586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are very few schools where they are well taught, and information is 

 lacking to show that the number is increasing. Good books exist, but 

 books are only of secondary importance, and certainly good teachers 

 are few indeed. The improvement in the quality of college graduates 

 who could teach biology in schools, if there was any demand for it, 

 gives room for hope. Under the present fashion of cramming for 

 college there is not much to hope for in the ordinary fitting-schools, 

 and it would be much better if they abandoned altogether the very 

 palpable sham which they now call botany. More could probably be 

 accomplished in the grammar and primary schools where there is more 

 time, and where the pupils are of an age when they naturally feel 

 interested in plants and animals. Of course, in such schools one 

 should begin with the larger flowering plants and not attempt to use 

 the compound microscope. Certainly, in schools in the country or in 

 places where the children frequently see plants growing, botany, if 

 well taught, would be admirably adapted for awakening and develop- 

 ing the spirit of obseiwation and investigation. In large cities the 

 case is somewhat different. There the children hardly ever see plants 

 growing, and the expense of providing them with the few flowers 

 shown at school is hardly warranted by the good derived therefrom. 

 As the main object is to acquire the power of observing, I am by no 

 means certain that, in large cities, physics, or at least mechanics, may 

 not prove to be better adapted to the purpose than botany or zoology. 



DISCEIMINATIOK IN EAILWAY EATES. 



Bt GEREIT L. LANSING. 



II. 



HAVING already considered those discriminations affecting per- 

 sons and things, there now remains the consideration of rates 

 affecting places. 



All discriminations favoring places result from the competition 

 existing at the favored points. This is of several kinds : First, the 

 competition of parallel railroad lines or water - routes ; second, the 

 competition of markets ; and, third, the efforts of the railroad com- 

 pany to increase its profits by increasing its trafiic at lower rates. 

 These operate sometimes singly, sometimes by more than one, some- 

 times all together. They also exist in different proportions, and so the 

 direct effect of one or the other can not, in most cases, be measured. 



I. The competition of parallel lines or water-courses includes those 

 cases where two or more points on a railroad are accessible also by 

 another railroad or water-route. The struggle for the trafiic of such 

 a place results in lower rates than to places less favorably situated. 



