June 26, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



355 



operation will, if required, have to be preceded by an artificial 

 drying process, as it has been found tliat salt carefully dried is 

 more easily preserved. A detailed statement of costs must be 

 filed, and for wages the average paid in the Netherlands must be 

 figured upon. A special contest will take place at Amsterdam 

 between the competitors. For this the contestants must supply 

 the necessary materials and machinery. The government will buy 

 from the contestant receiving the premium the machinery used 

 by him at the contest. Answers must be filed with the Depart- 

 ment of the Colonies at the Hague before Sept. 1. 



— A butter extractor (or extractor separator), a new machine 

 for making butter directly from fresh milk, is now being run reg- 

 ularly at the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station, on 

 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays of each week. Any per- 

 sons desiring to see the operation of the machine will be welcomed 

 and given every facility for investigating its workings. Visitors 

 from a distance should purchase railroad tickets to Lemont. A 

 stage connects with all trains. 



— Medical studies of the school children in Berlin showed that 35 

 per cent had more or less defective hearing, most of them being 

 thought deaf enough to be incommoded in their work. The 

 Pedagogical Seminary remarks that such partially deaf children 

 are often thought unjustly by theu- teacher to be inattentive. 

 More effort of attention is needed by such children, who are usu- 

 ally utterly incredulous concerning their defect, although they 

 often complain that the teacher speaks too low or indistinctly. 

 Children from better homes are less often defective than those 

 from squalid ones. 



— Beginning on Wednesday, July 1, and continuing six weeks, 

 there will be held at Plymouth, Mass., a school for the discussion 

 of practical ethics in the broadest sense of that phrase. The matter 

 to be presented has been selected with i-egard to the wants of 

 clergymen, teachers, journalists, philanthropists, and others, who 

 are now seeking careful information upon the great themes of 

 ethical sociology. The course of lectures will cover three different 

 departments : economics, history of religions, and ethics proper. 

 The department of economics will be in charge of Professor H. C. 

 Adams of the University of Michigan. Professor Adams will de- 

 liver seventeen lectures, three during each of the six weeks, on 

 the history of industrial society and economic doctrine in England 

 and America, beginning with the middle ages, and tracing geneti- 

 cally the gradual rise of those conditions in the labor world which 

 cause so much anxiety and discussion to-day. His associates and 

 the topics which they will treat are as follows : Professor John 

 B. Clark of Smith College, " Modern Agrarianism; " Albert Shaw, 

 American editor of the Review of Reviews, " Social Questions sug- 

 gested by the Crowding of Cities ; " Professor Edmund J. James, 

 president of the American Society for the Extension of University 

 Teaching, " Education in its Social and Economic Aspects ; " Henry 

 D. Lloyd of Chicago, "Trusts;" Professor Frank W. Taussig of 

 Harvard University, "Co-Operation;" Hon. Carroll D. Wright, 

 United States Commissioner of Labor, "Factory Legislation;" 

 President E. Benj. Andrews of Brown University, "Socialism." 

 The department of the history of religions will be in charge of 

 Professor Crawford H. Toy of Harvard University. Professor 

 Toy will offer a general course of eighteen lectures, extending 

 through the six weeks, treating the history, aims, and method of 

 the science of history of religions, and illustrating its principles by 

 studies in the laws of religious progress, with examples drawn 

 from the chief ancient religions. His associates and their topics 

 are Professor M. Bloomfield of Johns Hopkins University, " Buddh- 

 ism;" Professor George F. Moore of Andover Theological Sem- 

 inary, " Islam ; " Professor Morris Jastrow, Jun., of the University 

 of Pennsylvania, " The Babylonian-Assyrian Religion ;" Professor 

 Q. L. Kittredge of Harvard University, " The Scandinavian Re- 

 ligion;" Professor B. I. Wheeler of Cornell University, "The 

 Greek Religion;" Mr. W. W. Newell, editor of the Journal of 

 American Folk-Lore, "The Religion of the Laity in the Middle 

 Ages." The department of ethics will be in charge of Professor 

 Felix Adler of New York City. Professor Adler will offer a gen- 

 eral course of eighteen lectures, extending through the six weeks, 

 on the system of applied ethics, with special reference to the 



moral instruction of children, including a brief survey of the vari- 

 ous schemes of classification adopted in ancient and modem ethical 

 systems, the discussion of the relation of religious to moral in- 

 struction, of the development of the conscience in the child, etc. 

