Until very recently it had come to be a commonly accepted view in
America that the civilization of a nation is directly proportional to
the amount it expends for education, and inversely proportional to the
amount it expends for war. The budgets of European countries have given
Americans good reason to accept this standard, since its application
gave the most gratifying evidence of our great intellectual and moral
advancement. Less than three years ago the President of the National
Educational Association proudly exclaimed: “England, six to one for
war; Russia, thirty-eight to one for war; America, four to one for
education!”
Since that time our country has become involved in war projects, from
which we can hardly hope it will withdraw, that have increased our
expenditure for war four times, and a policy has been inaugurated
which, if persisted in, will certainly almost at once reverse our
boasted ratio, making it “four to one for war”! This course has been
supported by a great body of our people. Even our Christian ministers
have committed “The White Man’s Burden” to memory, and breathe never a
whisper of the sixth commandment. If, as has been held by all wise and
good men, the victories of peace are more worthy to be sung than those
of war; if the ability to avoid quarrels or to settle them without
force of arms is nobler than that which achieves military success; if
true enlightenment and education make for peace and not for war, then
our law of direct and inverse proportion has lately been scandalously
dishonored.
If we have expended so much for education and at the same time have
lowered our ideal of national greatness, something must be wrong with
that education. If the sharpening and quickening of the intellect are
accompanied by a blunting and atrophy of the moral sense, the best and
the worst thing that can be said of our school system is that it gives
daily rations to hundreds of thousands of teachers. Evidence of disease
of the national conscience must raise in the minds of thoughtful men
grave doubts as to the sufficiency of our education to “insure national
progress, prosperity, and honor,” whether because of inherent weakness
of the system or because of the strength of the forces opposed to it.
Has our system of education, then, failed to elevate our national
character? He who would answer this question in the affirmative would
be a pessimist indeed. Incalculable “general good” has come to us, we
think, by the agency of our schools. Without them our civilization
could not be so far advanced as it is; our national life might have
ended long since. In every crisis, however black has been the storm,
however fierce and ominous the lightning flash, there has followed
in good time the gentle rain, soothing and allaying our fear, and
giving renewed promise of prosperity and peace. It is the sober second
thought, we are in the habit of saying, which saves us, which takes the
helm and sheers us away from the half-hidden reefs in our first mad
course. It is not. It is the sober first thought which has redeemed us
from destruction time after time--the sober first thought of the few
who are truly educated, who have looked below the surface of things and
considered the hidden and obscure results, who have weighed the right
and wrong and stood immovable for the right. It is the counsel of such
men which has fallen like the rain that follows the first bursting of
the storm, and has given us courage and power to restrain ourselves and
to face our hardest duty. For such men in our national affairs we may
reverently offer thanks, and for an educational system which is partly,
at least, responsible for them we may have sincere praise. But our
safety must always depend upon the presence of such men, strong enough
in numbers and in influence to control each difficult and dangerous
situation which may threaten us. Our work as teachers is not faithful
if we do not increase this number and strengthen this influence. And if
such men have been overpowered in the important events of the past two
years, if they have been entirely ignored, or if they have been taunted
and ridiculed, we have reached a dangerous crisis, and our sacred
duty is to stop and take our bearings. If we have manifested certain
national traits hitherto scarcely suspected, and now unwillingly
confessed, every motive of patriotism and of prudence should impel us
to study our case, that we may effectively prescribe for it.
Are there not, then, certain signs which we may all agree are
discernible? Have not the waves of powerful feeling which have swept
over us, the storms of acrimonious debate which have raged in our
papers and forums, the pæans of praise which we have chanted at our
“peace jubilees” and hero parties, revealed the prevalence and rapid
growth of certain sentiments which we may all, without regard to
political belief, clearly recognize? I do not in this place raise
the question of the political wisdom or simple justice of the course
which the country has taken in its international relations. I do not
now challenge any belief as to these matters which has been formed
thoughtfully, honestly, manfully; but I do maintain that the past
few months have left lessons for thoughtful, honest men to unite in
studying.
Probably the most striking phenomenon which we have witnessed has
been the tremendous display of excited feeling. However careful our
national leaders may have been, however honest in basing their actions
on what they considered sufficient information, or however careless
and dishonest, no man who has read any considerable number of our
papers, who has listened to the clamor of the crowds, can doubt that
the force of blind passion has been in hundreds of thousands of men the
dominant force. If during the war with Spain you stood in the cheering,
surging crowds before the bulletin boards, if you heard storms of
hisses greet the name of the innocent boy-King of Spain, or noted the
cheer of triumph which applauded the capture of a lumber scow by an
armored cruiser, you will have no difficulty in agreeing with me. You
will smile at the idea of imputing to such men the credit of serious
thought. On the birthday of the greatest American, whose life was a
message of liberty--“who,” said a great Spanish orator, “laid down
his life at the foot of his finished work”--our papers printed jokes
about the mistake of the Filipinos in trying to fight Uncle Sam, and
in our cities, at least, the report of their slaughter was received
with exultation. Whether they were civilized or not, whether they
were misled or not, whether they were ignorant of America’s carefully
concealed intention or not, the killing of thousands of men who thought
they were fighting for their freedom, who faced machine guns, and who
crawled away into the bushes to die for the cause for which they had
fought, is hardly a subject for jokes or for exultation, when people
are governed by reason and not by feeling alone. When the Maine was
sunk in Havana Harbor her captain, in a notable dispatch telling of
the disaster, urged a suspension of judgment until the facts should
be known. Facts! In an hour our battle-cry was, “Remember the Maine!”
Under that motto, within a few days, one of the great Chicago dailies
(the Inter-Ocean) hung out the pennant of the wrecked battle ship and
enlistment signs. Who was right--the Maine’s captain or the paper?
