Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Connecticut:
Twenty-second Annual Report, for 1898, Part I, Fertilizers. Pp.
101.--Cornell University: No. 163. Three Important Fungous Diseases of
the Sugar Beet. By B. M. Duggar. Pp. 30; No. 164. Peach-Leaf Cure,
etc. By B. M. Duggar. Pp. 20.--Massachusetts Agricultural College
(Hatch Station): No. 58. Manurial Requirements of Crops. Pp 16.--New
Jersey: No. 135. Poisonous Plants. By Byron D. Halsted. Pp. 28.--North
Dakota Weather and Crop Service, Fifth Annual Report. B. H. Bronson,
section director. Pp. 78; Monthly Reports for October and November,
1898. Pp. 8 each.--Ohio: No. 96. The Army Worm and Other Insects. By
P. M. Webster and C. W. Mally. Pp. 26; No. 97. Some Diseases of Wheat
and Oats. By A. D. Selby. Pp. 32; No. 98. Small Fruits. By W. J.
Green. Pp. 146.--West Virginia: No. 53. Commercial Fertilizers. By J.
H. Stewart and B. H. Hite. Pp. 36.
American Asiatic Association, Journal of the. Vol. I, No. 5. John
Foord, editor. Pp. 16.
Ayer, N. W., and Son. American Newspaper Annual, 1899. Philadelphia.
Pp. 1400.
Berea Quarterly, February, 1899. Berea College, Kentucky. Pp. 28. 30
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Berry, Arthur. A Short History of Astronomy. New York: Charles
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Bradford, Gamaliel. The Lesson of Popular Government. New York: The
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Brown, William Harvey. On the South African Frontier. New York:
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Buckley, Arabella B. The Fairy-Land of Science. New York: D. Appleton
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Clayton, C. Helm. Studies of Cyclonic and Anti-Cyclonic Phenomena with
Kites. Blue Hill (Massachusetts) Meteorological Observatory. Pp. 15,
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Force, General Manning F. General Sherman. New York: D. Appleton and
Company (Great Commanders Series). Pp. 353.
Guignet, E., and Gamier, Edouard. La Céramique, Ancienne et Modern
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Scientifique Internationale.) Pp. 311. 6 francs.
Gellé, Le Dr. M. E. L'Audition et ses Organes (Hearing and Its
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Hancock, James Denton. The Louisiana Purchase treated in its Relations
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Herzberg, Henry. True _versus_ False Education. Pp. 20.
Hinsdale, Guy, M. D. Acromegaly. Detroit: William M. Warren. Pp. 88.
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Jacobs, Joseph. The Story of Geographical Discovery. New York: D.
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Kingsley, Mary H. West African Studies. New York: The Macmillan
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Lille, Société Photographique de. Le Nord Photographie. January, 1899.
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Mason, William P. Examination of Water (Chemical and Bacteriological).
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Macalaster, The. Monthly. February, 1899. St. Paul, Minnesota,
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Parsons, Frances Theodora. How to Know the Ferns. New York: Charles
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Rafinesque, C. S. Ichthyologia Ohioensis; or, Natural History of the
Fishes inhabiting the River Ohio and its Tributary Streams. A reprint
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Clays and Clay Industries of Pennsylvania; I, Clays of Western
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Russell, Frank. Explorations in the Far North. University of Iowa. Pp.
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Fragments of Science.
=Death of Professor Marsh.=--Othniel C. Marsh, professor of
paleontology in Yale University, and curator of the geological
collection of that institution, died of pneumonia at his home in New
Haven, Connecticut, March 18th. He had not been in good health for
several years, and succumbed to the effects of a cold which he had
caught before wholly recovering from a previous cold. A sketch of his
life up to that time, embracing the most active parts of his career as
a geological explorer, in which he gained great renown, was given,
with a portrait, in the Popular Science Monthly for September, 1878.
During the period that has intervened he made studies of the results
of his explorations and other geological work, and published papers of
very high scientific value. About a year ago he transferred his
extensive and famous collections at the Peabody Museum to the
university. These collections were among the finest of their kind in
the world, and were especially remarkable for their fossils of immense
animals exhumed from the Western plains. They were greatly admired by
Professor Gaudry, the eminent French geologist, who spoke of them in
terms of high praise in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of October 15,
1898. It was through his efforts that the funds were obtained from
George Peabody, his uncle, for the construction of the Peabody Museum,
a part of which has been built. His health having apparently improved
for a few months previous to his death, he had been working with
renewed activity at the museum, and had recently written articles on
paleontological subjects. Having considerable means of his own, he
served the university without salary, and carried on his explorations
mostly at his own cost, paying large sums to assistants and for other
items in the work. He left ten thousand dollars to the National
Academy of Sciences, of which he was one of the founders and was for
several years president, and all of the rest of his estate, estimated
to be worth nearly one hundred thousand dollars, to Yale University.
