112 



KNOWLEDGE . 



[Feb. 6, 1885. 



pages scrawled over with marks suggestive of the pro- 

 verbial worm that has been trodden on and which " will 

 turn." 



The Christmas Hamper. (Rangoon. 1884.)— Here is 

 an orthodox Christmas number which reaches us all the 

 way from Burmah. Seven stories and a poem constitute 

 the bill of fare. Let us hope that the dwellers in that 

 externally charming, though perhaps extortionately dear, 

 station, Rangoon, enjoyed it. 



INFLUENCE OF CIVILISATION 

 EYESIGHT. 



ON 



AT last week's meeting of the Society of Arts, a paper on " The 

 luflueiice of Civilisatiou on Eyesight" was read by Mr. R. 

 Brudenell Carter, who said there coukl be no doubt, not only that 

 the eye, as civilised men now possessed it, was inferior to that 

 possessed by animals which we had far outstripped in other parti- 

 culars, but also that, amongst ourselves, it had fallen very decidedly 

 below the standard of excellence which it had attained in some of 

 the families of the human race. An enormously large proportion 

 of the whole German nation is composed of the wearers of spec- 

 tacles, and there is abundant evidence that the need for such assist- 

 ance dated from a comparatively recent period. In 1812 the late 

 Mr. Ware communicated to the Royal Society the result of some 

 investigations into the sight of different classes of people in this 

 country, and he stated that, in the three regiments of Foot 

 Guards, short sight was " almost utterly unknown." During 

 twenty years and among lO.OUO men, not half-a-dozen soldiers had 

 been discharged, nor half-a-dozen recruits rejected, on account of 

 it. In the military school at Chelsea, among 1,300 children, he 

 found that there were no complaints of short sight, and, on closer 

 investigation, there were " only three children who experienced 

 the least inconvenience from it." Last year, his friend aud col- 

 league, Mr. Adams Frost, was good enough to examine for him a 

 Board-school in the South of London, and he found that 73 children 

 •out of 2(37, or rather more than one-fourth, had defective or sub- 

 normal vision. Among these 73, 26 were short-sighted, 16 were 

 flat-eyed, and would thus be called upon for unnatural exertion in 

 the act of seeing — exertion which cannot fail to tell upon them in 

 after life, or even before they leave school. In 1865, in Germany, 

 Profes.sor Cohn e.xamiucd the eyes of 1(1,060 school children, aud 

 ■found 1,630 of them with eyes "of faulty shape. Of these, 1,072 

 were short-sighted, 139 were flat-eyed, 23 were the subjects of a 

 •complicated defect of shape called astigmatism, and 396 were 

 suffering from the results of previous disease. He had offered the 

 School Board for London to undertake an equally extensive investi- 

 gation, but his offer was declined in an uncivil letter, written in very 

 bad English. He could not donbt, however, from the incidental 

 sources of information at his command, that the conditions found 

 in one school by Mr. Frost would, at least approximately, be 

 repeated in many others. What he might fairly describe as national 

 neglect of the culture of the eyes, and of effort to improve the 

 faculiy of seeing, was chiefly due to the prevailing absence of 

 notion concerning the projjer range and scope of the visual function, 

 -and hence concerning the powers which the eyes ought to possess. 

 Few things were more remarkable thtin the common want of infor- 

 Eiation about all matters which related to the use and functions of 

 these important organs. In most other respects it might be said 

 that the majority of parents had a fair knowledge of what ought to 

 be the average powers and capabilities of children. They knew, 

 iapproxiraately at least, how far a boy of ten years old could reason- 

 ably be expected to walk, how high or how far he could jump, how 

 fast he could run, what weight he could carry, what force he 

 ■could exert. There was not one parent in five hundred who 

 had the smallest notion how large an object — say a capital 

 letter, a boy ought to be able to see clearly at one hundred 

 feet away, or who could tell at what distance he ought to 

 be able to see and describe the characters of an object of given 

 ■magnitude. There w.as not one parent in 500 who could tell 

 whether his children possessed natural colour vision, or who, if the 

 inquiry were suggested to him, would know how to discover the 

 truth. Mr. Francis Galton had lately pointed out, with great force 

 and lucidity, that one of the most important duties of man, at the 

 present stage of his development, was to regulate the progress of 

 the evolution of his race ; and one consequence of want of know- 

 ledge about vision was that the evolution of the eye had been left 

 to the sport of accident, or that it had even been injuriously 

 affected by many of the circumstances incidental to civilisation. 