Which appeal meant safety, and which danger? Our own commission
investigated the wreck. After an examination, which was kept entirely
within our own hands, the commission reported that the ship had been
destroyed from the outside, but that there was no evidence to fix the
responsibility. Did we fix the responsibility? Though the investigation
board could find no evidence, though reason said that the destroyer
of the Maine, were he Spain’s own king, was Spain’s worst enemy, we
forgot the cause of deliverance, and went into battle with the cry
of vengeance on our lips. This is not a statement of sentiment but
of fact. Your motives, or the President’s, or mine may have been
pure--your opinion may have been unprejudiced--but these things around
us we all saw and all heard. We know that many men were carried away
by their feelings, and did not think. We know that their feelings grew
into a prejudice which was absolutely certain to distort the facts and
to drive them far from the truth if they ever came to the point of
thinking. The ears of the multitude have been closed to all counsels,
however wise; their eyes to all consequences, however fatal; their
minds to all logic, however clear and simple.
We may consider more briefly, but not less carefully, other tendencies
which have been shown, seeing many of them in the facts which have
already been referred to.
From the fact that passion has so largely supplanted reason in moving
many of our people we have developed some wonderful instances of
credulity. The sequence is most natural. When men become unwilling, or
uncaring, to ascertain the truth for themselves they inevitably display
a great willingness to swallow any statement which may obligingly be
offered them by some one else. So, with half of the Spanish navy sunk
and the other half accounted for, we spent hours of glorious, wild
conjecture, in the dear dead days beyond recall, listening to the awful
sound of cannonading in the Windward Passage, which reached us by the
way of Mole St. Nicholas. We believe what is sufficiently exciting to
be true.
Related to the phenomena we have noticed is another--the evident loss
of individuality--of moral and mental independence. How striking is
it to compare some of our newspaper editorials of to-day with those of
two years ago in the same papers, and to see how their writers have
been dragged, step by step, into line with those whom they formerly
opposed! They have not changed their faith; they have deserted it. For
them there is the defense of business necessity; but if you will to-day
talk to many men who gave you their opinions a few months ago, you will
find that they have broken down and given up--surrendered to superior
numbers. In our bulletin crowds we have all seen the spirit of the mob,
which meets the newcomer indifferent or doubtful, thrills him with the
mysterious influence of the men packed around and against him, and
sends him away an irresponsible monomaniac.
With such forces at work, it is inevitable that we should act, or
be ready to act, quickly. Why not? Reflection takes time. To learn
the facts fully and certainly takes time. To feel--how long? To take
another man’s word--how long? To give way to a thousand other men--how
long? We have all seen men cheering our war with Spain only yesterday.
To-day Austria seems friendly to the queen regent. We’ll whip Austria,
too. To-morrow Germany is impudent to Dewey. We shall be ready by
night to whip Germany. If Europe combines against us, how long shall
we consider the cost of such a war as that? Write it on the bulletin
board--the crowd will be ready before the writing is done.
Near to this is the spirit of fickleness, of inconstancy, which
has been frequently manifested. We have not only made up our minds
on insufficient evidence, but we have unmade them in a hurry on
no evidence at all, showing a startling lack of confidence in our
own judgments and of respect for them. Attention might well have
been called, in a former paragraph, to the small amount of our
real knowledge of the character of Aguinaldo. On what petty and
inconsequential evidence have we first called him a great liberator,
and now a scheming politician! Men who could hardly read his most
remarkable appeal to this country do not hesitate to call him an
unprincipled, conceited, ignorant barbarian: what reliable information
have they received with reference to his motives? They have found no
trouble in changing their opinions. In the past few months we have been
mercurial almost beyond mercurial Frenchmen. Think of the revulsion of
feeling that followed Hobson across the continent; and, more recently,
of our sad lack of self-restraint shown by the vicious and ungrounded
attack upon Admiral Dewey, only a few days after he had been the object
of the greatest display of hero worship America has ever seen. And how
many important changes may we count, if we carry back our comparison to
the time before the war?
But by so doing we uncover another significant fact. We find that
many of the ideas so quickly thrown aside are those which have been
the foundation principles, and bear the prestige of great names. We
have held it our special mission to show to warlike nations that a
power which stands for peace may be greater than theirs; and, alas!
many of our leaders, and our people, too, are crying that the time
has come--has _now_ come--for us to take our place among the great
nations of the earth. We have pitied the war-taxed peoples of Europe,
and offered them a home where they would not have to buy powder and
guns. And now we are eagerly rushing to take up the burden from which
they have been fleeing to us. We have held that great standing armies
are unnecessary and dangerous, and already we have quadrupled ours. We
have declared our determination to avoid foreign entanglements, and
now we are in the very heart of the sputtering coil in the far East.
With those who have thoughtfully decided that these changes have been
necessary or wise I have no wish to debate now, but we must all unite
in recognizing the spirit which has been shown, and is now shown, in
speaking of our past positions. The principles which for years have
been our rules of national conduct have been thrown aside in a day,
scoffed at, mocked. And we smile at the names of the great men who have
announced those principles and defended them, or we flatly declare
they are out of date. We once listened with reverent and full hearts
when our wise men spoke to us of freedom, and recalled our national
traditions and taught national righteousness. Now we laugh at swaddling
clothes outgrown, outused, and smile at the innocent simplicity of our
fathers. We lift our brows at the name of Washington: we say he was a
fine old gentleman, and his Farewell Address, considering everything,
was a very creditable paper, and well adapted to the exigencies of
the time in which it was written. And this carnival of irreverence is
holding not only in our streets, but in our newspaper offices, in our
pulpits, and in some of our higher institutions of learning.
These are the phenomena of our recent national experience which I
desire you to consider. There may be other unfavorable indications.
There may be others, and many more, which are hopeful and encouraging.
But these clearly warn us of danger. Furthermore, I insist that
whatever may have been your sympathy with the Administration, or your
opposition to it; however numerous the men of your acquaintance who
have been free from such influences, you must have seen them at work
in a dangerously large part of our population. Even if that part has,
in your judgment, reached the right position, you must recognize the
ominous character of their method of reaching it.