=Popular Co-operation in Health Work.=--In a review of A Quarter
Century of Public Health Work in Michigan, Mr. Theodore R. MacClure,
chief clerk of the State Board of Health office, says that experience
in the State has indicated that it is necessary to have the
co-operation of the people if the dangerous communicable diseases are
to be restricted and prevented. In order to accomplish this result,
the State Board of Health has published leaflets relating to the modes
of spreading and the best methods for the restriction and prevention
of such diseases. These leaflets have been printed by tens of
thousands, and whenever a dangerous disease is reported to the central
office several copies of the leaflet relating to the disease in
question are usually sent to the local health officer. He is requested
to place one of these instructive publications with the family where
the disease exists, and a copy with each neighbor of the infected
premises. The instruction comes at a time when people are interested
to know about the disease in question, and in this way their general
co-operation is sought and secured. Citizens are thus educated and
become familiar with their duties in the premises, are taught wherein
the dangers lie and how to avoid them, and are prompted by the
strongest considerations to do their part in the matter.
=Death of Prof. Oliver Marcy.=--Dr. Oliver Marcy, professor of natural
science in Northwestern University, who died February 19th, in the
eightieth year of his age, was a native of Coleraine, Massachusetts;
was graduated from Wesleyan University in 1846, became teacher of
mathematics in Wilbraham Academy, Massachusetts, and later professor
of geology, etc., in that institution. In 1862 he was appointed
professor of geology in Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois,
but taught in addition, at times, other branches of science and even
some branches in other lines. He was twice acting president of the
university. In conjunction with Prof. Alexander Winchell, he prepared
a monograph on Fossils from the Niagara Limestone of Chicago, which
was read to the Boston Society of Natural History. In 1866 he was
naturalist to a Government expedition to the Bitter Root Mountains in
Idaho and Montana, in which he collected scientific material, and of
which he published an account in 1867. He wrote papers concerning the
geology of the shore of Lake Michigan and of the region about Chicago;
brought two fossil trees found in the university grounds to scientific
notice; and contributed considerably to geological publications. He
was curator to the natural history collection of his university for
nearly thirty years. Two fossil species and a mountain in Montana have
been named after him.
=Which is the Fittest to Survive?=--Prof. A. W. Rücker spoke in his
opening address at the recent meeting of the International Magnetic
Conference in Bristol, England, of what seems to be a law of Nature,
that the products of an organism are fatal to itself; in accordance
with which, he said, pure science is threatened by the very success of
its practical applications. The smoke of our cities blots the stars
from the vision of the astronomer, and now the science of terrestrial
magnetism is threatened by the artificial earth currents of the
electric railway. Prof. W. E. Ayrton, in his welcoming address, took
another view of the subject and answered the reference the electrical
engineers make to the principle of the survival of the fittest when
they are told of the ruin their wires are bringing upon magnetic
observatories--"So much the worse for the observatories"--"Can the
system of electric traction that has already destroyed the two most
important magnetic observatories in the United States and British
North America be the best and fittest to survive? Again, do we take
such care and spend such vast sums in tending the weak and nursing the
sick because we are convinced that they are the fittest to survive?
May it not be perhaps because we have an inherent doubt about the
justice of the survival of the strongest, or perhaps because even the
strongest of us feels compelled modestly to confess his inability to
pick out the fittest, that modern civilization encourages, _not_ the
destruction but the preservation of what has obvious weakness, on the
chance that it may have unseen strength? When the electrical engineer
feels himself full of pride at the greatness, the importance, and the
power of his industry, and when he is inclined to think slightingly of
the deflection of a little magnet compared with the whirl of his
one-thousand-horse-power dynamo, let him go and visit a certain dark
storeroom near the entrance hall of the Royal Institution, and while
he looks at some little coils there, ponder on the blaze of light
that has been shed over the whole world from the dimly lighted
cupboard in which these coils now lie. Then he may realize that while
the earth as a magnet has endured for all time, the earth as a tramway
conductor may at no distant date be relegated to the class of
temporary makeshifts, and that the raids of the feudal baron into the
agricultural fields of his neighbors were not more barbarous than the
alarms and excursions of the tramway engineer into the magnetic fields
of his friends."
