50 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 416 



SCIENCE: 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



PUBLISHED BY 



N. D. C. HODGES, 



47 Lafayette Place, New York. 



Subscriptions.— United States and Canada S3.50 a year. 



Great Britain and Europe 4.50 a year. 



Communications will be "wekjomed from any quarter. Abstracts of scientific 

 papers are solicited, and twenty copies of the issue containing such will be 

 mailed the author on request in advance. Rejected manuscripts will be 

 r etumed to the authors only when the requisite amount of postage accom- 

 panies the manuscript. Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenti- 

 cated by the name and address of the writer; not necessarily for publication, 

 but as a guaranty of good faith. We do not hold ourselves responsible for 

 any view or opinions expressed in the communications of our correspondents, 



Attention is called to the " Wants ^' column. All are invited to use it in 

 soliciting information or seeking new positions. The name and address of 

 applicants should be given in full, so that answers will go direct to them. The 

 "Exchange" column is likewise open. 



Vol. XVII. NEW YORK, Januajit 23, 1891. No. 416. 



CONTENTS: 



The Medical Press on Koch's 



ClTRE 



Trees IN London 



Notes and News 



Editorial 



The Academic and Engineering 

 Departments of Cornell. 

 Letters to the Editor. 

 The Plight of Birds 



Henry L. Ward 

 The American Idea of Architec- 

 ture. Barr Ferree 



Cyclones and Anticyclones 



M. A. Veeder 



Br. Hann and the Condensation 



Theory of Storms. JT. A. Hazen 



The Practicability of transport- 

 ing the Negro back to Africa 



B. W. Shufeldt 48 

 The Skeleton in Armor 



Henry W. Haynes 50 

 Meteorology and Mathematics 



JPranz A. Velschow 51 

 The Education of the Deaf 



B. Engelsman 51 

 Book- Reviews. 



The Science of Fairy Tales 51 



Educational Review 52 



The Pedagogical Seminary 52 



The Future of Science 52 



Among the Publishers 53 



The New York Evening Post published, in its issue of Jan. 9, a 

 letter from Cornell Universitj which has a singular tone, and 

 makes most remarkable statements. It asserts that some of the 

 ablest professors in the literary branches of the university are 

 proposing to resign, because, as they state, they are unable to see 

 that progress in their own departments which has for some years 

 past distinguished the technical schools of the university. It is 

 said, that, although the academic departments have been continu- 

 ally strengthened by the addition of new departments and of able 

 men to the stafiF of professors and instructors, these departments 

 still fall behind the others in their rate of growth. This state of 

 things is attributed to the fact that the price of tuition has been 

 increased, though it is not stated why this increase should aflfect 

 their departments more than others. In all institutions of learn- 

 ing the cost of the technical instruction has been from the first, 

 both to the institution and to the student, greater than purely 

 literary instruction; and the flocking of students into them, in 

 spite of this disadvantage, is as observable in other colleges as in 

 that from which this curious complaint comes. Tlie real state of the 

 case is, we are confident, that the establishment of technical edu- 

 cation meets the need and fulfils the desires of a very large pro- 

 portion of young men who have no inclination to defer going into 

 business for the puqjose of getting an education of the older sort, 

 — a mistake, we think, — but who are keen enough to see that 

 certain branches of business must be most successfully pursued by 



those who have had the professional preliminary training, not 

 education in the usual sense of that term, which is required to 

 give the novice a good hold upon its principles and practice. The 

 profession of engineering, for example, has become a learned pro- 

 fession; and the graduates of these professional schools are more 

 carefully and remorselessly sorted out from the great mass than 

 are those who desire to enter either of the older, so-called learned 

 professions. Engineering schools often graduate not more than 

 one-third their entering classes. It is not at all likely that acute 

 and learned professors are proposing to leave any such good posi- 

 tions as are held at Cornell, or other great universities, on this ac- 

 count. The fact is, that the state of things noted is perfectly 

 natural and proper; and the result is, that every professor of 

 ability and ambition takes advantage of his good fortune in hav- 

 ing smaller classes to prosecute his studies and his researches, and 

 thus to teach the world, as well as his own students, both better 

 and more widely. Any such positions vacated in any of our col- 

 leges will be gladly taken by brighter men who seek just this 

 opijortunity. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[Continued from p. 48.] 

 The Skeleton in Armor. 



Professor Anderson was correct in saying that the skeleton, 

 immortalized by Longfellow, was discovered at Fall River, Mass., 

 in 1831 ; and not in 1837, as Mr. Beauchamp states on p. 26 of 

 your last number (Jan. 9, 1891). 



The actual date of the discovery was April 26, 1831, and the 

 earliest account of it was published in The American Magazine, 

 vol. iii. p. 434 (August, 1837). This was copied into Barber's "His- 

 torical Collections for Massachusetts," p. 123; and from that 

 source Col. Stone transferred it to his " Life of Brant." This may 

 account for Mr. Watson's having omitted Stone from his list of 

 authorities. Subsequently, in 1839, several other skeletons were 

 discovered in about the same locality, near the boundary-line be- 

 tween Fall River and Tiverton, R.I., accompanied by precisely 

 similar objects as the first. The original skeleton, which had 

 been preserved in the Museum of the Troy Athenaeum ("Troy"^ 

 was the old name of Fall River), was destroyed by a fire about 

 the year 1843. Some of the relics discovered with the skeletons, 

 disinterred in 1839 are now to be seen at the Redwood Library 

 in Newport. These different discoveries of similar interments, 

 some years apart, have occasioned the confusion of dates, 



A few years ago a skeleton was discovered at Centreville, on 

 Cape Cod, with a brass breastplate precisely like the one origi- 

 nally found in 1831. This is described by Henry E. Chase in the 

 "Smithsonian Report," 1883, -p. 902. 



It is worth noticing, that besides the " flat, triangular arrow- 

 heads of sheet copper," to which Mr. Beauchamp refers as having 

 been recently found in the Iroquois district of New York, similar 

 in shape to those made of brass disinterred with the skeleton in 

 1831, like objects, also made of sheet brass, have not infrequently 

 been met with 'in other localities (see &.bbott's Primitive Industry, 

 p. 420; Jones's Antiquities of the Southern Indians, p. 251; Re- 

 ports of the Peabody Museum, ii. p. 732, iii. pp. 35, 195; Reports 

 of Long Island Historical Society (1878-81), p. 40; Smithsonian 

 Report, 1883, p. 901). 



We learn whence the Indians procured the brass of which 

 these arrow-heads were fabricated, from the account given in 

 Underbill's " History of the Pequod War " {Collections of Massa- 

 chusetts Historical Society [3d series], vol. vi. p. 17), who tells us 

 that a Dutch trader was prevented from bartering with the Pe- 

 quods on the ground that they were to be supplied in part with 

 " kettles, or the like, which make their arrow-heads." Sir Fer- 

 dinando Gorges, earlier than this, had complained about "disor- 

 derly persons," who sold the savages '• arrow-heads and other 

 arms" ("Description of New England," ibid. p. 70). 



The earliest notices of the Indians often speak of their arrows 

 as being headed with brass. This was the case with those ' ' taken 

 up" and sent to England in the first encounter of the Pilgrims. 



