February 20, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



105 



measure of protection can, however, it is supposed, be obtained by 

 the use of charms provided by magicians. On one occasion, when 

 war was being carried on with England, the magicians gave the 

 soldiers a charm against English bullets. It was the blue flower 

 of a species of rhododendron. " Those who carried this talisman 

 rushed forward against columns of infantry without a shadow of 

 fear or hesitation ; and only when men began to bite the dust in 

 all directions did the nature of the delusion break upon the army, 

 and panic ensue." 



DEAF-MUTE INSTRUCTION.! 



The Sundry Civil Bill grants |52, 500 to the Columbia Institution 

 for the Deaf and Dumb, an increase of $5,000 over former ap- 

 propriations. 



President Gallaudet says, "The object of this increase is to en- 

 able the dii-ectors to enlarge the facilities afforded in the institution 

 for normal instruction. For many years the graduates of our 

 collegiate dei^artment have been in demand as teachers of the 

 deaf in the primary schools of the several States. The demand 

 for such teachers has far outgrown our limited supply; and as 

 no normal school for the training of teachers of the deaf exists in 

 this country, while several are sustained in Europe, it has been 

 thought extremely desirable that the advantages for normal in- 

 struction existing in this institution to a limited degree should be 

 increased.'' 



In accordance with your suggestion, I submit herewith a brief 

 statement of my reasons for opposing this grant, and trust you 

 will allow me a hearing before your committee: — 



1. The proposed normal department is a new departure, which 

 will probably lead to largely increased appropriations in the future, 

 diverting public money to an object foreign to the purposes for 

 which the institution was established. 



2. Such a training-school for teachers, supported by the National 

 Government, will interfere with that healthy competition which 

 now exists between rival methods of instructing the deaf. 



3. In the Columbia Institution a foreign language (the sign- 

 language) is used as the medium of instruction, whereas the rival 

 methods employ the English language alone for this purpose. 



4. The graduates of the collegiate department are, of course, 

 deaf. The institution, therefore, proposes to train deaf persons 

 to teach the deaf. This is a backward step, detrimental to the 

 best interests of the deaf, and subversive of the very object for 

 which the collegiate department exists. 



5. Great efforts are now made to teach deaf children to speak; 

 and articulation teachers are employed in all important schools 

 for the deaf, with the exception of the collegiate department of 

 the Columbia Institution. 



6. The president of the Columbia Institution has stated that 

 lack of funds alone prevents the employment of special articula- 

 tion teachers in the National College. The increased apropria- 

 tion of $5,000 now asked for would, if applied to this purpose, 

 not only enable the collegiate department to employ ordinary 

 teachers of articulation, but also a professor of elocution, who 

 could carry up articulation work to the highest point of perfection 

 attainable by the deaf. 



7. I would gladly support an application for $5,000, to be ex- 

 pended for the employment of articulation teachers and a professor 

 of elocution in the collegiate department of the institution, but I 

 would strongly oppose an application for the purposes set forth by 

 President Gallaudet. 



EEPORT OF PROGRESS IN SPECTRUM WORK.= 



During the past year or two a great deal of work has been done 

 in the photography of the spectra of elements and the identifica- 

 tion of the lines in the solar spectrum, which it will take a long 

 time to work up, ready for publication : hence I have thought 

 that a short account of what has been done up to the present 

 time might be of interest to workers in the subject. In the prosecu- 



^ Open letter of Alexander Graham Bell to Hon. William B. Allison, chair- 

 man of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, dated at Washington, D.O., 

 Feb. n, 1891. 



- From Johns Hopkins University Circulars. 



tion of the work, financial assistance has been received from the 

 Rumford Fund of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 

 as well as from the fund given by Miss Bruce to the Harvard 

 Astronomical Observatory for the promotion of research in astro- 

 nomical physics, and the advanced state of the work is due to 

 such assistance. 



