of the country and advance science than any other nation. On these
objects the sum of over $8,000,000 is spent annually and over 5,000
officers are employed. Yet in one direction it has fallen far
behind the great European nations. Our Department of Agriculture,
our Geological Survey and many other agencies surpass in range and
efficiency the similar institutions elsewhere, but the applications of
physics and chemistry to the arts have not enjoyed equal advantages.
The Physikalische-Technische Reichsanstalt, the national physical
laboratory of the German Empire, established under the direction of
von Helmholtz, is conducted at an annual cost of $80,000, and there is
in addition a German bureau of weights and measures on which the sum
of $36,000 is annually expended. For similar purposes Great Britain
spends annually $62,000, Austria, $46,000, and Russia, $17,500,
whereas, our office of Standard Weights and Measures receives the
meager appropriation of $10,400. We are very glad to learn that the
Secretary of the Treasury has submitted an amendment to the pending
sundry civil bill, creating in place of the present office a National
Standardizing Bureau. According to the amendment the functions of the
bureau shall consist in the custody of the standards; the comparison
of the standards used in scientific investigations, engineering,
manufacturing, commerce and educational institutions with the standards
adopted or recognized by the Government; the construction when
necessary of standards, their multiples and subdivisions; the testing
and calibration of standard measuring apparatus; the solution of
problems which arise in connection with standards; the determination of
physical constants and the properties of materials when such data are
of great importance to scientific or manufacturing interests and are
not to be obtained of sufficient accuracy elsewhere. Provision is also
made for the erection of a laboratory and its equipment, and for the
employment of an adequate staff, with a director, whose salary shall be
$6,000 per annum.
* * * * *
It is satisfactory that the Secretary of the Treasury should recommend
a reasonable salary for the director of the proposed bureau. Men
of science are, as a rule, but poorly paid, and the officers in
the scientific departments of the Government receive in many cases
salaries that are a small part of what they could earn as physicians or
lawyers. There is, of course, danger that if salaries are large, the
offices will be sought by ‘practical’ politicians, and it is probably
the part of wisdom to offer the best facilities for research rather
than large salaries. Still, if the scientific man has the salary
of a clerk, he will be ranked in the same class by legislators and
executive officers. The small salaries offered at Washington also
lead to the continual loss of those whose services are of the greatest
value to the Government. Thus, the recent call to the presidency of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of Dr. Henry S. Pritchett,
Superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, is
a serious blow to the bureau and to science at Washington. Dr.
Pritchett’s scientific attainments and executive ability will find
ample scope at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he
worthily succeeds Presidents Rogers, Runkle, Walker and Crafts. But he
was also greatly needed in the Coast and Geodetic Survey, where, after
the excellent administration of Dr. T. C. Mendenhall, there had been an
unfortunate interregnum of three years. During the past three years,
however, the work of the Survey has been placed on an excellent basis
by Dr. Pritchett, and there is every reason to believe that the ground
gained will not be lost.
* * * * *
The transition of Dr. Pritchett from the professorship of mathematics
and astronomy in Washington University to the superintendency of the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and now to the presidency of
the Massachusetts Institute, calls attention to the fact that the
only promotion possible to men of science or university professors
is an executive position. The type of the German _Gelehrte_, still
current in literature and on the stage, is not common in America. The
modern methods of advancing science--the laboratory, the observatory,
the museum, the expedition, with their complex equipment--demand
administrative ability of a high order. Science has been able to supply
presidents, not only to the great technical schools, but also to
Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and other universities. Still, it is
unfortunate that the man of science can not look forward to promotion
in the direction of his own work. He becomes a college professor or the
like at a comparatively early age with a moderate salary. He has now as
a motive the increase of his reputation, rather likely to degenerate
into vanity, and the nobler motive of contributing to the advance of
science and of civilization. But these motives appeal differently
to different men--in any case, they bake no bread and educate no
children. The average salary of scientific men can not be greatly
increased; there must be a certain relation between supply and demand,
and the average earnings of other professional men are also small.