=Teaching the Teachers.=--The following suggestive paragraph is taken
from the inaugural address of William Henry Preece, president of the
British Institution of Civil Engineers: "Our educational methods have
begun at the wrong end. We ought to teach the masters first and then
the men. Moreover, we have to teach the teachers and those who have
control of the purse-strings. The County Councils of England are
scarcely qualified as yet to discharge the very serious duty of
properly dealing with a question so few of them understand--though
many of them have tackled the matter manfully, especially the London
County Council, through its Technical Education Board, on which a
large proportion of co-opted experts have seats, who, by supporting
existing institutions, have contributed toward the supply of teachers.
But how are we to approach the masters? A fault once discovered is
halfway to repair. It is difficult to remove the scales from the eyes
of the man who has been successful in business and knows not of his
blindness; but the coming generation will be more enlightened, and the
future masters better educated. We are suffering from a lack of
competent teachers. A teacher who has had no training in the practical
world is worse than useless, for he imparts ideas derived from his
inner consciousness or from the false teaching of his own abstract
professor, which lead to mischief. In my own experience I have met
with very serious inconveniences from this cause. The ideal professor
of pure abstract science is a very charming personage, but he is a
very arrogant and dogmatic individual, and, being a sort of little
monarch in his own laboratory and lecture room, surrounded by devoted
subjects, his word is law, and he regards the world at large,
especially the practical world, as outside his domain and beneath his
notice. He is generally behind the age. These are not the men for
technical institutes. Such teachers should possess the diploma of this
institution."
=The People of India and the Missionaries.=--In the light of three
months' special observation, J. T. Sunderland has reviewed in the New
World Magazine the prospects of the success of Christian missions in
India. There are several causes that hinder their progress, among
which the author mentions as more important the number of Christian
sects and denominations; the character of the doctrines preached, in
that in many aspects they do not appeal to Hindu or Mohammedan faith
or modes of thought, and in some contradict them, and as to those
points are a serious hindrance to the progress of Christianity; and
the vices of many Europeans, creating a prejudice against their
professed religion that is not wholly contradicted by the testimonies
and examples of the missionaries and men of nobler stamp. To the last
objection the answer is easy, though it may not always be convincing,
that these wicked men sin not because they are natural products of
Christianity, but because they disobey it. A strong factor in
disarming prejudice against Christianity and winning favor for it is
the fact that through it, directly or indirectly, certain very
important kinds of good are coming to India--education, schools,
books, science, invention. The contact of India with Christian lands,
civilization, thought, and life, is steadily telling upon Indian
thought. Further, "it is to be said to the honor of all the Protestant
missions of India, at least, of whatever name, that they are helping,
instructing, and lifting up the lower classes, and offering them hopes
and prospects such as they could not have had under their old faiths.
This is much, very much." The very presence of the missionary in a
community is likely to be an enlightening influence. He is a man of
more than common education, and "has brought with him to India
something of the thought, the culture, the ideals of life, the habits
and customs of the Western world. He introduces higher standards of
living. He gives his influence in favor of better public sanitation,
better homes for the people, better streets and public buildings,
better public improvements generally. His home and family life, in
which the wife receives the same consideration as her husband, and the
daughters are educated with the same care as the sons, becomes a
valuable object lesson in the community where he dwells." The missions
as a whole are regarded by the author as an important factor in a
great religious evolution. The precise form and direction which this
evolution will take seem to be a matter yet to be determined.
=Weeds under Cultivation.=--For several years past the botanical
department of Michigan Agricultural College has maintained a "weed
garden," and has grown a hundred or more species of the most
troublesome weeds in plots. Some curious results from the experiments
are recorded by Prof. W. J. Beal in a paper read at the meeting, 1897,
of the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science. The most
vigorous and aggressive weeds seem to take on under cultivation the
weakness and capriciousness of delicate cultivated plants. "It is very
instructive," Professor Beal says, "to note how much better many of
these plants thrive when they get away from the spot where they have
been confined for from two to several years. Seedlings of Jamestown
weed were larger in the plantain bed than in their own. After three
years the plantain nearly ran out and _Amaranthus albus_ entirely
disappeared. One species of pigweed grew finely for two years, but
afterward made a small display; and another variety did not seem very
persistent for a plant that ranked among the weeds, but shied off from
its home ground 'as if searching for fresh fields.' Barnyard grass
(_Panicum crusgalli_) behaved like pigweed, and 'needed considerable
attention.' The little round-leaved mallow, which roots deeply about
rubbish piles in mellow soil, was grown of respectable proportions in
the garden with considerable difficulty, and with no more ease in the
bottom lands of other parts of the botanic garden. Considerable pains
is required every year to keep on hand even fairly well-grown
specimens of mullein. Knotgrass, which thrives with abuse and seems to
enjoy trampling by feet, was grown with difficulty in the plots.
