pictures taken, some being restrained by motives of superstition; but
in New Guinea Professor Semon found being photographed a great joke
for all the boys and girls. He had much trouble in isolating a single
individual, so as not to get thirty or forty persons into his picture
instead of the one he wished to immortalize. "Wishing," he says, "to
portray one young girl of uncommonly good looks, I separated her from
the rest, gave her a favorable position, and adjusted the lens,
surrounded all the while by a crowd of people behind and beside me,
the children cheering, the women most ardently attentive, the men
benevolently smiling. Evidently my subject was proud of the
distinction she enjoyed and the attention vouchsafed her. Quite
suddenly, however, this simple savage, untaught as she was and
innocent of the laws of reticence and prudishness, became convulsed
with shame, covered her eyes with her hands, and valiantly resisted
every attempt to make her stand forward as before. At the same time I
noticed that the hue of her features changed, the brown of her face
becoming darker and deeper than before, a phenomenon easily explained
by the fact of the blood rising into her head. Had she been a brown
girl we would have said that she blushed. At all events, the
physiological process was the same as that which forces us to blush."
At another time, when the author had got two little girls into
position to be photographed, their mothers came up and forbade his
taking them that day, but promised to present them on the morrow. On
the next day "both the little angels were solemnly brought to meet us
nearly smothered in ornaments, their hair decorated with feathers and
combs, their ears with tortoise-shell pieces, their little throats
surrounded by plates of mother-of-pearl and chains of dingo teeth,
legs and arms hung with rings and shells, teeth, and all sorts of
network.... Here, again, one may see that mothers are made of the
same stuff all over the world, Papuan mammas being equal to any of our
peasant women or fine ladies in the point of vanity as far as concerns
their children."
=Meat Extracts.=--An interesting account of the history and
preparation of meat extracts was recently given as a lecture before
the Society of Arts (English) by Charles R. Valentine. The idea of
concentrating the body of an ox into a thimbleful of elixir seems to
have been a very old one. Until the work of Justus von Liebig, about
fifty years ago, however, little progress of practical value was made
toward this end. Liebig macerated finely divided beef in cold water,
or in water not above 150° F. The water dissolved from sixteen to
twenty-four per cent of the weight of the dry flesh. This infusion was
heated, the albumen and red coloring matter of the blood coagulated,
and was separated as a flocculent precipitate. The remaining solution
has the aromatic taste and all the properties of soup made by boiling
the flesh. The infusion was then evaporated at a gentle heat. The
residue amounted to about twelve or thirteen per cent of the original
(dry) flesh. This is in rough outline the process of meat-extract
making. This extract is simply an evaporated beef tea, containing the
extractive matters of beef, and in virtue of these possesses medicinal
and dietetic properties of value. But it is in no sense a substitute
for beef, as the latter's most important food constituent--albumen--it
does not contain.
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
It appears from tables of Some Statistics of Engineering Education,
compiled by President M. E. Wadsworth, of the Michigan College of
Mines, that such education has been, in the United States, on the
whole a thing of comparatively recent date, the oldest school, the
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, having been established in 1824; the
next, the Lawrence and Sheffield Schools, in 1846 and 1847; and the
Columbia School in 1863. Civil engineering has led in this country,
and has had various periods of advance, as in 1887-'88, and
depression, as in 1896-'97. Mechanical engineering progressed till
1886-'87, when the number of students fell off, and the same happened
with electrical engineering, "which further suffers a natural reaction
from having been greatly overdone." As a rule, most of the schools in
the United States seem to run to specialties, one or two of the
courses being usually more conspicuous than the others.
The importance of some arrangement by which vessels may be informed of
each other's approach in fog and darkness has given rise to many
devices; the only one, however, which has as yet proved practical is
the fog-horn or siren, and this has many disadvantages. Several fatal
collisions at sea during the past year have given rise to renewed
interest in the subject, and a number of new methods have been
suggested. M. Branley, a French physicist, in a note presented to the
French Academy suggests that each vessel be provided with a number of
extremely sensitive magnetic receivers, or coherers, and a powerful
magnetic transmitter. Periodical signals being made with the
transmitter, corresponding impressions would be made upon the
receivers of approaching vessels. The principal difficulty with this
scheme lies in the fact that the receivers of a vessel will be
affected by its own transmitter. There are several methods by which
this difficulty may be overcome, however. Different signals may be
employed, or the interval between signals may be regularly varied. M.