But the lawyer may look forward to becoming a judge, the physician to
a large city practice, the clergyman to a bishopric, etc. In Germany
a university professor may look forward to being called to Berlin,
to becoming a _Hofrat_, a _Geheimrat_ and a ‘von.’ It seems that we
need in each American university one or two chairs with very large
endowments, the occupation of which would be a special honor.
* * * * *
The French Academy of Sciences and French Science have lost two of
their most distinguished representatives in the deaths of Joseph
Bertrand and of Alphonse Milne-Edwards. Bertrand was born in 1823,
and was somewhat of a prodigy when a boy, having published a paper on
the theory of electricity when but sixteen years old, and being the
author of numerous mathematical papers before he was twenty-one. His
original contributions to mathematics and mathematical physics are of
great importance, and he was the author of standard works on algebra,
on arithmetic and on the calculus. As permanent secretary of the Paris
Academy of Sciences he was continually engaged in administrative work,
preparing obituary notices, acting as judge in the annual awards of
its prizes, etc. He also contributed a large number of biographies
and other articles to non-technical journals. Milne-Edwards, born
in 1835, was a son of the eminent zoölogist, Henri Milne-Edwards,
and the grandson of Bryan Edwards, the historian and member of the
British Parliament. Milne-Edwards published important researches in
paleontology and in zoölogy, especially in relation to birds, and was
at the time of his death professor of zoölogy at Paris and director of
the Jardin des Plantes.
* * * * *
In the deaths of the Duke of Argyll and Prof. St. George Mivart, Great
Britain loses two men of a type more common there than in the United
States. Argyll was a man of great wealth, whose interests in science
were only secondary, but who did much directly and indirectly for its
advancement. His work, ‘The Reign of Law,’ published some twenty-five
years ago, has been widely read, and he is the author of many books and
articles concerned with the natural sciences. Mivart, although trained
as a barrister, became perhaps a professional man of science, but he
never occupied a regular university position. He published numerous
contributions to comparative anatomy and zoölogy, but is perhaps best
known for books and articles on general scientific subjects. Just
before his death, it will be remembered, he was excommunicated from the
Roman Catholic Church owing to articles which were supposed not to be
in conformity with its tenets. Both Argyll and Mivart represented an
attitude towards the doctrine of evolution which may be regarded as now
practically extinct.
* * * * *
Two lectures have been recently delivered by Prof. James Dewar at the
Royal Institution on the subject of liquid and solid hydrogen. These
lectures have been illustrated by experiments and have attracted the
attention of the most distinguished chemists and physicists of England.
It is easy to understand such interest in the subject when we consider
that even Clerk Maxwell thought it improbable that hydrogen would
ever be liquified, and yet Dewar was able to exhibit not only liquid,
but solid, hydrogen to his audience. Briefly recapitulated, the steps
in the condensation of what were formerly called the permanent gases
are these: in 1878 Cailletet, in Paris, and Pictet, at Geneva, by
suddenly expanding gases which had been compressed to a high degree and
cooled to a low temperature, succeeded in obtaining these gases in the
shape of a mist or of a transitory liquid jet. In 1884 Wroblewski and
Olszewski at Crakow obtained oxygen and nitrogen as static liquids. By
expanding hydrogen from a compression of 190 atmospheres in a vessel
cooled by liquid air evaporating under diminished pressure, this gas
was obtained as a mist or momentary froth, though it was affirmed by
Olszewski that he observed the liquid hydrogen in colorless drops and
as a liquid running down the sides of the tube. In May, 1898, Dewar
obtained hydrogen as a static liquid by allowing compressed hydrogen,
cooled in a bath of boiling air, to escape rapidly at a jet, the liquid
hydrogen being collected in a doubly isolated vacuum vessel. This
liquid hydrogen is a colorless liquid, with a specific gravity of 0.07
or less than one sixth the weight of liquid marsh gas, the lightest
liquid hitherto known. This is better realized by saying that while
one gram of water has the volume of one cubic centimeter, one gram of
liquid hydrogen has a volume of over 14 c. c. The boiling point of
hydrogen is -252° C. or 21° above the absolute zero, and by boiling
in a vacuum the temperature of 15° can be obtained. Very recently by
slowly evaporating very perfectly isolated liquid hydrogen, solid
hydrogen was obtained by Dewar as a white mass of solidified form, of
the lowest temperature ever obtained, -258° C.
