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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



20' s\)utb, longitude 19" 40' east, the waters 

 of a great river, Ikclembo, otherwise the 

 Kasai, coming from the south, and a little 

 below, another river from the north, the 

 Congo flows southwesterly in a mighty 

 stream, till at the mouth of the Kwango it 

 is compressed between two ranges of hills. 

 The rapids commence 180 miles above 

 Yellala Falls, there being a series of sixty- 

 two cataracts ; these it took the party five 

 months to pass. Mr. Stanley reached the 

 coast on August 11th with the ragged and 

 half-starved remnant of his followers, hav- 

 ing followed the river for about 1,800 miles. 

 They were received on board a British 

 naval vessel, and the natives carried back 

 to Zanzibar. Mr. Stanley himself has re- 

 turned to England. 



German Handicraft. A correspondent of 

 the Manufacturer $ Review, now visiting 

 Germany, cites numerous facts confirming 

 the criticisms passed by Prof. Reuleaux 

 upon the quality of the work done by Ger- 

 man artisans. Last winter, this writer oc- 

 cupied a room richly furnished and deco- 

 rated, but hardly a day passed without some 

 accident happening. The ornaments were 

 all glued on, and one day it was the cornice 

 of a wardrobe, another the slat of the dress- 

 ing-table, that fell off. Not a single lock in 

 the bureau would hold a drawer closed. On 

 a windy night a match was extinguished by ' 

 a gust of air coming through the double 

 windows. This case was typical. " When- 

 ever," says the author, " I had occasion to 

 call in an artisan, the job was badly done, 

 or delayed, or bungled. I never had a suit 

 of clothes or a pair of boots that fitted." 

 His experience extended over all Germany, 

 both north and south, in small villages and 

 towns up to 25,000 inhabitants, and it was 

 everywhere the same. The best specimens 

 of German manufacture are exported, as 

 the home market requires cheap goods. 

 Now, as the author remarks, Germany is 

 preeminently the land of technical educa- 

 tion, and the question naturally arises, " Is 

 this the fruit of the system, and is the sys- 

 tem itself a failure ? " Various answers have 

 been given: " It has been pointed out that 

 as domestic industry has no use for them, a 

 large number of the skilled, technically edu- 

 cated artisans and workmen emigrate to 



where their services are better appreciated, 

 and that they are to be found in the work- 

 shops of Paris, London, and New York, oc- 

 cupying leading and well-paid positions. 

 There is undoubtedly a great deal of truth 

 in that, but it is also evident that it fails to 

 cover the case ; the cause must be deeper. 

 It has been asserted, by men who certainly 

 ought to know, that the instruction in Ger- 

 man technical schools is too purely theoretic 

 and scientific, and too little practical ; that 

 the professors, able men though they be, 

 often have no practical knowledge of the 

 arts of which they expound the underlying 

 principles. It is evident that in this way 

 the students, instead of being trained, are 

 spoiled for their work. To illustrate, you 

 need simply look at some of our American 

 agricultural colleges; the professors may 

 be excellent chemists, physicists, botanists, 

 and zoologists, but how many of them know 

 practically anything about farming ? It is 

 thus that the question I have discussed has 

 a practical bearing upon our own institu- 

 tions. We are beginning to introduce tech- 

 nical schools everywhere, and we must guard 

 against the danger mooted." 



The Whitney Glacier. While visiting 

 the Pacific slope, on business of the United 

 States Entomological Commission, Mr. A. S. 

 Packard, Jr., ascended Mount Shasta, in 

 Northern California, and studied the Whit- 

 ney Glacier, one of the three glaciers on its 

 flanks. The Whitney Glacier is about three 

 miles long, and extends from the summit of 

 Shasta peak down to or quite near the line 

 of trees. The surface is white and clean 

 near the top. Ice cascades and crevasses 

 begin very near the upper termination. On 

 the upper portion on the east side, under a 

 perpendicular wall of rock, is a lateral mo- 

 raine; and a little farther down, where the 

 glacier abuts against the crater-cone of 

 Mount Shasta, is a lateral moraine on the 

 west side. The terminal moraine covers 

 the bottom of the glacier, and connects the 

 two lateral moraines. The end of the gla- 

 cier, instead of being free of detritus, push- 

 ing the mass before it, as in most European 

 glaciers, runs under the terminal moraine 

 for a considerable distance, the ice here and 

 there projecting above the surface of the 

 moraine. At and beyond the end of the 