Now, what has this to do with us? What connection has it with our
work? If science teaching has any educational value, the most definite
and direct connection. I shall not do you the injustice of supposing
that any tendency I have named did not at once bear to you its proper
suggestion. If it has failed, the fault has been in the presentation
of a very simple matter. For every perilous tendency I have mentioned
has its life in direct violation of the essential principles of science
study, and may be restrained by extending the knowledge and habitual
use of those principles.
I do not wish to claim for science work an unwarranted value in this
respect, nor to deny the influence of other subjects in bringing about
a moral evolution. It is true that history warns us by examples, that
it points us to the failure of free governments in whose steps to
destruction many of us seem only too willing to follow. It is true
that we can learn from Rome the results of imperialism; from France,
of irreverence; from Spain, of tyranny. In other fields of learning we
may find other lessons of present value. But to meet the dangers that
just now assail us, the national weaknesses that I have enumerated, the
scientific studies seem especially fitted.
“The great peculiarity of scientific training,” says Huxley, “that
in virtue of which it can not be replaced by any other discipline
whatsoever, is the bringing of the mind directly into contact
with fact, and practicing the intellect in the completest form of
induction--that is to say, in drawing conclusions from particular
facts made known by immediate observation of Nature.” “The bringing of
the mind into contact with fact.” This means the recognition of the
existence of incontrovertible truth. The dawning knowledge of such
truth must bring with it the consciousness that much that we have
always accepted as truth is open to question. Thus every belief, no
matter what its nature, is in time subjected to examination. If it
stand, it stands because it is able to bear this searching scrutiny and
to answer fairly the questions of honest doubt. Honest doubt may be the
result of honest reasoning; it must absolutely demand honest reasoning
to satisfy it. This exercise of the rational faculty, then, depends
upon and results from an awakened love of truth. How directly do these
most obvious principles of scientific investigation bear upon the facts
we have been considering! How flatly do they forbid us to be carried
away into excesses! Let us apply them briefly, point by point.
If love of truth and appeal to reason mean anything at all, they mean,
first of all, eternal opposition to the power of unthinking passion--of
blind feeling. They mean that every sentiment should have a rational
cause and a reasonable object. They do not forbid feeling, but they
require thinking.
Secondly, they defy prejudice. They call for the open court, the fair
trial, the impartial judge. They say “No” to worthless witnesses and to
packed juries.
Thirdly, they demand a sufficient amount of evidence. True science is
the enemy of wildcat theories and reckless generalizations. “The United
States has always come out on top in every war!” cries one. “There’s
no danger that we’ll ever be whipped.” “I don’t like foreigners,” says
another. “I had a Frenchman for a neighbor once, and he was dishonest.
I’m in favor of shutting out foreigners.” Such reasoning as this--and
how astoundingly common it is!--must be cut down at the root by the
habit of trained induction.
Fourthly, the love of truth and appeal to reason, which are in the
very grain of the scientific mind and heart, laugh at credulity. They
do not scoff at authority, or reject it. But they say: “We must know.
If we learn from you, we must know that you know. Who are you? How do
you know? If you know, you will not offer us absurd contradictions of
reason and accepted truth.”
Again, they make their abode with the man who can receive them at his
own intellectual fireside. They require that his mind be his own, that
his opinions be his own, that his acts be his own, and that he defend
his property in them, have pride in them, and stand by them.
Again, they demand sufficient time for care, for securing the evidence
and for weighing it, and for considering its effect. They demand the
completed work, and they reject all results which do not come from time
employed, but are hasty guesses.
And they are not tossed about like a wave of the sea. They do command
to prove all things, but they also exhort to hold fast that which is
good. First, to what is good of our own and in ourselves. It is well
enough to throw away our guesses, quickly made and often wrong. But the
fruit of honest investigation, the conclusions of careful reasoning on
sufficient information, these are the science student’s riches. He may
add to them or replace some of them by better, but he will not throw
them away at a suggestion, or trade them to the first speculator who
offers something else. He will not have a supply of new beliefs for
every day, or for every month, or for every year. Second, we should
hold fast the proved good which we have received from others. And we
should honor and revere those who have opened the way for us to the
truth--those who have above other men possessed the power of reason
and beneficently used it for the world. The spirit of science, which
sets infinite value on knowledge, can not fail to teach reverence for
those who have made it possible for us to know.
At every point, then, the scientist opposes the tendencies I have
deplored. Against them all he must stand, by training and by instinct.
Against them all he would teach others to stand, by giving to them
his own training. Against them all we science teachers may arm our
countrymen if we are faithful to our duty. But this end of our work is
defeated if our students are allowed to indulge in careless statements
of what they see and do; if they are permitted to use exaggerated
description or inaccurate terms. Right here is the crucial test of
the teacher’s honesty of purpose. The careful examination of written
descriptions and reports, the enforced correction of every inaccurate
detail, the personal consultation--all require untiring labor, and time
never allotted in the schedule. But such work carried out has its own
reward. The student first respects the truth, then learns to love it.
He conscientiously avoids the vague, the doubtful, the unsubstantiated.
If in our schools we might insure to every boy and girl this attitude
of mind, this desire for strict veracity, we should have started him
well on the way to correct judgments and wise conduct; we should have
implanted in his nature the first elements of good citizenship. As
Tennyson says:
“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncalled for) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear,
And because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
* * * * *
The fish called Lepidosiren (_Lepidosiren paradoxica_) is one of
the only three still existing survivors of the once prominent
group of _Dipnoi_, or lung fishes, which are characterized by the
possession of well-developed lungs in addition to their gills. Mr.
Graham Kerr, who spent several months in the swamps of the Gran
Chaco, South America, a habitat of these fishes, describes them as
living among the dense vegetation of the swamp, swimming in eel
fashion, or clambering through the mass of vegetation by means of
their leglike limbs. In the dry season they retire into the mud,
and breathe entirely by means of their lungs. When the wet season
begins they are set free, and at once prepare to spawn. They lay
their eggs in burrows at the bottom of the swamp, where the eggs
develop into larvæ. The phenomena of their development are of
special interest, because it takes place in seclusion, away from
the disturbing features due to adaptation to varied surroundings.
