PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 



occupied by naval detachments, and military gar- 

 risons were stationed in Iba, Lingayan, Dagupan, 

 and Vigan. In the interior garrisons were left 

 in the principal towns along the routes followed 

 by Gen. Lawton, Gen. MacArthur, and Gen. 

 Wheaton. The provinces of Bulacan, Nueva 

 Ecija, Pampanga, Bataan, Zambales, Tarlac, and 

 Pangasinan were practically dominated by them. 

 When additional troops arrived in December other 

 ports were occupied and opened, allowing the 

 trade in hemp and other products to be resumed. 

 An expedition into the mountains of the north- 

 west in search of the captive sailors of the York- 

 town and Urdaneta was successful, and all the 

 survivors, including Lieut. J. C. Gilmore, were 

 brought down to Vigan. The ports of the Philip- 

 pines were declared open to commerce on Dec. 11. 



Although the Philippine army was utterly dis- 

 persed and Aguinaldo a fugitive, the rebels of the 

 south who had first started the insurrection were 

 determined on making another desperate effort 

 to discourage the Americans. They fought fierce- 

 ly in small bodies, employing guerrilla tactics, 

 and Gen. Lawton met them successfully with 

 skirmishing methods used in warfare with the 

 American Indians. Gen. Wheaton and Gen. 

 Schwan co-operated with flying columns, and 

 where the army went a post was established in 

 every town. On Dec. 19 Gen. Lawton, who in 

 every battle had exposed himself to the hottest 

 fire, was killed in an insignificant action at San 

 Mateo, struck by a rebel sharpshooter. 



The Philippine commission consisted of J. G. 

 Schurman, George* Dewey, Charles Denby, and 

 Dean C. Worcester. The commissioners returned 

 to the United States and submitted their pre- 

 liminary report to the President on Nov. 2. They 

 concluded from their investigations that the Fili- 

 pinos are not a nation, but a variegated assem- 

 blage of various tribes, and their loyalty is still 

 of the tribal type. The multiplicity of tribes, the 

 diversity of languages, mutually unintelligible, 

 and the multifarious phases of civilization, rang- 

 ing from the highest to the lowest, and the utter 

 want of experience and training in self-govern- 

 ment disqualify the natives for the task of gov- 

 erning the archipelago at the present time, in spite 

 of their domestic virtues and their intellectual 

 capacities of a high order, though these capaci- 

 ties have been developed by education and experi- 

 ence only in a limited number of persons, the mass 

 of the population being uneducated. The most 

 that can be expected of them, in the view of the 

 commissioners, is to co-operate with the Ameri- 

 cans in the administration of general affairs from 

 Manila as a center, and to undertake, subject to 

 American control or guidance, the administration 

 of provincial and municipal affairs. As educa- 

 tion advances and experience ripens the natives 

 may be intrusted with a larger and more inde- 

 pendent share of government, self-government, as 

 the American ideal, being constantly kept in view 

 as the goal. Should American power be with- 

 drawn, the commissioners believe that the gov- 

 ernment of the Philippines would speedily lapse 

 into anarchy, which would excuse, if it did not 

 necessitate, the intervention of other powers and 

 the eventual division of the islands among them. 

 Only through American occupation, therefore, is 

 the idea of a free, united, and self-governing 

 Philippine commonwealth at all conceivable. 



PHYSICS IN 1899. Constitution of Mat- 

 ter, Ether, etc. Properties of the Ether. Fes- 

 senden, in a paper (American Association) on 

 the nature of electricity and magnetism and cer- 

 tain constants of the ether, points out the value 

 of dimensional formulae in the discussion of 



PHYSICS IN 1899. 



703 



physical problems, and takes up the question of 

 the fundamental relations between certain optical 

 properties and certain electro-magnetic properties 

 of the ether. He notes that three formula; exist 

 for the relation between four quantities, and that 

 consequently the equations can not be solved by 

 the ordinary method. A fourth relation must be 

 obtained, and then by a discussion of the dimen- 

 sions of the quantities involved it becomes pos- 

 sible to make certain hypotheses. Two of these 

 are shown to be the most probable, and then 

 experimental observations are called in to de- 

 termine which of these is preferable. A large 

 mass of experimental observations on the rela- 

 tion between permeability, density, specific in- 

 ductive capacity, and certain optical constants 

 of a long list of substances leads to a choice be- 

 tween the two possible formulae It is thus pos- 

 sible to deduce values for the elasticity of the 

 ether, as well as its density, and also, by con- 

 structing the dimensional formulae for the mag- 

 netic quantities, to visualize the nature of mag- 

 netic quantities. 



Gravity. Burgess (Paris Academy of Sciences, 

 Aug. 21 ) modifies the Cavendish method of de- 

 termining the Newtonian constant by suspending 

 in a mercury bath the weight that is supported 

 by the torsion thread. In this way a mass of 

 lead weighing 2 kilogrammes can be supported 

 on a torsion wire of bronze or platinum only 0.05 

 millimetre in diameter. The sensibility of this 

 device is very great, the shifting of the large 

 attracting mass of 10 kilogrammes by 40 turn- 

 ing the torsion system through about 12. The 

 chief difficulties are connected with the necessity 

 of maintaining the temperature of the mercury 

 and with the fluctuation of its surface tension. 



Unit of Time based on Gravitation. Lippmann 

 (Journal de Physique, August) proposes the adop- 

 tion of an absolute measure of time based on 

 the Newtonian constant of gravitation. This 

 constant is independent of the units of length 

 and mass, and is of dimension " minus two " in 

 time, and could be used as an absolute time unit 

 equal approximately to 3,862 mean-time seconds. 

 As all this involves the assumption that the units 

 of mass and volume are the same, the proposal 

 amounts to the adoption of a unit of time based 

 on the recognition of water as the substance of 

 unit density. 



Objectivity of Energy. Lodge (Philosophical 

 Magazine, XLVI, p. 414) holds that energy has all 

 the marks of objectivity. He states the follow- 

 ing among other propositions : " Stresses exist 

 solely in the ether " ; " the ether as a whole is at 

 rest, and velocities referred to it are absolute " ; 

 "the two fundamental forms of energy are dis- 

 tinct and possessed by different bodies viz., po- 

 tential by ether, kinetic by matter hence when- 

 ever there is transference there is transforma- 

 tion," and vice versa. 



Mechanics. Inertia. From experiments with 

 mercury and gelatin Barus (Science, VIII, p. 

 681) believes it probable that a body moving 

 through continuous ether will leave discontinu- 

 ous or triturated ether behind it and have sheared 

 continuous ether in front. If the triturated re- 

 gion be supposed to exist without any material 

 body, it will be a seat of energy, and can not 

 be at rest, but must continually break down the 

 neighboring continuous ether. The resistance to 

 this action varies as the velocity and as the 

 front presented, which may represent mass. We 

 thus have an approach to Newton's laws of mo- 

 tion as a manifestation of the ether. 



Friction. Brillouin (Comptes Rendus, 

 CXXVIII, p. 354) states that in the neighbor- 



