FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



571 



therefore of the State itself." Hence the 

 State has no right to refuse to one any 

 opportunity of preparing himself to ex- 

 ercise this freedom of choice which it ac- 

 cords to another. There has never been 

 a time since 1647 when the laws of Mas- 

 sachusetts did not require certain towns 

 to maintain grammar schools, of which 

 the high schools are the modern equiva- 

 lents, at public expense, and when the 

 colony became a State a perpetual obli- 

 gation was imposed upon the Legisla- 

 ture and magistrates " to cherish the 

 interests of literature and the sciences 

 and all seminaries of them, especially 

 the university at Cambridge, public 

 schools, and grammar schools in the 

 towns." 



Degeneration. — Dr. William C. 

 Krauss, in a paper on The Stigmata of 

 Degeneration, describes degeneration as 

 meaning, in pathology, the substitution 

 of a tissue by some other regarded as 

 less highly organized, less complex in 

 structure, of inferior physiological rank, 

 or less suited for the performance of the 

 original function. The same definition 

 may apply equally well, according to Dr. 

 Krauss, in human ontogeny, " where we 

 can regard a normal man as possessing 

 a certain number of units of strength 

 capable of supplying or exerting a cer- 

 tain number of units of work or force, 

 varying of course according to the en- 

 vironment, education, and fixity of pur- 

 pose of the individual. It would be ob- 

 viously unfair to compare a professional 

 man or a brain-worker, whose units of 

 work are intuitively manifold more than 

 a hand-worker, and declare the latter a 

 degenerate because his force and energy, 

 as measured by the world's standard, are 

 not as productive as the former. The 

 questions of money standard and time- 

 worth are foreign to the laws of degen- 

 eracy, and are not to be regarded in 

 any way. The degenerate must be con- 

 sidered solely and alone upon the phys- 

 ical, mental, and abnormal stigmata 

 which brand him as an abnormal or 

 atypical man, and prevent him from ex- 

 erting himself to the highest limit com- 

 mensurate ^^ith his skill and develop- 

 ment." The author's paper treats in de- 

 tail of the various aspects of degenerac-y. 



Birds as Pest Destroyers. — The 

 French journal, Le Chasseur, puts in 



a plea for the animals that should not 

 be killed. " Why destroy spiders, except 

 in rooms, while they check the increase 

 of flies? Why tread on the cricket in 

 the garden, which wars upon caterpil- 

 lars, snails, and grubs? Why kill the 

 inoffensive slowworm, which eats grass- 

 hoppers? Why slay the cuckoo, whose 

 favorite food is the caterpillar, which we 

 do not like to touch? Why destroy the 

 nuthatch and de-nest the warbler, foes 

 of wasps? Why make war on sparrows, 

 which eat seeds only when they can not 

 get insects, and which exterminate so 

 many grain-eating insects? Why burn 

 powder against starlings, which pass 

 their lives in eating larvae and picking 

 vermin from the cattle in the fields? 

 (But they eat grapes too.) Why destroy 

 the ladybird, which feeds on aphides? 

 Why lay snares for titmice, when each 

 pair take on an average one hundred and 

 twenty thousand worms and insects for 

 their little ones? Why kill the toad, 

 which eats snails, weevils, and ants? 

 Why save the lives of thousands of gnats 

 by destroying goat-suckers? Why kill 

 the bat, which makes war on night 

 moths and many bugs, as swallows do 

 on flies? Why destroy the shrew mole, 

 which lives on earthworms, as the mouse 

 does on wheat? Why say the screech 

 owl eats pigeons and chickens, when it is 

 not true, and why destroy it when it 

 takes the place of seven or eight cats 

 by eating at least six thousand mice a 

 year ? " 



The Yang-tse-Kiang. — In a lecture 

 before the London Foreign Press Asso- 

 ciation Mrs. Isabella Bishop describes 

 the Yank-tse-Kiang as one of the largest 

 rivers of the world, it draining an area 

 of 650,000 square miles, within which 

 dwell a population of 180,000,000. In 

 the journey to the far East, the scenery 

 at Szu-chuan changed from savage gran- 

 deur and endless surprises to the fairest 

 scenes, with prosperity, peace, law, and 

 order seeming to prevail everywhere. 

 Erroneous ideas were often entertained 

 about Chinese social life and surround- 

 ings. China had many trade associa- 

 tions, which were often strengthened by 

 alliance with guilds. They were com- 

 posed of men in any particular trade or 

 employment, who bound themselves for 

 common action in the interest of that 

 trade. They might rightly be called 



