Chapter V: Part 5

“‘A. She was actually used during twenty-three years, after which she was put out of use, having been constructed at Liverpool, and we can not know what she was applied for before got by Japan, but she remained more or less than one year in England.’ (Darwin made his famous voyage in her from 1831 to 1836.)

“‘Q. What is the name of the captain who had charge of her after she became the property of the Japanese Government?’

“‘A. Commander Sadakumi Shiba was appointed the acting captain February, 2d year of Genzi; Commander S. Hamataki, from December, 5th year of Genzi; Commander M. Omura, from November, 10th year of Genzi; Commander Sadakumi Shiba, from December, 11th year of Genzi; then the last was dismissed on the September, in the 14th year of Genzi.’

“‘Q. In what capacity did the Japanese Government use her from the time she arrived up to the time she was dismantled?’

“‘A. She was rated as the fifth class at the November, 4th year of Genzi, then the fourth class May the 8th year.’

“We found Yokosuka, and our party were shown every courtesy by the Japanese naval officials; so at last we ran down the Beagle, lying on the shore and showing not a vestige of her proud, historic self. She was being torn to pieces, and the parts were sold for ‘old junk.’

“I reflected, as I stood among her spars and chains, her anchors and her capstan, of the significance of the career of the famous vessel, and of her associations with the man whose investigations revolutionized scientific thought and spread consternation for a time in the pulpits of the world. The attitude of these pulpits has been modified by reason of those researches, and the blessings of the world and of the Church now follow the author of them for having shown the way to a juster and more rational conception of the power and purposes of the Creator.”

SCIENCE STUDY AND NATIONAL CHARACTER.

BY ALBERT B. CROWE.

Until very recently it had come to be a commonly accepted view in America that the civilization of a nation is directly proportional to the amount it expends for education, and inversely proportional to the amount it expends for war. The budgets of European countries have given Americans good reason to accept this standard, since its application gave the most gratifying evidence of our great intellectual and moral advancement. Less than three years ago the President of the National Educational Association proudly exclaimed: “England, six to one for war; Russia, thirty-eight to one for war; America, four to one for education!”

Since that time our country has become involved in war projects, from which we can hardly hope it will withdraw, that have increased our expenditure for war four times, and a policy has been inaugurated which, if persisted in, will certainly almost at once reverse our boasted ratio, making it “four to one for war”! This course has been supported by a great body of our people. Even our Christian ministers have committed “The White Man’s Burden” to memory, and breathe never a whisper of the sixth commandment. If, as has been held by all wise and good men, the victories of peace are more worthy to be sung than those of war; if the ability to avoid quarrels or to settle them without force of arms is nobler than that which achieves military success; if true enlightenment and education make for peace and not for war, then our law of direct and inverse proportion has lately been scandalously dishonored.

If we have expended so much for education and at the same time have lowered our ideal of national greatness, something must be wrong with that education. If the sharpening and quickening of the intellect are accompanied by a blunting and atrophy of the moral sense, the best and the worst thing that can be said of our school system is that it gives daily rations to hundreds of thousands of teachers. Evidence of disease of the national conscience must raise in the minds of thoughtful men grave doubts as to the sufficiency of our education to “insure national progress, prosperity, and honor,” whether because of inherent weakness of the system or because of the strength of the forces opposed to it.

Has our system of education, then, failed to elevate our national character? He who would answer this question in the affirmative would be a pessimist indeed. Incalculable “general good” has come to us, we think, by the agency of our schools. Without them our civilization could not be so far advanced as it is; our national life might have ended long since. In every crisis, however black has been the storm, however fierce and ominous the lightning flash, there has followed in good time the gentle rain, soothing and allaying our fear, and giving renewed promise of prosperity and peace. It is the sober second thought, we are in the habit of saying, which saves us, which takes the helm and sheers us away from the half-hidden reefs in our first mad course. It is not. It is the sober first thought which has redeemed us from destruction time after time--the sober first thought of the few who are truly educated, who have looked below the surface of things and considered the hidden and obscure results, who have weighed the right and wrong and stood immovable for the right. It is the counsel of such men which has fallen like the rain that follows the first bursting of the storm, and has given us courage and power to restrain ourselves and to face our hardest duty. For such men in our national affairs we may reverently offer thanks, and for an educational system which is partly, at least, responsible for them we may have sincere praise. But our safety must always depend upon the presence of such men, strong enough in numbers and in influence to control each difficult and dangerous situation which may threaten us. Our work as teachers is not faithful if we do not increase this number and strengthen this influence. And if such men have been overpowered in the important events of the past two years, if they have been entirely ignored, or if they have been taunted and ridiculed, we have reached a dangerous crisis, and our sacred duty is to stop and take our bearings. If we have manifested certain national traits hitherto scarcely suspected, and now unwillingly confessed, every motive of patriotism and of prudence should impel us to study our case, that we may effectively prescribe for it.

