l62 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 317 



SCIENCE 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



PUBLISHED BY 



N. D. C. HODGES, 



47 Lafayette Place, New York. 



[Entered at New York Post-OfBc 



nd-class maii-i 



:r.] 



Subscriptions. — United States and Canada $3.5° a year. 



Great Britain and Europe 4.50 a year. 



Science Club-rates for the United States and Canada (in one remittance): 

 I subscription i year S 3.50 



4 " I year 10.00 



Communications will be welcomed from any quarter. Rejected manuscripts will^be 

 returned to the authors only when the requisite amount of postage accompanies the 

 manuscript. Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name 

 and address of the writer ; not necessarily for publication, but as a guaranty of good 

 faith. We do not hold ourselves responsible for any view or opinions expressed in the 

 communications of our correspondents. 



NEW YORK, March i, iS 



No. 317. 



CONTENTS: 



;ic Motor in Factories 153 



Convention c 



TRIG LiGH 



Scientific News i 



Bibliography of the Iroqui 



guages 



The Los Angeles Base-Lii 

 Deep-Sea Models 



Washington. 



Lan- 



Z>. C. Giltnan 



ECONOM- 



London, Ancient and Modern, from 

 a Sanitary Point of View 



The Races of Egypt 



Diculafoy's Excavations i 

 Ethnological Comparison 



Ether, Electricity, and Ponderable 

 Matter : 



An Electric Date Stamp : 



The Production of Electric Cur- 

 rents by Mechanical Actions 



Edison Illuminating Companies. ... 



Mental Science, 



The Genesis of Error. ... , 



Abnormal Sense-Associations j 



Book-Reviews. 



Physical Realism 1 



The Development of the Intellect.. ] 



Political History since 1815 i 



Shall We Teach Geology i 



A Historical Geography of the Brii- 

 ish Colonies i 



Among THE Publishers i 



Letters to the Editor. 

 The Soaring of Birds 



G.K.Gilbert: Arthur L.Kimball 1 

 To keep Water-Mounts Moist 



E. B. Knerr i 

 Color-BIindness a Product of Civili- 



L. I. Blake; W. S. Franlilin : 

 Note on the Wind-Pressure Con- 

 stant Wjn. Ferrel : 



In a RECENT NUMBER of Science we called attention to the 

 danger to which travellers on ocean steamers are subjected when 

 their stateroom companions happen to be consumptives. That 

 this danger is not an imaginary one seems to be demonstrated by 

 an incident which recently occurred in France. A French physi- 

 cian. Dr. Gautier by name, has been investigating the question 

 whether tuberculosis may be communicated by means of its bacilli. 

 That this is possible for lower animals has been thoroughly proved. 

 Dr. Gautier has himself fallen a victim to the disease, having be- 

 come infected from the pulverized tuberculous sputum with 

 which he was experimenting, thus showing that the disease is 

 equally communicable to man. 



We ARE NOT APT to look to South America for evidence of the 

 greatest progress in science or art, and yet it is said that the sewerage 

 system which is now being constructed in Buenos Ayres is the most 

 perfect in the world. Measures have been taken which will result 

 in putting every house in the city in perfect sanitary condition with- 

 in three years. Sanitarians will watch the result of this stupendous 

 undertaking wiih great interest, and will be able to deduce from it 

 many valuable practical lessons. 



TO-DAY'S NEED AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.' 



You have doubtless observed, that though this is our annual cel- 

 ebration, when memory and hope are the keynotes of a festival, yet 

 there is an undertone of anxiety, an unwonted seriousness in our 

 demeanor and in our words. You know as well as I the cause ; 

 but you do not know as well as I the resolution which determines 

 us to turn a temporary loss into a permanent gain. The best 

 financiers can do no better. It is true that we have lost for a time 

 our income from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the securities 

 to which the sagacious founder of the university intrusted his en- 

 dowment, with so much confidence that he recommended his trus- 

 tees not to dispose of the stock, but to keep it as an investment. 

 He was doubtless influenced by the fact that this security was free 

 from the taxation which would fasten itself upon another invest- 

 ment. 



We believe that this suspension of dividends upon the part of 

 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is but temporary, and that the 

 stock is now, and always will be, property of great value. But we 

 have possessions of even greater worth. The Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity owns nearly three hundred acres of land within the present 

 limits of the city, which will soon be laid out in streets and ave- 

 nues. Fifteen or sixteen miles of street frontage can then be sold 

 or rented. " The past at least is secure ; " but to this familiar ut- 

 terance we can safely add, " the future is as secure as the past." 

 Our cause for anxiety is the present. How shall we make the 

 transit between the prosperity of the past ten years and the pros- 

 perity that is to follow .' How shall we meet the emergency of the 

 next five years ? 



There are but three ways, — contraction, borrowing, begging. 

 Contraction brings disaster, borrowing brings a day of reckoning, 

 begging is not pleasant. 



It is not agreeable to the managers of a great institution to ask 

 the public to come to their support. It is natural that they hesi- 

 tate before taking any such step. It is particularly difficult for 

 those who have devoted their lives to the advancement of knowl- 

 edge and the education of youth, who have renounced aspirations 

 for wealth, who seek for no other preferment than the modest dis- 

 tinctions of an academic life, who are willing that their families 

 should grow up without expectations beyond the inheritance of an 

 honorable name, and who only ask, that, with proper books and 

 apparatus, they may be allowed to continue in the service to which 

 they have consecrated their lives — I say it is especially hard for 

 such persons to ask the public to come to their relief. So it seems 

 to fall upon me, who am not a professor on the one hand, nor a 

 trustee on the other, to say the few frank words which others hesi- 

 tate to utter. 



The situation is this. A prudent management of our affairs 

 during the last few years has enabled the trustees to pay all their 

 current expenses, to build three great laboratories, to collect a large 

 library and a great amount of apparatus, and to buy a great deal of 

 real estate for the buildings that ^are wanted, and at the same time 

 to lay by a considerable amount of accumulated income. This 

 store they are now spending. It is not, like the widow's cruse, in- 

 exhaustible ; but if the sum of §100,000 can be added to it, and if 

 our receipts from tuition remain undiminished, the university will 

 go forward during the next three years without contraction, with- 

 out borrowing, and without begging. I am happy to say, that 

 although the trustees have not felt willing to make an appeal to 

 the public, and although no authorized statements on this subject 

 have been published, a number of the citizens of Baltimore have, 

 of their own accord, expressed the desire to raise this amount, and 

 have pledged themselves for generous sums. It would be difficult 

 for me to express the encouragement I have received, as one and 

 another of these helpful friends have intimated their readiness to 

 contribute liberally toward the desired amount. More than half 

 of the proposed fund has already been definitely pledged. One 

 subscription has come from New York, another from Liverpool ; 

 but almost all, as we might expect, have come from those who are 

 most intimately acquainted with the working of the university, — 

 our own neighbors and friends, who know the difficulties under 



I Remarks of Daniel C. Gilman, president of the John 

 the thirteenth commemoration day, Feb. 22, 18S9. 



Hopkins University, 