It has been discovered that the young lepidosirens become white and
transparent during the hours of darkness.
Editor’s Table.
_THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES._
Good use was made of a Washington celebration at Oberlin College, Ohio,
by the chief speaker of the occasion, the Rev. A. A. Berle, to utter
words that are peculiarly needed at the present time. His subject was
Popular American Fallacies, and among these he noted the following:
That Anglo-Saxondom is identical with the kingdom of God; that national
glory and power can supply the place of national character; that new
occasions always teach _new_ duties; and that political alliances may
do away with the necessity for “a dual alliance,” as he expressed it,
“between the people and God.”
These particular fallacies, in our opinion, were happily chosen. There
is a great deal of silly talk current about the incomparable glories
and unimaginable destinies of the Anglo-Saxon race; and it never seems
to occur to those who indulge in such talk that a profound sense of
one’s greatness is very far from being a sure sign of greatness.
The greatest characters are the simplest and least boastful. Their
greatness is so native to them that they are scarcely conscious of it;
and they leave it to others to sing their praises. It is presuming
altogether too intimate an acquaintance with the designs of Providence
to claim that any race in particular is charged, above all others,
with carrying those designs into effect. Who knows what reservoirs of
moral and intellectual force may reside in nations and tribes whose
world-action has been very obscure as yet? Dr. Arnold, of Rugby,
thought that much of high value for civilization lay dormant in the
negro race, and it is too soon to say he was mistaken. Then, who knows
what the Slavonic race may bring forth? Who can calculate the future
of the vast human hive known as China? And, after all, what has any
nation got to do except to behave itself, be it great or small, famous
or of no great repute? How is it in the community? Do we admire great
men who swagger, who boast of their wealth, their strength, their
courage, or their virtue? A little quiet consideration will persuade
any man that there is one law for all nations alike--the law of
justice and humanity--and that the greatest nation, according to any
true conception of greatness, is the one which exemplifies that law
most perfectly in its domestic and foreign policy. The surest sign
of greatness in a nation, we venture to say, is that it should hate
war--not dread it, but hate it.
It is a singular thing that any but the most light-headed portion
of the community should fall into the second fallacy which the
speaker mentioned--that national glory and power can take the place
of national character. A nation requires a true heart, an honest
self-consciousness, just as much as an individual, and time will avenge
national misdoings just as surely as it will those of individuals.
No numbers, nor any amount of huzzaing or factitious enthusiasm, can
make a vicious policy safe. You may win victories with chariots and
horsemen, but to enjoy the fruits of peace there must be a dominant
love of justice, and that is what war does not tend to promote. It is
also very true, as the speaker said, that there are not many _new_
duties to be learned in this age of the world. There is enough of
moral truth taught in old Hesiod’s Works and Days to make any society
now existing a good deal better than it is. When people talk of new
duties they generally mean some new harum-scarum enterprise. The old
duty would be good enough if they would only consider it closely and
follow it faithfully. The Rev. Mr. Berle has spoken words in season;
and it would be well if all who are like minded would unceasingly
proclaim the same doctrines, if perchance they may sink into the heart
of the masses, and give to this great people a public policy founded on
righteousness and the love of peace.
_A HUMILIATING SITUATION._
“How far, O Catiline, when all is said and done, are you going to abuse
our patience?” So said the great Roman orator on a certain famous
occasion. Our Catiline is no individual man; it is the party system
which has inflicted on us the Puerto Rican disgrace. It was obvious to
the common sense of every one that, having laid our hands on the island
of Puerto Rico, there was no decent course to take save to make it,
for all practical purposes, an integral portion of the Union. We had
cut it off from the market it enjoyed in Spain, and left it to contend
with the hostile tariffs of other countries--were we going, in addition
to that, to make it a stranger to the land that had seized it, and
subject its products to our own high scale of duties? The President,
in his message to Congress, conceiving the proposition to be almost
self-evident, had declared that it was “our plain duty to abolish all
customs tariffs between the United States and Puerto Rico, and give
her products free access to our markets.” So thought nearly every
disinterested citizen, and yet what have we since seen? The President,
terrorized by the cry of party unity in danger, repudiates his former
emphatic declaration, and gives his approval to a measure which
virtually makes our unfortunate possession a foreign country. With the
“free access to our markets” which the President had promised, the
island would have entered on a new career of prosperity; but with its
leading industries weighed down under an impost of fifteen per cent,
there is nothing in view but commercial stagnation and general poverty.
That the island has already languished under American rule--our
revolutionary forefathers did not expect that their descendants
would so soon go into the “ruling” business--the most disinterested
witnesses attest. A leading journal of this city, The Herald, prints in
heavy-faced type the following statement of a correspondent:
“American military officials told me at the outset that the year and a
half of American sovereignty had been a blight on the island. This was
not the echo of Spanish or of Puerto Rican feelings. They spoke their
own views with soldierly frankness and sometimes with a word of regret
for their own position. Their talk was more pointed than when filtered
through official channels.”
It is in these circumstances that our Legislature, at the instance of
a benevolent President, decides to refund to the people of the island
two million dollars of duties collected in our ports on their products.
Our tariff system breeds poverty in the population it oppresses, and
then we rush to their assistance with a largess. They ask for justice
and we offer them alms--alms for which the correspondent already quoted
says he can not find a single individual who is grateful. We rob the
Puerto Rican Peter to pay our own tobacco-growing Paul; and then we rob
the whole community in order to pay back Peter. And, strange to say,
some of us feel very virtuous over the business. The countenance of
the President glows with satisfaction over the thought of all the good
he is doing. For our part, we view the matter in a different light. The
money will, of course, meet certain expenses of government in Puerto
Rico; but there is reason to fear that it will do as much to pauperize
the island in one direction as the restriction of its trade will do
in another. What the Puerto Ricans want is not alms, but commercial
liberty. The repayment of this money will not stimulate their trade; it
will not stimulate anything except their helplessness. It is an open
question whether they will suffer more by our protectionist greed or
by our wishy-washy sentimentality. Meantime what are we to think of
the party system whose exigencies place us in so ridiculous a position
before the world? How long shall it abuse our patience?
