Part 18

=The Claims of the High School.=--In considering the right of the public high school to be a just charge upon the public treasury, Mr. Frank A. Hill, of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, finds that less than one fifth of the school money raised in the State is expended on account of these schools, whereas if the number of pupils in each of the thirteen grades of school was equal and the money was evenly divided, the higher grades would be entitled to four thirteenths, or nearly one third of it. To an objection sometimes raised against the high-school system that the "toiling millions" will have no use for more than the teaching of the elementary grades, Mr. Hill asks, Who has a right to decide whether one child shall have a greater or less amount of instruction than another? "And so freedom of choice, when the question of what one's life work shall be comes up, is a basic thing in government by the people. Upon the wisdom of this choice turns the welfare of each unit in the State, and therefore of the State itself." Hence the State has no right to refuse to one any opportunity of preparing himself to exercise this freedom of choice which it accords to another. There has never been a time since 1647 when the laws of Massachusetts did not require certain towns to maintain grammar schools, of which the high schools are the modern equivalents, at public expense, and when the colony became a State a perpetual obligation was imposed upon the Legislature and magistrates "to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences and all seminaries of them, especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns."

=Degeneration.=--Dr. William C. Krauss, in a paper on The Stigmata of Degeneration, describes degeneration as meaning, in pathology, the substitution of a tissue by some other regarded as less highly organized, less complex in structure, of inferior physiological rank, or less suited for the performance of the original function. The same definition may apply equally well, according to Dr. Krauss, in human ontogeny, "where we can regard a normal man as possessing a certain number of units of strength capable of supplying or exerting a certain number of units of work or force, varying of course according to the environment, education, and fixity of purpose of the individual. It would be obviously unfair to compare a professional man or a brain-worker, whose units of work are intuitively manifold more than a hand-worker, and declare the latter a degenerate because his force and energy, as measured by the world's standard, are not as productive as the former. The questions of money standard and time-worth are foreign to the laws of degeneracy, and are not to be regarded in any way. The degenerate must be considered solely and alone upon the physical, mental, and abnormal stigmata which brand him as an abnormal or atypical man, and prevent him from exerting himself to the highest limit commensurate with his skill and development." The author's paper treats in detail of the various aspects of degeneracy.

=Birds as Pest Destroyers.=--The French journal, _Le Chasseur_, puts in a plea for the animals that should not be killed. "Why destroy spiders, except in rooms, while they check the increase of flies? Why tread on the cricket in the garden, which wars upon caterpillars, snails, and grubs? Why kill the inoffensive slowworm, which eats grasshoppers? Why slay the cuckoo, whose favorite food is the caterpillar, which we do not like to touch? Why destroy the nuthatch and de-nest the warbler, foes of wasps? Why make war on sparrows, which eat seeds only when they can not get insects, and which exterminate so many grain-eating insects? Why burn powder against starlings, which pass their lives in eating larvæ and picking vermin from the cattle in the fields? (But they eat grapes too.) Why destroy the ladybird, which feeds on aphides? Why lay snares for titmice, when each pair take on an average one hundred and twenty thousand worms and insects for their little ones? Why kill the toad, which eats snails, weevils, and ants? Why save the lives of thousands of gnats by destroying goat-suckers? Why kill the bat, which makes war on night moths and many bugs, as swallows do on flies? Why destroy the shrew mole, which lives on earthworms, as the mouse does on wheat? Why say the screech owl eats pigeons and chickens, when it is not true, and why destroy it when it takes the place of seven or eight cats by eating at least six thousand mice a year?"

=The Yang-tse-Kiang.=--In a lecture before the London Foreign Press Association Mrs. Isabella Bishop describes the Yank-tse-Kiang as one of the largest rivers of the world, it draining an area of 650,000 square miles, within which dwell a population of 180,000,000. In the journey to the far East, the scenery at Szu-chuan changed from savage grandeur and endless surprises to the fairest scenes, with prosperity, peace, law, and order seeming to prevail everywhere. Erroneous ideas were often entertained about Chinese social life and surroundings. China had many trade associations, which were often strengthened by alliance with guilds. They were composed of men in any particular trade or employment, who bound themselves for common action in the interest of that trade. They might rightly be called trade unions, for through their elected officers they prescribed hours of labor and minimum wages and made trade rules, the breach of which was punishable by fine and expulsion. The Chinese people displayed much benevolence and social kindness one to another, and had societies for providing free coffins and seemly burial in free cemeteries for the poor, soup kitchens, foundling institutions, asylums, orphanages, and medical dispensaries. Throughout the whole of the Yang-tse basin the author was impressed with the completeness of Chinese social and commercial organization by the existence of patriotism or public spirit, by great prosperity, and by the absence of the decay often attributed to the nation. Of the prevailing "expansion" or territorial robbery fever Mrs. Bishop said that we were coming to think only of markets and territories, and to ignore human beings, and were breaking up, in the case of a fourth of the human race, the most ancient of the earth's existing civilizations without giving for our supposed advantage a fair equivalent.

