Part 17

=Relative Power of Fungicides.=--Mr. F. L. Stevens has published, in the Botanical Gazette, an account of experiments made for the purpose of establishing with some degree of accuracy the strengths of various solutions which are necessary to prevent the growth of fungous spores. The bearing of this question upon the relation of a fungicide to its efficiency is apparent. As among the general results the author finds that mercuric chloride is the strongest chemical used in its toxic effect upon the fungi, while potassium cyanide is remarkably weak considering its great toxic action on animals. Alcohol and sodium chloride have a stimulating effect. Various fungi offer different resistance to poisons, and the limits of resistance will vary in the same species. The spores of fungi are less susceptible than the roots of seedlings. A chemical may be twice as powerful as another against one fungus, while in acting upon another fungus an entirely different ratio may be sustained. An occasional spore may germinate and grow quite normally in a solution that prevents hundreds of normal spores around it from germinating. Penicillium as a nutrient medium offered greater resistance to poisons than did any of the other fungi worked upon. Uromyces did not diminish in vigor of growth with the increased strength of the poison, but the percentage of spores that germinated was diminished. In general, the results of the action of the chemicals were in accord with the theory of hydrolytic association. Incidentally new evidence bearing upon the theory of the hydrolytic dissociation of the molecule was adduced, together with facts that may throw some light upon the structure of the cell wall.

=National Forest Reserves.=--The report of the Secretary of the Interior for the year ending June 30, 1898, mentions thirty forest reservations (exclusive of the Afognac Forest and Fish-Culture Reserve in Alaska) as existing by presidential proclamation under the act of March 3, 1891, embracing an estimated area of 40,719,474 acres. The patrolling of the reserves has shown that fire is the paramount danger to which they are exposed. Next to fire, sheep-raising is the most serious difficulty to be considered in administering the reserves. Yet, as it is not considered expedient to prohibit so important an industry throughout the reserves, special efforts have been directed toward ascertaining the particular regions in which the conditions demand the exclusion of sheep, and toward learning what restrictions may be necessary in other regions. The institution of a national system of timber cutting to be economical in all directions is under consideration, but it is acknowledged that the work will require a certain degree of experience and training on the part of forest officers. A forest system inaugurated by the department in August, 1898, in which the reserves are placed under the control of a graded force of officers, has already shown good results; the reports received from the forest officers indicate that the patrolling has limited both the number and extent of fires. During the eighteen months previous to the preparation of the report in November, 1898, a great advance was made toward a comprehensive administration of the public forests. A marked change in public sentiment toward forest policy is noticed, with a subsidence of the opposition to the reserves and a tendency among the people in the localities directly interested to take a deep and approving interest in the matter.

=Sloyd as an Educational Factor.=--Mr. Gustaf Larsson, of the Sloyd Training School, Boston, represents, in his Bulletin, that Sloyd is steadily gaining ground, and has been introduced, during the past year, into city schools, colleges, and charitable institutions, and that many clubs and social organizations are becoming interested in it as an educational factor. The Sloyd principles seem to meet a cordial welcome wherever they are adequately presented. Mr. Larsson insists that in Sloyd instruction the teacher should enter into the child's point of view, and must never forget, he says, that it is the real work which appeals to him, and not the particular exercise or the typical use of the tool. As Dr. Henderson says, it is not necessary to be forever suggesting to him that he is being educated. "We must see, feel, and think with the worker, and so introduce our disciplinary exercises that he practices them correctly while still carrying out his own dearest desire. In this way only can he get the greatest benefit from any exercise. We must constantly bear in mind that we are aiming at a well-developed producer rather than a perfect product.... Whenever a piece of work, however poor in itself, stands for a child's best effort, it is a highly satisfactory production from the true teacher's point of view. He must remember also to keep constantly before us the fact that independence and self-reliance are to be cultivated from the outset." Sloyd claims to be peculiar in aiming at ethical rather than technical results, and at general organic development rather than special skill; in employing only pedagogically trained teachers; in using rationally progressive courses of exercises applied on objects of good form which are also of special use to the worker; in striving after gymnastically correct working positions in encouraging the use of both the left and right sides of the body; and in giving to each individual opportunity to progress according to his peculiar ability. These points have been emphasized in Sloyd from its beginning in Sweden more than twenty-five years ago.

