494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



reach over the exact space on the orbit of one half of the mean 



solar day, and beginning at the red noon point of one of the four 



days in the year when the true noon falls at just twelve o'clock — 



say December 24th — and step the di^dders around on the orbit, 



making a blue point mark at each second step, then as the blue 



points vary from the red so will the mean time which our clocks 



keep vary from the true noon of each day of the year. 



Variation in length of forenoon and afternoon, therefore, may 



be viewed by common intelligence not only as a fact but as a 



necessity. 



^»» 



PRESIDENT JORDAN'S "FEMINISM." 



Office of the President, Leland Stanford Junior University, 



Palo Alto, Cal. 



Post Office, Stanford University. 



Dear Dr. Toumans: 



The inclosed, from an anonymous but appreciative source, may 

 interest you. It is doubtless true that the philosophy of femi- 

 nism goes back to India, through Hegel and Plato, but the high 

 priestess does not know this. She made it all out of her own head. 



Truly yours, 



David S. Jordan. 



The University of Mentiphysics, 



Lynn, Mass., December 6, 1899. 



President David Starr Jordan, Leland Stanford University, Cali- 

 fornia. 

 Sir: I have before me the last issue of one. of our two or three 

 great scientific magazines, in which Mr. Giddings lays down the 

 exact method we are to follow in sociology, thereby creating the 

 pleasing impression that hereafter he intends to stick to it himself. 

 But, sir, I wish to say, as a student of " feminism," as you call it, 

 that my emotions were far less agreeable on perusing your bril- 

 liant plagiarism, the doctrine of Nihil nemini nocet, an aphorism 

 which apparently you wish to make rival the Cogito ergo sum of the 

 Cartesian philosophy. I will concede to you (I being, as it is per- 

 haps necessary for me to remark, a literary person) the undoubted 

 right all real literary persons have of appropriating everything of 

 a literary nature that they can lay their hands upon; but, while we 

 are in perfect harmony upon tliis occasion, in regard to that point, 

 I regret to insist that the thing must be done judiciously — that is 

 the art. Any mere plebeian can accumulate facts — that is the 

 raison d'etre of the plebeian; his duty is to work — but the real 

 ethereal literary man, such as the monthly magazines nourish, must 



