April 29, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



243 



Ferre!, by C. Abbe; A Definition of Institutions, by J. W. Powell; 

 Biographical Memoir of J. Homer Lane, by C. Abbe ; The Parti- 

 tion of the North American Realm, by Theodore Gill; Exhibition 

 of Teeth of a Gigantic Bear, Probably an Extinct Species, Found 

 in Ancient Mounds in Ohio, by F. W. Putnam ; A Means of Measur- 

 ing the Difference Between the Tidal Change in the Direction of 

 the Plumb Line and the Tidal Deflection of the Earth's Crust, A 

 Posthumous Paper by J. Homer Lane, read by C. Abbe. 



— Mr. Timothy Hopkins has made provision for the endowment 

 and maintenance of the seaside laboratory at Pacific Grove, 

 recently established under the auspices of the Leland Stanford 

 Junior University. It is intended to make this a place for origi- 

 nal investigation of the habits, life-history, structure and develop- 

 ment of marine animals and plants and to carry on work here 

 similar to that which is done at the acquarium at Naples. The 

 Hopkins Laboratory will be under the general direction of Pro- 

 fessors Gilbert, Jenkins, and Campbell. It will be open during 

 the summer vscation, and its facilities will be at the disposal of 

 persons wishing to carry on original investigations in biology, as 

 well as of students and teachers interested in that line of sub- 

 jects. It will be fully provided with aquaria, while microscopes, 

 microtomes and other instruments necessary for investigations 

 will be taken from the laboratories of the University. 



— At a meeting of the Epidemiological Society {Lancet. Feb. 29, 

 1892) Dr. Pringle quoted a remarkable passage from an ancient 

 Hindu work, which showed that true vaccination was known and 

 practised in India centuries before the birth of Jenner: "The 

 small-pox produced /rom the udder of the cow will be of the same 

 mild nature as the original disease. . . . The pock should be of 

 a good color, filled with a clear liquid, and surrounded by a cu'cle 

 of red. . . . There will be only slight fever of one, two, or three 

 days, but no fear need be entertained of small-pox so long as life 

 endures.'" Pasteur's attenuation of virus by successive cultures 

 has been applied in India for hundreds of years to inoculations 

 with variolous lymph, which the document in question directed 

 to be taken from "the most favorable cases,'' and he has seen 

 series of such selected inoculations in which there was no general 

 eruption, and the local phenomena were scarcely distinguishable 

 from those of vaccination. 



— In a paper, in the April number of the Botanical Gazette, on 

 " Some Fungi Common to Wild and Cultivated Plants," Byron D. 

 Halsted, Rutgers College, New Brunswick, N.J , says: "It has 

 been shown by means of a long series of examples that the evil 

 influences of wild plants may act at long range. It is not neces- 

 sary that their roots and those of the cultivated plants should 

 cross each other's paths in the soil or that their branches should 

 interlock and overshadow one another in a deadly embi'ace. There 

 is a more subtle bad influence than gross thieving or clutching by 

 the throat. It is more in the nature of a poison that is sent out 

 upon the air to be breathed in by the innocent wherever they may 

 unwittingly meet the unseen but deadly germs. Crowding of 

 plants is bad, rank growth of weeds is worse, but the most fatal 

 of all influences is that unseen group that steal away the health 

 of the plants which lack nothing for room and enjoy high and 

 thorough culture. After all it is the host of enemies that swarm 

 from the plants outside the garden fence that try the patience of 

 the husbandman. He has learned the methods of remedying the 

 others, but the floating spores defy his keenest eyesight to discern 

 and baffle his ingenuity to combat. The ways of the fungi are, 

 however, being slowly and laboriously revealed by the microscope 

 and conquered by the spraying pump. The former assists the 

 latter, which as yet blindly fires effective "small shot" into the 

 enemies' ranks. Proper seeding, fertilizing, and weeding will do 

 much to assist in warding off the deleterious influences of fun- 

 gous enemies; for healthy plants, while not proof against their 

 attacks, are less liable to be overcome by them. Let therefore 

 everything be done that is possible before the last resort comes 

 and then the fungicide will have the greatest effect and yield the 

 most returns. If so much of the smut, rust, mildew, mold, rot. 

 and blight of our cultivated plants is propagated by the wild 

 plants hard by, it may be wise for every crop-grower to pay atten- 



tion to what is thriving outside his garden wall. He cannot build 

 it high enough to shut out the spores, but he can do much to di- 

 minish the number of these spores. Having done this, he can 

 take up the sjjraying pump with a brighter hope of future success. 

