bore upon the questions of the factors which make a rapid reader, the
relations of rapidity to mental capacity and alertness, quickness
of visual perception, and amount of practice; and whether those who
gain their knowledge principally through the eye or through the ear
obtain and retain most from reading. The author finds that colors
are more easily perceived than geometrical forms, isolated words
than colors, and words in construction than disconnected words; that
persons of visual type are slightly more rapid readers than those of
the auditory type; that rapid readers, besides doing their work in
less time, do superior work, retaining more of the substance of what
is read and heard than do slow readers. Lip movement is a serious
hindrance to speed, and consequently to intelligence, of reading.
The disadvantage extends to reading aloud. Apart from external
conditions, such as time of day, physical fatigue, etc., some of
the influences contributing to rapidity of reading are largely
physiological, as visual perception; others are of mental endowment,
as alertness of mind; still others are matters of intellectual
equipment rather than intellectual ability, as extent of reading and
scholarly attainment.
Mr. Merton L. Miller, of the University of Chicago, says, in his
preliminary study of the Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico, that he was
hampered in his researches there by a circumstance that illustrates
very well certain characteristics of the Indian. About fifteen
years ago representatives of the Government were at Sia making
investigations, and had to ask many questions. Some time after they
went away there was much sickness in the pueblo, and many people
died. It occurred to the Sia people that the presence of those white
men, asking so many questions, was the cause of all their trouble; so
they sent men to the other pueblos to warn them against white men who
came to find out about their customs and beliefs. These messengers
also came to Taos, and the people remembered their warning well. If
a Taos Indian is caught now teaching the language or telling any of
the traditions to a white man, he is liable to a whipping and a fine.
This, Mr. Miller believes, accounts for the fact that he could rarely
learn anything from his friend when they were at the pueblo, although
when away in the mountains he became much more open and communicative.
NOTES.
The cigarette has found friends. The Truth about Cigarettes embodies
the substance of papers read and discussed at the Medico-legal
Society of New York. The gist of the papers is to the effect that
the stories of harm done by cigarettes are fictions or gross
exaggerations; that they contain no opium, arsenic, or other poisons,
but are the best pure tobacco (1.0926 grammes each) wrapped in pure
paper (0.038 gramme); that they never caused a case of insanity; and
that they are simply injurious in the same way and to a corresponding
extent as other forms of tobacco. These statements are supported
by certificates of physicians and by reviews of special cases of
insanity charged to cigarettes, showing that the insanity had matured
independently of them.
The average annual temperature at Manila is given by Mr. W. F. R.
Phillips, in a paper on the subject, as 80° F. April, May, and
June are the hottest months, May being the hottest of the three,
and December and January are the coolest. The highest thermometer
reading recorded is 100° F. in May, and the lowest 74° in January.
The average annual rainfall is 75.43 inches, more than 80 per cent
of which descends in the months from June to October, inclusive.
Departures from the average rainfall are sometimes excessive. For
example, as much as 120.98 inches have fallen in one year, and as
little as 35.65 inches in another. Still more remarkable were the
fall of 61.43 inches in one September, and that of only two inches in
another September.
At the observatory of Yale University, as we learn from the annual
report, a planned series of twelve measures each has been completed
for eighty-four stars of large, proper motion, with a view to
determinations of parallax, and it is expected shortly to bring the
number up to one hundred. A series of measures on highly colored
red stars has been begun, and is in progress for the purpose of
testing the possibility of a systematic error due to the lesser
refrangibility of their light. The photographic instrument has been
put into use at every suitable period of meteorological displays of
consequence. Preparations are already making for a more complete
observation of the Leonid meteoric shower expected in 1899.
The New York State College of Forestry, in connection with Cornell
University, was presented by Professor Fernow, at the Boston meeting
of the American Association, as a logical sequence to the policy to
which the State of New York was committed in 1885 by the purchase of
more than a million acres of forest land in the Adirondack Mountains,
to be gradually increased to three million acres. A demonstration
area of thirty thousand acres in the Adirondacks has since been
provided for it. The courses leading to the degree of Bachelor in
Forestry occupy four years, of which the first two are devoted to
the studies in which mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology,
botany, entomology, political economy, etc., figure as fundamental
and supplementary sciences, in addition to the professional courses;
besides which two courses of a more or less popular character are
contemplated.
The discovery is announced in a preliminary communication by Dr.
Issutschenko, of Russia, of a microbe pathogenic to rats. An epidemic
having broken out among the rats kept for experimental purposes in
the Government Agricultural Laboratory, a bacillus was isolated from
the liver and spleen of affected animals that proved excessively
fatal to rats and mice. Experiments in making the organism useful as
a living rat poison have not yet, however, had an encouraging success.
New Zealand has just definitely adopted a scheme of old-age pensions.
In future the New Zealand workingman of sixty-five years of age, who
has lived a life of honest toil, will be assured an income of one
pound a week.
The Wilde prize of the French Academy of Sciences has been awarded
by that body to Charles A. Schott, chief of the Computation Division
of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, for his work on
Terrestrial Magnetism.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious typographical errors were repaired. Archaic spellings
retained.
Illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in the
text.
Latin-1 file: P.211, "Marianne Chernyak"; original placed a macron
over the "a" in Chernyak.
Latin-1 file: Under General Notices, "The Parallaxes of 61^1 and 61^2
Cygni"; "^" indicates a superscript of the number following.