Branley calls attention to the influence of a metallic envelope
surrounding a coherer, and shows that when the coherer is thus
completely surrounded it is unaffected by the influence of a
transmitter. By thus inclosing the receiver on a ship at the instant
of the operation of the transmitter of the same vessel, the above
difficulty might be avoided.
While we can not collect roses from our gardens in January and maple
blossoms from the woods in February, yet, as Prof. W. J. Beal shows in
a bulletin of the Michigan Agricultural College Experiment Station,
our trees and shrubs in their winter garb furnish excellent lessons
for the profitable employment of pupils during many weeks at that
season in true botanical study. "Let each member of a class be
provided with a branch, a foot or two long, from a sugar maple, and
then spend some ten to twenty minutes or more quietly looking at the
buds and the bark, with its scars and specks, and then tell what he
has discovered, venturing to explain the object or meaning of some of
the things he has seen. In a similar manner let each look over a
branch of beech and then point out the difference between the two
kinds." Opening buds of trees may be obtained at any time during the
winter by placing the lower end of the stem in water for a week or two
while in the schoolroom.
Eivind Astrup, in his book With Peary near the Pole, gives admiring
pictures of the natural innocence of the uncontaminated Eskimos of
northern Greenland, where are communities in which "money is unknown,
and love of one's neighbor is a fundamental rule of action; where
theft is not practiced." All things are held in common, and falsehoods
are told only to spare the feelings of the listener. Among the
instances of the native kindliness of these people is one where a dog
had eaten up a reindeer coat, yet was only remonstrated with by its
owner. When the author suggested that a hungry dog should be punished
for stealing a piece of blubber, the owner said that it was himself
who deserved the thrashing for not having obtained sufficient food for
the dog.
The operations of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History
during 1897 and 1898 were almost wholly connected with the work of the
State Entomologist or with that of the Biological Station. The former
work related to various insects injurious to crops. The operations of
the Biological Station were carried on with more reference to
completing a formal report upon the fishes of Illinois. The work is
conducted with a view to the acquisition of correct ideas of the
relative abundance and local distribution of species, their haunts,
habits, regular migrations, and irregular movements, their building
times and places, rate of growth, food, diseases, and enemies--and, in
short, the whole economy of each kind represented at the station and
of the whole assemblage taken together as a community group. Extensive
studies of aquatic entomology were made, and a paper on ephemerids and
dragon flies is nearly ready for the press. No part of the work of the
station, however, attracts more attention among scientific men, or is
likely to lead to more interesting and important results, than the
plankton work, or the systematic study of the minute forms of plant
and animal life suspended in the water. Water analyses have been
extensively made in connection with these studies, which, combined
with the continuous biological work, will, when generalized, furnish a
substantial and authoritative body of knowledge of the conditions of
the waters of the middle Illinois previous to the opening of the
Chicago drainage canal, useful for comparison with the results of
similar studies made after that event. A summer school was conducted,
with fifteen pupils, in 1898, and publications were issued.
NOTES.
The Pasteur monument was dedicated at Lille, France, the city in which
the subject of the memorial performed his earlier more important
researches, April 9th. The ceremony was witnessed by a large assembly,
which included many eminent scientific men of France and foreign
countries, among whom men engaged in similar researches to Pasteur's
were especially represented. The monument, the fruit of a public
subscription, represents Pasteur standing on the summit of a column of
Soignies stone, holding in his right hand an experimental flask. At
the foot of the column a woman presents her child, which has been
bitten by a mad dog, for treatment. To the left is a group
representing inoculation--a woman, personifying science, injecting
serum into a child she holds on her knees. Three bas-reliefs represent
respectively Dr. Roux inoculating a sheep for anthrax, Pasteur
studying fermentation, and the first antirabic inoculation of the
young Joseph Meister, who is held by his mother, wearing the
broad-flapped Alsatian bonnet. The statue is in light bronze, and with
the gilded bas-reliefs harmonizes well with the gray of the stone.
Addresses were made by M. Armand Gautier and M. Duclaux, who said that
the improved laboratories now enjoyed by scientific institutions in
Paris were largely due to Pasteur's efforts.