Fragments of Science.
=Ventilation of Tunnels.=--The question of the ventilation of tunnels
forms the subject of a series of articles, by M. Raymond Godfernaux,
published recently in _Le Génie Civil_. The principal sources of
definite information, upon which the discussion of M. Godfernaux is
based, are the reports of the committee on ventilation of tunnels of
the Metropolitan Railway of London, and of the commission appointed
by the Italian Minister of Public Works to investigate the tunnels of
the railways of the department of the Adriatic. Although the vitiation
of the air in a tunnel may proceed from three sources--i. e., the
lighting, the respiration of the passengers, and the combustion of
the fuel in the engines--yet the two former sources are insignificant
compared with the latter, which alone need be considered. The principal
products of combustion which are injurious are carbonic acid, carbonic
oxide, and sulphurous acid. Of these it is found that the proportion of
carbonic oxide should not exceed 0.01 per cent, which corresponds to
0.13 per cent of carbonic acid in excess of the normal proportion of
0.03 per cent and to 0.00027 per cent of sulphurous acid. In practice
it is found that if the total proportion of carbonic acid be limited
to 0.15 per cent the proportions of the other gases will be well
within the comfort and danger limits. This is much lower than is often
attained in crowded auditoriums, where the proportion of carbonic acid
sometimes reaches 0.4 to 0.5 per cent, but in such cases there is no
carbonic oxide produced, while in the case of tunnels traversed by
steam locomotives we may assume that the carbonic oxide will be about
1 to 13 of the carbonic acid, and the sulphurous acid about 1 to 440.
Assuming a given limit of deterioration of the air, it would be easy
to devise a system of ventilation if it were possible to treat the
tunnel as if it were a closed room or controllable space. In practice,
however, the conditions are peculiar. The space to be ventilated is
a long, narrow passage, usually open only at the ends, and traversed
periodically often almost continuously, by trains in one or both
directions, these trains emitting the objectionable gases and also
disturbing the air currents best adapted to proper ventilation. How
best to reconcile these conflicting conditions forms the problem under
consideration. Where there are but few trains it has been proposed
to close the ends of the tunnel by doors, and provide a fan exhaust
or pressure system, but this method is obviously limited in its
applications. The practical conditions which must be considered are
those in which frequent trains in opposite directions pass through the
tunnel, and these conditions M. Godfernaux has analyzed graphically
in a very interesting manner. Assuming a double-track tunnel eight
hundred metres (a metre contains 39.37 inches) in length, with an
exhausting ventilator placed in the middle and with trains of a given
gas-producing capacity passing on each track every three minutes, he
constructs a diagram showing how the composition of the atmosphere of
the tunnel varies at successive points, and how, by an examination of
the diagram thus made, it is possible to discover the maximum vitiation
of the air, and consequently the extent to which the conditions are
satisfied. By one or two such constructions any such problem may be
solved to a degree quite within the limits of practical work, and
the effect of various systems of ventilation compared. M. Godfernaux
discusses various systems of ventilation, including those involving
the use of shafts, fan blowers and exhausters, and air jets, and
concludes with a description of the Saccardo system, in use in the
Apennine tunnel of the Bologna-Pistoia line, and to the St. Gothard
Tunnel. While all this investigation and discussion is of much value,
it certainly seems as if the true remedy lies not so much in the
removal of deleterious gases as in the absence of their production.
The substitution of electric traction avoids altogether the fouling of
the air of tunnels and subways, and electric locomotives are already
used in the Baltimore Tunnel in the United States and elsewhere, and it
seems as if this remedy is the true one to be applied in all cases.
* * * * *
=Liquid Air.=--The following warning appears in The Engineering and
Mining Journal of March 3d: “The advertisements which are now appearing
in the papers all over the country of companies which are to furnish
liquid air on a large scale must be accepted with a great deal of
caution. The public mind has been very adroitly worked up for the
reception of these by lectures, paragraphs in the press, and other
well-understood methods. Undoubtedly liquid air possesses some valuable
properties, and many striking experiments can be performed with it. It
is not by any means certain yet that it can be prepared, transported,
and used economically on a commercial scale, or that the difficulties
in the way have been overcome. We do not say that they may not be
overcome in the future; but to talk, as the advertisements do, of the
certainty that liquid air will soon largely replace steam in furnishing
motive power is going entirely too far. Such assertions have no present
basis of fact to warrant any one in making them. The liquid-air people
have a great deal to do yet before they can establish their claims or
carry on business on a scale that will warrant the organization of
ten-million-dollar companies. The question of validity of patents is
also quite an open one. It is doubtful if there is any valid patent on
this subject.”
* * * * *
=Taka-Diastase.=--The following is taken from an interesting article,
by W. E. Stone and H. E. Wright, in The Journal of the American
Chemical Society: “Taka-diastase is, so far as known, somewhat similar
to malt-diastase in its chemical character, viz.: a highly nitrogenous
substance, readily soluble in water, and dependent upon certain
conditions of temperature for its maximum activity. Its action is also
affected by alkalies and acids. It is produced as the result of the
growth of a species of mold (_Eurotium oryzæ_, Ahlberg) upon rice,
maize, wheat bran, etc. For its production, as at present practiced in
this country, wheat bran is steamed and, after cooling, is sown with
the spores of the fungus. After twenty-four hours in culture rooms,
at a temperature of about 25° C., the fungous growth becomes visible.
In forty or fifty hours the content in diastatic material has reached
the maximum, and further growth of the fungus is checked by cooling.
