the soil remained unsatisfactory, the rate of percolation of water through the flooded earth being only one half as rapid as through the unflooded. The authors ascribe this to the action of the chlorides of the sea water on the silicates of the soil with the formation of silicate of alumina in a gelatinous condition.
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The War against Monopolies.—Mr. Robert Ewen writes, in the Westminster Review, demanding free bank circulation as likely to be a very effective weapon to be used in “the coming contest with monopolists.” The subject seems to have attracted official attention in England in 1875, when Sir Stafford Northcote was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As chairman of the committee appointed to inquire into the working of the Bank Acts, he submitted a memorandum showing that, while certain items of the monopoly enjoyed by the Bank of England had been withdrawn, a residuum of restrictions on issuing banks still remained unrepealed. Some other countries have found a way of giving elasticity to the currency by buying in and laying aside their bonds, as the United States has recently been doing. This can not be done in Great Britain, because the Bank of England and the other bank monopolists block the way. The bank is tied down by acts of Parliament to buy and sell gold at a fixed price, and this restriction has been a cause of panics, whereas had gold been allowed to rise and fall in price, according to supply and demand, and the bank got a free hand in dealing with that commodity and in issuing legal notes to supply the circulating medium, “all would have gone well.” Foreign protectionists now have the power to prevent British goods from getting into their markets by imposing heavy duties on them, and at the same time forcing their produce into British markets, becauseEnglish laws allow them to get gold from the English cheaper than their goods can be obtained. “Suppose a merchant in Britain buys £100,000 worth of corn from America and gives a check on the Bank of England for the amount of the purchase. The American draws the £100,000 in gold and takes it home; he will have to pay no export or import duty thereon—indeed, the probability is he may get a premium on the gold in America. But reverse the transaction: Suppose the British merchant sold £100,000 worth of his goods to America, there would, in the first place, be the exorbitant duty imposed there upon our manufactures of from forty to fifty per cent. Or suppose our merchant wished to buy corn or any American produce in exchange for his goods in place of bringing money, the case would be different—it would tell against the American farmer, who would get a less price for his corn, etc., than he would have done by free trade.” This instance is given “to show how free trade in gold would bring about free trade and reciprocity between the United States and Britain, and is applicable to every other state with which we trade.... There should be full scope given to all good banks in the country, large or small, to carry on banking business in the best modern manner for the benefit of all parties, so as to encourage and develop all trades and industries.”
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Rats and the Plague.—In his introductory address at the opening of the London School of Tropical Medicine, Dr. Manson preached a war of extermination against rats with the vigor of Cato calling for the destruction of Carthage. “Were I asked,” he said, “how I would protect a state from plague, I would certainly answer, Exterminate the rats as a first and most important measure.” He added, “At the present juncture, were I the responsible sanitary head of any town in Europe, in anticipation of a possibility compared to which in horror and in destructiveness a general European war would be a trifle, I would do my best to have every rat and, if possible, every mouse in my district promptly exterminated.” Dr. Manson does not reveal his plan of campaign. Wholesale poisoning of sewers might have serious disadvantages, and there would be difficulties about inveigling the rodent population of these subterranean health resorts (as some enthusiasts consider them to be) into a lethal chamber. Are we to cry havoc and let slip thecatsof war? or to hurl an army of snakes against the foe? In either case we might find ourselves in the awkward position of a king who had called a too powerful auxiliary to his aid. Already action is being taken on the rat theory of plague. The French Government has ordered that special precautions are to be taken to prevent the importation of rats in vessels from plague-stricken places. It is to be hoped that similar precautions will be taken in regard to the transports which convey the Indian contingent to the Cape, or the situation there may become complicated by the intervention of an enemy who will deal destruction impartially to Boers and to Britons.
