Part 13

=The War against Monopolies.=--Mr. Robert Ewen writes, in the Westminster Review, demanding free bank circulation as likely to be a very effective weapon to be used in “the coming contest with monopolists.” The subject seems to have attracted official attention in England in 1875, when Sir Stafford Northcote was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As chairman of the committee appointed to inquire into the working of the Bank Acts, he submitted a memorandum showing that, while certain items of the monopoly enjoyed by the Bank of England had been withdrawn, a residuum of restrictions on issuing banks still remained unrepealed. Some other countries have found a way of giving elasticity to the currency by buying in and laying aside their bonds, as the United States has recently been doing. This can not be done in Great Britain, because the Bank of England and the other bank monopolists block the way. The bank is tied down by acts of Parliament to buy and sell gold at a fixed price, and this restriction has been a cause of panics, whereas had gold been allowed to rise and fall in price, according to supply and demand, and the bank got a free hand in dealing with that commodity and in issuing legal notes to supply the circulating medium, “all would have gone well.” Foreign protectionists now have the power to prevent British goods from getting into their markets by imposing heavy duties on them, and at the same time forcing their produce into British markets, because English laws allow them to get gold from the English cheaper than their goods can be obtained. “Suppose a merchant in Britain buys £100,000 worth of corn from America and gives a check on the Bank of England for the amount of the purchase. The American draws the £100,000 in gold and takes it home; he will have to pay no export or import duty thereon--indeed, the probability is he may get a premium on the gold in America. But reverse the transaction: Suppose the British merchant sold £100,000 worth of his goods to America, there would, in the first place, be the exorbitant duty imposed there upon our manufactures of from forty to fifty per cent. Or suppose our merchant wished to buy corn or any American produce in exchange for his goods in place of bringing money, the case would be different--it would tell against the American farmer, who would get a less price for his corn, etc., than he would have done by free trade.” This instance is given “to show how free trade in gold would bring about free trade and reciprocity between the United States and Britain, and is applicable to every other state with which we trade.... There should be full scope given to all good banks in the country, large or small, to carry on banking business in the best modern manner for the benefit of all parties, so as to encourage and develop all trades and industries.”

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=Rats and the Plague.=--In his introductory address at the opening of the London School of Tropical Medicine, Dr. Manson preached a war of extermination against rats with the vigor of Cato calling for the destruction of Carthage. “Were I asked,” he said, “how I would protect a state from plague, I would certainly answer, Exterminate the rats as a first and most important measure.” He added, “At the present juncture, were I the responsible sanitary head of any town in Europe, in anticipation of a possibility compared to which in horror and in destructiveness a general European war would be a trifle, I would do my best to have every rat and, if possible, every mouse in my district promptly exterminated.” Dr. Manson does not reveal his plan of campaign. Wholesale poisoning of sewers might have serious disadvantages, and there would be difficulties about inveigling the rodent population of these subterranean health resorts (as some enthusiasts consider them to be) into a lethal chamber. Are we to cry havoc and let slip the _cats_ of war? or to hurl an army of snakes against the foe? In either case we might find ourselves in the awkward position of a king who had called a too powerful auxiliary to his aid. Already action is being taken on the rat theory of plague. The French Government has ordered that special precautions are to be taken to prevent the importation of rats in vessels from plague-stricken places. It is to be hoped that similar precautions will be taken in regard to the transports which convey the Indian contingent to the Cape, or the situation there may become complicated by the intervention of an enemy who will deal destruction impartially to Boers and to Britons.

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=Forestry in California.=--As a remedy for the devastation of the forest lands of California, Marsden Manson, having shown that Government administrations with politics in them can not be trusted in the matter, recommends that all forest reservations and public lands upon mountain slopes within the borders of the State be granted to the University of California in trust, for the purpose of maintaining, developing, and extending the water supply of those regions forever. For this purpose the regents should be empowered to lease, under proper control, the timber cutting and pasturage privileges of those areas, and to use the resultant fund to protect the catchment areas, to maintain a college of practical forestry, to construct reservoirs at such points as may be necessary to the industries of the State, and dispose of the water for the benefit of the trust, to acquire mountain lands to be added to the catchment areas, and to do all such things as may maintain wise systems of forest and water conservation and use. The extent of income-bearing property which can be made available for forest preservation and storage of flood waters, Mr. Manson says, is far beyond the general idea.

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=Another New Element.=--The mineral pitchblende is distinguished for its radio-activity, or the property it has of emitting the peculiar light-rays which have recently attracted attention. The property has been attributed to the presence of uranium, one of the most radio-active among the known metals. About a year ago the chemists M. and Madame Curie, examining the different substances in pitchblende, found among them two new radiant substances, both more active than uranium, which they called polonium and radium. Polonium was found to be closely akin to bismuth, accompanying that metal in all its reactions, but separable from it by fractionation. Radium resembles barium in its chemical reactions. Recently M. A. Debierne, examining one of the products of solution and precipitation of pitchblende, observed intensified radio-active properties in a portion containing titanium, and on further investigation found still another substance showing the principal analytical properties of titanium, but which emitted extremely active rays. While these rays were comparable with those observed from polonium and radium, the chemical properties are entirely different from those of these substances. Radium, however, is spontaneously luminous, while the new substance is not.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Some recent experiments were made by Armand Gautier on the amount of the chlorides contained in sea air. They were conducted at the lighthouse at Rochedouvres, situated about fifty-five kilometres from the coast, during and after the long continuance of a good breeze directly inshore from the Atlantic. The air was drawn through a long tube containing glasswork, and this well then analyzed. He found that in a litre of air there was only 0.022 of a gramme of chloride of sodium. Small as this quantity is, it suffices, perhaps, with the aid of the traces of sodium present, to give sea air its tonic qualities.