Are there not, then, certain signs which we may all agree are discernible? Have not the waves of powerful feeling which have swept over us, the storms of acrimonious debate which have raged in our papers and forums, the pæans of praise which we have chanted at our “peace jubilees” and hero parties, revealed the prevalence and rapid growth of certain sentiments which we may all, without regard to political belief, clearly recognize? I do not in this place raise the question of the political wisdom or simple justice of the course which the country has taken in its international relations. I do not now challenge any belief as to these matters which has been formed thoughtfully, honestly, manfully; but I do maintain that the past few months have left lessons for thoughtful, honest men to unite in studying.

Probably the most striking phenomenon which we have witnessed has been the tremendous display of excited feeling. However careful our national leaders may have been, however honest in basing their actions on what they considered sufficient information, or however careless and dishonest, no man who has read any considerable number of our papers, who has listened to the clamor of the crowds, can doubt that the force of blind passion has been in hundreds of thousands of men the dominant force. If during the war with Spain you stood in the cheering, surging crowds before the bulletin boards, if you heard storms of hisses greet the name of the innocent boy-King of Spain, or noted the cheer of triumph which applauded the capture of a lumber scow by an armored cruiser, you will have no difficulty in agreeing with me. You will smile at the idea of imputing to such men the credit of serious thought. On the birthday of the greatest American, whose life was a message of liberty--“who,” said a great Spanish orator, “laid down his life at the foot of his finished work”--our papers printed jokes about the mistake of the Filipinos in trying to fight Uncle Sam, and in our cities, at least, the report of their slaughter was received with exultation. Whether they were civilized or not, whether they were misled or not, whether they were ignorant of America’s carefully concealed intention or not, the killing of thousands of men who thought they were fighting for their freedom, who faced machine guns, and who crawled away into the bushes to die for the cause for which they had fought, is hardly a subject for jokes or for exultation, when people are governed by reason and not by feeling alone. When the Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor her captain, in a notable dispatch telling of the disaster, urged a suspension of judgment until the facts should be known. Facts! In an hour our battle-cry was, “Remember the Maine!” Under that motto, within a few days, one of the great Chicago dailies (the Inter-Ocean) hung out the pennant of the wrecked battle ship and enlistment signs. Who was right--the Maine’s captain or the paper? Which appeal meant safety, and which danger? Our own commission investigated the wreck. After an examination, which was kept entirely within our own hands, the commission reported that the ship had been destroyed from the outside, but that there was no evidence to fix the responsibility. Did we fix the responsibility? Though the investigation board could find no evidence, though reason said that the destroyer of the Maine, were he Spain’s own king, was Spain’s worst enemy, we forgot the cause of deliverance, and went into battle with the cry of vengeance on our lips. This is not a statement of sentiment but of fact. Your motives, or the President’s, or mine may have been pure--your opinion may have been unprejudiced--but these things around us we all saw and all heard. We know that many men were carried away by their feelings, and did not think. We know that their feelings grew into a prejudice which was absolutely certain to distort the facts and to drive them far from the truth if they ever came to the point of thinking. The ears of the multitude have been closed to all counsels, however wise; their eyes to all consequences, however fatal; their minds to all logic, however clear and simple.

We may consider more briefly, but not less carefully, other tendencies which have been shown, seeing many of them in the facts which have already been referred to.

From the fact that passion has so largely supplanted reason in moving many of our people we have developed some wonderful instances of credulity. The sequence is most natural. When men become unwilling, or uncaring, to ascertain the truth for themselves they inevitably display a great willingness to swallow any statement which may obligingly be offered them by some one else. So, with half of the Spanish navy sunk and the other half accounted for, we spent hours of glorious, wild conjecture, in the dear dead days beyond recall, listening to the awful sound of cannonading in the Windward Passage, which reached us by the way of Mole St. Nicholas. We believe what is sufficiently exciting to be true.

Related to the phenomena we have noticed is another--the evident loss of individuality--of moral and mental independence. How striking is it to compare some of our newspaper editorials of to-day with those of two years ago in the same papers, and to see how their writers have been dragged, step by step, into line with those whom they formerly opposed! They have not changed their faith; they have deserted it. For them there is the defense of business necessity; but if you will to-day talk to many men who gave you their opinions a few months ago, you will find that they have broken down and given up--surrendered to superior numbers. In our bulletin crowds we have all seen the spirit of the mob, which meets the newcomer indifferent or doubtful, thrills him with the mysterious influence of the men packed around and against him, and sends him away an irresponsible monomaniac.

With such forces at work, it is inevitable that we should act, or be ready to act, quickly. Why not? Reflection takes time. To learn the facts fully and certainly takes time. To feel--how long? To take another man’s word--how long? To give way to a thousand other men--how long? We have all seen men cheering our war with Spain only yesterday. To-day Austria seems friendly to the queen regent. We’ll whip Austria, too. To-morrow Germany is impudent to Dewey. We shall be ready by night to whip Germany. If Europe combines against us, how long shall we consider the cost of such a war as that? Write it on the bulletin board--the crowd will be ready before the writing is done.

