302 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 324 



SCIENCE: 



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 mr correspondents. 



NEW YORK, April 19, 18 



No. 324. 



CONTENTS : 



LooMis Electric-Light Sys- 



-Ayrton and Perry's Improved and 

 I^EW Ammeters and Voltme- 



An Electric Door-Opener 



Building-Stones of East Texas,... 



Texas Asphaltum 



Exploration in Mexico 



Health Matters. 



Baking-Powders : 



Quarantine Conference ; 



Treatment of Obesity ; 



JElectrical News. 



The Clark Cell as a Source of Stan- 

 dard Currents : 



The Detroit Secondary Battery ; 



The Magnetic Properties of Nickel : 



A Challenge to the Westinghouse 

 Company : 



The Conductivity of Mica at High 

 Temperatures : 



Notes and News 298 



Editorial 302 



Stanley's Explorations as affecting 

 our Knowledge of Central Africa. 



The Study of the Deaf 302 



The Marine Biological Labora- 

 tory 303 



Report of the Health-Officer of 

 the Port OF New York 304 



Book-Reviews, 

 The Student's Atlas 303 



Among the Publishers . . 305 



Letters to the Editor. 

 The Robinson Anemometer 



H. A i Hazen 307 

 Surveys, their Kinds and Purposes 



Herbert G, Ogden 307 

 English Examinations 



Peter T. A usten 309 



An IMPORTANT QUESTION upon which Stanley's journey, ac- 

 ■ cording to his recent letter, may throw light, is the doubtful con- 

 nection of the Mootan Nzige with the Aruvimi or with the Albert 

 Nyanza, From a passing mention of this question in the letter, it 

 would appear that Stanley inclines to the opinion that the lake be- 

 longs to the Kongo system. He states that it is far smaller than 

 the Albert Nyanza, and this statement necessitates an important 

 ' change in our maps of Central Africa, Mr, Wauters of Brussels, 

 whose opinions regarding the hydrography of the Kongo basin de- 

 serve special consideration, has long maintained that the lake must 

 ibelong to the Aruvimi system, as it would be impossible to account 

 Ifor the enormous amount of water carried by that river if it had its 

 source west of the lake. Other geographers, among them A, 

 Kirchhoff, have maintained the existence of a connection between 

 the southern lake and the Albert Nyanza, In this case, the lake 

 would belong to the Nile system. Undoubtedly Stanley's explora- 

 tions will materially add to the solution of this interesting problem. 

 His whoik route led to entirely unknown territory, and will disclose 

 another section of the western slope of the great East African high- 

 lands. Among the ethnographical notes contained in his letter, 

 the discovery of a new tribe of dwarfs, called Wambutti, is note- 

 worthy, as they add one more to the great number of these widely 

 -scattered dwarfish people which have become known recently. 

 The Wambutti occupy an intermediate location between the Akka 



of the Welle, and Batwa of the southern Kongo affluents. The 

 natives, among whom these dwarfs live, are described as " strong, 

 brown-bodied, with terribly sharp spears," — a description which 

 shows that they belong to the group of the peoples inhabiting the 

 watershed between the Welle and Nile, and not to the Bantu, 



THE STUDY OF THE DEAF, 



The April number of the American Annals of the Deaf con- 

 tains much valuable information of a general as well as of a special 

 nature. Professor Greenberger, in speaking of the difficulty often 

 experienced in ascertaining whether a deaf-mute is idiotic or not, 

 narrates a number of instances in which children have been placed 

 in idiot-asylums who afterwards proved to be quite intellectual. 

 He says that the brightest pupil, without exception, that he has ever 

 had under his charge was a semi-deaf boy, who, on account of his 

 partial hearing, had been mistaken for an idiot, and placed in a 

 school for feeble-minded children before he was sent to a deaf- 

 mute institution. He afterwards became an able editor and part- 

 owner of a newspaper. 



W. G, Jenkins, M,A„ contributes a very valuable article on dic- 

 tion and idiom, and points out the great difficulty which learners of 

 the English language experience in mastering it, 



" At the end of four years, the ordinary pupil is in possession of 

 a vocabulary of three or four hundred words. His habit of com- 

 position has become pretty well fixed by that time, and his later 

 acquisitions are but expansions of the work already begun. The 

 skeleton has been formed, and the more meat that can be added, 

 the more satisfactory will be the result. The first three or four 

 hundred words in a deaf pupil's vocabulary are short, easy words ; 

 and a suggestion to discourage synonymes is nothing else than a 

 plea that the easy Saxon words already acquired be retained, in 

 preference to the longer Latin equivalents. If a pupil has been 

 taught to write, ' Mr, Smith built a house,' it would be better for 

 him, to the end of his life, to use those words, when necessary, 

 than to write, ' Mr, Smith erected a residence,' I do not think 

 there can be two opinions on the wisdom of urging our pupils to 

 use such words as ' buy,' ' lead,' ' begin,' ' hate,' ' end,' ' go,' ' hide,' 

 'whip,' ' letter,' ' famous,' in preference to 'purchase,' 'conduct,' 

 ' commence,' ' abominate,' ' terminate ' or ' conclude,' ' proceed,' 

 ' conceal,' ' chastise,' ' epistle,' and ' illustrious.' It is desirable 

 that our pupils should know every word they meet, but it is not 

 desirable to use synonymes for the language already in their pos- 

 session. To encourage the use of long words for the short, easy 

 words already familiar, would bring us under Goldsmith's criticism 

 of Dr. Johnson, of ' making minnows talk like whales,' The boy 

 who wrote of making shoes on a conclusion (last), and the one 

 who fermented on his father's farm, together with the Frenchman 

 who wrote to his English friend, praying that ' he and his family 

 might be pickled to all eternity,' might have expressed themselves 

 very clearly had they been less ambitious for synonymes. 



" If it were only possible to find out what words were best 

 adapted to the requirements of every-day life, and what number 

 could be practically taught in the few years at our disposal, a valu- 

 able aid in the work of instruction would be secured. Of the one 

 hundred and fourteen thousand words in the English language, we 

 must make up our minds to dispense with all but a thousand when 

 we consider the written language of the deaf. The mastery, in- 

 deed, of five hundred words would be a most gratifying accom- 

 plishment. It is claimed, by no less an authority than Max Miiller, 

 that a well-educated English scholar, a representative of the best 

 university, one who is familiar with Shakspeare and Milton, does 

 not use more than three to four thousand words. The Hebrew 

 Testament says all that it has to say in 5,642 words, while an 

 English author says that in his parish the rural laborers have not 

 more than three hundred words. However much we may mourn 

 over it, the fact remains, that, if our pupils are to express them- 

 selves in grammatical language, we must be content with a limited 

 vocabulary ; and it is much to be feared that time spent in techni- 

 cal studies, in memorizing technical phraseology, is so much time 

 taken away from practice in the language of the common people." 



A. L. E. Crouter, M.A,, contributes an article on the proper lo- 