The material, now consisting of the bran felted together with fungus
mycelium, is called ‘taka-koji.’ It may be mixed with grain or starchy
materials in the same manner as malt is used, and, like malt, will
speedily convert the starch into fermentable sugars. An aqueous extract
of the mass may be used for a similar purpose. For the preparation of a
pure product, which, however, is not necessary for ordinary industrial
purposes, the aqueous extract is concentrated by evaporation, and on
the addition of alcohol the diastatic substance may be precipitated
as a yellowish powder, easily soluble in water, of stable keeping
qualities, and possessed of an unusual power of converting starch into
sugar. The medicinal preparation above mentioned is obtained in this
way, and represents a fairly pure form of the diastatic principle. This
bears the name of ‘taka-diastase.’”
* * * * *
=Professor Agassiz’s Investigations on Coral Islands.=--Having steamed
and observed for twenty-five hundred miles among the Paumotu Islands,
Prof. Alexander Agassiz says, in a second letter from the Albatross
Expedition, published in the American Journal of Science, that he has
seen nothing tending to show that there has anywhere been a subsidence,
but that the condition of the islands does not seem to him capable
of explanation on any theory except that they have been formed in an
area of elevation. All the islands examined are composed of a tertiary
coralliferous limestone, which has been elevated to a greater or less
extent above the level of the sea, and then planed down by atmospheric
agencies and submarine erosion, and the appearance of this old rock
is very different from that of the modern reef rock. In these islands
the rims of the great atolls, after having been denuded to the level
of the sea, are built up again from the material of their two faces,
so that a kind of conglomerate, or breccia, or pudding stone, or beach
rock is found on all the reef flats. On the lagoon side sand bars
grow into small islands and gradually become covered with vegetation.
Whenever the material supplied from both sides is very abundant the
land ring becomes more or less solid; the islets become islands,
separated by narrow or wider cuts, until they at length form the large
islands, which seem at first to be a continuous land around the rim of
the lagoon, while they are often really much dissected. In time water
ceases to pass through the channels, and only the marks of them are
left. Few if any of the lagoons appear to be shut off from the sea
as Dana and other writers have supposed. They simply have not boat
passages. Unlike other coral regions, the Paumotu reefs seem to bear
only a scanty life.
* * * * *
=“Winking.”=--No satisfactory determination has been made of the reason
we wink. Some suppose that the descent and return of the lid over the
eye serves to sweep or wash it off; others that covering of the eye
gives it a rest from the labor of vision, if only for an inappreciable
instant. This view borrows some force from the fact that the record
of winking is considerably used by experimental physiologists to
help measure the fatigue which the eye suffers. In another line of
investigation Herr S. Garten has attempted to measure the length of
time occupied by the different phases of a wink. He used a specially
arranged photographic apparatus, and affixed a piece of white paper
to the edge of the eyelid for a mark. He found that the lid descends
quickly, and rests a little at the bottom of its movement, after which
it rises, but more slowly than it fell. The mean duration of the
downward movement was from seventy-five to ninety-one thousandths of
a second; the rest with the eye shut lasted variously, the shortest
durations being fifteen hundredths of a second with one subject and
seventeen hundredths with another; and the third phase of the wink,
the rising of the lid, took seventeen hundredths of a second more,
making the entire duration of the wink about forty hundredths, or four
tenths of a second. The interruption is not long enough to interfere
with distinct vision. M.V. Henri says, in _L’Année Psychologique_, that
different persons wink differently--some often, others rarely; some
in groups of ten or so at a time, when they rest a while; and others
regularly, once only at a time. The movement is modified by the degree
of attention. Periods of close interest, when we wink hardly at all,
may be followed by a speedy making up for lost time by rapid winking
when the tension is relieved.
* * * * *
=An Ingenious Method of Locating an Obstruction.=--The Engineering
Record gives the following interesting account of the scientific
solving of a practical commercial problem: “The pneumatic dispatch tube
for the delivery of mail between the main Philadelphia post office
and a branch office at Chestnut and Third Streets is a cast-iron pipe
buried below the surface of the street, and in it small cylindrical
carriers, six inches in diameter, are propelled from end to end by air
pressure. At one time a carrier became lodged at some unknown point
in the tube, and to remove the obstruction it was desirable to locate
its position as closely as possible before digging down to the pipe.
This was satisfactorily accomplished by firing a pistol at one end of
the tube; its report was echoed from the obstruction, and indicated
its position by the time required for the transmission of the sound.
The pistol was fired in a hole in the side of the pneumatic tube near
the end, which was capped and had a rubber-hose connection to the
recording apparatus. The end of the rubber hose terminated in a chamber
closed by a diaphragm about five inches in diameter, which had a stylus
attached to it. A cock in the middle of the rubber hose was partly
closed to reduce the force of the explosion on the diaphragm, and the
pistol was fired. The sound-wave immediately produced a movement of the
diaphragm, causing the stylus to make a mark on the record diagram.
The hose cock was then fully opened, and when the sound-wave had
traveled to the obstruction and been reflected back it again moved the
diaphragm, and caused the stylus to make a second mark on the diagram.
The lapse of time had been automatically recorded on the same diagram,
so to determine the distance it was only necessary to note the exact
interval of time between the direct and reflected reports, divide it
by two, and multiply the quotient by the velocity of sound under the
existing conditions.” The obstruction was indicated at 1,537 feet from
the diaphragm. Excavations were made at this place, and the carrier
was found nearly at the calculated point. The limits of distance at
which this method is applicable have not yet been determined, but Mr.
Batcheller, the engineer of the Pneumatic Tube Company and the deviser
of the above ingenious expedient, has found that in a tube 43.3 inches
in diameter a pistol shot will vibrate a sensitive diaphragm at a
distance of 65,129 feet; decreasing the diameter of the tube decreases
the distance over which the pistol shot will act.
