204 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XII. No. 299 



' tuto. cito.jucwide' in the words of old Comenius, — to the prac- 

 tical mastery of the modern languages. Its peculiarity consists 

 essentially in introducing the foreign tongue as a living tongue, 

 drilling it from the very beginning by ear and speech instead of 

 teaching it by reading and writing, like a deaf-mute language. 

 During the instruction the pupil hears and speaks only the lan- 

 guage he is to learn. The effect of this is, first, that he is enabled 

 to follow, without difficulty, even rapid conversation in the foreign 

 tongue; and, second, that he thoroughly acquires the pronuncia- 

 tion as well as the various expressions used in forming an assertion, 

 question, or command. Whether the method can be employed in 

 the instruction of large public-school classes, I am not yet able to 

 state. It appears to me, however, beyond doubt, that the method 

 is specially adapted to advance rapidly adults who desire to study 

 a modern language for practical application. But I am also in- 

 clined to believe, that its use, at least supplementary to the ordinary 

 public-school course, is practicable even in large classes, provided 

 the teacher himself can converse in the language to be taught. It 

 would be apt, above all. to re-awaken the pupil's interest, so easily 

 blunted by grammatical exercises and translations. Really the 

 method is only the systematized form of learning a foreign lan- 

 guage in a foreign country by its actual use." 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 " Take Heed ! " 



May I be allowed to draw attention to an expression that is now 

 creeping into our text-books and journals .' Every teacher of 

 chemistry is aware that students, when endeavoring to describe 

 experiments, prefix to almost every sentence the word ' take.' 

 " Take a glass cylinder," replies the student, when asked to de- 

 scribe the method by which hydrogen is collected, " fill it with 

 water, and invert it in a vessel filled with water. Then take a glass 

 tube and put the end of it under the mouth of the cylinder. Then, 

 when the cylinder is full, take a glass plate and put it on the end 

 of the cylinder, and take it out of the water," etc. 



The careful teacher would interrupt this laborious and involved 

 description at the start by suggesting the more concise statement, 

 " Invert a jar filled with water," etc. Indeed, it is quite remarkable 

 how students, when drilled by good teachers, soon fall into the 

 way of expressing their ideas concisely and accurately ; but it is dis- 

 couraging, in reading articles written by men of high standing, to 

 find directions beginning, " Take a jar," " Take a tube." Time is 

 short, life is short, and our sciences are getting to be endless. Let 

 us therefore discourage all verbosity and inaccuracy, and encourage 

 simplicity and terseness of expression. Let the teacher, when the 

 student begins his ramble by saying, " Well, you take salt, manga- 

 nese di-oxide, and strong sulphuric acid to which some water has 

 been added," stop him gently but firmly with "I will not! I am 

 willing to teach chemistry for a small salary, and to sacrifice myself 

 in the interest of science, but I must draw the line somewhere, and 

 I draw it here. I will not take salt, manganese di-oxide, and strong 

 sulphuric acid to which some water has been added." 



Let every one be on his guard against the ravages of this word. 



Peter T. Austen. 



New Brunswick, N.J., Oct. ij. 



Ants transplanting the Scale-Bug. 



In bringing in from outside the window the other day some pots 

 of agave infested with scale-bug, I placed one of these near a box 

 of plants. Next day I noticed some red ants engaged at something 

 on the point of one of the leaves. On examining more closely, I 

 found three ants bringing scale-bugs from off a dying leaf of an 

 agave to the leaf of a plant which it barely touched. They incited 

 the slow bugs to move along by touching them with their antennas, 

 and in the course of half a day they had transplanted several of the 

 half-grown insects. I am pretty sure, from the circumstances, that 

 ^hey were doing this, and I hardly think the scale could have 

 crossed alone, from the position of the leaves. I question if the 

 scale gives up its honey by excitation, like the aphis. I am inclined 

 to believe that they deposit the drops of beautifully clear, viscid 

 honey at night. The ants do associate with the scale for the pur- 



pose of gathering this product, and have nests at the base of each 

 plant suffering from scale. 



The ants have been in my office for more than four years, and I 

 have come to the conclusion, that, in my fight with the scale, they 

 aid and abet the enemy. 



There is one circumstance that reconciles me to the ants : they 

 search out and destroy the larva; of museum pests. A deer-skin 

 coat infested with moth was thrown on the floor one day, and after 

 a little while I noticed some ants crossing and burrowing in the 

 hair in the most excited manner, and I also noticed some ants car- 

 rying away and devouring the plump, white moth-larvse they had 

 secured. I have seen them carrying the struggling ' millers ' also. 



Walter Hough. 



U. S. National Museum, Oct. i6. 



Chest-Development. 



I AM glad to say the practical experience of another year has 

 completely confirmed the research I laid before the British Associa- 

 tion at Birmingham and Manchester. The best type of chest has 

 been easily obtained in young people ; but anthropologists will, no 

 doubt, be surprised to learn that a change in the same direction 

 can with care be made in those of mature age. This I have seen 

 in the diseased chest of a gentleman aged thirty-seven. Between 

 the ages of twenty -five and thirty-three, similar results have been 

 frequently noted. Here are facts that prove the direct power of the 

 surroundings in making the different types of chest we meet with, 

 and consequently we can now avoid those types that are known to 

 be so injurious to the race by substituting for them that which we 

 find at birth. No doubt, the proportion between the height and 

 chest-girth that obtains at birth is a very high one ; so much so, 

 in fact, that it has been thought that I was acting unadvisedly in 

 selecting it as the standard we ought to seek to attain. But it ex- 

 ists ; and Mr. Brent's maximum chest-girth, obtained from a large 

 number of actual measurements over forty years ago, closely agrees 

 with it. 



The method of treatment advocated in the paper on consump- 

 tion has been successfully applied in six cases. One, whose chest- 

 girth has increased about five inches, and whose vital capacity ex- 

 ceeds Hutchinson's so-called standard of health by seventy cubic 

 inches, has passed medical examination for life-assurance ; a 

 second, whose chest-girth has increased nearly three inches, has 

 been examined by a physician, who detected no signs of the pre- 

 vious disease; a third, whose vital capacity was eighty-five cubic 

 inches, and now is two hundred and twenty cubic inches, has borne 

 children, and continues well ; and most satisfactory progress has 

 been made in the others. To these we must add Sydenham's 

 cures and the numerous recoveries by nature which were obtained 

 by similar conditions. Hence the practical application of this 

 method has completely confirmed the explanation I gave of the 

 nature of the disease; and I have no doubt whatever that science 

 has gained another victory in the conquest of a great enemy of civil- 

 ized man. G. W. Hambleton. 



Dorchester Place, Blandford Square, London, Oct. ii. 



Queries. 



37. What Numbers does it take to make a Billion? — 

 During colonial times, both in England and the Colonies, it took 

 one million of millions to make a billion. During the first half of 

 the present century, I think it may be affirmed that this notation 

 had not been changed, and would have been held binding in law in 

 the United States. It is certainly the most convenient for the as- 

 tronomer, who has to deal with such enormous distances. The 

 nearest of the twelve or fourteen fixed stars whose distances are 

 approximately known to us require twenty, thirty, or forty English 

 billions of miles to measure the space between the earth and them. 

 The compilers of our modern American arithmetics, without any 

 legislation on the subject, seem to have disregarded the old nota- 

 tion, and to have adopted the French method, of calling in numbers 

 a thousand millions a billion. It is true that the French metric 

 system has been legalized, but it does not make a kilometre an 

 English mile. E. T. MERRICK. 



New Orleans, La., Oct. 13. 



