November 15, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



333 



Williams, President Dwight, Professors Newton and Wright of 

 Yale, President Capen of Tufts, President Raymond of Wesleyan, 

 President Hyde of Bowdoin, and President Andrews of Brown. 

 The discussions were on these subjects ; First, " What should be 

 the Minimum of Mathematical Studies for the Degree of Bachelor 

 of Arts ? " Second, " Ought not our Courses of Study, both Pre- 

 scribed and Elective, be so arranged that any Given Candidate for 

 the Degree of Bachelor of Arts should be compelled to confine his 

 Time to a Smaller Number of Subjects ? " Third, " The Expedi- 

 ency of requiring Somewhat of Natural Science for Admission -to 

 College." Fourth, "The Means of inducing Secondary Schools to 

 teach Science by Laboratory Methods." The convention continued 

 through Nov. 8. Among the subjects discussed were, " The ex- 

 pediency of reducing the College Course to Three Years," " Limi- 

 tation of Society Conventions in Term Time," "The Advantage of 

 College Training for Teachers," and " The College Pastorate." 



— Peter Graff of Worthington has announced the gift of twenty- 

 five thousand dollars out of the estate of his son, Charles H. Graff, 

 M.D., to endow a professorship of hygiene and physical culture in 

 Pennsylvania College at Gettysburg. Dr. George D. Staley of 

 Lebanon, formerly of Harrisburg, has been chosen to fill the chair. 



— The leading ship-tiuilders in England have just submitted to 

 the Canadian Pacific Company offers for the construction of three 

 first-class passenger- steamers for the Atlantic service in connection 

 with the new route to the East. It will be remembered, saj's En- 

 gineering, that a week or two ago the Naval Construction and 

 Armament Company, whose works are at Barrow, were commis- 

 sioned to build three twin-screw steamers of 7,000 tons, being 440 

 feet long, to attain a speed of 18 knots an hour, for service between 

 Vancouver and Yokohama, the other sea-passage of the route ; the 

 Canadian Pacific Railroad carrying the passengers from the At- 

 lantic seaboard in Canada to the Pacific. The new Atlantic 

 steamers will be faster than the Pacific vessels, having a maximum 

 speed of 20 knots, with the engines indicating about 10,000 horse- 

 power, and the boilers, of which there will be ten, working at a 

 pressure of 165 pounds to the square inch. The intention is that 

 the voyage from the south of England to Halifax in the winter, and 

 Quebec in the summer, should be accomplished in at most five days 

 and a half. Unlike the Pacific steamers, they will be propelled by 

 a single screw, but it is quite possible that before the contract is 

 ultimately fixed this may be altered. In the case of the Pacific 

 steamers the first idea was to have a single screw ; and, as nego- 

 tiations proceeded, the builders were asked to tender for twin-screw 

 boats, and the beam and depth of the hulls were considerably in- 

 creased. The 'Atlantic vessels will, according to present design, 

 be 480 feet long by 54 feet beam by 25 feet draught. The first of 

 the new vessels, according to the mail contract with the govern- 

 ment, must be ready to sail in February, 1891, so that the order 

 for the steamers will likely be placed before long. It is expected 

 that the passage from the south of England to Japan will be made 

 in twenty-three days without any difficulty. The distance is about 

 9,250 miles, as against 13,750 by the Suez Canal, and 15,500 by the 

 Cape. To Shanghai, also, the route is shorter via Canada, being 

 10,500 miles, as against 12,500 and 14,500 respectively by Suez and 

 the Cape. 



— An imperial Chinese edict, dated Aug. 27, 1889, states that 

 " the sovereign is of opinion that to make a country powerful, rail- 

 ways are essential." What a wonderful change this represents in 

 Celestial opinion since the time of the Chinese war ! The great 

 trunk line between Peking and Hankow is to be immediately com- 

 menced in two places, — in the south, from Hankow to Sin- 

 Yang Chow ; in the north, from Lu-Kow K'iao to Cheng-Ting 

 Fu, — leaving the intervening sections for a future period. Lu-kow is 

 five miles south of Peking. The construction of the line, accord- 

 ing to Engineering, is to be under the management of Chow Fu 

 and Taoti Pan Chtin-teh, under the general superintendence of Li 

 Hung Chang and the Admiralty. Li has transferred the whole of 

 the foreign staff of the existing Maiping-Tientsin line to the new 

 railway, although one of his colleagues advises that Chinese capital 

 and labor should be relied upon solely. There is still a very strong 

 opposition to railways in China ; and the emperor, out of compas- 

 sion for those who, in pulpit phraseology, may be called his " weaker 



brethren," has ordered the viceroys and governors of Chihli,. 

