296 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVIII. No 460 



like a solid isolated block into the life of the girl — we might 

 say like a meteorite fallen from the sky. It is often felt 

 that, when these college years are finished, everything con- 

 nected with them is to come to an end, be set aside, the stu- 

 dent herself is regarded as a finished product, turned off from 

 a mysterious machine, to be henceforth separated from it as 

 distinctly as a box from a turning-lathe. 



All this habit of mind is again characteristically English 

 — true English Philistinism, which is frankly indifferent to 

 intellectual interest for its own sake — but accepts a prescribed 

 intellectual drill as a means of attaining — it is not clearly 

 apprehended what. 



iBemoval of a girl from her mother's care, during the criti- 

 cal years of adolescence, must always be an evil morally and 

 physically, even when it is an advantage intellectually. That 

 is to say, it must be an evil, whenever the mother is adequate 

 to her charge, which, of course, is only too often not the 

 case. The girls are the exception whose health does not re- 

 quire constant and careful supervision, and it is absurd to 

 expect such supervision from the girls themselves. A young 

 person is a prig, who is competent, unadvised, to look after 

 her own health. It is perfectly true that thousands of 

 mothers prove themselves even more incompetent, either 

 through indolence, or ignorance, or indifference. But, theo- 

 retically, 776 expect a mother to be watchful, well informed, 

 far-sighted, and intensely solicitous. Such an anxious 

 mother, if nervous, uneducated, and weak, may, indeed, do 

 as much harm to the girl by over-fussing and spoiling as can 

 the mother who is indifferent to the plainest laws of health; 

 and the girl will do better, if removed to the impartial juris- 

 diction of a college faculty. But this is not then a change 

 from good to better, but from worse to good by default. 



The foregoing remarks have been suggested by surprise at 

 the fact that relatively so few citizens of New York seem as 

 yet to have become aware of the great advantage that has 

 been brought to their doors by the foundation of the Barnard 

 College for women in connection with Columbia University. 

 Nearly half of the pupils thus far enrolled are not from New 

 Yoi'k City, but from without our gates,^ and at the same time 

 New York girls leave their homes every year for the colleges 

 of other States — where they can only study under the disad- 

 vantages which have just been enumerated. Nay, more, these 

 disadvantages are not counted as such, but on the contrary 

 are reckoned as so many reasons for preferring the exile from 

 home. For a quarter of a century the anomaly has existed that 

 daughters of the wealthiest or the most highly educated citi- 

 zens of the great city of New York have been deprived, except 

 through such exile, of the educational advantages which 

 were accessible to the inhabitants of a country town like 

 Poughkeepsie. The parents must deprive themselves of the 

 delight of a daughter's society during four of the most charm- 

 ing years of her life; or else deprive the girl of the "still air 

 of those delightful studies " which should throw a charm 

 over all her future life and lend a force to all her faculties. 

 During four years all the marvellous development of thought 

 and feeling which goes to the making of character, all the 

 delicate details which go to the formation of manners, must 

 proceed un watched by the eyes that have the most intense 

 interest in both, or else the babyish system of education 

 must be continued, which arrests the intellectual training of 

 a girl at the very point where, for a boy, it first begins to be 

 strenuous. This injurious anomaly in our social structure 

 was removed, or rather the first step was taken to remove it, 



1 The Free Competitive Scholarship tor the best entrance examination Into 

 the Freshman Class for the year 169t}-91 was won by a graduate of the Jersey 

 City High Schorl. 



when, in a measure, Columbia College opened its doors to 

 women. Compared with what should be necessary when 

 the girls of New York shall have come forward in propor- 

 tionate numbers to claim the privileges of their university, 

 the measure is slight and the beginning small. From this 

 small beginning, however, a full university education for 

 women cannot fail to grow so soon as the citizens of New 

 York thoroughly appreciate, not only the value of such edu- 

 cation, but the value of having its facilities at home, brought 

 to their doors, when they realize that their girls may now 

 claim their share in the intellectual inheritance of the race, 

 without incurring the risks of expatriation from home which 

 were already inherent in the boarding-schools of the sampler 

 and crochet- needle, but are now too often laid to the account 

 of a little Latin and less Greek. 



CAN WE MAKE IT EAIN ? ' 



The recent experiments in rain making in Texas, under 

 direction of General Dyrenforth, and which have attracted 

 the attention of the whole country, seem attended by a cer- 

 tain amount of success. 



General Dyrenforth has proceeded upon the theory that 

 heavy concussions in the upper air currents would cause 

 a disturbance of these currents and thus produce rain. Con- 

 sequently all his attempts have been to produce the greatest 

 possible noise in the endeavor to cause a commingling of 

 currents proper for a condensation of their moisture. 



Every scientist knows, and a moment's thought ought to 

 convince any one, that concussions cannot cause rain-fall. 

 An explosion in the air is immediate in its effects. It be- 

 comes in fact merely the propagation of a sound-wave, 

 which, travelling about eleven hundred feet in a second, has 

 but an instantaneous action upon the air through which it 

 passes, and in which it is gradually frittered away into heat. 

 In a small part of a second the air is again the same in tem- 

 perature and density. The greatest effect, then — the prac- 

 tical effect — must follow close upon the concussion. There- 

 fore, if General Dyrenforth's tremendous explosions, his 

 " air quakes," produced rain-falls in Texas, there should 

 have been an immediate down-pour in that particular local- 

 ity as a result of each explosion. But such was not the' 

 case. In every case, according to his statements, the rain 

 has fallen from two to twenty-four hours after the explo- 

 sions, and over extended areas. In a few instances, when 

 rain-clouds were already present. General Dyrenforth says 

 drops of rain fell within a few seconds after the explosions. 

 The violent concussions may have had to do with the forma- 

 tion of these drops, but the true and only valuable rains 

 came hours after every possible effect of the concussion had 

 gone. 



It is an observed fact that rains have followed the heavy 

 cannonading of battles. But these rains did not fall until 

 several hours after the concussions of the air had completely 

 ceased. So, too, the proverbial showers of the Fourth of 

 July come late in the afternoon or during the day follow- 

 ing. 



Further, it is noticeable that during a thunder-storm a 

 lightning-flash and its attendant thunder are usually accom- 

 panied by a sudden increase of rain downpour. This has 

 been frequently attributed to the discharge of electricity in 

 the clouds. But the increase and the flash occur so nearly 

 simultaneously, that the rain-drops must have started from 



' since the above waa presented before the University Science Club, on 

 Nov. 13, 1 have read with interest Mr. T. Q. McPherson's excellent presenta- 

 tion of Altken'a experiments on " Dust," In the Popular Science Monthly, De- 

 cember, 1891. 



