October 25, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



285 



" As typhoid-fever is a greater calamity than Texas^fever, as 

 Asiatic cholera is more to be dreaded than hog cholera, so do we 

 need a department of public health more than a department of 

 agriculture, a bureau of vital statistics more than a bureau of ani- 

 mal industry. 



" The death-rate of twenty-six of the principal cities of America, 

 with a population of 9,873,448, is 20 per 1,000. I think it morally 

 certain that this rate could be reduced by means and methods now 

 known to sanitary science to 16 per 1,000, and probably still less 

 than that. The death-rate for London for the year 1888 was 18.5 

 per 1,000. This can be still further reduced. That of New York 

 and Brooklyn for the same year, taken together, is 25.5 per i.ooo; 

 New York, 25.9 ; Brooklyn, 23.7. The death-rate of these two 

 cities, if reduced to that of London, would secure a saving of 7 per 

 1,000, or annually 15,986 lives. These lives are public wealth. 



" But this is not all. For one death annually two persons are 

 sick during the entire year, or, in other words, there are two years 

 of disabling sickness to one death, 31,972 years in New York and 

 Brooklyn of sickness, preventable sickness, annually. The value 

 of these years of sickness cannot be reached with accuracy; but 

 the wages lost on account of sickness, the cost of care and main- 

 tenance during sickness and convalescence, and the money-value 

 of the lives destroyed, considering them only as machines, will, in 

 Ne'V York and Brooklyn, reach annually into the millions. I ven- 

 ture to suggest to the business-men of these cities that this loss is 

 enough every year to buy a great railroad or to build and subsi- 

 dize a fleet of ocean-going steel steamships." 



The session continues through Friday, while the sanitary exhibi- 

 tion will continue for some weeks. 



PROGRESS OF CHINA. 



Mr. R. S. Gundry read a paper on "Industrial and Commer- 

 cial Progress in China " to the British Association last month. 

 Premising that the wide differences in character and habits of 

 thought between Europeans and the Chinese made it difficult to 

 convey to an English audience an accurate impression of the situa- 

 tion, the paper, as reported in The Scottish Geographical Maga- 

 zine, went on to sketch the leading features of Chinese industry 

 and commerce in so far as they concerned, and had been affected 

 by, foreign enterprise. Beginning to move at a time when she had 

 been defeated in a foreign war, China's first efforts were to provide 

 herself with the warlike material which experience had shown her 

 to be so powerful : hence the early construction of arsenals and 

 steamers. The beginnings of telegraphs, and the acceptance in 

 principle of railways, weie due also, in a measure, to warlike stress 

 in connection with Kulja. and Tongking ; and mining was recog- 

 nized largely as a means of providing for all this additional ex- 

 penditure. But imperfection of knowledge, jealousy of foreign 

 supervision, and a disorganized condition of finance, which involves 

 venality and harassing taxation, retard a progressive movement, to 

 which the literati who constitute the mind of the nation are still 

 as a body disinclined. The imperial finances, too, have been 

 strained by a series of wars, rebellions, and disasters ; and distrust 

 of their officials prevents native capitalists from investing money in 

 enterprises with which the officials persist in meddling. The great 

 staples of tea and silk are severely menaced by the competition of 

 India and Ceylon in the one case, and of southern Europe in the 

 other ; and the Chinese are slow to accept improved methods of 

 preparation which would enable them to hold their own. China 

 tea is heavily handicapped also by taxation, in competition with its 

 duty-free rival. Fiscal hinderances, imperfect communications, and 

 consequent cost of transport, have much to do with the slow de- 

 velopment of trade. But the wide prevalence of domestic industry, 

 and difficulties of exchange caused by the demonetization of silver, 

 tend also to check the anticipated growth of demand for European 

 manufactures. There seems every prospect that more railways 

 will shortly be constructed, and that machinery will be tentatively 

 admitted for purposes of industrial manufacture ; but much time, 

 a more widespread desire for progress, and radical financial re- 

 form, will be required before China is likely to rival Japan in the 

 completeness of its transformation. 