 His associates and their topics are Dr. Charlton T. Lewis of New 

 York, " Criminals and the State; " Professor J. B. Thayer of Har- 

 vard Law School, and Hon. Herbert Welsh of Philadelphia, " The 

 Indian Question ; " Mr. J. H. Finley, secretary of the State Chari- 

 ties Aid Association of New York, "The Problem of Charity in 

 Great Cities;" Rev. C. R. Eliot of Boston, "Temperance Reform 

 and Legislation; " Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago, " The Ethical Ideal 

 in Education;" Professor Wm. E. Sheldon of Boston, "Humane 

 Treatment of Animals;" Mrs. Caroline Earle White, president of 

 the Woman's Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Preven- 

 tion of Cruelty to Animals, "Vivisection;" Mr. W. L. Sheldon 

 of St. Louis, "Reform Movements among Workingmen ; " Mr. 

 Wm. M. Salter of Chicago, " Ethical Theory; " Professor Robert 

 Ellis Thompson of the University of Pennsylvania, " PoUtics and 

 Ethics. " 



— In the course of an investigation, part of which has already 

 been communicated to the Royal Society, Professor Roberts- Austen 

 has discovered the most brilliantly colored alloy as yet known. 

 Nature states that it has a rich purple color, and bright ruby tints 

 are obtained when light is reflected from one surface of the alloy 

 to another. It contains about 78 per cent of gold, the rest of 

 the alloy being aluminum. The constants of the aluminum-gold 

 series of alloys are now being examined, and will shortly be pub- 

 lished. 



— According to Nature, the relations of weather and disease have 

 been recently investigated by Herr Magelssen of Leipzig, who, 

 having formerly called attention to the nature of certain " waves " 

 which recur in the variations of temperature (distinguishing waves 

 of about 13 days, 50 days, and 18 to 30 years duration), now traces 

 a connection of these with diseases and mortality. The year- waves 

 especially show this connection, the mortality (in our latitudes) 

 varying with the winter temperature. The least mortality (rela- 

 tively) is at the middle part of the temperature periods. The in- 

 jurious influence of heat is dominant in the more southern latitudes 

 (such as Vienna), while cold begins to act beneficially. In north- 

 ern places, mild winters prove injurious where several very mild 

 winters come in succession (e.g., Stockholm in 1871-74). The 

 most favorable conditions seem to be an alternation of moderately 

 cold and moderately mild winters. Too much importance, the 

 author thinks, has been attached to relative humidity. He fur- 

 ther offers proof that infectious disease is even more dependent on 

 weather than disease of the respiratory organs, or arising from cbUI. 



— The value of systematic observation of snow is now being 

 recognized in meteorology, says Nature, and in Russia observa- 

 tions were commenced in January last year at 438 stations in the 

 European portion of the empire, 31 in the Asiatic, and 55 in the 

 Caucasus. At first it was simply reported daily whether there 

 was a continuous snow-covering about the station or not. But 

 last winter the inquiry had been extended to the depth and gen- 

 eral behavior of the snow. Thus it is expected that in a few years 

 some valuable climatological material will have been accumulated 

 at St. Petersburg. The report of Herr Berg on the snow in the 

 early months of 1890, in European Russia {Repert. fur Meteor.), 

 contains a map showing the southern and western Umit of the con- 

 tinuous snow-covering for the first and fifteenth of each of the 

 months from January to AprU. In the west the snow extended 

 steadily till the beginning of March, the limit being then close to 

 the Baltic. In the south-east, there was steady advance till Feb- 

 ruary, and as far as the coast of the Caspian. In the south, the 

 advance was fluctuating, there being a maximum in the middle of 

 January and in the middle of February, both reaching to the 

 Black Sea coast. The retirement of the snow-limit began in the 

 south and south-east in the middle of February ; in the west about 

 half a month later. The general direction was north-east. On 

 April 15 the limit passed through Onega on the White Sea, Wet- 

 luga, and Katherinenburg. By the first of May all European 

 Russia was free from snow. Herr Berg describes the weather ac- 

 companying the disappearance of the snow, and traces its causation. 