Near to this is the spirit of fickleness, of inconstancy, which has been frequently manifested. We have not only made up our minds on insufficient evidence, but we have unmade them in a hurry on no evidence at all, showing a startling lack of confidence in our own judgments and of respect for them. Attention might well have been called, in a former paragraph, to the small amount of our real knowledge of the character of Aguinaldo. On what petty and inconsequential evidence have we first called him a great liberator, and now a scheming politician! Men who could hardly read his most remarkable appeal to this country do not hesitate to call him an unprincipled, conceited, ignorant barbarian: what reliable information have they received with reference to his motives? They have found no trouble in changing their opinions. In the past few months we have been mercurial almost beyond mercurial Frenchmen. Think of the revulsion of feeling that followed Hobson across the continent; and, more recently, of our sad lack of self-restraint shown by the vicious and ungrounded attack upon Admiral Dewey, only a few days after he had been the object of the greatest display of hero worship America has ever seen. And how many important changes may we count, if we carry back our comparison to the time before the war?

But by so doing we uncover another significant fact. We find that many of the ideas so quickly thrown aside are those which have been the foundation principles, and bear the prestige of great names. We have held it our special mission to show to warlike nations that a power which stands for peace may be greater than theirs; and, alas! many of our leaders, and our people, too, are crying that the time has come--has _now_ come--for us to take our place among the great nations of the earth. We have pitied the war-taxed peoples of Europe, and offered them a home where they would not have to buy powder and guns. And now we are eagerly rushing to take up the burden from which they have been fleeing to us. We have held that great standing armies are unnecessary and dangerous, and already we have quadrupled ours. We have declared our determination to avoid foreign entanglements, and now we are in the very heart of the sputtering coil in the far East. With those who have thoughtfully decided that these changes have been necessary or wise I have no wish to debate now, but we must all unite in recognizing the spirit which has been shown, and is now shown, in speaking of our past positions. The principles which for years have been our rules of national conduct have been thrown aside in a day, scoffed at, mocked. And we smile at the names of the great men who have announced those principles and defended them, or we flatly declare they are out of date. We once listened with reverent and full hearts when our wise men spoke to us of freedom, and recalled our national traditions and taught national righteousness. Now we laugh at swaddling clothes outgrown, outused, and smile at the innocent simplicity of our fathers. We lift our brows at the name of Washington: we say he was a fine old gentleman, and his Farewell Address, considering everything, was a very creditable paper, and well adapted to the exigencies of the time in which it was written. And this carnival of irreverence is holding not only in our streets, but in our newspaper offices, in our pulpits, and in some of our higher institutions of learning.

These are the phenomena of our recent national experience which I desire you to consider. There may be other unfavorable indications. There may be others, and many more, which are hopeful and encouraging. But these clearly warn us of danger. Furthermore, I insist that whatever may have been your sympathy with the Administration, or your opposition to it; however numerous the men of your acquaintance who have been free from such influences, you must have seen them at work in a dangerously large part of our population. Even if that part has, in your judgment, reached the right position, you must recognize the ominous character of their method of reaching it.

Now, what has this to do with us? What connection has it with our work? If science teaching has any educational value, the most definite and direct connection. I shall not do you the injustice of supposing that any tendency I have named did not at once bear to you its proper suggestion. If it has failed, the fault has been in the presentation of a very simple matter. For every perilous tendency I have mentioned has its life in direct violation of the essential principles of science study, and may be restrained by extending the knowledge and habitual use of those principles.

I do not wish to claim for science work an unwarranted value in this respect, nor to deny the influence of other subjects in bringing about a moral evolution. It is true that history warns us by examples, that it points us to the failure of free governments in whose steps to destruction many of us seem only too willing to follow. It is true that we can learn from Rome the results of imperialism; from France, of irreverence; from Spain, of tyranny. In other fields of learning we may find other lessons of present value. But to meet the dangers that just now assail us, the national weaknesses that I have enumerated, the scientific studies seem especially fitted.

“The great peculiarity of scientific training,” says Huxley, “that in virtue of which it can not be replaced by any other discipline whatsoever, is the bringing of the mind directly into contact with fact, and practicing the intellect in the completest form of induction--that is to say, in drawing conclusions from particular facts made known by immediate observation of Nature.” “The bringing of the mind into contact with fact.” This means the recognition of the existence of incontrovertible truth. The dawning knowledge of such truth must bring with it the consciousness that much that we have always accepted as truth is open to question. Thus every belief, no matter what its nature, is in time subjected to examination. If it stand, it stands because it is able to bear this searching scrutiny and to answer fairly the questions of honest doubt. Honest doubt may be the result of honest reasoning; it must absolutely demand honest reasoning to satisfy it. This exercise of the rational faculty, then, depends upon and results from an awakened love of truth. How directly do these most obvious principles of scientific investigation bear upon the facts we have been considering! How flatly do they forbid us to be carried away into excesses! Let us apply them briefly, point by point.

