January 25, 1889.J 



SCIENCE. 



69 



literary merit will not be disregarded, the decision of the judges 

 will rest mainly on the practical help afforded to teachers by the 

 article. The competition is open to all persons, without regard to 

 age, sex, color, or previous condition of servitude. The following 

 are the conditions : No paper is to e.xceed in length 5,000 words ; 

 the paper awarded first prize by the committee shall become the 

 property of The Academy ; any papers of special merit, which may 

 receive honorable mention, shall also become the property of The 

 Academy ; papers must be legibly written, so as to be published 

 without copying, must be signed with a fictitious name (the real 

 one being enclosed in a sealed envelope), and must be received at 

 the office of The Academy on or before April 15, i88g. Manu- 

 scripts not receiving prize or honorable mention will be returned if 

 stamps are enclosed. The names of the committee of award will 

 be published. If further information is desired, address The Acad- 

 emy, Syracuse, N.Y. 



— Dr. J. M. Toner of Washington has just brought out, in a 

 handsome brochure, " Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent 

 Behavior," found among the early writings of the first President, 

 and now published in full, from the original te,\t. They make 

 thirty-four pages, and are believed by Dr. Toner to be an original 

 compilation made when the compiler was only thirteen years old. 



— Messrs. Belford, Clarke, & Co. will remove to new quarters 

 Nos. 18-22 E. 1 8th Street, New York, about the ist of February. 



— We have received the third volume of the " Transactions and 

 Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America," 

 being an account of the meeting held in Philadelphia in December, 

 1887, with the papers there read. The different essays, fifteen in 

 number, are on a great variety of topics, but we can only notice a 

 few of them. Some, indeed, are so technical that but few persons 

 can enjoy or even understand them ; while one or two were read 

 only in part, and some that were read are not yet published. Of 

 those before us, one of the most generally interesting is the open- 

 ing one, by Mr. James MacAlister, on " The Study of Modern 

 Literature in the Education of our Time." The author takes ex- 

 treme ground in favor of modern literature as against the ancient, 

 holding that " the literatures of the modern world are entitled to 

 the first place in the intellectual culture of our time, and should 

 therefore be made the chief instruments of literary training in the 

 schools." Of course, the general sentiment of the meeting was 

 with him m this opinion ; but lovers of the classics will perhaps 

 think that the question cannot be so summarily disposed of. An- 

 other paper of general interest is that of Professor Kroeh, on 

 " Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages." The author reviews 

 the various methods that have been employed, and pronounces in 

 favor of the " natural " or conversational method ; but, in the 

 course of the discussion that followed. Professor Leidensticker 

 suggested, that, though the " natural " method was best for giving 

 a speaking knowledge of a foreign tongue, the grammar and reader 

 were better for imparting a reading knowledge of it. Other papers 

 read were on " The Style of Anglo-Saxon Poetry," on " Lord 

 Macaulay's English," and other literary themes ; and others still, 

 on strictly philological subjects, such as " The Origin of the Teu- 

 tonic Weak Preterite ; " but these we can only allude to. There 

 were also some essays with a distinctly local flavor ; in particular, 

 one by Professor Fortier on " Louisiana Folk-Lore," and another 

 by Professor Primer on " Charleston Provincialisms ; " both of 

 which will be interesting not only to philologists, but to many 

 others. It seemed to be the sentiment of the members present 

 that the study of such local themes is specially incumbent on 

 American philologists, the more so because local and dialectical 

 peculiarities are fast disappearing under the influence of the com- 

 mon schools. The essays as a whole betray two distinct tenden- 



cies, — the philological and the literary ; or, in other words, the 

 scientific and the aesthetic ; and in some of the discussions that fol- 

 lowed the reading of each paper these two tendencies came intc^ 

 collision. There seems, however, to have been great harmony of 

 feeling at the meeting, notwithstanding many divergences in views. 