="Somewhat" Poisonous Plants.=--In Prof. B. D. Halsted's paper in the State Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletins on The Poisonous Plants of New Jersey, besides the descriptions of plants recognized as poisonous internally and to the touch, a list is given of "many somewhat poisonous plants." Among these the catalpa and ailantus produce emanations that are disagreeable and sometimes poisonous, and catalpa flowers, when handled, will produce an irritation of the skin. The thorn of the Osage orange leaves a poisoned wound. The young leaves of the red cedar and the arbor vitæ are irritating to the skin and may produce blisters, and the pitch of the spruce causes itching. Balm of Gilead may cause blistering. The green bark of the club of Hercules is irritating to the skin. The herbage of oleander affects some persons like poison ivy, the bark of the daphne causes blisters, and the juice of the box produces an itching with many persons. To some the herbage of the wild clematis is acrid and unpleasant. Many of the wild herbs have acrid properties, among them skunk cabbage, Indian turnip, cow parsnip, several of the mustards, and the juice of red pepper and stonecrop. Garden rue and the short bristles of the borage are irritating. Some persons have had their skin inflamed by handling the garden nasturtium. Other plants not always pleasant to handle are meadow-saffron bulbs, garlic, juice of bloodwort and celandine, the smartweed, the herbage of the poke, monkshood, larkspur, bearberry, some of the buttercups, anemone, star cucumber, various burs, daisy flowers, hairy plants, the nettles, sneeze-weed, the corpse plant, and some of the toadstools. Flax spinners have a flax poison, jute workers a rash, hop pickers a disagreeable irritation of the hands, and the grinders of mandrake root find the powder irritating to the face. It is not unusual for persons who gather plants in field and forest to receive sensations akin to those produced by mosquitoes, which are often chargeable to the plants. Other animals than man are less susceptible to the effects of contact poisons.

=The Dangers of Hypnotism.=--In a review of the medico-legal aspects of hypnotism Dr. Sydney Kuh inquires whether the hypnotized can be injured physically or mentally by hypnotization, and whether they can fall victims to crime. Summing up a number of cases cited as bearing on the former question, he finds that hypnotism is now generally conceded to be a pathological and not a physiological condition; that its use, when resorted to too frequently, is liable to bring on mental deterioration; that it may be the cause of chronic headache or of an outbreak of hysteria; that at times it has an undesirable effect upon pre-existing mental disease; and that in some cases it may even produce an outbreak of insanity. He has learned of a few cases on record in which hypnotism was directly or indirectly responsible for the death of the patient. On the other hand, "we all know that hypnotism is a useful therapeutic agent practically only in cases of functional disease which only very rarely endangers the patient's life." Seeking simpler, less dangerous methods of treating maladies for which hypnotism has been recommended, the author has experimented upon the use of suggestion in the waking state, with results that encourage him. A large series of cases convinced him that a hypodermic injection of _aqua destillata_, given under proper precautions and circumstances, so as to impress the patient deeply, will produce very nearly, if not quite, as many cures as hypnotization. As for the other question, laboratory experiments indicate that a hypnotized person may be induced to commit acts bearing the aspect of crime, but that when the case becomes a serious one something will most likely occur in the mind of the patient or the conditions to prevent the consummation. The result is too uncertain and difficult, and the risks are too many and various, even to permit the use of hypnotism as an instrument of crime to become common or really dangerous. And the author's conclusion is that the dangers of hypnotism lie much more in its use for experimental and therapeutical than for criminal purposes.

=Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb.=--Of the two principal methods of instructing deaf-mutes in this country, as defined by Mr. J. C. Gordon, of the Illinois Institution, in the sign method, deaf-mutes are taught a peculiar language of motions of the arm and upper part of the body, to which they learn to attach signification through usage. For instance, to teach the word _cat_ to a deaf child a sign teacher would show the child a cat or a picture of a cat. He would next direct attention to the cat's whiskers, drawing the thumb and finger of each hand lightly over them. "A similar motion of the thumb and hand above the teacher's upper lip at once becomes a sign for cat." After the sign has become familiar the child is trained to write the word cat on a slate, blackboard, or sheet of paper, and by frequent repetition the pupil associates the written word with the sign for cat, so that the written word recalls the gestural sign, and the gestural sign serves to recall the concept cat. This language is acquired more readily than any other means of communication. The other method is the intuitive, direct, or English-language method, and, while it would require the use of the living cat or the recognition of the picture of a cat by the deaf child, would connect the written or spoken word directly with the object, without the intervention of any artificial finger-sign. Wherever this method prevails the English language in its written or spoken forms, or in its finger-spelled form, becomes the ordinary means of communication between teachers and pupils, so that every step in instruction requires the use of the English language, which is practically both the instrument and the immediate end of instruction. All the schools called oral use this method. It can be used in connection with finger-spelling, but not with the sign method.

=Experiments in Nature Study.=--Some very interesting features of school children's Nature study--not the teaching of science, but the seeing and understanding of the common objects of the external world--are illustrated in a report of Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station, from incidents of school life in some of the New York schools. The children in the sixth grade of one of the schools of Saratoga Springs provided themselves with eggshells filled with earth and sown with wheat. "The botanical side was made a lesson well flavored with active interest. The pride of ownership and a plant coming from a spoonful of earth had the charm of a creation all the pupil's own, and it was much more real to study the thing itself than to read about it and make a recitation." Geographical applications were made by tracing the introduction and extension and transportation of the crop, and by means of the exchange of correspondence the wheat belt could be traced and plotted in every State of the Union. The children of Corning gathered seeds and divided them into classes as indicated by the means of travel with which they are provided. A small boy felt himself a profound investigator when he discovered the advantage some seeds have in being able to float and ride on the water. It required no hard drill to learn the names. The summer planting of flowers by the children of Jamestown resulted in a flower show in the fall. Many children took the tent caterpillar, reared it from the eggs, and learned all about its metamorphoses. "Nature study can be made elastic. In the kindergarten it can be idealized so as to approach a fairy story. It can be intensified so that in the high school it will have all the solidity of pure science." The best proof that the idea is bearing fruit is that teachers are asking for definite instruction on the subject, and a course has been provided for them. The study should be so informal as not to admit of systematic examination.

=Chemistry Teaching in Grammar and High Schools.=--At the fourth 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.