FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



717 



northern coast. It is called the region of 

 treeless swamp, is uninhabited, and for eight 

 months out of the twelve is covered with 

 snow. Yet he found this to be the unknown 

 land which drains the Old World of half its 

 bird population every spring. At the begin- 

 ning of April Mr. Seebohm reached Ust Zyl- 

 ma, three hundred miles from the mouth of 

 the Petchora. The surface of the river was 

 frozen as far as the eye could reach, and the 

 frozen forest was as bare of life as the Des- 

 ert of Sahara. Suddenly summer came, and 

 with it the birds arrived. The ice on the 

 river split and disappeared, the banks steamed 

 in the sun, and innumerable birds of all sizes 

 and colors appeared within forty-eight hours 

 after the first warmth. The tundra was found 

 to be a moor, with here and there a large, 

 flat bog and numerous lakes. It was covered 

 with moss, lichens, heathlike plants, dwarf 

 birch, and millions of acres of cloudberries, 

 cranberries, and crowberries. Forced by the 

 perpetual sunshine of the arctic summer, 

 these latter bear enormous crops of fruit. 

 But the crop is not ripe until the middle or 

 end of the arctic summer, and if the fruit- 

 eating birds had to wait until it was ripe they 

 would starve. But each year the snow de- 

 scends on this immense crop of ripe fruit be- 

 fore the birds have time to gather it. It is 

 perfectly preserved by this natural system of 

 cold storage until the next spring, when the 

 melting of the snow discloses the bushes with 

 the unconsumed last year's crop hanging on 

 them or lying ready to be eaten on the 

 ground. It never decays, and is accessible 

 the moment the snow melts. The same heats 

 which free the fruits bring into being the 

 most prolific insect life in the world. No 

 European can live there without a veil after 

 the snow melts. Thus the insect-eating birds 

 are provided for. The trip to the Petchora 

 was but one of many similar expeditions 

 which Mr. Seebohm undertook from a pure 

 love of and interest in his science. 



The Negro Problem. Mr. J. L. M. Curry, 

 Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the John 

 F. Slater Fund, has written an interesting 

 pamphlet on The Negro Problem in the South, 

 in which, among other things, he discusses the 

 influence of education on the negro since the 

 war. He says in substance: More than a 

 generation has passed since slavery ceased in 



the United States. Despite some formidable 

 obstacles, the negroes have been favored be- 

 yond any other race known in the history 

 of mankind. Freedom, citizenship, suffrage, 

 civil and political rights, educational oppor- 

 tunities and religious privileges, every method 

 and function of civilization have been secured 

 and fostered by Federal and State govern- 

 ments, ecclesiastical organizations, munifi- 

 cent individual benefactions, and yet the re- 

 sults have not been on the whole such as to 

 inspire most sanguine expectations or justify 

 conclusions of rapid development or of racial 

 equality. Much of the aid lavished upon the 

 negro has been misapplied charity, and, like 

 much other almsgiving, hurtful to the recip- 

 ient. Schools which were established with- 

 out any serious need of them have been 

 helped ; public-school systems, upon which 

 the great mass of children, white and colored, 

 must rely for their education, have been un- 

 derrated and injured, and schools of real 

 merit and doing good work, which deserve 

 confidence and contributions, have had as- 

 sistance legitimately their due diverted into 

 improper channels. A very promising sign, 

 however, is the long- wished- for industrial de- 

 velopment which seems to be dawning on the 

 South. Whatever may be our speculative 

 opinions as to the progress and development 

 of which the negro may be ultimately capa- 

 ble, there can hardly be a well-grounded op- 

 position to the opinion that the hope for the 

 race in the South is to be found not so much 

 in the high courses of university instruc- 

 tion or in schools of technology as in handi- 

 craft instruction. This instruction, by what- 

 ever name called, encourages us in its results 

 to continued and liberal effort. What such 

 schools as Hampton, the Spelman, Claflin, 

 Tuskegee, Tongaloo, and others have done is 

 the demonstration of the feasibility and the 

 value of industrial and manual training. The 

 general instruction heretofore given in the 

 schools, it is feared, has been too exclusively 

 intellectual, too little of that kind which pro- 

 duces intelligent and skilled workmen, and 

 therefore not thoroughly adapted to racial 

 development nor to fitting for the practical 

 duties of life. That the two diverse races 

 now in the South can ever permanently har- 

 monize while occupying the same territory, 

 no one competent to form an opinion be- 

 lieves. That the presence in the same coun- 