'Insects prey upon it; rust causes it to dwindle and disappear.'
'Motherwort grows rank four feet high near the barnyard fence, and the
flowers are covered with bees, but when kept several years in the same
bed it goes off into the sulks as though neglected.' Shepherd's purse
is often disturbed by a parasitic fungus, and it is difficult to grow
nice plants long in the same place. Cocklebur, if found long in the
same spot, is troubled sadly with a mildew, and more recently also
with a rust."
=Operations against Woodchucks.=--Prof. F. H. Storer records in the
Bulletin of the Bussey Institution, Harvard University, the results of
his experiments in the destruction of woodchucks, which, besides being
very injurious to lands he had under cultivation, appeared to be
increasing. Smothering by a volatile liquid driven into the burrow has
been suggested by Professor Hilgard, who recommends bisulphide of
carbon. Professor Bussey finds that liquid not wholly satisfactory and
liable to objections, and prefers a preparation of naphtha or other
volatile liquid. In any event, some device seems to be needed for
forcing a considerable quantity of the vapor into the very end of the
burrow. Poisons are dangerous because of the probability that the
animal would bring the food on which they are placed to the mouth of
the burrow for eating, where children or useful animals might get it.
While experimenting with burning Cayenne pepper or sulphur on touch
paper, in order to smoke out the burrows, the author became acquainted
with the "woodchuck torches" of Mr. B. M. Wedger, of Roslindale,
Massachusetts. These consist of nitrate of soda, sulphur, mealed
gunpowder, and sulphide of antimony, so packed into a tube like a
Roman candle that on burning the fuse the vapors would be forced by
great pressure to the farthest recesses of the burrow. They proved
effectual, and it was indeed rare that any woodchuck to which they
were applied ever reported himself again. Professor Storer also
describes some experiments he made in burning sulphur in the burrows,
with special expedients for insuring more rapid and perfect combustion
of the sulphur; these promised fairly well. Mr. Henry Stewart has
described in the Country Gentleman an effectual method of destroying
woodchucks with blasting powder or dynamite.
=Evolution in Lamps.=--The story of lamps from Herodotus down to 1830,
Mr. Henry C. Mercer says, in an instructive study on Light and Light
Making in the contributions of the Bucks County (Pa.) Historical
Society, is not one of development. In principle and form they remain
the same, whether as the tin cylindrical or boat-shaped cups on
candlestick pedestals and the round tin cups with hemispherical lids,
or the lidless cups resting on wooden stands such as were recently
rescued by the author from the garret rubbish of old Bucks County. And
before Herodotus, as we follow the lamp back into the tombs of the Old
World, we find the boat-shaped form of earthenware preceding the
boat-shaped form of iron and possibly even that of bronze. The
chalk-cup lamp found by Canon Greenwell in the neolithic flint mines
at Grimes Graves, England, perhaps the oldest wick-floating lamp in
the world, is not essentially different from the oyster shell filled
with lard and provided with wicks that may be found among Virginia
negroes to-day. The Egyptian, Grecian, Phoenician, and Roman lamps, as
they have been found in the tombs and as we see them in the museums,
are not unlike the lard lamps that were most in use early in the
nineteenth century. Then crude grease gave way to sperm oil and lard
oil, with especial adaptations of the lamps that made them more
convenient and improved the light; and burning fluids that were
convenient and clean and gave a brilliant light, but were dangerous;
and kerosene, with other improvements in the lamps and refinements in
the oil that enabled it to give the most perfect artificial light yet
found and to keep up the fight for quality with gas and
electricity--all these having come in within the life-time of men
still among us. Besides the old lamps, our ancestors had candles,
molded when the price of tin, the material for the molds, did not
forbid the luxury, and before them tallow dips; a suspended wick was
dipped into a pot of hot tallow, on a cold day, and the operation was
repeated till layer after layer of grease hardened, and the candle was
thick enough. These candles were, however, troublesome in hot weather,
on account of their propensity to yield to the temperature and fall
over. "Who shall say, however, that candle-dipping is older than
molding, when we know ... that they molded candles in County Galway,
Ireland, in late years by punching holes in peat and pouring in tallow
on the down-hung wick of twisted flax fiber?" The Irish had, too, as
had the negroes, the rush light, a greased rush set in a hole in a
wooden block serving as a candlestick; or rushes joined in a triple
twist which flies apart when lighted, increasing the blaze. From this
Mr. Mercer passes to forms of candlesticks and torches and cressets
and methods of producing fire, whither we can not follow him, for the
multitude of details he notices, which will not bear abstracting.
