Vol. XXIII. No. S.] 



POPULAR SCTETTCE NEWS. 



123 



still, with all due allowance for the doctor's 

 sectionalisin, there is a grain of truth in his 

 remarks. 



But to return to matters nearer home. Are 

 not the liberal professions o\ercrowded .' It 

 is true, there is always room at the top, but 

 very few are able to get there. Arc not all 

 genteel pmsuits overcrowded, and those most 

 Which require least study and preparation.^ 

 Put an advertisement in any daily paper, 

 headed "Clerk Wanted," "Book-keeper 

 Wanted," and what a pile of answers it 

 brings. Put in another of carpenter, or 

 blacksmith, wanted, and how many good 

 workmen will be on hand ? There must, of 

 cour.se, be times when all trades are dull, and 

 mechanics are out of work, — even the best of 

 them, — or, if thev work, get but little paj-. 



"Learn a trade" has been harped on so 

 much by men who never handled any tool 

 but a pen, that one almo.st hesitates to say it. 

 But trades unions, and the modern system of 

 division of labor, render learning a trade a 

 much less simple matter than it once was. 

 The apprentice system is fast dying out, and, 

 as a substitute, it has been proposed to 

 engraft upon om^ public school system a kind 

 of technical school or college. Let the boy 

 who has finished the prescribed cour.se in the 

 gi-ammar .school enter a technical school, 

 instead of the high school, and, when he 

 conies out of that, he is better fitted for an 

 artisan than his brother who took the high 

 school comse. This plan looks well, but 

 how shall it be carried into practice.' What 

 shall this technical school teach him ? We 

 will not untlertake to answer ; it is a point 

 for honest difference of opinion. Some would 

 build workshops, and would teach him some 

 particular trade. We should have one school 

 of carpentry, another of blacksmithing, and 

 the graduates should come forth prepared to 

 earn the full pay of a journeyman carpenter 

 or smith. Others believe it would be prefer- 

 able to give him a general knowledge of tools, 

 of mechanical operations, of drawing and 

 mathematics, of the principles of mechanics 

 and physics, thus fitting him to quickly 

 acquire any trade he may select after he 

 leaves. .Such a school is in successful opera- 

 tion in Kommotan, in Bohemia, where, ac- 

 cording to Prof. Runkle, theoretical studies 

 are combined with practical work. In the 

 first year the studies are : Arithmetic, writ- 

 ing, drawing, geometry, physics, theory of 

 machines, and book-keeping. The shop- 

 work in the first year includes thirty hoins 

 per week for sixteen weeks in carpentry and 

 joinery, the same numlier of hours for twelve 

 weeks in wooil-turning, and another twelve 

 weeks for hand-tool work in metals. In the 

 second year the shop-work includes forging, 

 for eight weeks ; foundry work, also eight 

 weeks ; iron-turning, twelve weeks ; machine 

 locksmithery, twelve weeks. The studies 



are similar, but more advanced. Besides the 

 prescribed work, each industrious student can 

 make one or more complete machines. 



This scheme is vcrv pleasant to contem- 

 plate, but would it not, in this country, lead 

 men away from their destiny, too.? Woukl 

 not the graduates be too well educated for 

 common mechanics, and not well enough for 

 engineers.' Agricultural colleges seldom 

 make farmers ; the graduates know too much 

 to hold the plow and swing the scvthc. We 

 often see advertisements for book-keepers and 

 clerks with the warning that commercial col- 

 lege graduates need not apply. Would not 

 the owners of machine shops be quite as 

 afraid of the educated artisans as merchants 

 are of the graduates of business colleges.' 



Still, we believe something can and will be 

 done to train the eye and hand for future use- 

 fulness, and not leave the brain to do all the 

 work. In any school of chemistry worthv of 

 the name, the pupils not only hear lectm-es, 

 but take hold of the chemicals, and actually 

 go to work. In too many laboratories they 

 learn nothing but analysis, yet even this 

 acquaints them, to a certain extent, with 

 chemical manipulations. In a few schools, 

 especially the so-called polytechnic schools of 

 Germany, they are instructed in synthesis, as 

 well as analysis ; they make dyes and apply 

 them ; they manufacture, on a small .scale, 

 the rare and common chemicals, and, in one 

 at least, photography is thoroughly taught by 

 a distinguished scientist. Yet these men 

 rarely graduate expert chemists ; they have a 

 foundation on which they may build any sort 

 of a structure that the circumstances may re- 

 quire. 



**^ 



[Special Correspondence oi The Popular Science ?^ews.\ 



PARIS LETTER. 