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Forestry in California.—As a remedy for the devastation of the forest lands of California, Marsden Manson, having shown that Government administrations with politics in them can not be trusted in the matter, recommends that all forest reservations and public lands upon mountain slopes within the borders of the State be granted to the University of California in trust, for the purpose of maintaining, developing, and extending the water supply of those regions forever. For this purpose the regents should be empowered to lease, under proper control, the timber cutting and pasturage privileges of those areas, and to use the resultant fund to protect the catchment areas, to maintain a college of practical forestry, to construct reservoirs at such points as may be necessary to the industries of the State, and dispose of the water for the benefit of the trust, to acquire mountain lands to be added to the catchment areas, and to do all such things as may maintain wise systems of forest and water conservation and use. The extent of income-bearing property which can be made available for forest preservation and storage of flood waters, Mr. Manson says, is far beyond the general idea.
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Another New Element.—The mineral pitchblende is distinguished for itsradio-activity, or the property it has of emitting the peculiar light-rays which have recently attracted attention. The property has been attributed to the presence of uranium, one of the most radio-active among the known metals. About a year ago the chemists M. and Madame Curie, examining the different substances in pitchblende, found among them two new radiant substances, both more active than uranium, which they called polonium and radium. Polonium was found to be closely akin to bismuth, accompanying that metal in all its reactions, but separable from it by fractionation. Radium resembles barium in its chemical reactions. Recently M. A. Debierne, examining one of the products of solution and precipitation of pitchblende, observed intensified radio-active properties in a portion containing titanium, and on further investigation found still another substance showing the principal analytical properties of titanium, but which emitted extremely active rays. While these rays were comparable with those observed from polonium and radium, the chemical properties are entirely different from those of these substances. Radium, however, is spontaneously luminous, while the new substance is not.
Some recent experiments were made by Armand Gautier on the amount of the chlorides contained in sea air. They were conducted at the lighthouse at Rochedouvres, situated about fifty-five kilometres from the coast, during and after the long continuance of a good breeze directly inshore from the Atlantic. The air was drawn through a long tube containing glasswork, and this well then analyzed. He found that in a litre of air there was only 0.022 of a gramme of chloride of sodium. Small as this quantity is, it suffices, perhaps, with the aid of the traces of sodium present, to give sea air its tonic qualities.
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The second International Congress on Hypnotism is to be held in Paris, August 12 to 16, 1900, Dr. Jules Voisin presiding. The programme of discussions includes such topics as the terminology of hypnotism, its relations to hysteria, its application to general therapeutics, the indications of it and suggestions for the treatment of mental disease and alcoholism, its application to general pedagogy and mental orthopædics, its value as a means of pathological investigation, its relation to the practice of medicine and to jurisprudence, and special responsibilities arising from the practice of experimental hypnotism.
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The following is from a recent letter to Science by Prof. James H. Hyslop, of Columbia University: “So much has been published far and wide this last summer about my intention ‘to scientifically demonstrate the immortality of the soul within a year,’ that it is due to the facts bearing upon the choice between materialism and spiritism to say that I have never made any such professions as have been alleged. I wish the scientific public that still has the bad habit of reading and believing the newspapers to know that I was careful to deny that I made any such pretensions as were so generally attributed to me. More than one half the interviews alleged to have been held with me were the fabrications of reporters who never saw me, and the other half omitted what I did say and published what I did not say.”
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Some novel results have been obtained by M. Baillaud, of the Toulouse Observatory, France, from recent observations of the annular nebula in Lyra and comparisons with photographs taken in 1890. Among them are the discovery of small stars in the central space of the ring, the existence of bright points on the ring itself, a more distinct figure of the central star on the later photographs, giving it the aspect of a true star, and greater brightness in the central space, and certain changes in the shape of the edge of the ring, which shows at one point, more distinctly than in 1890, an eminence indicating a jet of matter escaping from the ring. Other nebulæ, especially that called the Dumb-bell and the nebula in the Crown, are spoken of as exhibiting similar phenomena.
