WOMEN IN SCIENCE. 507 



colleges seems quite right and proper; but tliink of the thrill of sur- 

 prise and dismay which would fill the breasts of the mothers of this 

 land should a lady, young and attractive, be appointed to train the 

 masculine mind at Yale or Harvard ! 



On women lawyers we still look askance, at least in the Eastern 

 States, and despite the attractions of some of the female divines, it 

 will be " long after to-day " before women clergymen, a strangely 

 contradictory term, win any large or enthusiastic following. 



The fact remains that, with all our boasted progress and enlight- 

 enment, our age is much behind the past, and for a perfect type of the 

 " new woman " we must go back to Miriam, the sister of Moses. She 

 was no shrinking creature, hiding her light under a bushel; an 

 accomplished musician and a poetess, she dared to assert herself, and 

 to lead the Israelites with timbrels and with dances in their song of 

 triumph upon the overthrow of Pharaoh and his horsemen in the 

 Red Sea. She was also, so says tradition, learned in the sciences, and 

 invented the hain-Marie, the double boiler of our kitchens, which 

 still bears her name. She was an authoress as well, and wrote a 

 practical treatise on alchemy which is still extant. She was a true 

 woman in her love of gossip, and was most severely punished for 

 " evil speaking, lying, and slandering," when she and Aaron ex- 

 pressed their opinion of their sister-in-law, the Ethiopian wife of 

 Moses. 



In 1894, Monsieur Rebiere, a French mathematician, delivered 

 a lecture entitled Les Femmes dans la Science, which was published 

 in a small pamphlet of eighty-seven pages; this brochure he recently 

 enlarged into a work of three hundred and fifty-nine pages, including 

 more than six hundred names of women more or less distinguished 

 in scientific pursuits. It is true that in order to swell the number 

 the writer has included some names on insufficient grounds, and 

 others about which he has no definite information; but the greater 

 part of the book consists of short, well-written biographies, giving 

 interesting and valuable insight into the lives of the women of all 

 ages and countries who have made useful discoveries or profound 

 studies in the various branches of science. 



Although M. Rebiere has omitted Miriam from his long list, we 

 find sufficient details concerning women of ancient and mediaeval 

 times to convince us that the wearing of blue stockings is by no 

 means a modern fashion. 'Nor are those who adopt the azure hose 

 always the unattractive and elderly; on the contrary, their portraits 

 show them to have been very fair to look upon. Indeed, so lovely 

 was the beautiful JSTovella d' Andrea, the daughter of a professor of 

 law at the University of Bologna in the fourteenth century, that 

 when she took her father's classes she was obliged to lecture behind 