The work may be summed up under the following heads : — 



1. The spectra of all known elements, with the exception of a 

 few gaseous ones, or those too rare to be yet obtained, have been 

 photographed in connection with the solar spectrum, from the 

 extreme ultra-violet down to the D line, and eye-observations 

 have been maile on many to the limit of the solar spectrum. 



2. A measuring-engine has been constructed with a screw to fit 

 the above photographs, which, being taken with the concave 

 grating, are all normal specti-a and to the same scale. This en- 

 gine measm-es wave-lengths direct, so that no multiplication is 

 necessary, but only a slight correction to get figures correct to 

 1 J^ of a division of Angstrom. 



3. A table of standard wave-lengths of the impurities in the 

 carbons, extending to wave-length 2000, has been constructed to 

 measure wave-lengths beyond the limits of the solar spectrum. 



4. Maps of the spectra of some of the elements have been drawn 

 on a large scale, ready for publication. 



5. The greater part of the lines in the map of the solar spec- 

 trum have been identi6ed, and the substance producing themi 

 noted. 



6. The following rough arrangement of the solar elements has 

 been constructed entirely according to my own observations, 

 although, of course, most of them have been given by others : 

 according to intensity, calcium, iron, hydrogen, sodium, nickel, 

 magnesium, cobalt, silicon, aluminum, titanium, chromium, 

 manganese, strontium, vanadium, barium, carbon, scandium, 

 yttrium, zirconium, molybdenum, lanthanum, niobium, palla- 

 dium, neodymium, copper, zinc, cadmium, cerium, glucinum, 

 germanium, rhodium, silver, tin, lead, erbium, potassium; ac- 

 cording to number, iron (3000 or more), nickel, titanium, manga- 

 nese, chromium, cobalt, carbon (200 or more), vanadium, zir- 

 conium, cerium, calcium (75 or more), scandium, neodymium, 

 lanthanum, yttrium, niobium, molybdenum, palladium, magne- 

 sium (20 or more), sodium (11), silicon, strontium, barium, 

 aluminum (4), cadmium, rhodium, erbium, zinc, copper (i), silver 

 (2), glucinum (2), germanium, tin, lead (1), potassium (1); doubt- 

 ful elements, iridium, osmium, platinum, ruthenium, tantalum, 

 thorium, tungsten, uranium ; not in the solar spectrum, antimony, 

 arsenic, bismuth, boron, nitrogen (vacuum tube), caesium, gold, 

 indium, mercury, phosphorus, rubidium, selenium, sulphur, 

 thallium, praeseodymium; substances not yet tried, bromine, 

 chlorine, iodine, fluorine, oxygen, tellurium, gallium, holmium, 

 thulium, terbium, etc. 



These lists are to be accepted as preliminary only, especially the 

 order in the first portion. However, being made with such a 

 powerful instrument and with such care in the determination of 

 impurities, they must still have a weight superior to most others 

 published. 



I do not know which are the new ones, but call attention to 

 silicon, vanadium, scandium, yttrium, zirconium, glucinum, ger- 

 manium, and erbium, as being possibly new. 



Silicon has lines on my map at wave-lengths 3905.7, 4103.1, 

 5708.7, 5772.3, and 5948.7. That at 3905.7 is the largest and most 

 certain. That at 4103. 1 is also claimed by manganese. 



The substances under '• not in the solar spectrum " are often 

 placed there because the elements have few strong lines or none 

 at all in the limit of the solar spectrum when the arc spectrum, 

 which I have used, is employed. Thus boron has only two strong 

 lines at 2497. Again, the lines of bismuth are all compound, and 

 so too diffuse to appear in the solar spectrum. Indeed, some good 

 reason generally appears for their absence from the solar spectrum. 

 Of course, this is little evidence of their absence from the sun itself. 



Indeed, were the whole earth heated to the temperature of the 

 sun, its spectrum would probably resemble that of the sun very 

 closely. 



With the high dispersion here used, the " basic lines " of Lock- 

 yer are widely broken up, and cease to exist. Indeed, it would 



