meeting of the New England Association of Chemistry Teachers, held in
Boston in January, 1899, preliminary reports were made on
grammar-school and high-school courses in chemistry. The
grammar-school course was defined as intended to give its pupils
first-hand knowledge of the more obvious and important facts and
principles of chemical changes, with emphasis placed on those facts
which are illustrative of the changes that are going on all about the
pupil in the home and in outdoor Nature. While the point of view
should be that of Nature study rather than of science, the selection
of material and method of study should be such as to make the course
of greatest value to those who are to pursue the subject in higher
institutions. For high-school study the report insists that, before
everything else, the course be intelligible to the pupil. Whatever
experiment or work is undertaken, it must be such that the pupil shall
be able to understand its aim and the steps in its pursuit, and it
must not be too intricate in demonstration or abstruse in application.
It should require at least five hours a week, and, if possible, too,
of these periods consecutive, and should come as late in the
curriculum as possible, following physics. The general work may be
divided into the heads of historical, informational (qualitative and
quantitative), and theoretical, the second division having ordinarily
the larger part of the time. The belief is expressed that only part of
the demonstration work should be done by the teacher in the class, but
most of it should be performed, as far as practicable, by each pupil
in the laboratory. Lastly, the report recommends that the humanistic
side of the science be made as prominent as possible. Whenever facts
in chemistry can be related to human life or activity this should be
done.
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
In a recent report on the educational work of the Passaic (New Jersey)
public schools, Superintendent F. E. Spaulding points out one of the
worst faults of our present public-school system. "The true function
of education is to foster and direct the growth of children, not to
teach so many pages, rules, facts, or precepts of this subject or of
that. And the one adequate rule of practice is constantly to meet the
growing needs of this and that individual child, not to teach this
class of children as a class. From this proposition there follows the
corollary, which is amply substantiated in practice, that the time,
order, method, and extent of presenting any subject can be rightly
determined only by the interest and capacity of the child for whose
benefit it is to be presented, not by the logic and practical
importance of the subject itself."
DR. SIR JAMES GRANT, of Ottawa, has been led, by his studies of the
alimentary canal in its function of discharging the secretions of the
various glands, to a high appreciation of the importance of its
operation in connection with the elaborate and complex nervous system
associated with it. It is reasonable, he believes, to suppose that the
activity of these nerves is injuriously affected by noxious influences
long before any evidence of organic disease appears, and that, hence,
want of care in the digestive process can not and does not fail "to
bring about results of a most telling character in the very process of
sanguinification." Believing that irregularities of the digestive
process in the alimentary canal are more frequent than is generally
supposed, he holds that "the internal sewage of the system" can not be
too critically examined with a view of preventing the ill effect of
toxic accumulations upon the nerve centers. "That the recently
discovered neurones," he adds, "play an important part in the
vitalizing of nerve energy is a reasonable deduction. A path is now
open in which life, under ordinary circumstances, _may be prolonged_,
provided no organic disease is present."
The courses in biology in the University of Pennsylvania have been
arranged with reference to the needs of students who desire
instruction in the biological sciences for general culture, as a
preparation for teaching or original investigation, or as a foundation
for the professional course in medicine. They include in the courses
in arts and sciences the electives, the biology-chemistry group, and
the botany-zoölogy group, each set including several classes; the
four-year course in biology, which appeals particularly to students
who wish to become teachers or to take up special work as
investigators in biology, and the two-years' course in biology, which
is designed especially for those who desire some systematic training
in natural science before taking up the study of medicine. Both of
these courses are open to men and women alike. An ample equipment is
provided for the biological department in the shape of spacious class
rooms and laboratories, a botanic garden, an herbarium, a vivarium,
zoölogical and auxiliary collections, a marine laboratory at Sea Isle,
New Jersey, tables at Woods Holl, library facilities, two serial
publications, and clubs and societies.
We learn from the London Lancet that besides the special ward of
twelve beds at the Royal Southern Hospital of Liverpool, which was
formally opened by Lord Lister on April 29th last, arrangements have
been completed for a school for the study of tropical diseases at
Liverpool. Lord Lister, on the occasion of the school's foundation,
said: "The medical student in the ordinary hospital has rare
opportunities of seeing these diseases, and for a man who is about to
practice in the tropics it is essential that he have opportunities for
studying them here before embarking on his tropical career. The
possession of tropical colonies makes such institutions in the home
country very necessary, not only for preparing the colonial doctors,
but for the protection of the home population, which is sure to be
brought into contact more or less with the infectious tropical
diseases."
An interesting paper by Mr. C. J. Coleman on The Electrical Protection
of Safes and Vaults is described in the Electrical World and Engineer.
He divided the methods into two systems, in one the alarm depending on
the opening and the other on the closing of a circuit--the latter of
the two being the one most in use. Among the curious devices mentioned
are cementing narrow tin-foil strips on the inner surfaces of window
glass, so that any breakage or fracture of the glass will open the
circuit; the use of glass tubes filled with mercury and connected in
circuit, or tubes filled with water or compressed air. In reply to
questions as to the use of electricity in perforating safes it was
stated that a five-ply chrome steel safe, seven inches and a half
thick, was burned through by three hundred ampères in twenty-five
minutes, and holes were burned through a solid block of vault steel
twelve inches thick in twenty-six minutes with three hundred and fifty
ampères, and in fifteen minutes with five hundred ampères.
NOTES.
