SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, li 



The Indepetident for Oct. 25 has an interesting article by 

 President Oilman on ' The Future of the Johns Hopkins University.' 

 It is the settled purpose of that institution, for the future as in the 

 past, to maintain a collegiate or undergraduate course of study, and 

 also a system of university or post-graduate courses. The college 

 students come mostly from Maryland. The post-graduate students 

 are from all parts of the country, but President Oilman thinks that 

 in the future they will come more and more largely from the South. 

 The university is now in most departments very well organized, 

 but two professorships of great importance — philosophy and 

 English — are still unfilled. Professor Hall, who was to have 

 been the head of the philosophical department, has been called to 

 the presidency of another institution, and his place has not yet been 

 supplied. The search for a professor of English literature, too, 

 has not yet been successful ; for the authorities of the university 

 want a man like Matthew Arnold or James Russell Lowell, and 

 such men are not easy to get. Strenuous efforts are making, how- 

 ever, to fill both these positions, and every one will hope that the 

 right men may be found. Mr. Hopkins, as is well known, left a 

 large sum to found a hospital, with the intention that the university 

 should establish a medical school in connection therewith. The 

 hospital buildings are now completed, and the university has already 

 •established three professorships as the beginning of a medical de- 

 partment. " The only cause for anxiety in the future of the Johns 

 Hopkins University," says President Oilman, " is the suspension of 

 dividends by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The founder gave 

 the university fifteen thousand shares of the common stock of the 

 railroad, and he recommended the trustees in the most explicit 

 terms to keep, protect, and defend this investment." The income 

 from this stock has been about $150,000 a year, and has been the 

 main support of the university ; and, now that it has ceased for a 

 time, there is little to sustain the institution except the tuition-fees 

 and the moderate surplus that has been accumulated in past years. 

 President Oilman suggests that the friends of the university should 

 make up an emergency fund to relieve its present needs, and e.\- 

 presses confidence that such an institution as the Johns Hopkins 

 University " will not long be allowed to suffer for the want of an 

 income." This confidence we believe to be justified ; and certainly 

 every lover of learning will hope that a university of so much prom- 

 ise may suffer no check in its useful career. 



The thoroughness with, which statistics are collected under 

 the direction of Col. Carroll D. Wright by the Labor Bureau at 

 Washington is well illustrated in the gathering of the facts in re- 

 gard to marriage and divorce in the United States, that are to be 

 embodied in a special report that will be ready early in Januar}'. 

 The special agents engaged in this work have obtained the figures 

 from every court in the country having divorce jurisdiction. When 

 it is stated that there are more than twenty-seven hundred of these 

 courts, and that the period of investigation extends over the ten 

 years from 1876 to 18S6, the magnitude of the work may be im- 

 agined. The report in each case will give the ages of the persons 

 divorced, the cause for which the separation was granted, state 

 whether the husband or wife obtained the decree, the number of 

 children, the place of marriage, and the migration of the couple 

 since then. This latter inquiry is made in order to show whether 

 the change of residence was bona fide, or merely for the purpose of 

 obtaining a divorce. Statistics showing the length of time the 



marriage lasted, and other facts that may tend to throw light on 

 the subject, have also been collected. The number of marriages 

 will be given by counties for the same period, so that the ratio of 

 divorces to marriages may be seen. There will be added a synop- 

 sis of the divorce laws of every State, and the statistics of divorces 

 in the principal countries of Europe. No such investigation for 

 original information has ever been made in any country, and there 

 is none in which it could be made. If it were possible for such a 

 force of experts to be organized elsewhere as Colonel Wright com- 

 mands the services of to make the inquiries, prejudice, red tape, 

 and respect for established institutions, would prevent them from 

 obtaining the information they sought. Americans have reason 

 to feel proud when they remember that nowhere upon the globe is 

 there an organization, public or private, so well equipped for the 

 collection of social statistics as the United States Labor Bureau. 



At length there is prospect of the speedy erection of a 

 building for the Congressional Library, — for this we suppose we 

 all ought to be truly thankful, in view of the narrow-minded way 

 in which Congress treated the subject at the late session, — but we 

 fear that the edifice will not be one upon which we shall have occa- 

 sion to waste much pride. This is no reflection upon General Casey, 

 who is hereafter to have full charge of the work, for we believe that 

 he will make the best building possible with the funds at his dis- 

 posal. The foundations of the building have already been built in 

 accordance with a plan that contemplated a structure ultimately to 

 cost ten or twelve million dollars. The cost of this work and of 

 the necessary excavations has been several hundred thousand dol- 

 lars, probably more than half a million. Economy requires the 

 utilization of this work, and General Casey has therefore wisely con- 

 cluded that the plan of the building he will erect shall be substan- 

 tially the same as that before contemplated, but that he will so 

 manage it by saving upon the cost of material, on ornamentation, 

 etc., as to keep his expenditures within the four million which Con- 

 gress has appropriated, and to which it has absolutely limited the 

 cost. It is rare that a public building does not cost from twenty- 

 five to fifty per cent more than is estimated : to erect a building 

 for seventy-five per cent less than the estimated cost will be a task 

 that no one will envy General Casey. And yet there will be a build- 

 ing of some sort completed much sooner than there has been any 

 reason to anticipate. It will afford accommodation to the books 

 and other literary and art treasures now in the Congressional 

 Library, and for those that will accumulate for a few years to come. 

 By the time it is full, there may be in Washington some Congress 

 that can appreciate the value of a great library, and that will be 

 broad-minded and patriotic enough to provide a building suitable 

 for its accommodation, and of such style of architecture that it will 

 not cause an American citizen to blush when he contemplates it. 



CENTENARIANS IN FRANCE." 

 M. LEV.\SSEtJR has recently published the result of an inquiry 

 into the number and condition of those who had reached the age of 

 one hundred years, which gives interesting information regarding 

 the extreme limits of human existence, and the proportion of men 

 that attain it. The newspaper account of centenarians frequently 

 ascribing an age of anywhere from one hundred and ten to one 

 hundred and thirty years, and emphasizing details showing re- 

 markable preservation of faculty, is of course utterly unreliable. A 

 slight investigation is often sufficient to show the groundlessness of 

 such pretensions. In 1871, of 37 reported centenarians in Bavaria, 



1 See an article by M. V. Turquan, Revue Scicntifi^ue, Sept. i, 1SS8. 



