862 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



at places where inflammable mixtures of air 

 and fire damp may be present. The variable 

 results following upon the detonation of 

 high explosives appear to be due in some 

 measure to defective admixture of the in 

 gredients or variation in the properties of 

 them. It is also certain that these explosives 

 alter in character with age. The same pre- 

 cautions should be observed when they are 

 used as with blasting powder ; and it should 

 always be recollected that the risk of explo- 

 sion is only lessened and not abolished by 

 their use. All the high explosives upon de- 

 tonation produce evident flame. 



Scicuee Endowments in the United States, 



Of the endowments for post-graduate sci- 

 entific study in our colleges, Mr. Addison 

 Brown, in his address before the Scientific 

 Alliance of New York, shows that Columbia 

 College has two fellowships the Tyndall, 

 of $648 a year, and the Barnard, of about 

 $300 a year expressly restricted to science. 

 Besides these, twenty-four general university 

 fellowships of $500 for post-graduate study 

 have been established, of which eighteen are 

 in present operation ; and, in addition, the 

 Schermerhorn fellowship in architecture of 

 $1,300, and the two McKim fellowships, to 

 support study in foreign travel, and five 

 prizes for proficiency in the medical depart- 

 ment. The University of Pennsylvania has 

 the Tyndall fellowship and the Lea Hygienic 

 Laboratory with a fellowship of $10,000 en- 

 dowed by Thomas A. Scott, and at present 

 applied to original research in bacteriology. 

 At Harvard, besides the three Bullard fel- 

 lowships of $5,000 each, established in 1891 

 to promote original research in the medical 

 school, there are two post- graduate fellow- 

 ships devoted to science exclusively, the 

 Tyndall fellowship of about $500, and the 

 income of the recently established Joseph 

 Lovering fund, the principal of which is 

 now about $8,000. There are also eleven 

 other general fellowships the Parker, the 

 Kirkland, and the Morgan available for 

 promising graduate students in any branch, 

 of which about five have usually been as- 

 signed to science. These fellowships give 

 an income of from $450 to $700 a year. 

 Harvard has also forty-six scholarships avail- 

 able for graduate students, varying in in- 

 come from $150 to $300 each, of which about 



seventeen are assigned to science. Prince- 

 ton has a hundred undergraduate scholar- 

 ships, and only one post-graduate fellowship 

 for science. Yale has the Silliman and the 

 Sloane fellowships in science. In all these 

 colleges there are only about twenty-six ade- 

 quately endowed post-graduate fellowships 

 in science. As these should be continued 

 for at least three years, there is provision 

 altogether for only about nine per year not 

 one fourth the number required to supply 

 the annual loss of trained teachers in the 

 colleges of the country, to say nothing of the 

 increasing demand through the growth and 

 improvements in the colleges themselves. As 

 it is from such specially trained students that 

 the great professors of the future must be 

 drawn, the need of much greater endow- 

 ments for new i-ecruits is apparent. 



Animals in Sleep. Delicate distinctions 

 are made by a writer in the London Specta- 

 tor on the Sleep of Animals between those 

 animals which sleep soundly, those which 

 sleep fitfully and always on the alert, as if 

 " with one eye open," and real nocturnal ani- 

 mals which sleep in the daytime a dead 

 sleep. Rabbits, deer, and other timid ani- 

 mals, sleeping largely in the daytime, when 

 wakened, instantaneously ]>ass into the action 

 that is required usually flight and escape 

 with full possession of their faculties. " A 

 sleeping fox will rise, gallop off, and dodge 

 the hounds with as much coolness and 

 knowledge of the ground as if it had been 

 surprised on the prowl with all its wits 

 awake. . . . Hares seem never to sleep ; 

 however closely they may lie in their forms, 

 the eye is ever alert and vigilant. . . . Deer 

 stalkers have discovered by experiment that 

 the sleeping senses of the stag (hearing 

 and scent) are sensitive up to a distance 

 of at least two hundred yards on the wind- 

 ward side." There are reasons for be- 

 lieving that the broken and timid form of 

 animal sleep in the greater number of species 

 is not such as they would naturally choose, 

 but is the result of habits acquired and 

 transmitted in centuries of danger and avoid- 

 ance of their enemies; and that the same 

 causes that have modified the hours of sleep 

 changing them from the night time to the 

 daytime have also modified its character. 

 They are not daytime and alert sleepers by 