* * * * *
=Diseased Meat in Paris.=--The police of Paris, says the Lancet, have
just laid hands on a vast fraudulent organization for evading the
precautionary measures drawn up by the authorities for inspecting the
meat distributed for consumption in the suburbs of Paris. Both for
Paris and the suburbs all animals destined for food have to be killed
in public slaughterhouses, where the strictest watch is kept by the
municipal veterinary surgeons, who forbid the delivery to the butchers
of any meat which exhibits the slightest suspicious signs. Elaborate
regulations have been laid down as to the various diseases which render
meat unfit for the food of man, and naturally enough tuberculosis is
the complaint most rigorously watched for. The swindlers who have
been arrested made up a vast organization which used to buy up from
the farms of the eastern provinces and even in Germany such animals
as, owing to disease, would have been refused for slaughter at the
abattoirs, and, moreover, they bought them dirt cheap. These animals
were then conveyed in regular herds to a small place near Paris and
killed in sheds built at the bottom of an old quarry. Under cover of
night the meat was taken away by the accomplice butchers and resold
in the various suburban shops. In connection with this clandestine
slaughterhouse the firm had a kind of cemetery, where those animals
were buried the meat of which was too bad for even the swindlers to
risk its sale in the market. Ivry was the place where the fraud was
discovered, and the official inquiry shows that the organization was
singularly complete. It is extraordinary that the slaughterhouse,
which was in full work, should never have attracted the attention of
the villagers, but it must be remembered that all killing was done by
night and that the slaughtermen were all Germans who did not understand
a word of French, and were therefore unable to engage in imprudent
conversation with the neighbors.
* * * * *
=How Aluminum is made.=--In a paper read before the Manchester Junior
Electrical Engineers, J. H. Henderson describes the two commercial
methods of making aluminum: The agent which has made aluminum a
commercial product is electricity. This is how electrolysis produces it
(by one successful method): In a metal, carbon-lined crucible having
two carbon electrodes, one of which acts as anode and the other as
cathode, are put the following ingredients: Fluoride of calcium, 234
parts by weight; double fluoride of cryolite, 421 parts by weight;
fluoride of aluminum, 845 parts by weight. To these add three to
four per cent of a suitable chloride--for example, calcium chloride.
To this add alumina sufficient to form a very stiff mixture. Before
electrolysis can begin the above are fused by means of heat, which
should not exceed 1,210° F. The heat is obtained from a furnace heated
by gas, coke, or charcoal, care being taken that no gases from the
furnace enter the crucible. The bath fused, the electrodes are dipped
into it, the current switched on, and the metal is deposited (in the
best and largest of these crucibles) at the rate of one pound per
five electrical horse-power hours. The current pressure required is
six to eight volts, at a density of one and a half ampères per square
inch. The metal from time to time is removed from the crucible by
means of a siphon or a ladle, care being taken to remove as little of
the haloid salts as possible. There is another method of extraction
equally successful with this, but also more economical. In this other
method a set of similar ingredients are placed in a crucible having
one or more vertically movable carbon electrodes, which are used as
one, or a collective anode, respectively. The crucible, though lined
principally with carbon, has some metal exposed to act as a cathode at
the beginning of the process, this to generate heat enough to fuse the
bath, after which the anode is placed so that the extracted aluminum
acts as a cathode. The molten metal is from time to time run out of a
tap-hole into a mold, and thence cast into ingots, or granulated by
being poured into cold water. The same particulars as to results apply
to this crucible furnace process also, only that not nearly so much
of the bath is wasted in it, and the metal needs less purifying when
molten. There are, also, no loss of time and money from the use of gas,
coke, or charcoal, and of an extra furnace in this method.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
=“A Mechanical Bootblack.”=--A bootblacking apparatus is one of the
latest developments of the nickel-in-the-slot machine, a specimen of
which is undergoing trial in a French public garden. The customer drops
his coin--in the present case a ten centime, or a two-and-a-half-cent
piece--into the receptacle, which opens the way to a compartment
where a brush cleans his boots; he next puts his feet into a second
compartment and has them blackened; and then into a third, where they
are polished. The operation takes about a minute and a half, and during
the time the customer may watch the indications of its progress as they
are shown upon the dial. The machinery working in the inside is very
simple. An electric motor of small power--about eighteen kilogrammetres
per second--controls the shaft on which the three rotary brushes are
fixed, and the customer has only to unlock the machine, the same as all
others of its kind, with his coin, and move the handle which opens the
circuit and starts the motion. A representation of the machine at work
is given in the accompanying illustration, for which we are indebted to
_La Nature_.
* * * * *
=The “Barisal Guns.”=--A curious phenomenon of unexplained sounds like
those of explosions, occasionally heard in different places over the
earth, has attracted much attention, has been made the subject of a
book recording several hundred accounts of it, by M. Ernest Van den
Broeck, of Brussels, and has already been mentioned in the Popular
Science Monthly. The phenomenon has been most carefully observed in
India, where it seems to have assumed a peculiarly marked form,
and is known there as the “Barisal guns.” M. Van den Broeck calls
it “mistpoeffers,” or air-puffs. The most definite description of
it is given in Nature by Mr. Henry S. Schurr, as he has heard it
in India, where it has been observed over a wide range, but most
clearly and frequently in the Baekergunge district, of which Barisal
is the headquarters. The Barisal guns are heard most frequently from
February to October, not during fine weather but just before, during,
or immediately after heavy rain. They always sound in triplets--that
is, three reports occur, one after another, at regular intervals--and
though several guns may be heard, the number is always three or a
multiple of three. Sometimes only one series of triplets of sounds is
remarked in a day; at other times the author has counted as many as
forty-five of them, one after another, without a pause. The report is
exactly like the firing of big guns heard at a distance, except that it
is always double, or has an echo. A number of conjectural solutions of
the phenomenon have been put forth, but none of them accounts for it as
a whole in any approaching a satisfactory manner.
* * * * *
=Photographing Live Fishes.=--A number of methods are mentioned by
Dr. R. W. Schufeldt, in a paper on the subject, by which fishes may
be photographed in their natural element, with natural surroundings.
This can be done, even under the surface of the water, by the use
of certain subaquatic apparatus. By the employment of instantaneous
photography some fishes have been taken in the air, as of salmon
in the act of leaping, or of flying fish in flight. Such pictures,
however, illustrate special habits rather than the ordinary life
of the subjects. Well-arranged aquariums afford opportunities for
photographing fishes in almost every condition and position, and a
command of light and situation can be had in them which is of great
advantage to the operator. The specimens of fish photographs published
by the author with his paper are in every way satisfactory. The spots
on the sunfish, for example, are almost as clear and distinct as if
we had the fish lying before us in the broad light. The photograph of
the pike has afforded opportunity to correct some inaccuracies in the
drawing of it as given in previous works of high authority.
