August 28, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



273 



system suggested for universal adoption it 

 would seem to me that N and W would more 

 satisfactorily meet the requirements, clearly in- 

 dicating to the eye as they do the local char- 

 acter of the system of coordinates employed. 



As a letter to designate the earth's magnetic 

 potential, I believe none more fitting could be 

 adopted than G after Gauss, the author of this 

 function. Gauss himself used F, but this letter 

 is not sufficiently characteristic ; it is used to 

 designate many other functions in mathemati- 

 cal physics ; and there would, moreover, be a 

 conflict in our system, since V seems the most 

 logical letter to designate the vertical force. 



L. A. Bauer. 



Linden, Md., August 10, 1896. 



SCIENTIFIC LITEBATUBE. 



Memoirs of Frederick A. P. Barnard, D. D., 

 LL. D., L. H. D., D. C. L., Tenth President 

 of Columbia College. By John Fulton. Co- 

 lumbia University Press. Macmillan & Co. 

 1896. 



When a person has been for nearly sixty 

 years deeply interested in the problems of edu- 

 cation, and has himself contributed largely to 

 their solution, his biography necessarily reads 

 like the history of the progress of this science 

 during that period. The life under review is 

 no exception, and indeed his lively reminis- 

 cences of his own early school days carry the 

 beginning of our period back to the time when 

 our century was scarcely a baker's dozen years 

 old. 



Born May 5, 1809, at Sheffield, Mass., of 

 old Puritan stock, Frederick Augustus Porter 

 Birnard was a thorough New Englander. He 

 has given a very vivid description of the isola- 

 tion of the little village among the hills and its 

 peculiar institutions, especially the ' meeting 

 house' and all its associations. He says of this 

 early period of his life, which he afterwards 

 came to consider all important in the education 

 of a child : "I believe that if there is anything 

 good in me it must be owing to that loving- 

 maternal solicitude which gently swayed me 

 toward the right, at a time when the bending of 

 the twig sufficed to give its permanent inclina- 

 tion to the full grown tree." Soon after he 



could walk he was sent to the village school, 

 and at four attended a ' grammar school. ' At 

 six he commenced the humanities with the vil- 

 lage parson and was an interested reader of 

 Shakespeare's comedies; with his mother he 

 made the acquaintance of Cowper, Goldsmith, 

 Addison, Burke and others. At the same time 

 his ingenuity produced kites, windmills, water- 

 wheels and the like, which were the objects of 

 the envious admiration of his playmates. At 

 the age of nine he went away to the Saratoga 

 Academy, where along with much classics he 

 learned the printer's trade, an incident which 

 undoubtedly was the beginning of that interest 

 in journalism which resulted later in so much 

 editorial work. When only twelve he was sent 

 to the Stockbridge Academy to prepare for 

 Yale, where he entered three years later (1824), 

 the youngest member of his class. One will be 

 amply repaid for reading his lively and often 

 amusing accounts of his life at the preparatory 

 school, and especially his description of con- 

 temporary life at Yale. Graduated second in 

 his class in 1828, he was appointed teacher in 

 the Hai'tford Grammar School. These two 

 years of life in Hartford prior to his appoint- 

 ment at Yale were full of new experiences and 

 ventures, especially as an author and an editor, 

 and at this early date he evinced that liking 

 and aptness for newspaper controversy that 

 stood him in such good stead in his after life. 



When Barnard was appointed to teach at 

 Yale it had been the custom for each tutor to 

 take his share of the entering class and teach 

 them all the branches during their first three 

 years. As an undergraduate he had seen the 

 weakness of this method, and his first act at 

 Yale was to persuade the faculty to permit the 

 division for the first three classes by subjects 

 instead of by numbers, thus starting a much 

 needed change. After one year of service he 

 was so troubled by increasing deafness that he 

 resigned from Yale and threw himself heartily 

 into the instruction of the deaf mutes at the 

 Hartford Institution. Removing in 1832 to the 

 similar institution in New York city, he labored 

 zealously and happily until his call to the Uni- 

 versity of Alabama early in 1838. 



During the sixteen years of his stay at Tuska- 

 loosa, Barnard began the campaign for good 



