SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XX. No. 491 



complete course in physical geography — of all high school 

 subjects the most difficult and the one most conamonly poorly 

 taught. Certain universities, as Harvard and Michigan, 

 require elementary chemistry; others entirely omit it, be- 

 cause in it students are too often poorly prepared. Said a 

 university professor of chemistry to me, not long ago, "I 

 prefer my students to come tome with no chemistry. I find 

 they too often come with matter and methods to be un- 

 learned." Now, this must be remedied in the chemistry 

 work of the high school; the " indictment must be quashed ;'' 

 the fault must be corrected by proper instructions and skilled 

 methods. Without appliances, that is to say, without labora- 

 tory facilities, radical and valuable revolution is impossible. 

 Physical science in the high school must be experimental. 



Without multiplying words, then, it may be stated that 

 the high school must give, to those who ask it, preparation 

 for entrance into university work. It must adapt its science 

 curriculum to the requirements of the standard college or 

 university. For long years these higher institutions com- 

 pelled certain and definite work in language and mathe- 

 matics, they compel that work, with little or no modification 

 to-day. Why cannot they, equally well, compel proper 

 science preparation ? We believe they can; we think they 

 will. 



There will not be, in the nature of things there cannot be, 

 a set limit to science requirements in the universities. As 

 the tables of the various laboratories, physical, chemical, 

 physiological and biological, become over-taxed, up go the 

 requirements. The standards of entrance are being steadily 

 raised, especially in Indiana University, Michigan Univer- 

 sity, Cornell, Yale, Harvard, and Leland Stanford, Jr., 

 Universities, as fast as the high and other secondary schools 

 will admit cf it. So there is no goal; no end; the high 

 school will ever need to keep close watch on university matters 

 and determine its own work accordingly. Our own State 

 university proposes to the high school to occupy advanced 

 ground in this very matter; toeain and hold the confidence 

 of the university, on the one hand, to meet a legitimate de- 

 mand for more complete preparation in science on the other, 

 the high school course must be materially modified. 



THE FEEDING OF HORSES. 



Bulletin No. 13 of the Agricultural Experiment Station 

 of Utah has been received. This bulletin reports the results 

 of a feeding trial of horses by the director, J. W. Sanborn. 

 It reports the result of a trial in a direction that the Ameri- 

 can Experiment Station literature is almost silent upon, viz., 

 feeding horses hay and grain mixed, and feeding cut against 

 whole hay to horses. 



It is a common belief with horsemen that when grain, 

 especially meal, and more especially such meal as corn meal, 

 is fed to horses alone or mixed with hay, it tends to compact 

 in the stomach and produce indigestion. It is believed that 

 it so far compacts that the gastric juices do not have free 

 access to the mass of it. Furthermore, it is believed to be 

 subject more to the washing influence of heavy drinking. 

 In the latter respect it is known that the horse's stomach is 

 very small, and that grain is liable to be washed out of it, 

 as the stomach necessarily overflows with water. 



As usual, the writer fed two lots of horses for nearly three 

 months, one lot with hay and grain mixed, and the other 

 lot with hay and grain fed separately. At the end of this 

 period the food was reversed, and the horses were fed some 

 two months more. It would be unnecessary to quote the 



figures of lengthy trial. Suffice it to say that it was found 

 that horses, as in the case of cattle and pigs, showed no dis- 

 advantage by the division of the grain and hay into sepa- 

 rate feeds over feeding hay mixed with grain. Indeed, in 

 this trial he found a disadvantage for the horses on the hay 

 and grain mixed, they not maintaining their weight as well. 

 The author ascribed this result to the fact that the timothy 

 hay when cut Que, with its sharp solid ends, irritated and 

 made sore the mouths of the horses, and possibly induced 

 too rapid eating, as when the hay and grain were moist they 

 would be more likely to eat more rapidly than when fed 

 dry. As this trial is in accord with trials with ruminants 

 and with the pig, it would seem quite probable that the old 

 and persistent argument in favor of mixing hay and grain 

 is not sound. 



The second trial reported in this bulletin covered feeding 

 of cut against whole hay to horses. This trial also covered 

 two periods in which the foods were reversed with the sets, 

 in order to determine whether any change of weights found 

 was due to the individualism of the horses, or whether it 

 was due to the system of feeding. The two periods covered 

 from August 10 to December 31. As in the other case, we 

 will not review the tabulated data that accompany the bul- 

 letin. This trial was very decisively in favor of ihe cut 

 clover for the four months and a half covered by this period. 

 The food fed was clover, and the author points out the fact 

 that clover hay and lucerne, unlike timothy hay, do not 

 present sharp, solid, cutting edges. The results are decisive, 

 and in accordance with those of a trial made by the Indiana 

 Experiment Station with cattle. Director Sanborn points out 

 the fact that these trials, covering nearly a year's time with 

 four horses, showed that horses consume practically the same 

 amount of food that cattle do when high fed, and make it 

 somewhat clear that horses make as economical use of hay 

 and graia as do cattle, and he calls attention to the fact that 

 the practice of charging more for pasturage of horses, where 

 grooming is not involved, is not well founded. He also 

 shows that less food was eaten during the hot months than 

 during the cooler mouths, and particularly that the horses 

 ate less grain during the hot months than during the cooler 

 months. The trial seems to show also that a rather large 

 ration of grain for work-liorses is an economical one. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The idea of flower-farming for perfumes seems to be exciting 

 a good deal of interest in New South Wales, as many inquiries 

 on the subject have lately been submitted to the Agricultural 

 Deparcment. There are at present in the colony no means of 

 illustrating the practical operations of this industry, but the 

 Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales hopes that this defi- 

 ciency will soon be supplied by the institution of experimental 

 plots on one or more of the experimental farms. The Gazette 

 points out that in scent farms large quantities of waste material 

 from nurseries, gHrdens, orchards, and ordinary farais might be 

 profitably utilized, while occupation would be found for some 

 who are unfit for hard, manual labor. A Government perfume 

 farm was lately established at Dunolly, in Victoria, and this 

 promises to be remarkably successful. 



— At the meeting of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria on 

 March 14. as we learn from Nature. Professor Baldwin Spencer, 

 the president, gave an interesting account of a trip he had made 

 to Queensland in search of Ceratoius. Special interest attaches 

 to thi^ form, since it is the Australian representative of a small 

 group of animals (the Dipnoi) which is intermediate between the 

 fishes and the amphibia. Ceratodus has its home in the Mary and 

 Burnett River-i in Queensland, whilst its ally, Lepidosiren, is 

 found in the Amazon, and another relative, Protopterus, flourishes 



