178 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 425 



throughout the country. On the contrary, the genius of the 

 Anglo-Saxon race leans towards self-help. It has been the 

 mission of the race in the past to develop self-government in 

 religion and politics: it remains to crown this work with 

 the application of the voluntary system to liberal education. 

 In indulging this piece of speculation I have had a practi- 

 cal purpose before me. If what I have described be a rea- 

 sonable forecast for the university of the future, does it not 

 follow that university extension, as the germ of it, presents 

 a field for the very highest academic ambition ? To my 

 naind, it appears that existing types of university have 

 reached a point where further development in the same di- 

 rection would mean decline. In English universities the 

 ideal is " scholarship." Scholarship is a good thing, and we 

 produce it. But the system which turns out a few good 

 scholars every year passes over the heads of the great mass 

 of university students without having awakened them to any 

 intellectual life: the universities are scholarship- factories, 

 producing good articles, but with a terrible waste of raw 

 material. The other main type of university enthrones 

 " research " as its summum boniim. Possibly research is as 

 good a purpose as a man can set before him, but it is not the 

 sole aim in life. And when one contemplates the band of 

 recruits added each year to the army of investigators, and 

 the choice of ever minuter fields — not to say lanes and 

 alleys — of research, one is led to doubt whether research is 

 not one of the disintegrating forces of society, and whether 

 ever-increasing specialization must not mean a perpetual 

 narrowing of human sympathies in the intellectual leaders 

 of mankind. Both types of university appear to me to pre- 

 sent the phenomena of a country suffering from the effects 

 of over-production, where the energies of workers had been 

 concentrated upon adding to the sum of wealth, and all too 

 little attention bad been given to the distribution of that 

 wealth through the different ranks of the community. Just 

 at this point the university extension movement appears to 

 recall academic energy from production to distribution, sug- 

 gesting that devotion to physics, economics, art, can be just 

 as truly shown by raising new classes of the people to an 

 interest in physical and economic and aesthetic pursuits as 

 by adding to the discoveries of science, or increasing the 

 mass of art products. To the young graduate, conscious 

 that he has fairly mastered the teaching of the past, and that 

 he has within him powers to make advances, I would sug- 

 gest the question whether, even for the highest powers, there 

 is any worthier field than to work through university exten- 

 sion towards the university of the future. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*** Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The writer^s name 

 is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



Tlie editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character 

 of the journal. 



Chi request, twenty copies of the number containing his communication will 

 be furnished free to any correspondent. 



The Souring of Milk during Thunder-Storms. 



In Science of Sept. 19, 1890, appeared a short note on some 

 work recently done in Italy by Professor Tolomei on the souring 

 of milk during thunder-storms. Professor Tolomei concludes that 

 there is a sufficient amount of ozone generated at such times to 

 coagulate milk by a process of direct oxidation, and a consequent 

 production of lactic acid.' 



Similar results have been obtained by other experimenters, and 



1 A more extended account of Professor Tolomei^s experiments is given in 

 Bieder^nann^s Central-Blatt fur Agriculturchemie, 1890, p. 538. 



some have even gone so far as to say that free oxygen, when in 

 contact with milk, will generate enough lactic acid to coagulate 

 its caseine. 



These results are very different from some obtained in this 

 laboratory. While working on the bacteria in milk, the idea 

 occurred to us to find out, if possible, the truth of the somewhat 

 widely accepted theory that milk will sour with extreme rapidity 

 during thunder-storms. Although the statement that this is an 

 oxidizing action had been frequently made, a Mr. lies of Balti- 

 more was the first, so far as I know, to perform any experiments 

 in this direction.' His method was to subject milk to the action 

 of ozone, generated by an electric spark passed through oxygen, 

 above the milk. He found a rapid coagulation produced, which 

 he attributed to the direct oxidizing action of the ozone. 



Our method was similar to that of Mr. Iles's. A Wolff bottle 

 was filled about one-third full of milk, and the air in the bottle 

 displaced by pure oxygen. Through the opposite necks wires 

 leading from a Holtz induction machine were passed into the 

 interior, and the necks plugged tightly with cotton to prevent any 

 escape of oxygen ; ozone was then generated by passing a spark 

 across through the oxygen from one pole to the other. In some 

 cases, instead of the spark, a ' ' silent discharge " of electricity 

 from the two poles was used to generate ozone. 



In all cases a second bottle was partially filled with milk, and 

 kept as a "control;" i.e., one in which the milk is left in its 

 normal condition. 



For some of our experiments three bottles were used, — one left 

 as a control; a second filled with milk and oxygen; while a 

 third was filled, like the second, with milk and oxygen, and then 

 treated with the electricity. We thus had milk under three con- 

 ditions: 1. In its normal state; 2. Under the iofluence of free oxy- 

 gen ; 3. Under the influence of free oxygen plus a certain amount 

 of ozone. The electricity, in all cases, was passed through the 

 oxygen for at least half an hour. That a considerable quantity of 

 ozone was generated, was shown by its odor, and strong action 

 on starch-iodine paper. Our results were very different from 

 those given by lies and Tolomei. The milk treated with ozone, 

 or simply pure oxygen, soured a little, but only a little, faster 

 than normal milk. If the milk in the control coagulated in 

 thirty-six hoiu's, the milk experimented on coagulated only an 

 hour or two earlier. 



This result was very constant. In a considerable number of 

 experiments, using milk of all degrees of sweetness, from that 

 just from the cow to that a day or more old, the same result 

 followed, — a slight hastening of the time of coagulation in milk 

 treated with ozone or oxygen. Between the time of coagulation 

 of milk treated simply with oxygen, and that treated with oxygen 

 plus ozone, no perceptible difference could be noticed. 



We had, then, in our experiments, ijroduced a slight hastening 

 of the time of coagulation. Was this a direct oxidation? From 

 the fact that it required over a day to act, it seemed likely that it 

 could not be. If, however, it were an oxidation, it ought to act 

 as well on sterilized milk — i.e., milk in which all bacteria have 

 been killed by heat — as on ordinary milk. We therefore, before 

 introducing the oxygen, sterilized the milk. In this case no co- 

 agulation occurred. Milk that had been treated at two separate 

 times, a week apart, with oxygen and ozone, was kept for over 

 two months without the appearance of the least sign of coagula- 

 tion. 



Briefly summed up, then, our results were as follows : — 



1. Milk, under the influence of oxygen, or ox^'gen and ozone, 

 coagulates somewhat earlier than when left in its normal con- 

 dition. 



2. This action does not take place if the milk has been sterilized, 

 and is kept from contact with un filtered an-. 



3. It is probably, therefore, not an oxidation. The conclusion 

 drawn from this is that the souring was simply produced by an 

 unusually rapid growth of bacteria. The bacteria of milk are 

 mostly aerobic, and would undoubtedly be stimulated to rapid 

 growth by free oxygen or ozone. 



If in a thunder-storm ozone is set free, as some observers claim, 

 its action on bacteria would perhaps explain the effects produced 

 1 Cliemical News, vol, xxxvi. p. 237. 



