December 8, 1893.] 



SCIENCE. 



317 



fire at the other end of the furnace. . Combustion is as- 

 sisted by hot air inlets and by combustion chambers, thus 

 making it possible to consume the most offensive matter, 

 to destroy or convert into gas the product of this combus- 

 tion, and to do this with speed and economy at places 

 near to houses and in the presence of large numbers of 

 people. The garbage and sewage sludge resulting from 

 the presence of twenty-seven and one-quarter million of 

 persons has been destroyed in six months to the entire 

 satisfaction of the Exposition authorities and under the 

 observation and in the presence of thousands of persons. 

 The furnace received the highest awards in medals. 



BIRD NOTES. 



BY MORKIS GIBBS, K.^LAMAZOO, MICH. 



Eapacious birds and beasts retain their love of destroy- 

 ing, even after years of confinement, and it is a well- 

 acknowledged fact that among those rapacious animals of 

 a menagerie which are reared in confinement, we find the 

 most ferocious and destructive examples, if they once 

 escape and become aware of their power. As a fitting 

 illustration of this princij)le of general acceptance, the 

 following instance is offered: 



A friend of mine took two half-grown young from a 

 nest of the great horned owl. Bubo virginianua (Gmel.), 

 five years ago last spring. These birds were always kept 

 in confinement and were never in the presence of other 

 birds or mammals which might have formed their food 

 in the wild state. 



Within a few months past the pair escaped from their 

 pen, and instead of flying to the woods, they immediately 

 sought out a hen-house at a neighbor's less than sixty 

 rods distant, enfpred it and mangled and killed over a 

 dozen chickens. The owner of the hennery appeared on 

 the scene and caught the owls red-handed in the midst 

 of the carnage. 



This is certainly a much more destructive onslaught 

 than is recorded from the visitations of wild owls in my 

 experience. 



In watching the gulls which follow the steamers on the 

 sea or great lakes, the question has often occurred to me. 

 Do these same birds follow the boat day after day, or do 

 the birds of the day drop out and others take their place ? 

 I have repeatedly noticed individuals leave one steamer 

 and follow another, oftentimes in a different course and 

 sometimes directly opposite to the formerly selected 

 route. Of course during the nesting season gulls or other 

 birds cannot fly to any great distance, but in the summer, 

 fall and winter months they certainly can and do follow 

 ships for immense distances. 



On a trip in a coasting steamer from New York to 

 Jacksonville a few winters ago, I had a favorable opportu- 

 nity to prove that a gull could follow a vessel for a great 

 distance. Soon after passing Hatteras we noticed one of 

 the gulls in the good-sized flock which followed the boat, 

 to have an injured leg. The foot hung so that the pas- 

 sengers could readily identify the cripple. 



When we reached Charleston harbor the crippled gull 

 was still picking up scraps thrown overboard from the 

 galley, but was soon lost to us in the fog which surround- 

 ed us for hours while we waited to cross the bar. The 

 next morning, when the passengers went on deck, there 

 was our gull which had met the vessel on coming from 

 the harbor, whether \>j accident or design I cannot say. 

 The cripple followed us up the St. Johns Eiver, and was 

 often remarked upon by the passengers who had come to 

 know it. This bird, which was one of the larger gulls, 

 but I cannot be positive in regard to the species, followed 

 pyr ^teftmer fully five hundred miles. 



LETTEES TO THE EDITOR. 



^^Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The 

 writer's name is in all cases required as a proof of good faith. 



On request in advance, one hundred copies of the number con 

 taining his communication will be furnished free to any corres 

 pondent. 



The editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with 

 the character of the iournal. 



A Mistake in Teaching Botany. 



Allowing for some measure of truth in the article un- 

 der the above heading in your issue for Oct. 20, I still 

 think that the writer is in error in several of his recom- 

 mendations and in some of his criticisms. 



Probably the system of teaching botany at present in 

 vogue in many schools and colleges is far from perfect, 

 but I very much doubt if the introduction of the changes 

 proposed would effect any improvement. Some of them 

 would, I am persuaded, be injurious. 



The writer condemns the old plan of a spring term in 

 botany spent on the study of the phanerogams and fol- 

 lowed by the analysis of fifty to one hundred plants, and 

 he suggests if no more time can be given to the study 

 that the teacher should tell the names of the plants and 

 save the time for more important work, adding that, as 

 for analysis, exjDerience shows that a large part of the 

 work, when not done under the supervision of the 

 teacher, is accomplished by ascertaining the common 

 name and then going to the index. He afterwards sug- 

 gests that those who have been confining the studj' to the 

 phsenogams should give half of the time to the crypto- 

 gams, and even adds that every one who studies botany 

 at all should learn something about bacteria, smuts, 

 moulds, mildews, etc., and that vegetable physiology 

 should form an important part of the work of the first 

 term. 



I cannot infer with certainty from the article if the 

 writer is a teacher or not, but after many years' experi- 

 ence in the work it appears to me that any attempt to 

 cover the ground proposed must end in failure so far as 

 real scientific education is concerned. 



Consider for a moment the mental position of a class 

 of beginners of any age and in any science, botany for 

 example, utterly ignorant of scientific method and un- 

 versed in scientific work, and too often, if beyond child- 

 hood, mentally purblind from the pernicious habits of 

 thought and work engendered by the book-instruction of 

 which school work mainly consists. For such scholars 

 the whole available time of a term is required to learn 

 how to work, and the difficulty of studying even a phseno- 

 gam is quite sufficient to engross their attention without 

 entering on the intricate ground of cryptogamic botany. 

 The organs of a plant, their parts, their names and func- 

 tions, their description and the nomenclature, with other 

 important but untechnical topics that can be incidentally 

 introduced by the teacher, such as the elements of geo- 

 graphical distribution, economic botany, forestry, etc., are 

 more than enough to fill the time while the scholar is 

 wrestling with the elementary difficulties of the science. 

 And the teacher of experience knows that a considerable 

 time is necessary for the assimilation of even this mini- 

 mum of knowledge, and that it is impossible to reduce 

 this amount if any real mental discipline is desired, be- 

 cause the organic law of mind demands repetition, varia- 

 tion and attention before facts and their significance and 

 words and their ideas can make a permanent impiression 

 on the memorj' and the intellect. Any other course can 

 end only in a smattering, and in the past this method of 

 procedure has too often brought so-called scientific teach- 

 ing into disrepute. 



Moreover any one accustomed to working in the higher 

 departments knows how little can be accompilished in the 



