i 3 8 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



est, and unobtrusive that but few suspected 

 the presence of a great thinker so near at 

 home, and fewer still knew him personally. 

 He died in Houston, Texas, January 12, 1890. 



The Late Henry James Clark. — A biogra- 

 phy and bibliography of Henry James Clark 

 has been published by the Massachusetts 

 Agricultural College, in which he was the 

 first professor. He was born in 1826, be- 

 gan the study of botany under Asa Gray in 

 1850, and became a pupil and private assist- 

 ant of Agassiz, who spoke of him in 1857 as 

 "the most accurate observer in the coun- 

 try." He was in succession adjunct Pro- 

 fessor of Zoology in Harvard University; 

 Professor of Botany, Zoology, and Geology 

 in the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania ; 

 Professor of Natural History in the Univer- 

 sity of Kentucky; and Professor of Com- 

 parative Anatomy and Veterinary Science 

 in the Massachusetts Agricultural College; 

 and he was a member, fellow, or correspond- 

 ent of the principal American scientific so- 

 cieties, including the Academy of Sciences 

 when its membership was limited to fifty. 

 He assisted Agassiz in the preparation of 

 parts of the Contributions to the Natural 

 History of the United States ; delivered lect- 

 ures on histology and the Cambridge Muse- 

 um of Comparative Zoology ; and delivered 

 a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute 

 on Mind in Nature ; or the Origin of Life, 

 and the Mode of Development of Animals. 

 He died on the first day of July, 1873, in the 

 forty-eighth year of his age. The list of his 

 scientific writings comprises twenty -seven 

 titles, mos of which cover more than one 

 article. 



Educational Valne of Manual Training. 

 — The committee report of the National 

 Council of Education on the Educational 

 Value of Manual Training admits the rea- 

 sonableness of substituting a system of man- 

 ual training in special schools, in so far as it 

 can be done, for the old system of appren- 

 ticeship, but insists that the training ought 

 not to be begun before the completion of 

 the pupil's twelfth year, nor before he has 

 had the statutory instruction prescribed by 

 the state in the intellectual branches of 

 school work. It admits that manual train- 

 ing is an educative influence, and that, in so 



far as the schools teach the scientific prin- 

 ciples that underlie the practical points of 

 their work, they add intellectual education 

 to physical education. The study of general 

 scientific principles, according to Dr. William 

 T. Harris's interpretation of the views of the 

 report, would be educative in the first rank : 

 they explain all machines and all natural 

 phenomena in our present experience, and 

 will explain those that we meet in the fu- 

 ture. In the second rank are special appli- 

 cations of science in the form of theories 

 of special machines, as, for example, of the 

 steam-engine. These theories explain all 

 machines made in accordance with them ; 

 they are very general, but not so general as 

 the scientific theories of the forces involved. 

 They are accordingly less educative. A third 

 and least educative school exercise is the 

 construction of a particular machine, when 

 the theory is narrowed down to a special 

 example. The laborer meets many new 

 things in the work of constructing the ma- 

 chine, but unhappily they are not educative, 

 because they are contingent, and do not as- 

 sist in explaining or constructing the next 

 machine. Examined in these three grades 

 of educative value, the purely manual work 

 of the school belongs to the lowest grade, 

 and furnishes the obscurest knowledge of 

 principles covered up by a mass of non-es- 

 sential circumstances. The committee, how- 

 ever, lays stress on the importance of aes- 

 thetic culture through drawing. It is cult- 

 ure in taste that American workmen need, 

 and not culture in skill, for our laborers are 

 already ingenious and skillful and indus- 

 trious. Drawing is the best means of ac- 

 quiring familiarity with the conventional 

 forms of beauty in ornament — forms that 

 express the outlines of freedom and grace- 

 fulness, and charm all peoples, even those 

 who have not the skill to produce them; 

 and make markets for the articles that bear 

 them. 



Causes of Insanity. — The latest report of 

 the British Commissioners of Lunacy gives 

 tables showing the causes of insanity as 

 verified by the medical officers of the institu- 

 tions, in the cases of 136,478 patients who 

 have been admitted into public and private 

 asylums since 1887. The causes are classi- 

 fied as " moral " and " physical." As might 