If love of truth and appeal to reason mean anything at all, they mean, first of all, eternal opposition to the power of unthinking passion--of blind feeling. They mean that every sentiment should have a rational cause and a reasonable object. They do not forbid feeling, but they require thinking.

Secondly, they defy prejudice. They call for the open court, the fair trial, the impartial judge. They say “No” to worthless witnesses and to packed juries.

Thirdly, they demand a sufficient amount of evidence. True science is the enemy of wildcat theories and reckless generalizations. “The United States has always come out on top in every war!” cries one. “There’s no danger that we’ll ever be whipped.” “I don’t like foreigners,” says another. “I had a Frenchman for a neighbor once, and he was dishonest. I’m in favor of shutting out foreigners.” Such reasoning as this--and how astoundingly common it is!--must be cut down at the root by the habit of trained induction.

Fourthly, the love of truth and appeal to reason, which are in the very grain of the scientific mind and heart, laugh at credulity. They do not scoff at authority, or reject it. But they say: “We must know. If we learn from you, we must know that you know. Who are you? How do you know? If you know, you will not offer us absurd contradictions of reason and accepted truth.”

Again, they make their abode with the man who can receive them at his own intellectual fireside. They require that his mind be his own, that his opinions be his own, that his acts be his own, and that he defend his property in them, have pride in them, and stand by them.

Again, they demand sufficient time for care, for securing the evidence and for weighing it, and for considering its effect. They demand the completed work, and they reject all results which do not come from time employed, but are hasty guesses.

And they are not tossed about like a wave of the sea. They do command to prove all things, but they also exhort to hold fast that which is good. First, to what is good of our own and in ourselves. It is well enough to throw away our guesses, quickly made and often wrong. But the fruit of honest investigation, the conclusions of careful reasoning on sufficient information, these are the science student’s riches. He may add to them or replace some of them by better, but he will not throw them away at a suggestion, or trade them to the first speculator who offers something else. He will not have a supply of new beliefs for every day, or for every month, or for every year. Second, we should hold fast the proved good which we have received from others. And we should honor and revere those who have opened the way for us to the truth--those who have above other men possessed the power of reason and beneficently used it for the world. The spirit of science, which sets infinite value on knowledge, can not fail to teach reverence for those who have made it possible for us to know.

At every point, then, the scientist opposes the tendencies I have deplored. Against them all he must stand, by training and by instinct. Against them all he would teach others to stand, by giving to them his own training. Against them all we science teachers may arm our countrymen if we are faithful to our duty. But this end of our work is defeated if our students are allowed to indulge in careless statements of what they see and do; if they are permitted to use exaggerated description or inaccurate terms. Right here is the crucial test of the teacher’s honesty of purpose. The careful examination of written descriptions and reports, the enforced correction of every inaccurate detail, the personal consultation--all require untiring labor, and time never allotted in the schedule. But such work carried out has its own reward. The student first respects the truth, then learns to love it. He conscientiously avoids the vague, the doubtful, the unsubstantiated. If in our schools we might insure to every boy and girl this attitude of mind, this desire for strict veracity, we should have started him well on the way to correct judgments and wise conduct; we should have implanted in his nature the first elements of good citizenship. As Tennyson says:

“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncalled for) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear,
And because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”

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The fish called Lepidosiren (_Lepidosiren paradoxica_) is one of
the only three still existing survivors of the once prominent
group of _Dipnoi_, or lung fishes, which are characterized by the
possession of well-developed lungs in addition to their gills. Mr.
Graham Kerr, who spent several months in the swamps of the Gran
Chaco, South America, a habitat of these fishes, describes them as
living among the dense vegetation of the swamp, swimming in eel
fashion, or clambering through the mass of vegetation by means of
their leglike limbs. In the dry season they retire into the mud,
and breathe entirely by means of their lungs. When the wet season
begins they are set free, and at once prepare to spawn. They lay
their eggs in burrows at the bottom of the swamp, where the eggs
develop into larvæ. The phenomena of their development are of
special interest, because it takes place in seclusion, away from
the disturbing features due to adaptation to varied surroundings.
It has been discovered that the young lepidosirens become white and
transparent during the hours of darkness.

Editor’s Table.

_THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES._

Good use was made of a Washington celebration at Oberlin College, Ohio, by the chief speaker of the occasion, the Rev. A. A. Berle, to utter words that are peculiarly needed at the present time. His subject was Popular American Fallacies, and among these he noted the following: That Anglo-Saxondom is identical with the kingdom of God; that national glory and power can supply the place of national character; that new occasions always teach _new_ duties; and that political alliances may do away with the necessity for “a dual alliance,” as he expressed it, “between the people and God.”