* * * * *
=Marine Life at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.=--Mr. Francis N.
Beach, in presenting to the Boston Society of Natural History a list
of the Marine Mollusca of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, speaks of
the locality as representing “a fairly distinct facies of molluscan
life--the fauna of the oyster beds, broadly speaking. From this point
of view, its homogeneity and the absence of stragglers lend it value.
Probably almost every species enumerated lives on the spot where
found or in the immediate vicinity. This characteristic makes the
spot a good sample of actual conditions of life in that interesting
transitional region where the ‘Virginian’ and ‘Acadian’ (or ‘Boreal’)
faunas overlap. From this point of view it is, so far from being
homogeneous, strikingly heterogeneous.” Of the two faunas, the southern
one contributes a quota rather more than twice that of the more
northern one, and the increase in the preponderance of southern forms
can be detected in a range of forty miles. The author concludes from
his examination that, notwithstanding the well-marked character of
Cold Spring Harbor as “muddy,” its molluscan fauna is determined not
at all by that character, but predominantly by the depth of water and
by the factors included in the “inclosedness” of the place--that is,
he supposes, by the temperature, the specific gravity, the percentage
of organic matter, etc. “It looks as though the various species would
manage somehow to be represented on almost any stretch of shore or
bottom, provided only the _water conditions_ be right.”
* * * * *
=Farm Homes for Neglected City Children.=--The system of providing
homes upon farms is represented in the last annual report of the
New York Juvenile Asylum as being on the wane. While from 1880 to
1890 twenty-four per cent of the children committed to the asylum
were placed in Western homes, the percentage from 1890 to 1897 was
only fifteen. Among the reasons assigned for this diminution are the
increase of undesirable material, chiefly of races against which
prejudice is strong, and the growing habit of parents expecting their
children to be restored to them when their services become profitable.
Placing out street waifs and neglected and dependent children in the
homes of private families, the report says, has been sadly abused. The
degradation and moral corruption of the condition of such children
are apt to make them so refractory and unsusceptible to the wholesome
influences of family life that an abrupt transfer is liable to be
attended with failure and disaster. The children should therefore be
previously brought under the restraining and reformatory influences of
a training school. At the best, a placing-out work can not be exempt
from serious contingencies. “The second decade, the adolescent age,
under most favorable conditions, is the period when the will is apt
to be wholly dominated by the emotions, and unless the environment is
peculiarly favorable, guardianship becomes a difficult function. With
an indenturing system that prolongs the term of apprenticeship for boys
throughout their minority, both apprentice and guardian must possess
an extraordinary measure of amiable qualities to insure a continuance
of their relation through an extended period.” When the boy is old
enough to earn wages from strangers the temptation to leave and go out
for hire is very strong, and must be met by a corresponding degree of
tact and liberality; and even when interests are happily adjusted “a
placing-out system ought to take account of the tastes and aptitudes of
young people, and leave the way open for the deserving at a suitable
age to start upon a new career.”
* * * * *
=Animals Helping One Another.=--While the ruminant animals as a rule
do not seem to have made any further advance toward forming communal
groups than to post sentinels while pasturing together, a few marked
cases are found in which a division of labor and some system of
assistance seem to have been given effect. One such instance is cited
in the London Spectator as having been observed by Lord Lovat in the
Highland deer, where large stags have smaller stags to attend them and
serve them very much as the English school bully is attended and served
by his fag. Lord Lovat tells another story of compassion manifested
and help afforded by a stag to a younger animal. Of three stags on the
move, two jumped the wire fence, and the third, a two-year-old, halted
and would not venture the leap. The two waited for some time while the
little fellow ran along the fence, till the larger of them came back to
coax him, and “actually kissed him several times.” Finally, the animal
gave up and went on, after which the little stag took courage and
made the jump. The social organization is very far advanced with the
beavers, and is quite elaborate with the rabbits, which excavate common
and interlacing burrows, and with insects like ants and bees.
* * * * *
=Geological Formations and Forests in New Jersey.=--From a study
of the relation between forestry and geology in New Jersey, Arthur
Hollick finds that two distinctly defined forest zones have long been
recognized in the State--a deciduous and a coniferous--the contrast
between the two being so obvious as to attract the attention even of
superficial observers. While the deciduous zone is roughly confined
to the northern part of the State and the coniferous to the southern
part, yet when the line of demarcation is carefully followed up across
the State and beyond its confines it is found not to coincide with
any parallel of latitude or isothermal line, and not to be entirely
dependent either on topography or the physiographic conditions. “If,
however, a geological map of the region be examined, the line of
demarcation between the two zones will be found to follow the trend of
the geologic formations whose outcrops extend in a northeast direction
across the State and southward beyond. A coincidence was suggested,
and it became more apparent, as the investigations proceeded, that the
two classes of angiosperms and gymnosperms were severally identified
with certain geological formations, and also that the distribution of
many species within each of the zones was capable of being similarly
associated, and their limits of being more or less accurately defined.
The deciduous zone is roughly located as lying north of a line between
Woodbridge and Trenton, and the coniferous zone as being south of a
line between Eatontown and Salem. Between these two lines is an area
about sixteen miles wide where these zones overlap, which the author
calls the “tension zone,” because a constant state of strain or
tension in the struggle for existence prevails in it. In the deciduous
zone the geological formations are numerous, with various soils and
every gradation of topography, and the diversity of trees is great. Its
southern line is coterminous with the southern edge of the Triassic
formation. The coniferous zone presents but little diversity in geology
or topography, and little variety of trees. Its northern border is
coterminous with the northern border of Tertiary gravels, sands, and
sandy clays. The “tension zone” includes practically the whole of the
Cretaceous plastic clays, and the clay-marls and marls.