 There was a carcass, so to speak, in the pasture and he went out 

 and buried it. Fungi are the basis of contagion and they infect 

 at long range by means of their myriads of invisible spores. To 

 learn of their ways and find better methods of resisting them make 

 the burden of many a station botanist's labor to-day." 



— At the Washington meeting, Thursday, April 21, of theNation- 

 al Academy of Sciences Dr. Karl Barus, Professor Samuel F. Em- 

 mons and Mr. M. Carey Lea were elected members of the academy. 

 Dr. Barus is connected with the United States geological survey, 

 and is well known as a physicist. Professor Emmons is also con- 

 nected with the geological survey and is a geologist. Mr. Lea is 

 a Philadelphian, and is famous as a photographic chemist. The 

 academy elected four foreign associate members. They were 

 Professor Hugo Gylden of Upsala, Sweden ; Professor Carl 

 Weierstross of Berlin, Germany; Professor August Kekule of 

 Bonn, Germany ; and Professor E. Du Bois Reymond of Berlin, 

 Germany. 



— "On the Track of Columbus," a paper by Horatio J. Perry, 

 is one. of the features of the May New England Magazine. 



— Professor N. S. Shaler, whose articles in Seribner's, on "The 

 Surface of the Earth " and " Nature and Man in America," have 

 done so much to make clear the practical features of geology and 

 geography, begins in the May number of that periodical a group 

 of four articles on Sea and Land, in which he will discuss Sea- 

 Beaches, The Depths of the Sea, and Icebergs. 



— Some time ago Public Opinion, the eclectic journal of Wash- 

 ington and New York, offered $300 in cash prizes for the best 

 three essays on the question " What, if any, changes in existing 

 plans are necessary to secure an equitable distribution of the 

 burden of taxation for the support of the National, State, and 

 Municipal Governments ?'•' The competition has attracted much 

 interest, and the committee, consisting of Hon. Josiah P. Quincy 

 of Boston, Hon. Jno. A. Price, Chairman National Board of Trade, 

 and Mr. W. H. Page, Editor of The Forum, have just awarded 

 the first prize to Mr. Walter E. Weyl of Philadelphia; the second 

 to Mr. Robert Luce, editor of The Writer, Boston; and the third 

 to Mr. Bolton Hall of New York. The successful essays will be 

 published in Public Opinion of April 33. 



"French Schools through American Eyes" is a report to the 



New York State Department of Public Instruction by J. Russell 

 Parsons, Jr., the same gentleman who not long ago made a similar 

 report on the German schools. Mr. Parsons remarks in his preface 

 that " the belief that everything American is perfect constitutes a 

 false form of patriotism which seems to be growing in this coun- 

 try ; " but he maintains that in educational matters we have much 

 to learn from foreigners. France, he thinks, has during the past 

 twenty years made great advances in primary education, and now 

 has some of the best public schools in the world. These schools 

 he describes at considerable length, treating of their legal status 

 and obligations, their organization, the method of selecting teach- 

 ers, the methods of inspection, the courses of study, and many 

 other aspects of the complex subject. His liberal use of statistics 

 and the dryness of style characteristic of government publications 

 make his book rather dull reading except to those especially inter- 

 ested in its theme; but to such persons it will convey much useful 

 information. The most interesting part of it to the general 

 reader is that which describes the courses of study in the various 

 schools. The object sought by the French authorities is to teach 

 those subjects that every person ought to know and to teach them 

 in the most thorough manner possible. Moral education, too, re- 

 ceives special attention, and is so conducted as not to interfere in 

 any way with the religious beliefs of either the children or their 

 parents. Mr. Parsons gives tables showing the courses of instruc- 

 tion in several of the schools, which, however, we have not space 

 to summarize. The book is published by C. W. Bardeen of Syra- 

 cuse, N.Y. 