* * * * *
Among the most suggestive results obtained through recent work in
experimental embryology are those of Prof. Jacques Loeb, of the
University of Chicago, on the chemical fertilization of the eggs of
sea-urchins without participation of the male element. There has for
some time been reason to suspect that cell-division, both in tissue
cells and in the egg, is incited by chemical stimulus; and several
observers before Loeb had shown that when unfertilized sea-urchin eggs
are treated by the addition to the sea-water of various substances,
such as strychnine or chlorides of sodium or magnesium, they may
undergo some of the preliminary changes of development and may even
segment. Loeb was able to induce complete and normal development by
first bringing the eggs for about two hours into a mixture of sea-water
and a weak solution of magnesium chloride, and then transferring them
to normal sea-water. Eggs thus treated segmented and underwent a
development which, though somewhat slower than usual, was otherwise
normal and produced perfect larvæ. This effect can not properly be
called fertilization in the ordinary sense of the word, but is rather
to be regarded as artificially induced parthenogenesis. It points
unmistakably, however, to the possibility, or rather probability, that
in normal fertilization the spermatozoon incites the egg to development
by bringing to it certain definite chemical substances; and Loeb gives
reasons for the view that these substances are probably in the form of
ions, concluding that these and not the nucleins are essential to the
process of fertilization. A highly suggestive new field for work is
opened by these experiments.
* * * * *
Astronomers can not bring the phenomena they study into the laboratory
or test the behavior of the heavenly bodies under artificial
conditions. They have to be satisfied with such opportunities as
nature gives, even though she bestows them as meagerly as she does
solar eclipses. Consequently, the total eclipse of the forenoon of May
28th has been the object of much preparation. Most of the important
astronomical observatories in this country will have parties stationed
along the path of the eclipse from New Orleans to Norfolk, Va. Many
European parties will observe the eclipse in Portugal, Spain and
North Africa. It has been pointed out by Prof. R. W. Wood and Mr. A.
L. Rotch[J] that there are several important physical observations
to be made apart from the astronomical observations on the sun’s
corona described by Professor Bigelow, in the May number of this
magazine. Just before and after totality alternate bright and dark
bands are observed sweeping across the country. It is hoped that by
the coöperation of a number of observers more complete and exact data
concerning this phenomena may be gathered and its explanation found.
The changes in the wind noted during eclipses will also be observed to
ascertain whether the sudden cooling of the atmosphere by the passage
of the moon’s shadow is a sufficient explanation of the so-called
‘eclipse wind.’ Those who know nothing about theories of the corona or
of the ‘eclipse wind’ will be interested in the more obvious phenomena
and in some cases, in the opportunity to take such a photograph as can
not be duplicated in this country until 1918. The most favored ones are
those who live in the fifty-mile belt of the total eclipse, but the sun
will be seen nine tenths covered in the eastern and southern States,
and will be six tenths covered to those in the least favorable locality
of the United States, the extreme northwest. The proper methods of
observing and photographing the corona were described in Professor
Bigelow’s article on the eclipse in the May number of the POPULAR
SCIENCE MONTHLY.
[J] In ‘Science,’ Apr. 27th and May 11th.
Transcribers’ Notes
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.
Page 162: “ominum gatherum” likely is a misprint for “omnium gatherum”.
Page 167: “resistent” was printed that way twice in this article. In a
different article, it was twice printed “resistant”.
Page 207: Unmatched closing quotation mark deleted after “from other
men.”
Page 211: “corrolary” was printed that way.
Page 214: “calcium carbid” was printed that way.
Page 220: The first occurrence of “American Museum of Natural History”
was printed without the “of”; the second with it.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Popular Science Monthly, June, 1900, by Various