548 



NATURE 



\Oct. 3, 1889 



our monuments is said to be far worse than it was fifteen years 

 ago, and there is nobody at present to look after it. 



According to Mr. W. C. Wilkinson, of New York, there is 

 a lamentable decay of what he calls " the reading habit " of the 

 American community. He has addressed to the A^ation a letter 

 in which he says that if the census taken could next year require 

 people everywhere to name the books they had read during the 

 previous twelve months, the result would probably show that not 

 one person in a hundred in the United States had been the 

 reader of even a single book. Some time ago Mr. Wilkinson 

 took a leisurely drive from the Hudson to the Genesee, "through 

 one of the most enlightened and most thriving belts of country in 

 the Empire State of the Union," and during the journey he tried 

 in various ways to find out from a considerable number of people 

 the nature and extent of their recent familiarity with books. " I 

 found the fact superfluously made out," he says, " that, so far at 

 least as rural regions may be taken to represent in this respect 

 the country at large, not many persons in comparison to the 

 whole number of our population are book-readers." 



The Century Magazine for October contains some interesting 

 reminiscences of Sir John Herschel by the late Miss Maria 

 Mitchell, who, during her visit to England in 1857, was for 

 some time his guest. " I could scarcely believe," she says, 

 " when I saw Sir John Herschel in his family, guessing conun- 

 drums with the children, playing at spelling, and telling funny 

 anecdotes, that he was the same man of whom one had said to 

 me when I first landed in England, ' He is living at Hawkhurst, 

 not very well, and not very good-natured.' Probably the ex- 

 pression on his countenance of physical suffering had been 

 mistaken for ill temper. He was remarkably a gentleman ; 

 more like a woman in his instinctive perception of the wants 

 and wishes of a guest." Sir John told " pleasant little anecdotes 

 of some self-made astronomers who came to him with most 

 absurd notions, such as the non-existence of the moon — founded 

 upon the reading of his works ! And one good soul sent to him 

 to have a horoscope cast, and inclosed a half-crown. Another 

 wrote to him asking, ' Shall I marry, and have I seen her ? ' " 



An ethnographical work on the Caroline Islands, by J. S. 

 Kubary, is about to be published, in three parts, at Leyden. 

 The full title is " Ethnographische Beitrage zur Kenntnis des 

 Karolinen Archipels." The work is said to present the results 

 of much observation and study, and it will contain many illustra- 

 tions prepared from the author's original sketches. 



In the new number of the Internationales ArcJiiv fiir Ethno- 

 graphic (Band ii. Heft, iv.), Dr. Luschan concludes his valuable 

 and interesting paper on the Turkish " Schattenspiel," and Dr. 

 O. Schellong gives a graphic account of the so-called Barium 

 Festival in Kaiser Wilhelm's Land. Dr. Schellong's paper is an 

 important contribution to our knowledge of the customs of the 

 Melanesians. 



According to the scheme adopted by the Italian Royal Com- 

 mission to commemorate the work of Columbus, a " Raccolla 

 Colombiana" will be published, in six volumes, devoted to (i) 

 the writings of Columbus ; (2) Colambus and his family ; (3) 

 the discovery of America : (4) navigation and cartography of 

 the discovery ; (5) monographs (Italian precursors and con- 

 tinuers of the work of Columbus) ; (6) bibliography. This 

 work will apparently be the outcome of a large amount of 

 diligent research. 



The Congress on Education, organized under the patronage 

 of, and with a subvention from, the Paris Municipal Council, 

 has concluded its sittings. It was attended principally by 

 teachers, and there were nearly as many women as men, A 

 considerable number of Russian and Polish teachers were pre- 

 sent, together with a few delegates from Belgium, England, 



Italy, and Switzerland. The tone of the debates soon rendered 

 it evident (the Times Correspondent says) that by free education 

 the Congress meant freedom from clerical and official control. 

 The general spirit animating the Congress was well expressed by 

 the resolutions carried. The first was to the following eiTect : — 

 "That public education should have for its object the perfecting 

 of society by the integral culture of man ; it should have a 

 scientific character, and should employ the experimental and 

 deductive methods of observation ; it should aim at preparing 

 mankind, from a moral, social, industrial, and agricultural point 

 of view, for a better future, and a state of society where in- 

 equality and injustice, privileges and the exploitation of man by 

 man, ignorance and superstition, will tend more and more to dis- 

 appear. By integral education it is meant that all forms of 

 instruction shall be equally accessible to all pupils, whether rich 

 or poor." The Swiss delegate explained that in several cantons 

 the pupils had free meals as well as free education. In the 

 governing of educational matters the Congress thought there was 

 danger in allowing any one particular class of interests to pre- 

 dominate. Parents especially were looked upon with suspicion 

 as being too often opposed to progress, which was more likely to 

 be initiated by the school teachers, the municipalities, or the 

 State. The Congress voted that these four elements should 

 together decide educational matters. It also pronounced itself 

 in favour of m.ixed schools, where boys and girls should work 

 side by side at the same lessons, and be sometimes taught by 

 men and sometimes by women. A great deal of evidence was 

 given to show that this developed the spirit of emulation and 

 produced a higher tone of morality than the separate system. 

 Mme. Heliga Lowy gave a pathetic account of the tyranny pre- 

 vailing in Russian Poland, where boys were flogged and ex- 

 pelled from school if overheard speaking their native language, 

 and explained the measures taken by the Russian Government to 

 prevent the growth of education, quoting an official decree 

 stating that knowledge spread too rapidly among the people, and 

 that this menaced social order. 



At the Sanitary Conference at Worcester last week a very 

 interesting paper on sewage and fish was read by Mr. Willis 

 Bund, a well-known barrister and authority on inland fishery 

 matters, and Chairman of the Severn Fishery Board. His 

 suggestion was that the standard of purity for efiluents from 

 sewage works should be that the effluent should be purified to 

 such an extent that no effect would be produced upon fish that 

 frequented the stream into which the effluent flowed. Incident- 

 ally Mr. Willis Bund gave much interesting information on fish 

 and sewage in this country. Dividing the rivers of the country 

 into those in which Salmonidce are found and those where they 

 are not, he said that curiously enough, up to the present time, 

 with one exception (York), all sewage works had been placed on 

 rivers from which Salnonidir were absent. It had for a long 

 time been the fashion to say that the effluent from sewers did not 

 injure fish life, because fish were often seen feeding at the sewers' 

 mouths, but fresh sewage was limited, and the class of fish 

 usually found near sewers and drains were known as coarse or 

 white fish — roach, dace, chub, &c. ; but it was a fact that the 

 Salmonidcc did not feed at the entrance to sewers, and were not 

 found there. Speaking broadly, he said the fish that inhabit the 

 English rivers are divided into two great classes— Cyprinidce, or 

 fish of the carp family, and Salmonidce, or fish of the salmon 

 family. The first are resident in fresh water ; the latter com- 

 prise migratory species. The first are far more tenacious of life 

 than the second, and will live and even thrive under circum- 

 stances in which the second would die at once. Curiously 

 enough, sewage experiments have been made almost exclusively 

 on members of the Cyprinidcc, and usually on fish that are the 

 hardiest and most difficult to kill of that family ; and yet more 

 curiously, the fish usually selected for experiment is a fish not 



