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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 957 



the curriculum, or that it should be required 

 to be taught by unwilling teachers, but it 

 urged that the training college curriculum 

 should be adapted to include the biological 

 and physiological knowledge on which a 

 eugenic ideal could he based, and that the 

 subject should be approached from the evolu- 

 tionary standpoint. Mr. Trevelyan said that 

 the board, while unable to make sex hygiene 

 or eugenics a compulsory subject of instruc- 

 tion in elementary schools or training col- 

 leges, recognized the importance of the matter, 

 and had no wish to discourage experiments in 

 teaching on those lines. 



It is stated in the Electrical World that 

 several pieces of electrical apparatus con- 

 structed by Volta during his early electrical 

 experiments were discovered recently by Sir 

 Henry Norman, a member of the British 

 parliament, in a little curiosity shop in an 

 out-of-the-way section of a small Italian town. 

 The uncle of the shopkeeper was Volta's cook 

 and body servant for thirty years. On his 

 death he left much of his experimental 

 apparatus with this servant, and it has 

 since passed down from generation to gen- 

 eration. The collection comprises a cup- 

 board full of old apparatus, a number of 

 books, portraits, papers and letters and some 

 personal and domestic articles. Sir Henry 

 Norman suggests that the collection be pur- 

 chased and presented to the Royal Institution 

 to be placed with Faraday's original apparatus. 



VNIVEBSITT AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 

 The will of the late Isaac M. Jackson, of 

 Plymouth, Mass., among other public be- 

 quests, gives $15,000 to Yale University. 



It is reported that the medical department 

 of Willamette University, Salem, has been 

 merged with the medical department of the 

 University of Oregon, located at Portland, 

 the merger to take effect at the conclusion of 

 the present college year. There will hereafter 

 be but one medical college in the state. A 

 biennial appropriation of $45,000 has been 

 made by the Oregon legislature for the med- 

 ical department of the state university. 



The development of a health instruction 

 bureau in connection with the Extension Di- 

 vision of the University of Wisconsin has 

 been authorized by the regents. According 

 to authorities in medicine, hygiene and vital 

 statistics, the average duration of human life 

 could be raised fifteen years if all the present 

 available medical and hygienic knowledge 

 were intelligently applied. The new health 

 bureau will undertake to carry out to the 

 people of Wisconsin this knowledge. Bulle- 

 tins will be published on preventable dis- 

 eases, infant mortality, hygiene and similar 

 subjects. Public lectures, health institutes, 

 etc., will also be given. 



Professor Allyn A. Young, of Washing- 

 ington University, St. Louis, has been ap- 

 pointed professor of economics at Cornell 

 University, to succeed Professor E. W. Kem- 

 merer, now of Princeton University. 



DISCUSSION AND COSBESPONDENCE 

 A method for making paraffin bottles for 



HYDROFLUORIC ACID 



The usual method of making containers for 

 hydrofluoric acid for use in softening hard 

 woody tissue is, either to use the large wax 

 bottles in which the acid comes from the 

 dealer, or ordinary glass bottles which have 

 previously been coated on the inside with 

 paraffin. Owing to the size of the bottles the 

 first of these methods is inconvenient, unless 

 a large number of blocks of wood are to be 

 softened at one time, and the second method 

 is often unsatisfactory, as the parafiin some- 

 times cracks, allowing the acid to eat through 

 the glass. These difficulties led me to devise 

 the following bottle which is easy to make and 

 is more satisfactory in its operation than the 

 above. 



Ordinary cardboard mailing tubes, of the 

 proper diameter, should be cut into lengths of 

 about ten centimeters each. These should be 

 thoroughly infiltrated by placing them in a 

 vessel of melted paraffin and leaving them in 

 the oven for a short time. After the card- 

 board has become infiltrated the tubes should 

 be removed, and when the paraffin has hard- 