=Inconsistent Philozoists.=--In his address at the opening of the
physiological and pathological laboratories at Belfast, Ireland, Lord
Lister took occasion to give some illustrations, drawn from practice,
of the value of pathological research. "There are people," he said,
"who do not object to eating a mutton chop--people who do not even
object to shooting a pheasant with a considerable chance that it may
be only wounded and may have to die after lingering in pain, unable to
obtain its proper nutriment--and yet who consider it something
monstrous to introduce under the skin of a guinea-pig a little
inoculation of some microbe to ascertain its action. These seem to me
to be most inconsistent views. If these experiments upon the lower
animals were made for the mere sport of the thing, they would be
indeed to be deprecated and decried; but if they are made with the
wholly noble object of not only increasing human knowledge, but also
of diminishing human suffering, then I hold that such investigations
are deserving of all praise. Those little know who lightly speak on
these matters how much self-denial is required in the prosecution of
such researches when they are conducted, as indeed they always are, as
far as I am aware, with the object of establishing new truth."
=The Ruins of Xkichmook, Yucatan.=--The group of ruins in Yucatan
called Xkichmook was discovered by Mr. Edward H. Thompson in 1888,
when he read a paper before the American Antiquarian Society embodying
his first impressions of it. He has since made studies of it extending
over a period of seven years. The group is about one hundred and forty
miles south of Merida and forty or fifty miles east of Campeche,
situated in a narrow valley between a series of rocky hills, and has
to be approached by precipitous paths over the hillsides, and thence
down the beds of dry _arroyos_ whose yearly freshets wash away all
vegetation. Ten buildings, including one called the Palace, and two
mounds were explored, and some miscellaneous excavations were
made--all of which are described in the author's paper (Field
Columbian Museum), with figures of the buildings and objects. Pottery
and flaked stone implements were plentiful, but polished implements
and specimens of sculpture were exceedingly rare. The flat under
surfaces of the ceiling stones of the vaulted chambers seem to have
contained very elaborate designs; in another chamber portions of a
painting were still partly preserved; in another, curious drawings or
glyphs in strong black lines once existed; in another was a painted
human figure, of which only the flowing headdress, a portion of the
face, and certain devices issuing from the mouth and probably
indicating speech, now remain. The mysterious red hand was found
painted in various places, and in one a human hand in blue pigment was
found, the impression of which was so fresh and perfect in places that
even the minute lines of the skin were visible. In ten years of
investigation among the ruins of Yucatan and Campeche not as many
specimens of worked obsidian were found as could be picked up in half
an hour among certain Mexican ruins; but traces of ancient fabrication
of flint implements were more plentiful than anywhere else.
=The Seventeen-Year and the Thirteen-Year Locusts.=--The periodical
cicada, or seventeen-year locust, as it is called, is distinctly
American, and has the longest life period of any known insect. It is
especially remarkable, Mr. C. L. Marlatt observes in his memoir upon
it, in its adolescent period, the features of particular divergence
from other insects being its long subterranean life of thirteen or
seventeen years, and the perfect regularity with which at the end of
these periods every generation, though numbering millions of
individuals, attains maturity almost at the same moment. At this
moment the brood issue from the ground, leaving innumerable exit
holes, and swarm over trees and shrubs, filling the air with their
strident calls, and laying their eggs in slits which they cut in the
trees. The larvæ, when hatched, fall to the ground, and quickly burrow
out of sight, each "forming for itself a little subterranean chamber
over some rootlet, where it remains through winter and summer, buried
from sun, light, and air, and protected in a manner from cold and
frost.... It lives thus alone in its moist earthen chamber," rarely
changing its position unless some accident to the nourishing rootlet
may necessitate its seeking another, passing the thirteen or seventeen
years of its hypogeal existence in slow growth and preparation for a
few weeks only of winged life in the air and light. Other cicadas
appear every year, usually in comparatively small numbers. They are
probably equally long in maturing, but the periods of their lives have
from some cause or another been cast in "off" years. The thirteen-year
broods are southern, and the shortening of their periods of
development may possibly be accounted for by the longer season of
warmth in the southern year giving them the number of hours or of
aggregate degrees of warmth in thirteen years that the more northern
broods can not receive in less than seventeen years. This, however, is
only speculation, and there are difficulties in applying the
supposition to make it fit all the facts; and many believe that the
two races are specifically different. The late Prof. Charles V. Riley
distinguished twenty-two different broods of cicadas in the United
States, seven of which appertain to the thirteen-year period (_Cicada
tredecem_).