FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



429 



tion, situated in different parts of the city. 

 The question of the proper place for cookery 

 in the school course has been solved, for 

 Philadelphia, by putting it in the sixth school 

 year, when the pupils are firmly established 

 in the work of the grammar grades, and their 

 attention has not yet been directed to prep- 

 aration for admission to the High School. 

 The course provides between twenty-five and 

 thirty lessons, and is completed in a single 

 year. It includes instruction in the care of 

 the kitchen, and of the stove or range, gen- 

 eral lessons in the classification and nutritive 

 values of foods, the cooking of vegetables, 

 breakfast cereals, bread, eggs, soups, meats, 

 simple cakes and desserts, lessons in invalid 

 cookery, and in table setting and serving. 

 Special attention is given to the preparation 

 of nutritious and savory dishes from inex- 

 pensive materials. About two thousand pu- 

 pils, or less than one half of the number of 

 girls of the sixth year now in the schools, 

 are accommodated in the eight cookery 

 schools. The pupils manifest an intelligent 

 interest in the instruction, and spend the half 

 day per week in the school kitchen without 

 any appreciable loss in the other branches of 

 study. " It comes as a period of relaxation." 



A Trait Common to us All. — The doctrine 

 of the tendency of mankind to develop the 

 like fancies and ideas at the like stage of in- 

 tellectual infancy was mentioned by Mr. E. 

 W. Brabrook in his presidential address be- 

 fore the Anthropological Section of the British 

 Association, as a generalization for which we 

 are fast accumulating material in folklore. 

 It is akin to the generalization that individual 

 savage races present in their intellectual de- 

 velopment a marked analogy to the condition 

 of the earlier races of mankind. The fan- 

 cies and ideas of the child resemble closely 

 the fancies and ideas of the savage and the 

 fancies and ideas of primitive man. "Mrs. 

 Gomme has found that a great number of 

 children's games consist of dramatic repre- 

 sentations of marriage by capture and mar- 

 riage by purchase, and that the idea of ex- 

 ogamy is distinctly embodied in them. There 

 can be little doubt that they go back to a 

 high antiquity, and there is much proba- 

 bility that they are founded upon customs 

 actually existing, or just passing away, at the 

 time they were first played. Upon the same 



principle, if we view children's stories in 

 their wealth of details, we shall deem it im- 

 possible that they could have been dissemi- 

 nated over the world otherwise than by ac- 

 tual contact of the several peoples with each 

 other. But if we view them in their simpli- 

 city of idea, we shall be more apt to think 

 that the mind of man naturally produces the 

 same result under like circumstances, and 

 that it is not necessary to postulate any com- 

 munication between the peoples to account 

 for their identity. It does not surprise us 

 that the same complicated physical operations 

 should be performed by far-distant peoples 

 without any communication with each other ; 

 why should it be surprising that mental op- 

 erations, not nearly so complex, should be 

 produced in the same order by different peo- 

 ples without any such communication ? 



The Toes ill Walking. — An instructive 

 discussion of the walking value of the lesser 

 toes by Dr. Heather Bigg is given in a recent 

 copy of the London Lancet. Dr. Bigg be- 

 lieves that the lesser toes of the human foot 

 are of little importance in walking — the 

 great toe constituting the important tread of 

 the foot — and in proof of this he gives an ac- 

 count of a patient, all of whose lesser toes it 

 was found necessary to amputate because of 

 persistent contraction of the tendons. On 

 November 10, 1894, the toes were removed, 

 especial care being taken to keep the result- 

 ing scars well up on the dorsal aspect of the 

 foot, so as to be well away from the subse- 

 quent tread. In three weeks the patient 

 could stand on her feet, and, after her re- 

 turn home, sent the following record of her 

 progress toward complete recovery : Decem- 

 ber 30, 1894: "I am able to walk perfectly 

 on my feet with little or no pain, but can not 

 yet wear either slippers or boots, as they are 

 still tender." — January 15, 1895: "I man- 

 aged to get on my slippers yesterday and 

 wore them with ease for more than six 

 hours." — January 28th : " I put on my boots 

 to-day for the first time. It still pains me 

 slightly to walk ; otherwise my feet are going 

 on all right." — February 18th : " I ought to 

 say that the steel plates only half way an- 

 swer splendidly." — March 24th : " You will 

 be glad to hear that I can walk splendidly 

 now, just like a proper human being ; it is 

 just eighteen weeks next Tuesday since the 