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The second International Congress on Hypnotism is to be held in Paris, August 12 to 16, 1900, Dr. Jules Voisin presiding. The programme of discussions includes such topics as the terminology of hypnotism, its relations to hysteria, its application to general therapeutics, the indications of it and suggestions for the treatment of mental disease and alcoholism, its application to general pedagogy and mental orthopædics, its value as a means of pathological investigation, its relation to the practice of medicine and to jurisprudence, and special responsibilities arising from the practice of experimental hypnotism.

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The following is from a recent letter to Science by Prof. James H. Hyslop, of Columbia University: “So much has been published far and wide this last summer about my intention ‘to scientifically demonstrate the immortality of the soul within a year,’ that it is due to the facts bearing upon the choice between materialism and spiritism to say that I have never made any such professions as have been alleged. I wish the scientific public that still has the bad habit of reading and believing the newspapers to know that I was careful to deny that I made any such pretensions as were so generally attributed to me. More than one half the interviews alleged to have been held with me were the fabrications of reporters who never saw me, and the other half omitted what I did say and published what I did not say.”

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Some novel results have been obtained by M. Baillaud, of the Toulouse Observatory, France, from recent observations of the annular nebula in Lyra and comparisons with photographs taken in 1890. Among them are the discovery of small stars in the central space of the ring, the existence of bright points on the ring itself, a more distinct figure of the central star on the later photographs, giving it the aspect of a true star, and greater brightness in the central space, and certain changes in the shape of the edge of the ring, which shows at one point, more distinctly than in 1890, an eminence indicating a jet of matter escaping from the ring. Other nebulæ, especially that called the Dumb-bell and the nebula in the Crown, are spoken of as exhibiting similar phenomena.

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The Chicago Manual-Training School, which is said to be the first independent manual-training school in the United States, is now in its sixteenth year, having been founded in 1883 by the Commercial Club of Chicago. It has been, since 1897, an integral part of the University of Chicago. While its peculiar feature is manual training, it also furnishes instruction in the essential studies of a high-school course. The shop work and drawing are eminently practical. The making of a machine, such as a lathe or steam engine, is begun by the pupils in the drawing room, and is followed by them through the pattern-making shop, the foundry, and the forge room, and is perfected in the machine shop. The forge tools and engine-lathe tools are made by pupils. The courses of the school include a business course, a technological course, and a college preparatory course.

NOTES.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received, by the will of Mr. Edward Austin, deceased at the age of ninety-four years, a bequest of $400,000, the interest of which is to be used for the assistance of needy and meritorious teachers in prosecuting their studies. In addition to this bequest, the institute received, during 1898, an accession of $928,000 to its general funds, and one of $46,000 to its scholarship funds.

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At the recent meeting of the Allied Scientific Societies, at New Haven, Conn., Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, was chosen to act as retiring President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in place of Prof. Edward Orton, deceased.

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The meeting of the Allied Scientific Societies of the United States was held in New Haven, Conn., during holiday week. It was much larger than either of the meetings previously held, and was attended by nearly five hundred members, representing ten societies--viz., the American Society of Naturalists, the Association of American Anatomists, the American Morphological, Physiological, Psychological, and Chemical Societies, the Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Archæological Association of America. The discussions were all interesting.

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The great Roman Catholic Missionary Society, the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, is reported to have sent a circular to all its missionaries urging them to interest themselves in the collection of natural-history specimens for scientific societies and institutions. This is intended, it is said, to interest and encourage missionaries who have a scientific bent, and to inform the world that the Church is not hostile to biological research.