The minor planet recently discovered by Witt, remarkable as having an
orbit that comes within that of Mars, and provisionally known as DQ,
has been named Eros. An examination by Professor Pickering and Mrs.
Fleming of the Harvard photographs has revealed traces of this body on
twelve plates taken in 1893 and 1894, and on four plates of 1896. By
the aid of these plates it has been possible to determine its elements
with greater accuracy than would otherwise be possible. Its mean
distance from the sun is 1.45810, its shortest distance 1.13334, and
its greatest distance 1.78286 that of the earth; the eccentricity of
its orbit is 0.222729, and its period is 643.10 days. Its synodical
period is such that it has three oppositions in seven years. The next
opposition will be in the last months of 1900, and will be a
moderately favorable one for observation.
The courses in pure science of the New York University include
undergraduate, graduate, and summer courses in mathematics, physics,
chemistry, geology, and biology, with laboratory privileges and
provision for special students and independent work in chemistry. The
university last year was attended by 1,717 students in its three
faculties and six schools, and 720 non-matriculant students and
auditors. A new feature this year is the inauguration of the Charles
F. Deems lectureship of philosophy, under an endowment of $15,000 by
the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, with Prof. James
Iverach, D. D., of the Free Church College, Aberdeen, Scotland, as the
first lecturer. A feature of the university organization is the
institution of a woman's advisory committee co-operating with the
council. A woman's law class is supported by the Woman's Legal
Education Society, the purpose of which is to make business women and
women in private life acquainted with existing law.
The new Science Building of the City Library, Springfield, Mass.,
recently completed, is being inaugurated by a Geographical and
Geological Exhibition. It includes the best and latest maps, models,
globes, charts, relief maps, and photographs, special attention being
paid to the most effective modes of teaching. One of the most
attractive features of the exhibition is the work from the Springfield
public schools.
An ingenious method for thawing out frozen water pipes has been used
by Prof. R. W. Wood, of the University of Wisconsin. It consists
simply of passing a current of electricity through the pipe. In one
case it is said that one hundred and fifty feet of frozen pipe was
thawed out in eighteen minutes. The ordinary street current was used,
the voltage being reduced to about fifty.
In a summary of inspectors' reports of the Hartford Steam Boiler
Inspection and Insurance Company for 1898 it is stated that of 78,349
boilers, inspected both internally and externally, during the year,
there were 11,727 dangerous defects discovered and 603 entire boilers
were declared unsafe for further use.
The recent death list of men known in science includes the names of
Charles Naudin, an eminent French botanist, Dean of the Botanical
Section of the Academy of Sciences and author of a book on Hybrids in
the Vegetable Kingdom, at Antibes, France, March 19th, aged
eighty-four years; Dr. G. W. Leitner, an eminent Orientalist and
linguist, Lecturer on Oriental Language at King's College, London,
Principal of Lahne College, and Registrar of Punjaub University, where
he introduced the use of their own language and literature in teaching
Indian students, founder of the Anglo-Indian Institute at Woking,
England, and author of works in Education, the Races of Turkey, The
Races and Languages of Dardistan, Græco-Buddhist Discoveries, and
other Oriental subjects, at Bonn, March 24th, in his sixty-ninth year;
Dr. Angelo Knorr, Docent in the Veterinary School of Munich, February
22d; Elizabeth Brown, astronomical observer and author of papers on
solar phenomena, at Cirencester, England, March 6th; Dr. Wilhelm von
Müller, Professor General Chemistry in the Institute of Technology,
Munich; Dr. Friedrich von Lühmann, mathematician, at Straslund,
Prussia; Dr. Charles Fortuun, mineralogist, in London; Alfred
Feuilleaubois, author of researches on Fungi, at Fontainebleau,
France; Dr. Heinrich Kiefert, a geographer and cartographer whose fame
was world-wide, whose maps and atlases are everywhere recognized as
authorities, at Berlin, April 21st, aged seventy years; and Prof.
Sophus Lie, of the University of Christiania, an eminent
mathematician, February 18th, in his fifty-seventh year.
Transcriber's Notes:
Words surrounded by _ are italicized.
Words surrounded by = are bold.
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent
spellings have been kept, including inconsistent use of hyphen (e.g.
"tortoise-shell" and "tortoise shell"), and proper names (e.g.
"Shakspere" and "Shakespeare").
Some illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in
the text.