 Into the operation of these circumstances it was now time to inquire. 

 For the organs of living beings there was no resting-place; they 



must either advance or deteriorate, either continue in a course of 

 improvement under the influence of evolution, or "throwback," 

 as breeders say, to au earlier and less finished type under the 

 influence of sluggish and imperfect use. Of deterioration we had an 

 abundance of examples, aiid in two especially common ways. We 

 had the malformation of short sight, which had come into existence 

 within historic time, and into prevalence almost within living 

 memory, and which now affects at least one-tenth of our popula- 

 tion ; and we had the malformation of flat-eye, which was plainly 

 an involution, a return to an earlier and legs perfect type, and 

 which was attended, in the great majority of caS'-s, by an acute- 

 ness of vision below even the humble standard with which our 

 dwellers in towns are wont to satisfy themselves. The remedy for 

 the conditions which he had described must be sought, first of all, 

 in a recognition of the fact that good sight is an important point of 

 ]ihysical excellence, which, like any other such point, should be 

 assiduously cultivated. He would urge parents to ascertain, as 

 soon as their children knew the alphabet, whether they could de- 

 cipher the letters at the proper distances. He would urge upon 

 them, in the case of every child whose vision was sub-normal, to 

 ascertain the cause and nature of the defect, and to regulate not 

 only the studies, but also, as far as possible, the future career, in 

 accordance with it. He would urge upou all who had the control 

 of schools, that the vision of every new pupil should be tested 

 on admission, and that the tasks required should be con- 

 trolled in accordance with its capabilities. He would urge that 

 all lesson-books for very young children be printed ia large tj-pe, 

 aud that the children should be compelled to keep such books at a 

 distance (the type in which we often see texts of Scripture printed 

 to be hung up in railway waiting-rooms would be a good size for 

 the purpose). He would urge that many of the school-books now 

 in use should be abandoned ; and that new editions should be pre- 

 pared, in type of at least twice the size, and twice the legibility 

 (the latter depending much upon the shape and design of the 

 letters) of that which was now in use. Finally, he would urge upon 

 all who were concerned in the organising of athletic sports and 

 contests that excellence of vision should be highly esteemed in such 

 competitions. He felt sure that if public attention were once 

 fairly directed to the question, if the eyes received as much atten- 

 tion as the muscles, and if an intelligent knowledge of what they 

 ought to accomplish were diffused abroad, that our country, in the 

 course of two or three generations, would be peopled by a race who 

 might engage, if not without fear, yet certainly without disgrace, 

 in a seeing contest with any other representatives of the human 

 family. — Stand ard. 



iBtsirrllanfa. 



It was stated last week, at the annual meeting of the Dudley 

 Chamber of Commerce, that Belgian iron is delivered in India at 

 about the same rate as is charged for the conveyance of that kind 

 of material from Dudley to London, which is about 15s. per ton. 



A RAINFALL map has been issued by the Mining Department of 

 New South Wales, showing the borings which liave been made 

 throughout the colony for water, not only by the Goverument, but 

 by private individuals. 



From a Government return just issued it appears that in 1883 

 5,171,963 tons of coal were carbonised for gas-making purposes by 

 companies belonging to other than local authorities, aud 2,459,3-11 

 tons by those owned by local authorities, or a total of 7,631,30-1 

 tons. The quantity of gas produced was 76,837,967,813 cubic feet 

 of gas. 



One of the uses to which it is proposed to put the locomotive 

 electric head-light is to have a second illuminator placed on the 

 rear of the engine's cab, throwing a flood of light over the train, 

 and so arranged that it can be turned to the right or left, and be 

 made to illuminate the station grounds when the train is at a 

 standstill. 



The Atinales Industrielles describes cork bricks, which it says 

 are now being employed for various purjioses, such as for coating 

 steam-boilers and ice-cellars, and for many other purposes. They are 

 thus made : — The cork is freed from woody particles and other im- 

 purities by a winnowing process ; the wind from the ventilator 

 throws the cork into a second machine, where it is cut to pieces, 

 and is thence drawn up in buckets and ejected into a niilf, where it 

 is ground to an impalpable powder, which is then kneaded up with 

 a suitable cement and pressed into bricks. The cork bricks are 

 first dried in the air, and afterwards by means of artificial heat. 

 They are hard, and not liable to decomposition, and keep off 

 moisture, heat, cold, and sound. 



On Tuesday evening, an interesting lecture was delivered by 

 Prof. W. Grylls Adams, F.R.S., at King's College, oa the " Electric 



