214 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



President Barnard, of Columbia College, in a public address repro- 

 bating in severe terms the common method of teaching science as 

 being an inversion of the true order of cultivating the mental faculties, 

 referred to the great benefits which must arise " when our systems of 

 education shall have been remodeled from top to bottom." That re- 

 sult may come about in the fullness of time, but it is wise to expect 

 only a slow and gradual improvement. Vice-President Grote, in his 

 St. Louis address, pointed out the guiding principle in this case as a 

 substitution of real knowledge for second-hand information by a neces- 

 sary law of mental advancement. In obedience to this principle, the 

 cultivators of original science should do what they may to raise the 

 standard of our prevalent science-teaching ; and we respectfully ask 

 that the Association will assign to a committee the duty of reporting 

 at our next meeting on the best modes of improving the teaching of 

 science in our public schools. 



E. L. Youmans, 



A. R. Grote, 



J. W. Powell, } Committee. 



N. S. Shalee, 



J. S. Newberry, 







THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 



By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 

 I. INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS. 



THE philosopher who first perceived and announced the fact that 

 all the physical doings of man consist simply in changing the 

 places of things made a very profound generalization, and one that is 

 worthy of more serious consideration than it has received. 



All our handicraft, however great may be the skill employed, 

 amounts to no more than this. The miner moves the ore and the fuel 

 from their subterranean resting-places, then they are moved into the 

 furnace, and by another moving of combustibles the working of the 

 furnace is started ; then the metals are moved to the foundries and 

 forges, then under hammers, or squeezers, or into melting-pots, and 

 thence to molds. The workman shapes the bars, or plates, or cast- 

 ings, by removing a part of their substance, and by more and more 

 movings of material produces the engine, which does its work when 

 fuel and water are moved into its fireplace and boiler. 



The statue is within the rough block of marble ; the sculptor 

 merely removes the outer portions, and thereby renders his artistic 

 conception visible to his fellow-men. 



The agriculturist merely moves the soil in order that it may receive 



