The burden of the president's address of J. B. Johnson before the
Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education is the necessity
for our future material prosperity for a specific scientific training
for the directors of each and every kind of manufacturing and
commercial activity. Germany "has worked out this problem to a most
fruitful issue," but its imperial and paternal method can not be
imitated here, or probably anywhere else. The problem is a very
difficult one with us, and it will be of no use to look to
municipalities or Legislatures for its solution. There exist a few
special high-grade industrial, commercial, mechanical, electrical, and
mining schools, but they are entirely inadequate to answer the demands
of the occasion. The author looks to organized commercial bodies like
the one he is addressing as furnishing the best means for establishing
the schools desired.
Prof. F. L. Washburn, of the University of Oregon, describes in the
American Naturalist a curious specimen of the toad (_Bufo
columbiensis_), which has an extra arm projecting from the left side
just in front of the normal left arm. The extra arm has seven digits,
and is without an elbow joint, but is slightly movable at the
proximal joint next to the body. Its radius and ulna are separate
bones, not fused as they are normally. The dissection shows other
peculiarities of structure, such as might be expected from a
consideration of the exterior. The species, normal, is common in parts
of Oregon.
It is related of Charcot, the distinguished alienist, late of the
Salpêtrière, Paris, that he had marked artistic ability, and when he
was seventeen years old his family had some hesitation whether to make
him a doctor or a painter. He chose the medical profession. He was
fond of drawing sketches of his patients, and of landscapes he saw in
his travels, and was not above making an occasional caricature.
Several albums are filled with designs of this kind. A study of his
work as an artist was prepared by Dr. Henri Meige in connection with
the erection of his monument, and is deposited in the Salpêtrière.
The Russian decree nullifying the constitutional privileges of
Finland, notwithstanding treaty guarantees, is producing an effect
that was probably not intended or anticipated. Realizing the futility
of resistance and holding the people true to their reputation of being
the most peaceable, enlightened, and orderly of the Czar's subjects,
the representatives of the Finns are said to be quietly making
inquiries about the prospects of settlement in the Canadian Northwest
and other free regions.
Despite the growing use of motor traction, the raising of horses gives
no sign of diminishing. Against 212,827 horses in 1888, the Argentine
Republic has, by the census of 1895, 4,234,032. That country now ranks
third in horse-rearing nations, being excelled only by Russia and the
United States.
M. André Broca has found, concerning the use of India-rubber supports
for isolating physical apparatus from earth tremors, that when
apparatus having movable parts are supported in this way the
vibrations, instead of being reduced, may in some cases be increased
tenfold. But when the apparatus consists entirely of rigid material
there is no better way of insuring steadiness than by resting it on
India rubber.
The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis works for
the single end of educating the community in a knowledge of the true
nature of consumption and of the means of controlling or conquering
it. For this it diffuses literature, seeks the aid of persons in
influential positions, and strives to obtain the requisite conditions
for restoring those early afflicted and for preventing the
communication of infection to others from those far advanced. Its main
effort is directed toward the establishment of a municipal hospital
for tuberculous patients, and for a sanatorium in the high regions of
the State. For the last purpose it is offered a most desirable
location in Luzerne County.
The list of recent deaths among men known in science includes the
names of W. W. Norman, Professor of Biology in the University of
Texas; John Whitehead, who died while on a scientific mission to the
island of Hainan, for which he left England in the autumn of 1898;
Naval Lieutenant Charles William Baillie, Marine Superintendent of the
English Meteorological Office, inventor of the hydra sounding machine,
late Director of Nautical Studies at the Imperial Naval College,
Tokio, and author of important meteorological investigations, at
Broadstairs, June 2th, aged fifty-five years; Henry Wollaston Blake,
an original member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, of the
Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and of the British Association,
and a Fellow of the Royal Society, eighty-four years of age; Edward
Jannetaz, a French mineralogist, an assistant in the Museum of Paris,
and Lecturer on Mineralogy for forty years, Master of Conferences in
the Faculty of Sciences, author of _Les Roches_ and other books, aged
sixty-seven years; Dr. Eugen Ritter von Lommell, of the University of
Munich, distinguished in mathematics, physics, and optics, and author
of several books on those subjects, including The Nature of Light in
the International Scientific Series, June 19th, in his sixty-third
year; Sir Alexander Armstrong, arctic navigator and discoverer of the
Northwest passage, late Director-General of the Medical Department of
the British Museum, and author of a narrative of his great discovery
and of a work on Naval Hygiene; Dr. Hugo Weidel, Professor of
Chemistry in the University of Vienna; Sir William Henry Flower, late
Director of the British Museum of Natural History, Past President of
the British Association, at the time of his death President of the
Zoölogical Society of London, and author of several excellent books on
zoölogy, natural history, museums, and kindred subjects, aged
sixty-eight years; and Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, the distinguished
American ethnologist and linguist, of whom we give a fuller notice
elsewhere.
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.
Some illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in
the text.