 Hupeh, and Honan to issue explanatory proclamations, exhorting, 

 and commanding all people to throw no impediment in the way.. 

 " It is the imperial desire that all shall work together to make this- 

 great work a success." This will be the first railway openly con- 

 structed in China. The existing line commenced as a tramway 

 from the coal-mines to a canal. Then a locomotive was put upon- 

 it, and little by little it was extended until it reached Tientsin. If 

 the Chinese would only commence to build railways in good ear- 

 nest, the effect would soon be felt in England. 



— At the recent meeting of the Congress of German Men of 

 Science and Physicians at Heidelberg, Herr O. Ammon submitted 

 to the Anthropological Section some interesting results of observa- 

 tions he had made in Baden. These observations, says Nature, 

 related to five thousand soldiers. The tall men had generally long 

 skulls, or skulls of medium length, whereas the short men had 

 round skulls. Most of the round-skulled men came from the Black 

 Forest ; the long-skulled usually belonged to the valley of the 

 Rhine, and were especially numerous in towns and in the neighbor- 

 hood of the castles of ancient families. From this fact Herr Am- 

 mon concluded that the round-skulled men had been the original 

 inhabitants of the Rhine valley, that they had been driven from it 

 by long-skulled invaders, and that the latter had established them- 

 selves near the settlements of their victorious leaders. Having 

 shown that there is a certain relation between the height of the 

 figure and the shape of the skull, Herr Ammon went on to indicate 

 the relation between fair hair and blue eyes. No fewer than 80 

 per cent of the men with blue eyes had fair hair. He found also 

 that physical growth is generally quicker in the case of the brown- 

 eyed than in that of the blue-eyed type. 



— In a paper read before the Royal Danish Academy in Feb- 

 ruary, M. Adam Paulsen gave some interesting particulars of ob- 

 servations made with the object of determining the height of the 

 aurora. Nature states that two theodolites were used, the ob- 

 serving telescopes of which were replaced by short tubes having 

 small holes at the eye ends, and metallic cross-wires at the other 

 ends. Two of the stations were situated in the same magnetic 

 meridian, on opposite banks of the Fiord of Godthaab, at a distance 

 apart of 5800.4 metres. The vertical circles of the two theodolites 

 were placed in a common plane by means of observations of " blue- 

 fire " signals given at each station. Signals were also exchanged 

 on the appearance of an aurora which it was thought possible to 

 measure, so that simultaneous observations were secured ; and it 

 was previously agreed to direct the instruments to the base of the 

 auroral arc. The observations at Godthaab gave heights for dif- 

 ferent aurorae ranging from 0.6 of a kilometre to 67.8 kilometres. 

 A second series of observations with the same apparatus and 

 methods was made in 1885 by MM. Garde and Eberlin at Nanor- 

 talik, near Cape Farewell, the base-line in this case being 1247.8 

 metres ; and the values determined here were 1.6 to 15.5 kilometres. 

 The results obtained by the staff of the Swedish International Ex- 

 pedition at Spitzbergen, with a base of 572.6 metres, range from- 

 0.6 to 29.2 kilometres. These observations, therefore, lead to the 

 conclusion that aurorse are by no means confined to the highest 

 parts of our atmosphere, but that they occur almost indifferently at all 

 altitudes. In support of this view, M. Paulsen gives accounts ot 

 several appearances of aurorse beneath the clouds and the summits 

 of mountains. It is interesting to compare the new values with 

 those given by previous observers. M. Flogel calculated the heights 

 of several aurorse which appeared in the autumn of 1870, and con- 

 cluded that only the very lowest parts of the aurora came at all 

 within the limits of our atmosphere : he gave the actual limits as 

 150 to 500 kilometres. For an aurora on Oct. 25, 1870, M. Rei- 

 mann found a height of from Soo to 900 kilometres, and Norden- 

 skiold came to the conclusion that the mean height of aurors was 

 about 200 kilometres. On the other hand, Lemstrom has observed 

 aurorae as low as 300 metres, and M. Hildebrandsson has seen 

 aurorffi in a completely clouded sky. Considering all the facts of 

 the case, M. Paulsen inclines to believe that in the temperate zone,, 

 auroras only appear in the higher layers of the atmosphere ; where- 

 as in the auroral zone, properly speaking, the phenomenon is gen- 

 erally produced in the lower layers. 