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The Chicago Manual-Training School, which is said to be the first independentmanual-training school in the United States, is now in its sixteenth year, having been founded in 1883 by the Commercial Club of Chicago. It has been, since 1897, an integral part of the University of Chicago. While its peculiar feature is manual training, it also furnishes instruction in the essential studies of a high-school course. The shop work and drawing are eminently practical. The making of a machine, such as a lathe or steam engine, is begun by the pupils in the drawing room, and is followed by them through the pattern-making shop, the foundry, and the forge room, and is perfected in the machine shop. The forge tools and engine-lathe tools are made by pupils. The courses of the school include a business course, a technological course, and a college preparatory course.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received, by the will of Mr. Edward Austin, deceased at the age of ninety-four years, a bequest of $400,000, the interest of which is to be used for the assistance of needy and meritorious teachers in prosecuting their studies. In addition to this bequest, the institute received, during 1898, an accession of $928,000 to its general funds, and one of $46,000 to its scholarship funds.
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At the recent meeting of the Allied Scientific Societies, at New Haven, Conn., Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, was chosen to act as retiring President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in place of Prof. Edward Orton, deceased.
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The meeting of the Allied Scientific Societies of the United States was held in New Haven, Conn., during holiday week. It was much larger than either of the meetings previously held, and was attended by nearly five hundred members, representing ten societies—viz., the American Society of Naturalists, the Association of American Anatomists, the American Morphological, Physiological, Psychological, and Chemical Societies, the Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Archæological Association of America. The discussions were all interesting.
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The great Roman Catholic Missionary Society, the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, is reported to have sent a circular to all its missionaries urging them to interest themselves in the collection of natural-history specimens for scientific societies and institutions. This is intended, it is said, to interest and encourage missionaries who have a scientific bent, and to inform the world that the Church is not hostile to biological research.
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We have to record, among the later deaths of men in science, the names of Francis Guthrie, formerly Professor of Mathematics in Graaff Reinet College and afterward in South African College till 1898, aged sixty-eight years; he was interested in botany, on which he gave public lectures, and, with Harry Bolus, revised the order of Heaths forFlora capensis; Prof. P. Knuth, botanist and author of researches on the relations of insects and flowers and on cross-fertilization, at Kiel, Germany, aged forty-five years; he had published two of the projected three volumes of theHandbuch der Blüten Biologie; Prof. R. Yatube, Japanese botanist; Ferdinand Tiemann, honorary Professor of Chemistry in the University of Berlin; Alexander McDougall, inventor, sixty years ago, of an atmospheric railway, and since of many useful mechanical and chemical appliances, at Southport, England; Dr. Camera Pestana, chief of the Bacteriological Institute at Lisbon, Portugal, of plague, which he contracted while experimenting with it at Oporto; and Prof. Elliott Coues, an American naturalist, most distinguished in ornithology, in Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, December 25th, after a surgical operation, aged sixty-seven years; he had been a professor in Norwich University, Vermont, and in the National Medical College in Washington, and had done scientific work while in the military service of the Government, in the Geological Survey, and in the United States Northern Boundary Commission; and was the author of several books on ornithology and on the Fur-bearing Animals, besides editing the journals of Lewis and Clark and other books of American exploration.
Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Cornell University: No. 172. The Cherry Fruit-Fly. A New Cherry Pest. By M. V. Slingerland. Pp. 20.—Maryland: Twelfth Annual Report. Pp. 212.—Michigan: Horticultural Department. No. 176. Strawberry Notes for 1899. By L. R. Taft and H. P. Gladden. Pp. 14.—Ohio: Press Bulletin No. 202. Results of Sugar-Beet Investigations in 1899, etc. Pp. 2.—United States Department of Agriculture: Practical Forestry in the Adirondacks. By Henry S. Graves. Pp. 84.
American Chemical Society, Journal of the. Vol. XXI, No. 12. December, 1899.
Blatchley, W. S. Gleanings from Nature. Indianapolis: The Nature Publishing Company. Pp. 348.
Capon Springs Conference, The Second, on Education in the South. 1899. Proceedings. Pp. 109.
Catlin, Charles A. Baking Powders. A Treatise on the Character, Methods for the Determination of the Values, etc. Providence, R. I.: Rumford Chemical Works. Pp. 40.