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We have to record, among the later deaths of men in science, the names of Francis Guthrie, formerly Professor of Mathematics in Graaff Reinet College and afterward in South African College till 1898, aged sixty-eight years; he was interested in botany, on which he gave public lectures, and, with Harry Bolus, revised the order of Heaths for _Flora capensis_; Prof. P. Knuth, botanist and author of researches on the relations of insects and flowers and on cross-fertilization, at Kiel, Germany, aged forty-five years; he had published two of the projected three volumes of the _Handbuch der Blüten Biologie_; Prof. R. Yatube, Japanese botanist; Ferdinand Tiemann, honorary Professor of Chemistry in the University of Berlin; Alexander McDougall, inventor, sixty years ago, of an atmospheric railway, and since of many useful mechanical and chemical appliances, at Southport, England; Dr. Camera Pestana, chief of the Bacteriological Institute at Lisbon, Portugal, of plague, which he contracted while experimenting with it at Oporto; and Prof. Elliott Coues, an American naturalist, most distinguished in ornithology, in Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, December 25th, after a surgical operation, aged sixty-seven years; he had been a professor in Norwich University, Vermont, and in the National Medical College in Washington, and had done scientific work while in the military service of the Government, in the Geological Survey, and in the United States Northern Boundary Commission; and was the author of several books on ornithology and on the Fur-bearing Animals, besides editing the journals of Lewis and Clark and other books of American exploration.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Cornell University: No. 172. The Cherry Fruit-Fly. A New Cherry Pest. By M. V. Slingerland. Pp. 20.--Maryland: Twelfth Annual Report. Pp. 212.--Michigan: Horticultural Department. No. 176. Strawberry Notes for 1899. By L. R. Taft and H. P. Gladden. Pp. 14.--Ohio: Press Bulletin No. 202. Results of Sugar-Beet Investigations in 1899, etc. Pp. 2.--United States Department of Agriculture: Practical Forestry in the Adirondacks. By Henry S. Graves. Pp. 84.

American Chemical Society, Journal of the. Vol. XXI, No. 12. December, 1899.

Blatchley, W. S. Gleanings from Nature. Indianapolis: The Nature Publishing Company. Pp. 348.

Capon Springs Conference, The Second, on Education in the South. 1899. Proceedings. Pp. 109.

Catlin, Charles A. Baking Powders. A Treatise on the Character, Methods for the Determination of the Values, etc. Providence, R. I.: Rumford Chemical Works. Pp. 40.

Field Columbian Museum, Chicago. Zoölogical Series. Vol. I, No. 16. List of Mammals obtained by Thaddeus Surber, chiefly in Oklahoma and Indian Territories. By D. G. Elliot; No. 17. Notes on a Collection of Fishes and Amphibia from Muskoka and Gull Lakes. Pp. 6. By S. E. Meek and D. G. Elliot.

Knight, W. C., and Slosson, E. E. The Oil Fields of Crook and Uinta Counties, Wyoming. University of Wyoming, Laramie. (Petroleum Series, Bulletin No. 3.) Pp. 30.

Lange, D. Our Native Birds. How to protect them and attract them to our Homes. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 162. $1.

Manson, Marsden, San Francisco, Cal. The Evolution of Climates. Pp. 100.

Morgan, William, 96 Bowery, New York. A New Scientific Discovery. The Correct Reason why the Magnetic Needle points to the Pole. Pp. 14.

New Epoch, The, Publishing Company. The Bibliography of Progressive Literature. New York. P. O. Box 136, Madison Square Branch. Pp. 96.

Orcutt, H. E. The Empire of the Invisibles. New York: The Metaphysical Publishing Company. Pp. 80. $1.

Peabody Education Fund. Proceedings of the Trustees at their Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting. New York, October 4, 1899. Pp. 58.

Sunset. Vol. III, No. 6. October, 1899. Monthly. San Francisco, Cal. Southern Pacific Railway Company. Pp. 24.

Starr, Frederick, Chicago, Ill. Some North American Spear-Throwers. Pp. 3, with plate; Survivals of Paganism in Mexico, Pp. 14; The International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology. Pp. 8; Holy Week in Mexico. Pp. 6; The Art of Benin City, Pp. 8.

Turner, Mrs. M. M. The Bible God, Bible Teachings, Selections from the Writings of Scientists. (Library of Liberal Classics.) New York: Peter Eckler. Pp. 139. 25 cents.

United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Pamphlet No. 424. Experiments in Photography of Live Fishes. By R. W. Shufeldt. Pp. 5, with nine plates; No. 425. Notes on the Tide-Pool Fishes of California, with a Description of Four New Species. By Arthur White Greeley. Pp. 20; No. 426. The Synaptas of the New England Coast. By Hubert Lyman Clark. Pp. 12, with plate; No. 427. Descriptions of New Genera and Species of Fishes from Puerto Rico. By Barton W. Evermann and Millard C. Marsh. Pp. 12.

United States National Museum (Smithsonian Institution). Directions for collecting and rearing Dragon Flies, Stone Flies, and May Flies. By James G. Needham. Pp. 12; Contributions to the Natural History of the Commander Islands. (A New Species of Stalked Medusæ, Haliclystus Stejnegeri.) By K. Kishinouye. Pp. 5; Report for the Year ending June 30, 1897. Part I. Pp. 1021.

University of California. The Inauguration of Benjamin Ide Wheeler as President of the University. Berkeley: University Press. Pp. 30.

Ward, Lester F., Jenney, W. F., Fontaine, W. M., and Knowlton, F. H. The Cretaceous Formation of the Black Hills as indicated by the Fossil Plants. United States Geological Survey. Pp. 188.

Transcribers’ Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Words originally printed in Greek are shown that way in some versions of this eBook. English transliterations were added to all versions by the Transcribers and are indicated by [Greek: ].

Page 467: “Magna Charta” was printed that way.

Page 507: Quotation beginning “we must regard” was not ended by a closing quotation mark. Transcriber added one at the end of the paragraph, after “prove a unity of race.”