TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING. 33 



were, in the carbon and oxygen thus separated. Rather this energy was trans- 

 formed to chemism, an active kinetic energy, a vibration of oxygen atoms in the 

 oxygen molecule, and a vibration of carbon atoms in the carbon molecule, or, more 

 correctly, a vibration of the atoms of the complex molecules forming the vegetable 

 structure. The sum of the amount of vibration in the oxygen molecules, as such, 

 and the amount of vibration in the vegetable molecules, is more than was the 

 amount of atomic vibration in the carbon dioxide before it was separated, by just 

 that degree of energy represented by the solar heat and light employed in the sep- 

 aration. But, to induce this higher rate of vibration necessary to the existence of 

 the new molecules of oxygen and carbon, is not storing energy in those molecules 

 any more than it is "storing energy" to convert the energy of motion of a revolv- 

 ing armature to electricity. In short, the energy of the sun's heat and light is con- 

 verted to chemism, a form of kinetic energy. When now, ages after those plants 

 have grown and fallen to earth and become coal, the conditions being made favora- 

 ble for the carbon to unite with oxygen, they combine; chemism is again trans- 

 formed to heat and light. 



Would it not be well for authors of text-books on physics to drop this very 

 meaningless and annoying expression of "potential" energy? Let the student be 

 taught that all energy is kinetic. Let him know that if energy disappears in one 

 form of motion it surely appears in some other form of motion, and that to speak 

 of a body at rest as having any kind of energy whatever is an absurdity. 



SOME STATISTICS RELATING TO THE HEALTH OF COLLECxE 



WOMEX. 



BY GEETKUDE CKOTTY, LAWEENCE. 



"Paris," writes Colonel Higginson, "smiled for an hour or two, in the year 1801, 

 when, amidst Napoleon's mighty projects for remodeling the religion and govern- 

 ment of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvian Marechal, thrust in his 'Plan for 

 Prohibiting the Alphabet to Women.'" I hope you, in the year 1891, will find occa- 

 sion to smile at the thought that woman should not attend college, because, as is 

 claimed, of her mental inferiority to men, or her physical inability to endure college 

 training. If her mind is weak, then it ought by all means to be strengthened, pro- 

 vided always that it is not done at the expense of her physical welfare. But it is not 

 my purpose to consider woman's mental strength, as compared with that of man, or 

 to treat of her mind in any respect, except in so far as study affects her mind, and 

 her mental condition affects her health. 



Doctor Beard, an eminent physician and psychologist of New York, in investi- 

 gating the effect of scholarly employment upon the length of men's lives, computed 

 the lives of 500 men of mental attainments — poets, philosophers, scientists, educa- 

 tors, lawyers, physicians, etc. — and found the average age to be 64 years; while the 

 average life of the masses was but 50 years, and even then only those who lived to 

 be 20 years of age or over were included in his calculation. The average age of 100 

 brain workers of our own time he found to be 70 years. If mental occupation is 

 instrumental in lengthening men's lives, why may not women likewise profit by it? 



We hear a great deal of complaint to the effect that the American woman is phys- 

 ically inferior to the women of Europe — of Germany. And only too often are we 

 told that this physical weakness is the result of confinement in schoolrooms, and of 

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