=Hawaiian Reptiles.=--It is shown, in a paper on the subject by Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, published by the United States National Museum, that there are no true land reptiles in the Hawaiian archipelago other than a few species of lizards, all belonging to the cosmopolitan families--the geckoes (four species) and the skinks (three species). All of these, except one of the geckoes, belong to species widely distributed over the Indo-Polynesian island world, while the gecko excepted has close relatives in New Caledonia, Java, Sumatra, and Ceylon. This distribution is regarded by the author as not sustaining the theory of a once continuous land connection between the various island groups, but rather, by the limited number of species, as indicating that at the time of the immigration of the lizards the islands were separated from other lands. Yet these land creatures could not have been distributed over thousands of miles of ocean by ordinary means, and the agency of man has to be invoked. From various considerations it is permissible to conclude that they came to the islands with the ancestors of the Hawaiians. No records are known of any of the marine snakes having been taken at the Sandwich Islands. Marine turtles live in the seas surrounding the archipelago and breed upon some of its outlying islands, but little is known of them. There are no indigenous batrachians in the group, but frogs and toads are said to have been brought, intentionally, from China, Japan, and America to assist in the fight against mosquitoes.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Miss Kingsley defines one of the fundamental doctrines of African fetich as being that the connection of a certain spirit with a certain mass of matter, a material object, is not permanent. "The African will point out to you a lightning-stricken tree and tell you that its spirit has been killed; he will tell you when the cooking pot has gone to bits that it has lost its spirit; if his weapon fails, it is because some one has stolen or made sick its spirit by means of witchcraft. In every action of his daily life he shows you how he lives with a great, powerful spirit world around him. You will see him, before starting out to hunt or fight, rubbing medicine into his weapons to strengthen the spirit within them, talking the while, telling them what care he has taken of them, reminding them of the gifts he has given them, though those gifts were hard to give, and begging them in the hour of his dire necessity not to fail him. You will see him bending over the face of a river, talking to its spirit with proper incantations, asking it when it meets a man who is an enemy of his to upset his canoe or drown him, or asking it to carry down with it some curse to the village below which has angered him, and in a thousand other ways he shows you what he believes if you will watch him patiently. It is a very important point in the study of pure fetich to gain a clear conception of this arrangement of things in grades. As far as I have gone I think I may say fourteen classes of spirits exist in fetich. Dr. Nassau, of Gaboon, thinks that the spirits affecting human affairs can be classified completely into six classes."

At a recent meeting of the Institute of Mining Engineers (England), reported by Industries and Iron, Mr. J. A. Longden, who delivered the opening address, discussed the problem presented by the rapid exhaustion of the English coal fields. During the last twenty-five years, he said, the output of coal had increased from 120,000,000 to 200,000,000 tons, the ratio of increase being two and a half per cent per annum. Assuming that the increase for the next twenty-five years will only be one and a half per cent, the coal output in 1925 would reach 280,000,000 tons. At such an increasing annual output the commercially workable coal would be practically used up. Mr. Longden suggested the propriety of putting an export duty of sixpence per ton on all coal exported, and finally said: The evidence before them all pointed to one thing--namely, that in fifty years they would practically be dependent on the United States of America for cheap coal, iron, and steel, and when this came about "we or our sons will find out that an alliance with the United States for coaling our navy was imperative." In conclusion, he insisted upon the necessity of taking measures to avoid waste in the coal industry.

The following note is from Nature of May 11th: "At the last meeting of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland Dr. Elliot Smith settled a point in the comparative morphology of the brain which at one time was the subject of a heated controversy between Huxley and Owen. In 1861, it may be remembered, Owen maintained that the _calcar avis_ and the calcarine fissure which causes it were characters peculiar to the brain of man, a statement which Huxley showed to be untrue, the formation being well marked in all primate brains. Dr. Elliot Smith has reached the further generalization that the _calcar avis_ is a character shown by all mammalian brains, with the possible exception of the prototherian. He identifies--and the reasons for this identification do not seem capable of refutation--the calcarine fissure of the primate brain with the splenial fissure of the brain of other mammals. This generalization will materially assist in homologizing the primate and unguiculate _pallium_."

The influence of wind on the speed of steamers is of considerably more importance than is generally believed. In the _Annalen der Hydrographie_ for January, 1899, L. E. Dinklage describes some observations recently made on two of the North German Lloyd steamers of about five thousand tons and fifteen or sixteen knots. The results show that when the wind was favorable no difference whatever could be detected in the speed of the vessels during a light breeze or a heavy gale. But with a beam (cross-wind) or head wind a reduction of from three to five knots and a half was produced. The obvious conclusion is that the wind when favorable never helps a fast steamer, but always hinders it when unfavorable. Probably with vessels steaming ten knots or less a favoring gale might increase the speed.

NOTES.

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.