November 23, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



815 



the interest of which should accumulate for 100 

 years and then be used for public purposes. 

 The period ended some six or seven years ago 

 and there has been much difference of opinion 

 as to the disposition of the fund which now 

 amounts to $366,880. It appears, however, that 

 a committee of the City Council and the man- 

 agers of the fund have agreed to recommend 

 that the money be used for the erection of a 

 building to be known as the Franklin Institute, 

 which shall be used for educational purposes, 

 with special reference to artisans. 



A NUMBER of American men of science were 

 awarded gold and silver medals at the Paris 

 Exposition. A circular has been sent them, 

 in lieu of the medals, stating that these can 

 be purchased — the gold medal for 600 fr. The 

 value of the gold in the medal is not stated, 

 but it probably allows a generous profit to the 

 promoters of the Exposition. Electrotype 

 blocks of the medals are also offered for sale at 

 a cost that will allow somebody a profit of 

 about 1,000 per cent. 



Attempts have been made to sell a certain 

 book by a person who styles himself ' President 

 of the Natural Science Association of America,' 

 and the name is now being used to promote the 

 sale of mining stocks. There is probably no 

 legal means of preventing the use of an honor- 

 able name for such purposes, but there should 

 be some agency such as a committee of the 

 National Academy of Sciences or of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Science 

 that would prevent people from being deceived 

 by the misuse of a name such as the ' Natural 

 Science Association of America. ' 



Peofessoe Smbdley, supervisor of the Chi- 

 cago Board of Education's Department of Child 

 Study has drawn, says the Medical News, the 

 following conclusions from the examinations of 

 the eyes of the school children : (1) Dull pupils 

 have a greater number of eye defects than 

 brighter pupils. (2) Defective eyesight causes 

 dulness in the child. (3) The primary rooms 

 in the public schools have the poorest light. 

 (4) Boys have better sight than girls. (5) 

 School life is responsible for many eye defects. 

 (6) The first three years of school life increases 

 eye defects one-third. (7) Of pupils whose 



sight is but one-tenth the keenness of normal, 

 the number grows steadily larger from the be- 

 ginning to the end of school life. (8) While 

 in ordinary schools 32 per cent, had only two- 

 thirds of ordinary keenness of sight, in one 

 school 48 per cent, had that degree of eye de- 

 fects. (9) Such defects undoubtedly were the 

 cause of the presence of many of the pupils in 

 that school. (10) Something must be done at 

 once, at almost any cost, to save school chil- 

 dren's eyes. 



Peofessoe Geassi has just published, says 

 the Lancet, another note in the Rendiconti della 

 R. Accademia dei Lincei, describing some obser- 

 vations made by him in September of last year 

 and during the past summer at Grosseto with 

 the object of controlling the results obtained 

 last year in July and August by Professor 

 Koch's expedition. The latter, it may be re- 

 membered, found very few anopheles, but a 

 very great number of culiees in this city, al- 

 though malaria was very prevalent, and from 

 this fact he considered it likely that culex pipi- 

 ens is also an agent in the propagation of ma- 

 laria. Professor Grassi, on the contrary, has 

 found anopheles very abundant in the same 

 houses where Koch had noted malaria the pre- 

 vious year, and he concluded from this that 

 Professor Koch's party were inexpert at the 

 work of looking for mosquitoes and that their 

 search was not made in the proper places, 

 which are the entrauces of houses and out- 

 houses, and not in the bedrooms. He found 

 that the favorite time for the anopheles 

 to feed at Grosseto was the thirty or forty 

 minutes immediately after sunset, and to a 

 much less extent, the same time before sunrise. 

 They take long flights in search of food and like 

 to go away shortly after feeding, for which 

 reason they may be said to change every twenty- 

 four hours, at least during the warm weather, 

 only very few (about 1 per cent.) being conse- 

 quently found infected in the height of summer. 

 As the weather becomes colder they remain 

 longer and a large proportion (about 8 per 

 cent.) are found infected. The infected insects 

 are apt to be conveyed passively over long dis- 

 tances and so spread infection to fresh locali- 

 ties hitherto exempt. Anopheles are found in 

 some places where no malaria exists as, e. g., , 