The Royal Institution of Great Britain, on the occasion of its one
hundredth anniversary, has elected as honorary members the following
Americans: Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley, astronomer, Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.; Prof. Albert Abraham
Michelson, physicist, of Chicago; Prof. Robert Henry Thurston,
mechanical engineer, Director of the Sibley College of Cornell
University; Prof. J. S. Ames, of Johns Hopkins University; George
Frederick Barker, physicist, Professor of Physics at the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; and Prof. William Lyne Wilson,
President of Washington and Lee University, ex-Congressman, and
Postmaster-General.
The foundation stone of an oceanographic museum, instituted by Prince
Albert of Monaco, was laid in that city April 25th. The museum is
designed, primarily, to receive the large and valuable collections
obtained by the prince in the voyages of ocean exploration which he
has conducted, and to become a general depository for oceanographic
spoils. The principal address was made by the governor-general, who
glorified the prince's meritorious scientific career. The German
Emperor, who is named a patron of the museum, and the French President
were represented on the occasion by deputies.
The City Library Association of Springfield, Mass., has been holding,
during April, May, and June, an elaborate and instructive exhibit of
geographic appliances of special interest to teachers in the
elementary schools. The exhibition included a number of sets of wall
maps, relief maps and globes, models for use in structural geography,
pictures, photographs, etc., of geographical features, aids in
teaching, geographical texts, manuals and treatises, books of travel,
and an exhibit of geographical work done in the elementary schools of
Springfield and vicinity. The association has also published a brief
Bibliography of Geographical Instruction, which was prepared by W. S.
Monroe, of the State Normal School at Westfield, Mass.
Dr. Daniel G. Brinton has presented to the University of Pennsylvania,
where he is Professor of American Archæology and Linguistics, his
entire collection of books and manuscripts relating to the aboriginal
languages of North and South America. The collection represents the
work of twenty-five years, and embraces about two thousand titles.
Mr. Andrew Carnegie has offered to complete, with a contribution of
£50,000, a fund which Mr. Joseph Chamberlain is trying to raise in
order to make the scientific school the principal department of the
University of Birmingham, England.
A noteworthy experiment in bird protection has been made in a boys'
school at Coupvray, France, by forming a society of the pupils for
that purpose. The president, vice-president, and secretary of the
society are selected from among the pupils of the first division, and
all the other pupils are members. Meetings are held every Saturday
afternoon in March, April, May, June, and July, under the presidency
of the teacher, to hear the reports of members and record the nests
protected and noxious animals destroyed in a notebook kept for the
purpose. In 1898, 570 nests were protected by the school, and more
than 400 mice, rats, weasels, and dormice were destroyed. Such
societies cost nothing, and are capable of rendering great service.
Ernest D. Bell, whose formula for determining animal longevity by the
length of the period of maturity was published in a recent Monthly,
has sent a later communication to Nature, changing his constant from
10.5 to 10.1, the latter figure giving much better results.
The report of Mr. J. C. Hopkins on the Clays and Clay Industries of
Western Pennsylvania is the second one of a series of economic reports
on the natural resources of the State in course of publication by the
Pennsylvania State College. The first report, published in 1897, was
on the Brown Stones of Pennsylvania. The report represents that a
capital of nearly $7,000,000 is invested in the clay industries about
Pittsburg, of which more than $3,000,000 are in the fire-clay
industry. The value of the annual output of material is nearly
$4,000,000, more than fifty per cent of the capital invested. The 139
companies employ 4,403 men.
Herr Hansemann, of the University of Berlin, who examined the skull of
Helmholtz, reports in the _Zeitschrift für Psychologie_ that he found
the head about the size of Bismarck's, and a little smaller than
Wagner's. By metrical standards the brain weighed about 1,700 grammes
with the coagulated blood, and about 1,440 grammes without it--about
100 grammes more than the average. The circumvolutions, which are now
thought to have more relation to mental capacity than mere weight,
were particularly deep and well marked. The skull was 55 centimetres
in circumference, 15.5 centimetres broad, and 18.3 centimetres long,
and the cephalic index was 85.25.
Our obituary list for this month includes the names, among persons
known in connection with science, of Miss Elizabeth M. Bardwell,
Professor of Astronomy in Mount Holyoke College, who died May 28th,
aged sixty-seven years; G. F. Lyster, long Engineer-in-Chief of the
Mersey Docks and Harbor Board, and author of valuable improvements in
the Liverpool docks, member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of
the Institute of Civil Engineers, aged seventy-six years; Prof. Lars
Fredrik Nilson, Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station at
Stockholm, Sweden, May 14th, aged fifty-nine years; M. Adolphe Lageal,
a French geologist, killed by natives while making explorations in the
French Soudan; Sir Frederick McCoy, Professor of Natural Science in
the University of Melbourne, died in May, aged seventy-six years; he
was a member of the Geological Survey of Victoria, founder of the
Melbourne National Museum, and author of numerous papers on Victorian
geology; before going to Australia he was Professor of Geology in
Queen's College, Belfast, and had already attained a high reputation
as a geologist by the work he had done as assistant to Sedgwick and by
the publication of important memoirs in geology and paleontology; and
Lawson Tait, an eminent English surgeon, author of numerous books of a
high order relative to his profession, and an active worker in
practical sanitary matters; he died at Llandudno, Wales, June 13th,
aged fifty-four years.
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.
"long-continued" and "long continued") and proper noun (e.g.
"Yang-tse-Kiang" and "Yank-tse-Kiang").
Some illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in
the text.