These particular fallacies, in our opinion, were happily chosen. There is a great deal of silly talk current about the incomparable glories and unimaginable destinies of the Anglo-Saxon race; and it never seems to occur to those who indulge in such talk that a profound sense of one’s greatness is very far from being a sure sign of greatness. The greatest characters are the simplest and least boastful. Their greatness is so native to them that they are scarcely conscious of it; and they leave it to others to sing their praises. It is presuming altogether too intimate an acquaintance with the designs of Providence to claim that any race in particular is charged, above all others, with carrying those designs into effect. Who knows what reservoirs of moral and intellectual force may reside in nations and tribes whose world-action has been very obscure as yet? Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, thought that much of high value for civilization lay dormant in the negro race, and it is too soon to say he was mistaken. Then, who knows what the Slavonic race may bring forth? Who can calculate the future of the vast human hive known as China? And, after all, what has any nation got to do except to behave itself, be it great or small, famous or of no great repute? How is it in the community? Do we admire great men who swagger, who boast of their wealth, their strength, their courage, or their virtue? A little quiet consideration will persuade any man that there is one law for all nations alike--the law of justice and humanity--and that the greatest nation, according to any true conception of greatness, is the one which exemplifies that law most perfectly in its domestic and foreign policy. The surest sign of greatness in a nation, we venture to say, is that it should hate war--not dread it, but hate it.

It is a singular thing that any but the most light-headed portion of the community should fall into the second fallacy which the speaker mentioned--that national glory and power can take the place of national character. A nation requires a true heart, an honest self-consciousness, just as much as an individual, and time will avenge national misdoings just as surely as it will those of individuals. No numbers, nor any amount of huzzaing or factitious enthusiasm, can make a vicious policy safe. You may win victories with chariots and horsemen, but to enjoy the fruits of peace there must be a dominant love of justice, and that is what war does not tend to promote. It is also very true, as the speaker said, that there are not many _new_ duties to be learned in this age of the world. There is enough of moral truth taught in old Hesiod’s Works and Days to make any society now existing a good deal better than it is. When people talk of new duties they generally mean some new harum-scarum enterprise. The old duty would be good enough if they would only consider it closely and follow it faithfully. The Rev. Mr. Berle has spoken words in season; and it would be well if all who are like minded would unceasingly proclaim the same doctrines, if perchance they may sink into the heart of the masses, and give to this great people a public policy founded on righteousness and the love of peace.

_A HUMILIATING SITUATION._

“How far, O Catiline, when all is said and done, are you going to abuse our patience?” So said the great Roman orator on a certain famous occasion. Our Catiline is no individual man; it is the party system which has inflicted on us the Puerto Rican disgrace. It was obvious to the common sense of every one that, having laid our hands on the island of Puerto Rico, there was no decent course to take save to make it, for all practical purposes, an integral portion of the Union. We had cut it off from the market it enjoyed in Spain, and left it to contend with the hostile tariffs of other countries--were we going, in addition to that, to make it a stranger to the land that had seized it, and subject its products to our own high scale of duties? The President, in his message to Congress, conceiving the proposition to be almost self-evident, had declared that it was “our plain duty to abolish all customs tariffs between the United States and Puerto Rico, and give her products free access to our markets.” So thought nearly every disinterested citizen, and yet what have we since seen? The President, terrorized by the cry of party unity in danger, repudiates his former emphatic declaration, and gives his approval to a measure which virtually makes our unfortunate possession a foreign country. With the “free access to our markets” which the President had promised, the island would have entered on a new career of prosperity; but with its leading industries weighed down under an impost of fifteen per cent, there is nothing in view but commercial stagnation and general poverty. That the island has already languished under American rule--our revolutionary forefathers did not expect that their descendants would so soon go into the “ruling” business--the most disinterested witnesses attest. A leading journal of this city, The Herald, prints in heavy-faced type the following statement of a correspondent:

“American military officials told me at the outset that the year and a half of American sovereignty had been a blight on the island. This was not the echo of Spanish or of Puerto Rican feelings. They spoke their own views with soldierly frankness and sometimes with a word of regret for their own position. Their talk was more pointed than when filtered through official channels.”

It is in these circumstances that our Legislature, at the instance of a benevolent President, decides to refund to the people of the island two million dollars of duties collected in our ports on their products. Our tariff system breeds poverty in the population it oppresses, and then we rush to their assistance with a largess. They ask for justice and we offer them alms--alms for which the correspondent already quoted says he can not find a single individual who is grateful. We rob the Puerto Rican Peter to pay our own tobacco-growing Paul; and then we rob the whole community in order to pay back Peter. And, strange to say, some of us feel very virtuous over the business. The countenance of the President glows with satisfaction over the thought of all the good he is doing. For our part, we view the matter in a different light. The money will, of course, meet certain expenses of government in Puerto Rico; but there is reason to fear that it will do as much to pauperize the island in one direction as the restriction of its trade will do in another. What the Puerto Ricans want is not alms, but commercial liberty. The repayment of this money will not stimulate their trade; it will not stimulate anything except their helplessness. It is an open question whether they will suffer more by our protectionist greed or by our wishy-washy sentimentality. Meantime what are we to think of the party system whose exigencies place us in so ridiculous a position before the world? How long shall it abuse our patience?

