LATEST DEVELOPMENTS WITH THE X RAYS. 659 



But even if all the reforms in taxation that could be imagined 

 were put in operation they would not meet the situation; they 

 would not deliver the American people from the great and alarm- 

 ing evil of over-legislation and excessive taxation. An increase 

 of revenue, like an increase of supervision, is almost certain 

 to increase the injustice that it was designed to abate. The 

 first year's operation of the Raines law contributed more than 

 $3,500,000 to the State treasury, yet the addition to the public 

 expenditures that accompanied its enactment made a high tax rate 

 necessary. What the situation requires, therefore, is not more 

 but less social regulation and taxation. We need also a gradual 

 restriction of the duties of the State to the limits laid down by 

 Mr. Spencer— to the preservation of order and the enforcement of 

 justice. Although not apparently a disciple of that philosopher, 

 Mr. lioberts himself virtually subscribes to this view. In his last 

 report he demands " far greater economy and care in public ex- 

 penditures, and no further excursions in the field of social super- 

 vision and regulation." 



LATEST DEVELOPMENTS WITH THE X RAYS. 



By Peof. JOHN TROWBEIDGE, 



DIRECTOR OF THE JEFFERSON PHYSICAL LABORATORY, HARVARD UXIVERSITY. 



~\TT~E have become accustomed to seeing photographs of the 

 ' V bones of our hands, and we no longer stop at shop windows 

 to look at X-ray photographs. Indeed, they are rarely displayed, 

 and the lecturer who once gazed on a sea of faces as he endeavored 

 to explain the most marvelous electrical sensation of this century 

 now addresses a mere handful of listeners. Such patient hearers 

 continuing to the end may still hear of marvelous performances 

 of this strange light of which the great public are even now igno- 

 rant, and in this paper I shall take my readers into a physical labora- 

 tory and endeavor to make the generally unknown manifestation 

 of the new rays plain and free from technical language. I am 

 sure that we shall all leave the laboratory with our imagination full 

 of thoughts of unknown movements in the air about us — thoughts 

 of possible telepathic waves through space, conceptions of new 

 ranges of nerve excitations, hopes of new lights, conceptions of 

 the vastness of the electrical whirls in that elevated region where 

 the molecules of the air, in their endeavor to fly into the abyss 

 of space, are controlled by the earth's forces and are endowed with 

 electrical energy by the sun. 



In the first place, what -is the present state of our knowledge 

 of the X rays? Have we more efficient methods of producing 



