56 



The Review of Reviews. 



July 1, 1HU6 



SCIENTIFIC MARVELS OF OUR TIME. 



The most illuminating article that has appeared in 

 popular periodicals upon the very abstruse subject of 

 " The New Chemistry," is Mr. W. A, Shenstone's 

 paper on " Carbon and the Shapes of Atoms," which 

 is published in the May Cornhill. He concludes 

 with the daring suggestion that " stereochemical 

 forniulse will have to be replaced sooner or later by 

 living pictures, for which models may perhaps be 

 found in the constellations which glorify the 

 heavens." 



THE SIMPLON TUNNEL. 



Sir Francis Fox, in the Cornhill, describes how 

 the great tunnel was bored through the Simplon 

 Pass, which was inaugurated on the 30th of 

 May. The tunnel is twelve and a-quarter miles in 

 length. Its construction was impeded by the heat 

 of the rocks and the water springs through which it 

 passed. In some cases the water was scalding hot, 

 131 degrees temperature being the maximum. The 

 tunnellers had to cross a great subterranean river at 

 a cost of £^1000 per yard. The tunnel was carried 

 across the river enclosed in a tube of granite masonry 

 8 ft. 6 in. thick. The adoption of the Brandt 

 hydraulic drill avoided the creation of dust, and no 

 tunneller died of phthisis. 



THE SUBSTITUTE FOE TIMBER PILES. 



Mr. H. H. Suplee, the writer of the quarterly sur- 

 vey of applied science in this quarter's Forum, says 

 that wooden piles such as those upon which Amster- 

 dam and St. Petersburg have been built are now 

 being discarded: — 



The timber pile is now being extensively replaced by tJie 

 pile of reinforced concrete. Such piles are made of several 

 vertical rods of steel, fitted to a pointed metal shoe at 

 the bottom, and wrapped around with a spiral binding 

 of heavy wire, the whole being filled and surrounded witli 

 concrete, and forming a pillar of artificial stone in the 

 midst of wliioh is a steel skeleton. Concrete piles are 

 effectively sunk by the water-jet method, a powerful stream 

 of water being directed through a pipe passing down the 

 centre of tiie pile, which mines away the earth at the foot. 

 Such piles have the great advantage of being immune from 

 decay, the alkaline concrete preventing the oxidation of the 

 embedded steel, while the ravages of the teredo, so fatal to 

 timber piles in marine structures, are rendered impossible. 



THS COST OF A TRAFFIC SUBWAY. 



Although the streets of Chicago are wide, the 

 citizens have deemed it necessary to construct a sub- 

 way for heavy traiBc. This line, which will be 

 opened at midsummer, carries 30,000 tons of freight 

 daily. It is operated by small cars which are cap- 

 able of being run into sidings in the basements of 

 warehouses and stores, practically replacing the work 

 of the teamsters. The Chicago subway system cost 

 abf'ut ^4.000,000, or 30 per cent, more than the 

 Simplon tunnel, and .nbout one-seventh the estimated 

 cost of the Panama Canal. 



WHAT WE WASTE IN GAS. 



Benjamin Franklin used to maintain that we could 

 pay off the national debt with the saving to be 

 effected by going to bed with the sun and rising with 

 him in the morning: — 



It ia estimated that in the United States alone there is 

 involved for artifleiai light a yearly expenditure of not 

 less than £40,000,000, of which one-half is for electric lights 

 ing, one-sixth for gas, and one-third for oil; not taking 

 into account the limited use of natural gas and acetylene 

 for lighting. The need for special attention to this depart- 

 ment of engineering appears in the fact that probably at 

 least £4,000,000 of this yearly bill for light ia wasted. 



THE COMING AIRSHIP. 



The airship so long expected is coming, it seems, 

 from Dayton, the home of the National Cash 

 Register: — 



The French Government has acquired an interest in the 

 latest machine of the Wright brothers, of Dayton, Ohio. 

 The published accounts of the experiments of the Wright 

 brothers relate wholly to gliding, the impetus being ob- 

 tained by leaping from a hillock or other point of eleva- 

 tion. But it is credibly reported that they have succeeded 

 in applying a propelling motor to the aeroplane, and in 

 accomplishing independent flight. 



VOCATION AND CULTURE. 



The April number of the Atlantic Monthly opens 

 with a sensible article, by Mr. Willard Giles Parsons, 

 on Education ; why it fails to hit the mark. 



The writer divides the aims of public education 

 into cultural and vocational, the aim of cultural 

 studies being appreciation and taste, while the result 

 of vocational study should be skill — skill to produce. 

 The confusion of these aims, he says, is the main 

 cause of the present blindness of education. Nearly 

 every school course aims at both at once, and there- 

 fore misses altogether: — 



Vocational training {he writes) is too scholastic, too much 

 shut away from the world at large. 



Vocational courses (he writes) must make themselves 

 practical. They must look out into the world and see 

 what it wants of them. 



The cultural coursea, on the other hand, do not give true, 

 vital taste. 



Of the study of Shakespeare, for instance, Mr. 

 Parson says: — • 



The scientific, minute study of Shakespeare, the use of his 

 plays as material for grammatical analysis, philological in- 

 vestigation, historical research, belongs only to the last 

 years of the college and to the graduate school. 



The proper stud.v of Shakespeare in the high school is to 

 feel, to read Shakespeare, see Shakespeare, play Shake- 

 speare. This might awaken love. It would certainly result, 

 in the high school, in a truer, broader acquaintance; in the 

 college, in a truer, sounder criticism: on the stage, in a 

 truer and more frequent presentation. 



The study of grammar and literature should go 

 on side by side, but not be intermixed. 



Religious Tests in the United States. 



Mr. McMaster, writing in the American Journal 

 of Sociology, records the fact — interesting in \iew of 

 the present discussion of religious tests in English 

 schools — that nearly all the American States began 

 by imposing religious tests even when formally re- 

 pudiating them. For instance, in Tennessee her 

 bill of rights declared "That no religious test shall 

 e\er be required as a qualification to any office or 

 public trust under this State." But her constitution 

 declared that " No person who denies the being of a 

 God or future state of rewards and punishments 

 shall hold any office in the civil department of this 

 State." 