Fragments of Science.

=Ventilation of Tunnels.=--The question of the ventilation of tunnels forms the subject of a series of articles, by M. Raymond Godfernaux, published recently in _Le Génie Civil_. The principal sources of definite information, upon which the discussion of M. Godfernaux is based, are the reports of the committee on ventilation of tunnels of the Metropolitan Railway of London, and of the commission appointed by the Italian Minister of Public Works to investigate the tunnels of the railways of the department of the Adriatic. Although the vitiation of the air in a tunnel may proceed from three sources--i. e., the lighting, the respiration of the passengers, and the combustion of the fuel in the engines--yet the two former sources are insignificant compared with the latter, which alone need be considered. The principal products of combustion which are injurious are carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, and sulphurous acid. Of these it is found that the proportion of carbonic oxide should not exceed 0.01 per cent, which corresponds to 0.13 per cent of carbonic acid in excess of the normal proportion of 0.03 per cent and to 0.00027 per cent of sulphurous acid. In practice it is found that if the total proportion of carbonic acid be limited to 0.15 per cent the proportions of the other gases will be well within the comfort and danger limits. This is much lower than is often attained in crowded auditoriums, where the proportion of carbonic acid sometimes reaches 0.4 to 0.5 per cent, but in such cases there is no carbonic oxide produced, while in the case of tunnels traversed by steam locomotives we may assume that the carbonic oxide will be about 1 to 13 of the carbonic acid, and the sulphurous acid about 1 to 440. Assuming a given limit of deterioration of the air, it would be easy to devise a system of ventilation if it were possible to treat the tunnel as if it were a closed room or controllable space. In practice, however, the conditions are peculiar. The space to be ventilated is a long, narrow passage, usually open only at the ends, and traversed periodically often almost continuously, by trains in one or both directions, these trains emitting the objectionable gases and also disturbing the air currents best adapted to proper ventilation. How best to reconcile these conflicting conditions forms the problem under consideration. Where there are but few trains it has been proposed to close the ends of the tunnel by doors, and provide a fan exhaust or pressure system, but this method is obviously limited in its applications. The practical conditions which must be considered are those in which frequent trains in opposite directions pass through the tunnel, and these conditions M. Godfernaux has analyzed graphically in a very interesting manner. Assuming a double-track tunnel eight hundred metres (a metre contains 39.37 inches) in length, with an exhausting ventilator placed in the middle and with trains of a given gas-producing capacity passing on each track every three minutes, he constructs a diagram showing how the composition of the atmosphere of the tunnel varies at successive points, and how, by an examination of the diagram thus made, it is possible to discover the maximum vitiation of the air, and consequently the extent to which the conditions are satisfied. By one or two such constructions any such problem may be solved to a degree quite within the limits of practical work, and the effect of various systems of ventilation compared. M. Godfernaux discusses various systems of ventilation, including those involving the use of shafts, fan blowers and exhausters, and air jets, and concludes with a description of the Saccardo system, in use in the Apennine tunnel of the Bologna-Pistoia line, and to the St. Gothard Tunnel. While all this investigation and discussion is of much value, it certainly seems as if the true remedy lies not so much in the removal of deleterious gases as in the absence of their production. The substitution of electric traction avoids altogether the fouling of the air of tunnels and subways, and electric locomotives are already used in the Baltimore Tunnel in the United States and elsewhere, and it seems as if this remedy is the true one to be applied in all cases.

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=Liquid Air.=--The following warning appears in The Engineering and Mining Journal of March 3d: “The advertisements which are now appearing in the papers all over the country of companies which are to furnish liquid air on a large scale must be accepted with a great deal of caution. The public mind has been very adroitly worked up for the reception of these by lectures, paragraphs in the press, and other well-understood methods. Undoubtedly liquid air possesses some valuable properties, and many striking experiments can be performed with it. It is not by any means certain yet that it can be prepared, transported, and used economically on a commercial scale, or that the difficulties in the way have been overcome. We do not say that they may not be overcome in the future; but to talk, as the advertisements do, of the certainty that liquid air will soon largely replace steam in furnishing motive power is going entirely too far. Such assertions have no present basis of fact to warrant any one in making them. The liquid-air people have a great deal to do yet before they can establish their claims or carry on business on a scale that will warrant the organization of ten-million-dollar companies. The question of validity of patents is also quite an open one. It is doubtful if there is any valid patent on this subject.”

