844 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1146 



opposed to immeasurable pains of birth ! And 

 to make mathematical philosophy appear as 

 a dire necessity rather than a thing to be 

 chosen for its own sake. 3 And then to urge 4 

 with that lover of paradox, Gilbert Chesterton, 

 that the serious spiritual and philosophic ob- 

 jection to steam shovels is not that men work 

 at them and pay for them and make them very 

 ugly, nor even that men are killed by them, 

 but merely that men do not play at them! 

 Imagine a group of sportsmen cavorting over 

 a ten-thousand acre field tossing and catching 

 a Brobdignagian ball in steam shovels ! Is it 

 conceivable that the one objection to the 

 steam shovel might have been eventually over- 

 come if the Great War had not come upon us? 

 The greatest danger of our time is the con- 

 fusion of boundaries between thing-philosophy 

 and human-philosophy, between the philosophy 

 of material conquest and power and that inti- 

 mate philosophy of comfort which makes life 

 not easy but worth while. "When these 

 boundaries are rectified there will be a philos- 

 ophy of steam shovels recognized and used as 

 such, and another philosophy of living; and 

 the most laughable spectacle in the world will 

 have passed by forever, namely, the Bergson 

 type of philosopher with his following flock of 

 men and women captivated by humbug in the 

 name of an easy, capital-letter science raised 

 heaven-high above all dirt and slime! 



W. S. Franklin, 

 Barry MacNutt 



THE VALUE OF THE SANITARY 

 SURVEY 



It would seem unnecessary to again dwell 

 upon the old topic that analytical examina- 

 tions, whether chemical or bacteriological or 

 both, utterly fail in a large number of cases 

 to supply sufficient data whereon to build an 

 opinion as to the sanitary value of a water ; 

 but the old belief is deep-seated and dies hard. 



s This we have tried to do in our ' ' Introduction 

 to Mechanics." 



4 See preface to Franklin and MacNutt 's ' ' Ele- 

 ments of Electricity and Magnetism," The Mae- 

 millan Co., 1908. 



From time to time therefore it appears neces- 

 sary to call attention to the fact that, how- 

 ever valuable the information gained in the 

 laboratory may be, a thorough personal knowl- 

 edge of the conditions surrounding the source 

 whence the water comes and the method used 

 for taking the sample entirely outweigh the 

 analytical data. 



Take an instance : Mr. N. S. Hill had re- 

 ported to him the presence of B. Ooli in water 

 from flowing artesian wells, over which wells 

 he had jurisdiction; and he was naturally not 

 a little pained and mystified because of the 

 character of such report, the accuracy of which 

 was beyond dispute. The water rose under 

 pressure sufficient to carry it fifteen or twenty 

 feet above the ground surface and it thence 

 fell in open streams into the funnel-shaped 

 ends of vertical pipes connected directly with 

 the supply main. Deep waters may contain 

 bacteria, especially chromogenic varieties, and 

 even pathogenic forms may occur therein be- 

 cause of unsuspected channel ways in the rock; 

 but under the conditions obtaining in this in- 

 stance the adverse report of the examiner was 

 unlooked for and Mr. Hill's surprise was fully 

 warranted. 



Upon carefully conducted inspection it was 

 observed that at certain times of the day the 

 rims of the above-mentioned funnel-shaped 

 pipe terminals were lined with sparrows that 

 roosted, as often as not, with heads pointed 

 outward. 



Another case of pollution due to birds had 

 a more serious ending. The contractor was 

 confident of the purity of the water he had 

 engaged to supply and rested his case upon the 

 report of a bacteriologist selected by both 

 parties. The report was adverse to the fitness 

 of the water and caused financial failure of 

 the contractor. When it was too late to rectify 

 the error it was discovered that the small 

 basin which caught the water as delivered from 

 the ground had served as a roosting place for 

 birds and from that basin, rather than from 

 the falling stream, the sample had been taken. 



During a legal inquiry concerning what 

 could or could not be done by the addition of 

 alum to a city water-supply, much discussion 



