148 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 500. 



rel, bushel, peck, quart, etc., for apples, 

 peaches, cherries, strawberries and berries of 

 all kinds, potatoes, asparagus and, as far as I 

 have been able to note, all vegetables and prac- 

 tically all fruits, except oranges (sold by- 

 count) are weighed out in kilos or grams. 

 The man with the push-cart who peddles these 

 things in the street always weighs them, and 

 even the basket-man, whose entire stock in 

 trade may often be bought for less than ten 

 cents, carries his steelyard-like balance thrown 

 over his shoulder. Indeed, I have never seen, 

 as I have gone about the streets of Italian 

 cities, in any of the many vegetable shops or 

 other shops where food material is sold at re- 

 tail, any other method of measuring quantity, 

 barring a very few cases in which counting 

 is used, as in dealing with^ eggs or oranges; 

 even liquids are generally sold by weight and 

 when a liter of anything is asked for it is 

 usually weighed. This morning I happened 

 to visit one of the largest grocery and food- 

 supply houses in Florence. Among an almost 

 infinite variety of products sold here there may 

 be mentioned, peas, beans (dry), hominy, 

 meal of various kinds, etc., alcohol, benzine, 

 petroleum and very many other articles, all of 

 which in the United States would ordinarily 

 be sold by the quart, peck, gallon or other 

 capacity measure. 



The manager told me that all of these, even 

 including wine in which he deals largely, are 

 sold only by weight; that he had ouce had a 

 single liter measure in his store which he had 

 used for a time in measuring petroleum, but 

 that he now has no capacity measure whatever 

 in his entire establishment. In some shops 

 petroleum is sold by volume, but in many 

 others always by weight. 



The use of weight instead of volume is a 

 great benefit to the purchaser and is equally 

 advantageous to the honest dealer, but it is 

 only possible in a system in which the trans- 

 lation from mass to volume is quickly and. 

 easily made. Weighing can always be done 

 with a much higher degree of accuracy than is 

 possible with volume measuring, allowing the 

 same time and care. 



Cheating by means of false measures, or 

 by correct measures loosely filled or ' topped,' 



is very common, and inspectors find it diffi- 

 cult to deal with. False balances and weights 

 are much more easily detected. Then there is 

 that large collection of most uncertain meas- 

 ures of extensive use but without the least 

 legal standing, including the box, basket, 

 crate, package, ' bunch ' and the like, by means 

 of which peaches, berries, etc., are retailed to 

 a confiding public, the capacity of box or 

 basket depending entirely on the disposition 

 of the dealer and the scarcity of the commod- 

 ity. It is worth a good deal to be protected 

 from this sort of petty robbery. 



T. C. M. 

 Florence, Italy, 

 June 17, 1904. 



HONORAEY DEGREES IN ENGINEERING. 



To THE Editor of Science: For several 

 years our technical press has called attention 

 after each commencement season to the dis- 

 proportionately small number of engineers 

 among those whose attainments receive the 

 sanction of academic approval in the form of 

 honorary degrees. The Street Railway Jour- 

 nal, the exponent in America of the most pro- 

 gressive branch of electrical engineering, calls 

 attention to this unsatisfactory state of af- 

 fairs in its issue of July 16. 



The value of education is to a very great 

 extent realized in service, and there is no 

 better indication of true appreciation of the 

 ends of education on the part of our institu- 

 tions which are devoted mainly to the begin- 

 nings of it than the conferring of honorary 

 degrees wisely. 



Our universities, to the extent that they 

 stand for research, have an end in themselves, 

 and academic honors are promptly bestowed 

 upon those who contribute to the advancement 

 of learning. Our colleges and technical 

 schools, on the other hand, are devoted almost 

 exclusively to teaching and they have no end 

 in themselves. No college teacher can draw 

 much inspiration from the meager attainments 

 of his untried graduates. The fruit of his 

 labor is extra-academic, and the effectiveness 

 of his labor depends upon his being sufficiently 

 a man of the world to know these fruits and 

 to draw his inspiration from them. If the 