 There seem to exist, apart from the sense-organs 

 with which we are acquainted, — such as the eye, 

 ear, tactile sense, tongue, and nose, — some senses 

 of whicli the organs are not apparent, even in man, 

 and the question of the nature ot" these senses, as 

 well as that of their use and functions, is one that 

 will not he soon settled. There are sense-organs — 

 or seemingly sense-organs — in animals, whose func- 

 tions are not distinctly perceptible, — such as the 

 lateral line in fishes, — and this fact may explain in 

 some measure how it is that we do not always 

 understand how and through what means the ex- 

 ternal world affects us. Many animals are endowed 

 with senses which remain yet quite mysterious to 

 our understanding, and all we know is that these 

 senses exist. We are not even sure whether any 

 definite organs are concerned with them ; it seems, 

 in some cases, that the sensations, or impressions, 

 are of an unknown origin, and are, perhaps, derived 

 from definite organs, or from the sensations fur- 

 nished by these organs. Among these senses, 

 which have been recently studied in a very interest- 

 ing manner by M. Beaunis in his last book on the 

 Sensations Internes (internal sensations, as distin- 

 guished from those whose external origin is quite 

 obvious), the most prominent of those which are 

 present in animals, are the following: First, the 

 homing faculty, which is well known to occur in 

 many animals, — such as the bee, many migratory 



animals, many fishes, the horse, dog, etc. Of the 

 wonders of the homing faculty, many instances are 

 quite familiar to our readers. It is known, for 

 instance, that many honey-hunters find their prey 

 by catching bees, and letting them free at diflcrent 

 points. Each bee strikes home immediately, and 

 so, to find the bee-hive, one only needs to follow the 

 bee-line of two or three bees, as they point to one 

 and the same spot, and come across each other at 

 the very spot where the hive is to be found, and is 

 actually discovered. Eels and fishes often go from 

 one pond to another, very distantly located, or from 

 a pond to the sea, in a quite straight line, without 

 any mistake. It would seem that this homing 

 faculty pre-exists to all individual experience, since 

 Humphrey Davy informs us that he has seen a 

 young alligator, which had just got out of its egg, 

 which had been broken by this observer, make 

 immediately for the direction in which water was 

 close by. Again, a falcon, sent from Teneriife to the 

 Duke of Lerme, in southern Spain, managed to 

 escape, and, sixteen hours later, had returned, quite 

 exhausted, to Teneriffe. A dog, carried from Men- 

 tone, in the south of France, to Vienna, came back 

 to Mentone ; and a donkey of Gibraltar, which was 

 shipwrecked 300 kilometres away, on the Spanish 

 coast, also man.-iged to get to his home in Gibraltar. 

 How are such facts^-of which many more instances 

 could be adduced — to be explained? Explanations 

 are numerous, but none are satisfactory, as is gen- 

 erally the case when many theories are offered. 

 Wallace and Croom-Robertson believe that the 

 sense of smell is the basis of the homing faculty, but 

 in many cases — in the most extraordinary ones — 

 this explanation cannot he accepted. Sight cannot 

 he called upon to explain these cases, either. Must 

 we believe in some magnetic or electrical sense, as 

 De Roo and Viguier pretend? It may be the case, 

 but nothing is known that allows us to accept the 

 theory ; it is not yet supported by positive facts and 

 experiments, notwithstanding Braid's and Reichen- 

 bach's researches in this difficult subject. 



Another sense which seems to exist in animals is 

 the so-called meteorological sense, through which 

 many animals seem to be warned of forthcoming 

 changes of the weather. Many others display some 

 notion of time, and know very accurately at what 

 time of day, for instance, their food must be dis- 

 tributed to them. Man possesses a faculty of the 

 same sort, which is well displayed by the accurate- 

 ness with which many persons — almost everybody, 

 in fact, who choose to try the experiment — wake at 

 night exactly at the time at which they choose to 

 wake. 



A few days ago, the society Scieniia, whose object 

 is to favor friendly intercoursie of Parisian scientists, 

 by occasional meetings and banquets, offered 

 a dinner to Prof. P'rancis Darwin, of Cam- 

 bridge, the well-known botanist and author of the 

 JAfe and Correspondence of Charles Darwin. It 

 was the fourteenth meeting of the society, and the 

 preceding dinners had been offered to eminent men, 

 such as Pasteur, De Lesseps,— /m mildi, quantum 

 mutatus ah illo . . .; Eiffel, Janssen, Renan, 

 Berthelot, etc. ; this was the first occasion on which 

 the honor was conferred upon a foreigner. Some 

 fifty savants attended the dinner, among which were 

 Marey, De Lesseps, Eiffel, Cailletet, Richet, and De 

 Brazzagiard. M. Marey delivered a very interesting 

 speech, in proposing M. Darwin's health. His 

 speech was quite evolutionary, and this is an inter- 

 esting sign of the times, as members of the Institute 

 have, for the most part, been very much opposed to 

 evolution and Darwinism. M. Francis Darwin 

 answered in very appropriate terms, and the evening 

 was a very pleasant one to all who had gathered in 

 the Continental Hotel banquet hall. M. Dar«in 



