I02 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 314 



SCIENCE: 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPEH OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



PUBLISHED BY 



N. D. C. HODGES, 



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NEW YORK, Feb. 8, ig 



No. 314. 



CONTENTS: 



93 



The Steam-Enginb, its Principles, 



ETC. £■ X. Dickerson 94 



Improved Gaslight 96 



The Nkw Weston Voltmeter 97 



Electrical News. 



Hertz's Researches on Electric Os- 

 cillations 99 



Electric Plants in the Navy 1 00 



The Axo Battery loi 



Notes and News loi 



Editorial 102 



The New York Schools again. — In- 

 ternational Copyright. — Presi- 

 dent Eliot's Annual Report. 



" Science and the Dictionarv 103 



Speech and Alphabetics 



A . Melville Bell 104 



A Riv: 

 A Pop 



J. P. Pinl/y 105 

 \V. M. D. 108 



: Obsfr 



Scientific News ik Washington. 



Irrigation in California 



The Nucleus of a " Zoo " 



Mounds of Ohio 



Triple Births in the Human Race.. 



The Talking-Machine in Use 



Where Will It Go Ne.vt ? 



Book-Reviews. 



The Teachers' Psychology 



Among the Publishers 



Letters to the Editor. 



The Baconian Method in Science 



Logicm 



The many kind and appreciative words that our recent edito- 

 rial comments on school matters have called forth are sufficient 

 proof that we have succeeded in arousing an interest in this most 

 important matter. Our Wednesday of last week the New York 

 City Board of Education discussed the report of the committee on 

 reform, but adjourned without taking any action. As we go to 

 press, the matter is again under discussion. The character of the 

 meeting of last week is now re-assuring. The " wrigsters " in the 

 board received Mr. Webb's opening remarks in sullen silence, and, 

 when finally one commissioner did find his tongue, it was to say 

 that no marking system prevailed in New York city schools ! This 

 astounding statement is so transparently false, that we are quite at 

 a loss to know why it was made. We can only interpret it as a 

 sign that the opposition propose to treat the whole matter with an 

 ignorant bravado. This attitude, however, will not be tolerated 

 by the public nor by the independent section of the press. The 

 question must be squarely met, and a vote must be taken. Another 

 commissioner, one who knows nothing whatever about the schools 

 as they now exist, proclaimed that they were perfect, and cited 

 himself, a graduate of them, in evidence. This line of argument 



will hardly be accepted as conclusive. The well-known fact is, that 

 abuses of the most outrageous kind exist, — favoritism, political 

 methods, bad teaching, and the rest, — and they are wasting the 

 lives of hundreds of thousands of children. The Board of Educa- 

 tion iintst cope with them. 



The American [Authors'] Copyright League has issued an 

 appeal, asking the support, by all interested, of the Chace-Breckin- 

 ridge Copyright Bill, which passed the Senate May lo by 34 to 10, and 

 is now before the House of Representatives. This is a compromise 

 measure, the outcome of years of labor. Whatever its defects, this 

 bill, the league believes, " will put a stop to the habit of piracy ; will 

 free American authors from the competition with stolen goods ; will 

 enable American writers to support themselves by their pens ; will 

 make American books cheaper by opening to them the broad home 

 market now supplied wilh inferior foreign work ; will give Ameri- 

 can books a chance to reach the American people, who now read 

 many worthless books by foreign authors, reprinted in rival edi- 

 tions solely because they can be had for nothing ; will result in 

 securing to American authors important and growing foreign 

 markets ; and will take from our country the stigma of being the 

 only great nation n the world which despoils the foreign author." 



In this connection it is interesting to note, that, according to the 

 Washington correspondent of the New York Evening Post, " the 

 friends of the Copyright Bill have a plan for bringing up the bill in 

 the House which they hope will be successful. The plan is to have 

 a rule reported that will cover this bill. The great difficulty has 

 been to induce the Republicans to agree not to insist that any such 

 rule shall be amended so as to make it in order to call up pension- 

 bills for passage. The Democratic Representatives are deter- 

 mined to resist any further pension legislation in this Congress. 

 Some of the Republicans think that they have made all the ' rec- 

 ord ' as to pensions that is necessary, and that it is expedient to 

 pass the Copyright Bill. There was a dinner on Saturday night, 

 Jan. 19, which was attended by Mr. Houghton of Boston, Edward 

 Eggleston, and others interested in the copyright matter, and by 

 some of the leading mem.bers of the House, including Messrs. Can- 

 non of Illinois, Long of Massachusetts, Adams of Illinois. Some 

 of the Western members have been influenced by the concentrated 

 attack upon the bill that has been made by the American Press 

 Association, which furnishes the country newspapers with patent 

 insides. The friends of the bill are endeavoring to counteract this 

 influence, and to answer the stereotyped petitions which have been 

 sent to the country newspapers for signature. Dr. Eggleston re- 

 ports that a large majority of members of Congress, who at the 

 opening of the session found their mails crowded with bogus peti- 

 tions purporting to come from typographers, have had their eyes 

 opened to the fictitious nature of these petitions by the representa- 

 tives of the typographical unions who have visited Washington to 

 assure members that the unions are heartily in favor of the bill, 

 and that the opposition is, so far as they can find out, supported 

 and paid for by certain British publishers who are afraid to lose 

 business if the bill becomes a law. The fact that the Union 

 Printer of New York, edited by W. M. Rood, and which is the 

 official organ of the typographical unions in that part of the country, 

 is giving hearty support to the bill by editorial articles, and joining 

 hands with the organ of Union No. 2 of Philadelphia, shows the 

 spirit in which the members of the craft are taking hold of the 

 matter." 



The annual report of the president of Harvard College is 

 always looked for with interest, and for some years past Science 

 has made it a custom to call attention to this report as soon as it is 

 issued. The report of 1887-88 is before us ; and, while it contains 

 no features of striking interest, yet it chronicles a steady progress 