Field Columbian Museum, Chicago. Zoölogical Series. Vol. I, No. 16. List of Mammals obtained by Thaddeus Surber, chiefly in Oklahoma and Indian Territories. By D. G. Elliot; No. 17. Notes on a Collection of Fishes and Amphibia from Muskoka and Gull Lakes. Pp. 6. By S. E. Meek and D. G. Elliot.
Knight, W. C., and Slosson, E. E. The Oil Fields of Crook and Uinta Counties, Wyoming. University of Wyoming, Laramie. (Petroleum Series, Bulletin No. 3.) Pp. 30.
Lange, D. Our Native Birds. How to protect them and attract them to our Homes. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 162. $1.
Manson, Marsden, San Francisco, Cal. The Evolution of Climates. Pp. 100.
Morgan, William, 96 Bowery, New York. A New Scientific Discovery. The Correct Reason why the Magnetic Needle points to the Pole. Pp. 14.
New Epoch, The, Publishing Company. The Bibliography of Progressive Literature. New York. P. O. Box 136, Madison Square Branch. Pp. 96.
Orcutt, H. E. The Empire of the Invisibles. New York: The Metaphysical Publishing Company. Pp. 80. $1.
Peabody Education Fund. Proceedings of the Trustees at their Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting. New York, October 4, 1899. Pp. 58.
Sunset. Vol. III, No. 6. October, 1899. Monthly. San Francisco, Cal. Southern Pacific Railway Company. Pp. 24.
Starr, Frederick, Chicago, Ill. Some North American Spear-Throwers. Pp. 3, with plate; Survivals of Paganism in Mexico, Pp. 14; The International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology. Pp. 8; Holy Week in Mexico. Pp. 6; The Art of Benin City, Pp. 8.
Turner, Mrs. M. M. The Bible God, Bible Teachings, Selections from the Writings of Scientists. (Library of Liberal Classics.) New York: Peter Eckler. Pp. 139. 25 cents.
United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Pamphlet No. 424. Experiments in Photography of Live Fishes. By R. W. Shufeldt. Pp. 5, with nine plates; No. 425. Notes on the Tide-Pool Fishes of California, with a Description of Four New Species. By Arthur White Greeley. Pp. 20; No. 426. The Synaptas of the New England Coast. By Hubert Lyman Clark. Pp. 12, with plate; No. 427. Descriptions of New Genera and Species of Fishes from Puerto Rico. By Barton W. Evermann and Millard C. Marsh. Pp. 12.
United States National Museum (Smithsonian Institution). Directions for collecting and rearing Dragon Flies, Stone Flies, and May Flies. By James G. Needham. Pp. 12; Contributions to the Natural History of the Commander Islands. (A New Species of Stalked Medusæ, Haliclystus Stejnegeri.) By K. Kishinouye. Pp. 5; Report for the Year ending June 30, 1897. Part I. Pp. 1021.
University of California. The Inauguration of Benjamin Ide Wheeler as President of the University. Berkeley: University Press. Pp. 30.
Ward, Lester F., Jenney, W. F., Fontaine, W. M., and Knowlton, F. H. The Cretaceous Formation of the Black Hills as indicated by the Fossil Plants. United States Geological Survey. Pp. 188.
Transcribers’ NotesPunctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.Words originally printed in Greek are shown that way in some versions of this eBook. English transliterations were added to all versions by the Transcribers and are indicated by [Greek: ].Page467: “Magna Charta” was printed that way.Page507: Quotation beginning “we must regard” was not ended by a closing quotation mark. Transcriber added one at the end of the paragraph, after “prove a unity of race.”
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Words originally printed in Greek are shown that way in some versions of this eBook. English transliterations were added to all versions by the Transcribers and are indicated by [Greek: ].
Page467: “Magna Charta” was printed that way.
Page507: Quotation beginning “we must regard” was not ended by a closing quotation mark. Transcriber added one at the end of the paragraph, after “prove a unity of race.”