FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



859 



ing new methods without replacing old ones; 

 that the decimal divisions, instead of being 

 the greatest advantage of the system, are 

 its most irreparable defect, and of what- 

 ever uniformity of division Nature and man 

 are capable, it can never be expressed by 

 the number ten ; and that the mind can 

 never think in decimal fractions, but inva- 

 riably does think in fractions reduced to 

 their lowest terms, so that they are as im- 

 possible to get rid of as the mind itself. 

 The English system, the author shows, though, 

 like all things in Nature, it bears the marks 

 of imperfection, the decay of time, and the 

 usages of civilizations long since passed 

 away, yet in its essential elements embodies 

 the wisdom and experience of ages, and is, 

 in fact, the survival of the fittest. 



English Composition " as it is Taught." 



— An idea of the value of instruction in Eng- 

 lish writing given in our common and pre- 

 paratory sehools may be gained from the 

 report of the Committee on Composition and 

 Rhetoric to the Board of Overseers of Har- 

 vard University. The committee gave out as 

 a subject to the students for voluntary com- 

 position a description of the instruction and 

 what they thought it was worth. Thirteen 

 hundred and eight students in the college, 

 Scientific School, and Radcliffe College hand- 

 ed in papers. These are classified and com- 

 pared according to the advancement of the 

 writers in the college course. The most no- 

 ticeable feature in the papers corresponding 

 with the freshman grade, taken as a whole, 

 is their extreme crudeness of thought and 

 execution ; and they reveal various defects in 

 the system of instruction used in the schools 

 from which the writers came. The papers 

 of the next grade were better and showed 

 benefit from instruction received in the pre- 

 vious course, but with evidence of the de- 

 ficiency in early elementary training still ap- 

 parent. The work of the writers of the 

 junior class (average age twenty-one years) 

 was satisfactory, but nearly all of them ex- 

 pressed a decided opinion that the instruc- 

 tion given in the preparatory schools in 

 written English is inadequate. All but three 

 of the seventy papers from Radcliffe College 

 were creditable in execution ; but none of 

 them indicated any special capacity for ob- 

 serving, or attempted anything in pointing 



out defects which might be termed a thought- 

 ful solution of them. The papers from the 

 Scientific School were, curiously, " noticeably 

 inferior in nearly all respects." The papers 

 from graduates of normal schools were like- 

 wise not what could be reasonably ex- 

 pected from students of such institutions. 

 The chief value of these papers " lies in the 

 indirect or unconscious light they throw upon 

 a curiously heterogeneous system of almost 

 undirected natural growth." They also reveal 

 " what heretofore has been the great defect 

 in the methods of instruction in written Eng- 

 lish in the common preparatory schools. It 

 has been taught almost wholly objectively, 

 or as an end ; almost never incidentally and as 

 a means." In the great majority of these 

 schools "English is still taught, it would 

 seem, not as a mother tongue, but as a for- 

 eign language." The committee believes, 

 however, that, taken as a whole, the infer- 

 ences and conclusions to be drawn from the 

 papers " are distinctly and unmistakably 

 encouraging, because they reveal wherein is 

 to be found the root of the trouble, and 

 indicate the steps now being taken to remove 

 that trouble. It is remarked that while 

 methods of instruction are often unsparingly 

 criticised, schools and teachers are, as a rule, 

 kindly spoken of. 



The International Scientific Catalogue. 



— The proceedings of the International Bib- 

 liographical Conference of 1896 in Loudon 

 concerning the International Catalogue of 

 Scientific Literature, Dr. Cyrus Adler's sum- 

 marized account of which has only recently 

 been published, afford many points of inter- 

 est. Among them was the discussion as to 

 the definition of a contribution to science for 

 the purpose of the catalogue. It was de- 

 cided, with the help of a committee to which 

 the conference had to refer the subject, to 

 mean a contribution to the mathematical, 

 physical, or natural sciences, " such as, for 

 example, mathematics, astronomy, physics, 

 chemistry, mineralogy, geology, botany, math- 

 matical and physical geography, zoology, 

 anatomy, physiology, general and experi- 

 mental pathology, experimental psychology, 

 and anthropology, to the exclusion of what 

 are sometimes called the applied sciences — 

 the limits of the several sciences to be deter- 

 mined hereafter." The discussion related 



