218 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 187 



President Cummings, a paper on ' A more humane 

 and novel mode of criminal correction ' was read 

 by John Mlxller, of Ann Arbor, Mich. The audi- 

 ence was in full sympathy with the criticisms of 

 our penal institutions, and the appeal for a more 

 rational and humane treatment of the younger 

 and hopeful classes of criminals, Avith a view to 

 their safe restoration ; but when emasculation of 

 the intractibles was boldly advocated, and argued 

 by reference to the successful subjugation of brute 

 beasts through castration, no encouraging re- 

 sponse met the reader. He well described his 

 own paper as ' a popular subject treated in a very 

 unpopular manner.' 



Mr. Miiller was more fortunate in his treatment 

 of the question, ' How can spelling reform be- 

 come a success?' Upon the premise that in 

 rational spelling there should be one sign for one 

 sound and but one sound for one sign, he presented 

 an aljjhabet of twenty-seven characters, which he 

 claimed sufficient for English wants, and quoted 

 eminent teachers to prove that one-third of the 

 time of the pupil can be saved by use of the 

 phonetic spelling, and that childi'en can be taught 

 to read ordinary compositions in five months. 

 Characters proposed by different persons were 

 shown upon the blackboard, and a lively discus- 

 sion ensued. A serious difficulty arises in the fail- 

 ure of these reformers to agree upon a system, as 

 unanimous consent is manifestly essential to the 

 successful introduction of such a change. In the 

 discussion it was notable that nearly all the critics 

 of English spelling were foreigners. 



' Centenarianism in the United States,' was a 

 masterly analysis, by Joseph Jastrow, of German- 

 town, Penn., of the statistics on the subject 

 named. In the tenth census, the number of per- 

 sons aged a hundred years or over is given as 

 4,016, which was declared absurd, especially as 

 more than three-fourths of these are colored 

 people and more than half of all are colored 

 females. The chief cause of these gross errors is 

 exaggeration, both from ignorance and intent. 

 This exaggeration has been steadily decreasing for 

 a half century, the decennial tables showing a 

 uniform decline, with the exception of 1870, when 

 the freed negroes interrupted the downward scale. 

 There being evidences that the errors accompany 

 illiteracy, the best means of correction is to as- 

 sume as probably most accurate tlie ratio of cen- 

 tenarians to the whole population, among the 

 natives in the states of least illiteracy. Combined 

 with this, the author used what he termed tlie 

 'decimal exaggeration,' or the excess of the num- 

 ber at a 'round ' age, as given by the census, viz., 

 at twenty, thirty, etc., over the number at the 

 next year below, — an excess which the doctrine 



of ' expectation of life ' shows to be impossible' 

 Under this method of correction, one-third of the 

 states with least tendency to error being used as 

 the basis, the number of centenarians is reduced to 

 about one hundred and fifty. Up to this point, 

 the native male whites have been regarded as per- 

 fectly reliable. This is evidently not the case, 

 and the estimate is hazarded that inasmuch as 

 only one in twenty-five of the alleged cases in the 

 whole country has proved genuine, two in three of 

 the remainder may be doubted, as unintentional 

 errors, leaving but fifty centenarians in the United 

 States, or about one to every million of popula- 

 tion. The figures of the census are thus reduced 

 by dividing by eighty, — and this great alteration 

 is sustained by similar researches in England. 



' The social waste of a great city ' was the title 

 of a long and verbose paper read by Dr. L. L. 

 Seaman, of New York city. The author's experi- 

 ence in ten years' medical seiwice in the city 

 hospitals and charitable institutions led him to 

 vigorously denounce the system of control by city 

 politics, the association of charity with correction 

 in the administrative boards, — claiming that it 

 was erroneous and mischievous to assume a close 

 relation between poverty and crime, — and ' the 

 monopolizing and poisoning' of over six hundred 

 acres of the fine island areas on the front of the 

 city by their present uses. The chief service of 

 this paper was in bringing out a severe criticism 

 by Mr. Edward Atkinson, who took a far more 

 hopeful view of the tendency of the times towards 

 imi^roving the condition of the poor and the lessen- 

 ing of crime in our large cities. 



E. B. Elliott, actuary of the treasury depart- 

 ment at Washington, presented two papers, main- 

 ly tabular and statistical. The titles were : 

 ' Formulas for determining the United States gold 

 value of silver bullion, when the London price 

 per ounce of standard silver and the price of ster- 

 ling exchange between New York and London are 

 known ; ' and ' Tables showing for a series of 

 years the rates of interest realized to investors in 

 the securities of the United States government.' 

 The interest tables well illustrate the varying credit 

 of the government, from before the war, to the 

 darkest days of 1864, when lack of confidence and 

 ' fiat money ' made the earniug-power of the gold 

 dollar I62 cents per annum, and then through the 

 period of sounder finance and restored confidence 

 to the present time, when ' governments ' yield 

 the holder about 2^ per cent. Mr. Elliott's alge- 

 braic formulae for silver values are of limited in- 

 terest, but may be valuable at times. For a con- 

 stant numerator, he multiplies the number of 

 grains of fine silver in question {S) by the London 

 price per ounce of standard silver in pence {d), 