 We are glad to add that the association passed a resolution in favor 

 of repealing the tariff on foreign books ; and we should be happy 

 to record a similar act on the part of Congress. 



— Miss Dora Wheeler, the well-known decorative artist, has 

 given much of her spare time during the past two or three years to 

 painting, either in pastel or oils, a series of portraits of authors here 

 and abroad, many of whom are numbered among her personal 

 friends. Unfortunately several of those of English authors who had 

 given her sittmgs during her stay in London, in 1886, including 

 Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie, Mr. Walter Besant, Mr. Thomas Hardy,, 

 and Mr. Austin Dobson, whose further acquaintance the American 

 public is always glad to make, were lost in transit. Since that 

 time her sitters have been exclusively American authors ; and she 

 has finished, or nearly finished, portraits of Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Bur- 

 nett, Mr. Lowell, " Mark Twain," Mr. Warner, Mr. Howells, Mr. 

 Aldrich, Mr. Stockton, Mr. Burroughs, Walt Whitman, and others. 

 The interesting announcement is made that these portraits will be 

 given as frontispieces through the year for The Literaiy News, 

 New York. Mrs. Stowe is portrayed in the January number, and 

 Mrs. Burnett will be given in that for February. 



— Ensign Hayden's nautical monograph No. 5, just published by 

 the Hydrographic Office, is a graphic and picturesque report of the 

 famous March blizzard. It is illustrated with four maps showing 

 the advance and culmination of that extraordinary atmospheric 

 convulsion. 



— Mr. von Lindheim, an Austrian engineer, has compiled the 

 statistics of street railroads in Europe. The development of such 

 roads dates back not more than fifteen or twenty years. In Eng- 

 land, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Austria, and Switzerland 

 there are 221 cities having street-railroads. Among these, 118 are 

 in England, 43 in Germany, and 23 in France, there being no city 

 of less than twenty thousand inhabitants having such roads, while 

 in the United States they are found in cities of not more than one 

 thousand inhabitants. In Europe there existed in 1886-87 4.330 

 miles of street-railroads, while the United States had 5,932 miles. 

 England had 883 miles on which 416,518,423 passengers were car- 

 ried. In Germany 245,657,503 passengers were carried on 525 

 miles of road. In England 472,356 passengers were carried over 

 each mile; in Germany, 468,874 ; in France, 545,815. There were 

 3,345 street-cars in Germany, 3,494 in England, and 2,780 in 

 France, against 22,940 in the United States. In the latter, 92,203, 

 horses, 12,217 mules, and 248 locomotives were in use on street-roads. 

 Of considerable interest is the comparison of distance travelled each 

 day by the horses. In Berlin a horse gives an average of 16.1 

 miles; in Posen, even as much as 16.7 miles; in Vienna, 14.5. 

 miles ; in Paris, 9.9 miles; and in Hamburg, 13.7 miles. The use 

 of mechanical motors in place of horses is steadily increasing. It 

 is particularly desirable in those places where the daily variations of 

 traffic are considerable. In Berlin, for instance, the Sunday and 

 holiday traffic is 27 per cent of the whole, and in Vienna even 

 amounts to 34 per cent, while on Wednesday the street-cars are 

 very little used. Mr. von Lindheim is a strong advocate of the use 

 of electric traction in street-railroads, and states that in Europe the 

 cost of horse-traction is 1.47 if that of electric traction is assumed 

 as I. 



— Ticknor & Co. announce among their January books, " Stead- 

 fast," by Rose Terry Cooke ; " Great Captains," by Col. Theodore 

 Ayrault Dodge, U.S.A., — a series of six lectures delivered before 



The Most Practical and Popular of the 

 Many Excellent Text-Books Recently Pub- 

 lished ON this Subject. 



Published leas than one year ago, and already 

 adopted for use in a large number of the leading 

 High Schools^ Normal Schools, Seminaries, Acad- 

 emies, etc., of the country. 



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