56 
MATURE 
{ AZay 20, 1886 
The number of females attending the second-grade 
schools is equal to the number of males, and three-fifths | 
of the teachers also in these schools are women. So 
many important institutions having for their main object 
the higher education of the sex have been opened in the 
United States that it is considered that the special exam- 
inations of females conducted for some time past under 
the auspices of the Harvard University may now be 
dropped. The number of them competing for scholastic 
honours on the same basis as the men is steadily increas- 
ing ; “but,” the report suggestively adds, “not rapidly 
enough to threaten any disturbance of existing social, 
domestic, or business relations.” 
One association for promoting the bigher education of 
women reports that while the physique of lady students 
is higher than among women at large, yet that even that 
of the former is painfully low, and requires that measures 
should be taken against so dangerous a deterioration. 
With regard to the co-education of men with women, 
a committee, appointed by a Western College to inquire 
into the subject, conclude by saying :— 
“Joint education of men with women in the higher 
studies has now been tried in a sufficient number and 
variety of colleges, and for a sufficient length of time to 
prove that no special difficulties and evils grow out of it, 
and that it does away with the greatest difficulties and 
evils of the old monastic system. It makes college life 
and society more nearly human instead of only ‘half- 
human.’ The half-human ever verges first and last 
towards the bestial, whether in armies, on shipboard, in 
miners’ camps, or in colleges, monasteries, or nunneries. 
It would be wise to humanise the colleges still more, 
rather than to begin the process of dehumanising them.” 
It is then urged that all lectures and studies should be 
conducted in as public a manner as possible, and attended 
by friends and relations of both sexes. 
Kindergarten teaching is being carried out more largely, 
but is making its way more as a charitable institution 
than as a branch of education. Very appropriately it is 
becoming the ladies’ charity ; its work is found specially 
beneficial as the early beginning of a reformatory educa- 
tion for the purpose of overcoming inherited vicious 
propensities and physical infirmities. Most energetic 
efforts for this purpose are being made at San Francisco 
in particular. 
Attention is specially called in this report to the desir- 
ability of teaching history so as to make the reading of 
it an intelligent study, attractive to its learners, who will 
fill up leisure time with its pursuit instead of, as of old, 
insisting on the laying to heart long tables of dates and 
dry facts, “killing the life out of the subject, disgusting 
the pupils, and giving them a dislike for historical 
reading.” 
Colleges of the highest class keep increasing in num- 
ber, yet, nevertheless, the totals of teachers and pupils 
are sinall for the proud name each claims of “ University.” 
Some have resigned that title and devoted themselves to 
school work ; but more fresh ones have sprung up which 
constitute a splendid force for future generations when 
their work, their wealth, and the population supporting 
them, have been multiplied. The fact of a superabund- 
ance of such institutions proves how highly learning even 
of the least utilitarian character is esteemed. 
Perhaps traceably to temporary reasons, classics seem 
to be gaining rather than losing ground upon physical 
science at Harvard, a higher standard of instruction ard 
attainment having been required in the latter. Technical 
schools, however, make steady, though not rapid, progress. 
Agriculture, mining, and building form so large a propor- 
tion of American employment that full ‘attention can be 
given to these subjects with little hesitation. The bulk 
of their pupils are at once absorbed in further teaching, 
instead of putting into practice what they know, with 
their own hands. 
The United States Commissioner of Education takes 
an annual survey of the whole educational world, and 
presents it to all who study his report, and when the sub- 
jects to be taught a different people like the 200,000,000 
of British India are in it placed side by side with those 
which seem important in our own schools, a question 
suggests itself whether scientific teachings have not a 
better claim than the old knowledge to the title of 
“literee humaniores.” We see how local and confined 
are classical and historical studies, and of what common 
value to the whole human ra:e are the elements of natural 
and physical science. 
The free education which Texas and others of the 
United States are in favour of is not recommended by 
our Commissioners even in a country where it would 
interfere with so few vested interests as in India. 
We are glad to know that a work on public libraries 
is progressing, which is intended to supplement the special 
report published in 1876. 
There are 11,663 institutions in regular correspondence 
with the Bureau, and no one reading this report can fail 
to see the importance of a common centre of communi- 
cation to so many and so various efforts to carry on the 
great work that will have such an influence ovcr the next 
generation. A central nucleus, again, to this organisation 
must be a library, by reference to which inquiries from so 
many quarters on so many subjects may be answered. 
It is hard, therefore, to believe it a wise economy of a 
great nation to cut down the allowance for so permanent a 
part of the office as this from 1000 dollars to 500 dollars, 
which, nevertheless, has been done. 
W. ODELL 
COLLECTION OF HAIRS AFTER EARTH- 
QUAKES IN CHINA 
N Dr. Macgowan’s “ Note on Earthquakes in China,” 
republished in NATURE for May 6 (p. 17), I find the 
following passage :— 
“The tremors that are experienced in Chehkiang, 
Kiangsu, and coterminous regions to the west, are some- 
times followed by the appearance on the ground of sub- 
stances that in Chinese books are styled ‘white hairs., 
When I first called attention to records of that kind that 
are found in local gazetteers, I suggested that they might 
be crystals precipitated by gaseous emissions, such as 
were once reported as occurring after an earthquake in 
south-west of the United States; from later descriptions 
of these ‘ horsetail-like’ substances I incline to the opinion 
that they are organic, perhaps mycelium.” 
I think there can be little doubt that Dr. Macgowan’s 
conclusion is well founded, and that the “white hairs” 
have no real connection with the earthquake. 
In 1852, during one of the late Mr. Fortune’s visits to 
China, he experienced the shock of an earthquake at 
Shanghai. He gives the following curious account in 
““A Residence among the Chinese” (pp. 4, 5), of the 
subsequent search for the hairs:— 
“Groups of Chinese were seen in the gardens, road- 
sides, and fields engaged in gathering hairs which are said 
to make their appearance on the surface of the ground 
after an earthquake takes place. This proceeding at- 
tracted a great deal of attention from some of the foreign 
residents in Shanghai, and the Chinese were closely ex- 
amined upon the subject. Most of them fully believed 
that these hairs made their appearance only after an 
earthquake had occurred, but could give no satisfactory 
explanation of the phenomenon, while some, more wise 
than their neighbours, did not hesitate to affirm that they 
belonged to some huge subterraneous animal whose 
slightest shake was sufficient to move the world. 
““] must confess, at the risk of being laughed at, that 
I was one of those who took an interest in this curious 
subject, and that I joined several groups who were 