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=Taka-Diastase.=--The following is taken from an interesting article, by W. E. Stone and H. E. Wright, in The Journal of the American Chemical Society: “Taka-diastase is, so far as known, somewhat similar to malt-diastase in its chemical character, viz.: a highly nitrogenous substance, readily soluble in water, and dependent upon certain conditions of temperature for its maximum activity. Its action is also affected by alkalies and acids. It is produced as the result of the growth of a species of mold (_Eurotium oryzæ_, Ahlberg) upon rice, maize, wheat bran, etc. For its production, as at present practiced in this country, wheat bran is steamed and, after cooling, is sown with the spores of the fungus. After twenty-four hours in culture rooms, at a temperature of about 25° C., the fungous growth becomes visible. In forty or fifty hours the content in diastatic material has reached the maximum, and further growth of the fungus is checked by cooling. The material, now consisting of the bran felted together with fungus mycelium, is called ‘taka-koji.’ It may be mixed with grain or starchy materials in the same manner as malt is used, and, like malt, will speedily convert the starch into fermentable sugars. An aqueous extract of the mass may be used for a similar purpose. For the preparation of a pure product, which, however, is not necessary for ordinary industrial purposes, the aqueous extract is concentrated by evaporation, and on the addition of alcohol the diastatic substance may be precipitated as a yellowish powder, easily soluble in water, of stable keeping qualities, and possessed of an unusual power of converting starch into sugar. The medicinal preparation above mentioned is obtained in this way, and represents a fairly pure form of the diastatic principle. This bears the name of ‘taka-diastase.’”

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=Professor Agassiz’s Investigations on Coral Islands.=--Having steamed and observed for twenty-five hundred miles among the Paumotu Islands, Prof. Alexander Agassiz says, in a second letter from the Albatross Expedition, published in the American Journal of Science, that he has seen nothing tending to show that there has anywhere been a subsidence, but that the condition of the islands does not seem to him capable of explanation on any theory except that they have been formed in an area of elevation. All the islands examined are composed of a tertiary coralliferous limestone, which has been elevated to a greater or less extent above the level of the sea, and then planed down by atmospheric agencies and submarine erosion, and the appearance of this old rock is very different from that of the modern reef rock. In these islands the rims of the great atolls, after having been denuded to the level of the sea, are built up again from the material of their two faces, so that a kind of conglomerate, or breccia, or pudding stone, or beach rock is found on all the reef flats. On the lagoon side sand bars grow into small islands and gradually become covered with vegetation. Whenever the material supplied from both sides is very abundant the land ring becomes more or less solid; the islets become islands, separated by narrow or wider cuts, until they at length form the large islands, which seem at first to be a continuous land around the rim of the lagoon, while they are often really much dissected. In time water ceases to pass through the channels, and only the marks of them are left. Few if any of the lagoons appear to be shut off from the sea as Dana and other writers have supposed. They simply have not boat passages. Unlike other coral regions, the Paumotu reefs seem to bear only a scanty life.

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=“Winking.”=--No satisfactory determination has been made of the reason we wink. Some suppose that the descent and return of the lid over the eye serves to sweep or wash it off; others that covering of the eye gives it a rest from the labor of vision, if only for an inappreciable instant. This view borrows some force from the fact that the record of winking is considerably used by experimental physiologists to help measure the fatigue which the eye suffers. In another line of investigation Herr S. Garten has attempted to measure the length of time occupied by the different phases of a wink. He used a specially arranged photographic apparatus, and affixed a piece of white paper to the edge of the eyelid for a mark. He found that the lid descends quickly, and rests a little at the bottom of its movement, after which it rises, but more slowly than it fell. The mean duration of the downward movement was from seventy-five to ninety-one thousandths of a second; the rest with the eye shut lasted variously, the shortest durations being fifteen hundredths of a second with one subject and seventeen hundredths with another; and the third phase of the wink, the rising of the lid, took seventeen hundredths of a second more, making the entire duration of the wink about forty hundredths, or four tenths of a second. The interruption is not long enough to interfere with distinct vision. M.V. Henri says, in _L’Année Psychologique_, that different persons wink differently--some often, others rarely; some in groups of ten or so at a time, when they rest a while; and others regularly, once only at a time. The movement is modified by the degree of attention. Periods of close interest, when we wink hardly at all, may be followed by a speedy making up for lost time by rapid winking when the tension is relieved.

