NOTES. 



719 



responsibility would be overwhelming for 

 an individual, and a cabinet, if dispersed, 

 takes hours to bring together." The dan- 

 ger of panic, to which the people and the 

 markets would be constantly exposed, in 

 the view of such apprehensions as these, is 

 one the effects of which would be real. Such 

 objections to the tunnel have found formal 

 expression in a remonstrance which has 

 been signed by men whose names carry 

 weight everywhere, and have at last brought 

 about a suspension of the project. A very 

 curious objection, which Americans can 

 hardly appreciate, is suggested in "The 

 Spectator." It is that the tunnel would 

 turn England into an outlying peninsula of 

 the European Continent, and " would be al- 

 most purely mischievous, as slowly destroy- 

 ing the insularity and separateness of the 

 national character." 



CoIor-IVames and Color-Sense. Dr. B. 



Joy Jeffries, in an article in " Education," 

 calls attention to the fact that the power to 

 give right color-names does not indicate the 

 possession of a right perception of colors. 

 " A blind child will give the name of the color 

 of grass, trees, apples, bananas, bricks, its 

 companion's clothes, and perhaps even of 

 hundreds of objects, the color-name of which 

 it has learned. So, also, the color-blind boy 

 will do the same. It is one thing to learn 

 the color-name connected with a remembered 

 object, and a very different thing to con- 

 nect the right name with the sensation a 

 green color arouses. Here has been the 

 mistake which object-teaching has rather 

 fostered than corrected." It is evident, he 

 adds, that teaching color in the schools 

 must embrace the detection of color-blind- 

 ness in the boys, the learning the names of 

 the commonest colors at least, the sharpen- 

 ing of the appreciation and discrimination 

 of colors, and thus the gradual education of 

 the color-sense. Instruction should begin 

 in primary or Kindergarten work, and be 

 steadily pursued through school-life. Con- 

 genital color-blindness is incurable, but it 

 may be somewhat palliated. It is not ex- 

 hibited as strongly in artificial as in natural 

 light. Looking through a piece of lemon- 

 colored glass will help the color-blind in 

 daylight or electric ligl^t ; and the same is 

 true of looking through a solution of gela- 



tine stained with fuchsine. No temporary 

 or permanent change takes place in the 

 color-sense under these circumstances, but 

 alterations of light and shade are made 

 which the color-blind have learned, uncon- 

 sciously, to avail themselves of. 



NOTES. 



In our notice, in the July number, of the 

 death of Professor W. B. Rogers, we as- 

 cribed it, following the newspaper reports, 

 to apoplexy. We now learn from his broth- 

 er, Professor R. E. Rogers, that the deceased 

 died from heart-disease. Professor Rogers's 

 physicians pronounced the cause of his 

 death to be "an attack of the heart, in 

 which life was extinct before his body 

 reached the floor." 



Antoine Breguet, co-editor with Dr. 

 Charles Richet of the " Revue Scientifique," 

 in Paris, died of a disease of the heart on 

 the 8th of July, in the thirty-second year of 

 his age. He was distinguished in science 

 chiefly as an electrician, and took a con- 

 spicuous part in the management of the 

 International Exposition of Electricity of 

 last year. , Among his earlier writings was 

 a paper on the theory of the Gramme ma- 

 chine, which was published in the " Annales 

 de Chimie et de Physique." He contributed 

 many articles to " La Nature " between 1S75 

 and 1878; and became co-editor of the 

 " Revue Scientifique " on the retirement of 

 M. Alglave from that journal in 18S0. 



Mr. Albert S. Gatschett, in a study 

 of the Indian languages of the Pacific States 

 and Territories, and of the Pueblos of New 

 Mexico, disputes the affinities which are 

 supposed by many to exist between the 

 Aztecs and the Pueblos. The oldest and 

 most important characteristics of race and 

 language, he alleges, are far from being 

 common to both races, and even secondary 

 and more recent characteristics, as imple- 

 ments, manners, customs, laws, government, 

 religions, beliefs, worship, and traditions, 

 have not been shown to be identical in them. 

 A comparison of all of the four languages 

 of the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona 

 results in showing that none of them have 

 sufficient affinity with Aztec to justify a 

 classification with it. 



The French Department of Public Works 

 reports that of the 39,938,126 metres repre- 

 senting the total length of the national high- 

 ways of the country, 23,731,928 metres may 

 be bordered with trees. Of this distance, 

 14,335,311 metres have already been planted 

 with 2,691,698 trees, leaving 9,396,617 me- 

 tres yet to be planted. 