JADE IN BURMAH. 



According to a recent official report from Burmah, the jade- 

 producing country is partly enclosed by the Chindwin and Uru 

 Rivers, and lies between the 25th and 26th parallels of latitude. 

 Jade is also found in the Myadaung district, and the most cele- 

 brated of all jade deposits is reported to be a large cliff overhang- 

 ing the Chindwin, or a branch of that river, distant about eight or 

 nme days' journey from the confluence of the Uru and Chindwin. 

 Of this cliff, called by the Chinese traders " Nantclung," or "diffi- 

 cult of access," nothing is really known, as no traders have gone 

 there for at least twenty years. Within the jade tract described 

 above, small quantities of stone have been found at many places, 

 and abandoned quarries are numerous. The largest quarries now 

 worked are situated in the country of the Merip Kachins. The 

 largest mine is about 50 yards long, 40 broad, and 20 deep. The 

 season for jade operations begins in November, and lasts till May. 

 The most productive quarries are generally flooded, and the labor 

 of quarrying is much increased thereby. In February and March, 

 when the floor of the pit can be kept dry for a few hours by bal- 

 ing, i.nmense fires are lighted at the base of the stone. A careful 

 watch is then kept in a tremendous heat to detect the first signs 

 of splitting. When this occurs, the Kachins attack the stone with 

 pickaxes and haminers, or detach portions by hauling on levers in- 

 serted in the cracks. The heat is almost insupportable, the labor 

 severe, and the mortality among the workers is high. The Ka- 

 chins claim the exclusive right of working the quarries, and there is 

 not much disposition on the part of others to interfere. Traders 

 content themselves with buying the stone from the Kachins. The 

 jade is then taken by Shan and Kachin coolies to Nainia Kyank- 

 seik, one long day's journey from Tomo. Thence it is carried by 

 dug-outs down a small stream, which flows into the Tudaw River, 

 about three miles below Sakaw, and down the Tudaw River itself 

 to Mogaung. 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 



New Experiments upon the Time-Relations of Mental 

 Processes. 



In the preceding issue of this department an account was given 

 of certain experiments measuring the time of re-action to words, 

 both simply and when the movements of the five fingers were as- 

 sociated respectively with five words or five general classes of words. 

 The results revealed a striking difference, according as the atten- 

 tion is directed to the sensory factors of the process and their 

 appreciation, or the motor factors and their execution. The latter 

 is a much briefer act, and seems to require a quite different series of 

 mental processes from the former. To the theories explaining 

 these and other facts we shall recur in this study. Dr. Miinster- 

 berg continues the work by applying similar methods to the study 

 of association, judgments, and in general more complex operations. 



I. As the more mechanical process in every association consists 

 in hearing and understanding a spoken word and in speaking a 

 word, we can easiest measure how much time is needed to accom- 

 plish this part of the process by measuring the time intervening 

 between the speaking of a word by the experimenter and the rep- 

 etition by the subject. Throughout this study there are two sub- 

 jects, M and R ; and in addition to the time there is given in 

 parentheses the average variation, v, which marks the relative con- 

 stancy, regularity of the process measured. As the words used in 

 later experiments were both monosyllables and others, these were 

 introduced at the outset, care being taken by the experimenter 

 when calling a polysyllabic word to press the key in speaking the 

 last (or the last accented) syllable, and by the subject always to 

 press the key when speaking the first syllable of his reply-word. 

 The simple repetition of a word, then, was accomplished by M in 

 .403 of a second {v, .060) ; 'by R, in .362 of a second (v, .070). 



II. Here, instead of repeating the called word, one re-acts by 

 calling ai quickly as possible a word associated in any way what- 

 ever with the first; that is, an ordinary "association-time." M 

 does this in .845 of a second (z/, .140) ; R, in .948 of a second 

 (v, .170). The shortest time was for " gold-silver" (.390 of a sec- 