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=An Ingenious Method of Locating an Obstruction.=--The Engineering Record gives the following interesting account of the scientific solving of a practical commercial problem: “The pneumatic dispatch tube for the delivery of mail between the main Philadelphia post office and a branch office at Chestnut and Third Streets is a cast-iron pipe buried below the surface of the street, and in it small cylindrical carriers, six inches in diameter, are propelled from end to end by air pressure. At one time a carrier became lodged at some unknown point in the tube, and to remove the obstruction it was desirable to locate its position as closely as possible before digging down to the pipe. This was satisfactorily accomplished by firing a pistol at one end of the tube; its report was echoed from the obstruction, and indicated its position by the time required for the transmission of the sound. The pistol was fired in a hole in the side of the pneumatic tube near the end, which was capped and had a rubber-hose connection to the recording apparatus. The end of the rubber hose terminated in a chamber closed by a diaphragm about five inches in diameter, which had a stylus attached to it. A cock in the middle of the rubber hose was partly closed to reduce the force of the explosion on the diaphragm, and the pistol was fired. The sound-wave immediately produced a movement of the diaphragm, causing the stylus to make a mark on the record diagram. The hose cock was then fully opened, and when the sound-wave had traveled to the obstruction and been reflected back it again moved the diaphragm, and caused the stylus to make a second mark on the diagram. The lapse of time had been automatically recorded on the same diagram, so to determine the distance it was only necessary to note the exact interval of time between the direct and reflected reports, divide it by two, and multiply the quotient by the velocity of sound under the existing conditions.” The obstruction was indicated at 1,537 feet from the diaphragm. Excavations were made at this place, and the carrier was found nearly at the calculated point. The limits of distance at which this method is applicable have not yet been determined, but Mr. Batcheller, the engineer of the Pneumatic Tube Company and the deviser of the above ingenious expedient, has found that in a tube 43.3 inches in diameter a pistol shot will vibrate a sensitive diaphragm at a distance of 65,129 feet; decreasing the diameter of the tube decreases the distance over which the pistol shot will act.

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=Diseased Meat in Paris.=--The police of Paris, says the Lancet, have just laid hands on a vast fraudulent organization for evading the precautionary measures drawn up by the authorities for inspecting the meat distributed for consumption in the suburbs of Paris. Both for Paris and the suburbs all animals destined for food have to be killed in public slaughterhouses, where the strictest watch is kept by the municipal veterinary surgeons, who forbid the delivery to the butchers of any meat which exhibits the slightest suspicious signs. Elaborate regulations have been laid down as to the various diseases which render meat unfit for the food of man, and naturally enough tuberculosis is the complaint most rigorously watched for. The swindlers who have been arrested made up a vast organization which used to buy up from the farms of the eastern provinces and even in Germany such animals as, owing to disease, would have been refused for slaughter at the abattoirs, and, moreover, they bought them dirt cheap. These animals were then conveyed in regular herds to a small place near Paris and killed in sheds built at the bottom of an old quarry. Under cover of night the meat was taken away by the accomplice butchers and resold in the various suburban shops. In connection with this clandestine slaughterhouse the firm had a kind of cemetery, where those animals were buried the meat of which was too bad for even the swindlers to risk its sale in the market. Ivry was the place where the fraud was discovered, and the official inquiry shows that the organization was singularly complete. It is extraordinary that the slaughterhouse, which was in full work, should never have attracted the attention of the villagers, but it must be remembered that all killing was done by night and that the slaughtermen were all Germans who did not understand a word of French, and were therefore unable to engage in imprudent conversation with the neighbors.

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=How Aluminum is made.=--In a paper read before the Manchester Junior Electrical Engineers, J. H. Henderson describes the two commercial methods of making aluminum: The agent which has made aluminum a commercial product is electricity. This is how electrolysis produces it (by one successful method): In a metal, carbon-lined crucible having two carbon electrodes, one of which acts as anode and the other as cathode, are put the following ingredients: Fluoride of calcium, 234 parts by weight; double fluoride of cryolite, 421 parts by weight; fluoride of aluminum, 845 parts by weight. To these add three to four per cent of a suitable chloride--for example, calcium chloride. To this add alumina sufficient to form a very stiff mixture. Before electrolysis can begin the above are fused by means of heat, which should not exceed 1,210° F. The heat is obtained from a furnace heated by gas, coke, or charcoal, care being taken that no gases from the furnace enter the crucible. The bath fused, the electrodes are dipped into it, the current switched on, and the metal is deposited (in the best and largest of these crucibles) at the rate of one pound per five electrical horse-power hours. The current pressure required is six to eight volts, at a density of one and a half ampères per square inch. The metal from time to time is removed from the crucible by means of a siphon or a ladle, care being taken to remove as little of the haloid salts as possible. There is another method of extraction equally successful with this, but also more economical. In this other method a set of similar ingredients are placed in a crucible having one or more vertically movable carbon electrodes, which are used as one, or a collective anode, respectively. The crucible, though lined principally with carbon, has some metal exposed to act as a cathode at the beginning of the process, this to generate heat enough to fuse the bath, after which the anode is placed so that the extracted aluminum acts as a cathode. The molten metal is from time to time run out of a tap-hole into a mold, and thence cast into ingots, or granulated by being poured into cold water. The same particulars as to results apply to this crucible furnace process also, only that not nearly so much of the bath is wasted in it, and the metal needs less purifying when molten. There are, also, no loss of time and money from the use of gas, coke, or charcoal, and of an extra furnace in this method.

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