Febbuaet 18, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



159 



only between two portions of matter, and that its 

 effects on these portions of matter (measured by the 

 momentum generated in a given time) are equal and 

 opposite. The stress is measured numerically by the 

 force exerted on either of the two portions oftnatter" 

 (the italics are mine). 



In making this quotation, as in making other 

 quotations from the same authority in my pamphlet, 

 I appeal from Maxwell the critic to Maxwell the au- 

 thor. The passage just quoted meets so many of the 

 points raised by Professor MacGregor, that I shall 

 trench upon your space no further now, except to 

 thank Professor MacGregor for his general commen- 

 dation of my pamphlet, and to say that I made my 

 quotation from Minchin, not to suport my use of the 

 term ' inertia force,' but because of its recognition 

 of what Minchin there calls the 'kick' of a body 

 'against change of motion.' E. H. Hall. 



CamlDridge, Mass., Feb. 13. 



German constructions. 



Permit me a few words apropos of the Tarious let- 

 ters called forth by my remarks about German scien- 

 tific writings. To Mr, Eggert, who found fault with 

 me so abundantly, there was no possibility of rei^ly, 

 as his motives were emotional, and criticism has 

 nothing to take from emotion except sympathy to un- 

 derstand. Mr. Eggert wrote, " ' M' assumes to judge 

 of the literary qualifications of people who use a 

 language with which he himself is less familiar than 

 he is with French and English." I regret that he 

 made this erroneous statement. But experience has 

 shown, that, when people express opinions on sub- 

 jects they know nothing about, they are not unapt to 

 make serious mistakes, and so Mr. Eggert has blun- 

 dered about my knowledge of languages. 



In regard to Mr. Lea's sentence with the six pronouns 

 in execrable succession : is it miich worse than the 

 following sample of what is grammatically good 

 English? — " He said that that that that that man 

 used was incorrect." 



Mr. Frazer gives a sentence, which he kindly ad- 

 mits to be obscure, although it follows upon the ex- 

 pression of his admiration of the lucidity of that kind 

 of em,bottement phraseology. He admires even this 

 sentence, Dem, der den, der die, das Verbot enthalt- 

 ende Tafel abgerissen hat, anzeigt, wird hierdurch 

 eine Belohnung zugesichert, — "because it says in 

 eighteen words and ninety-five letters what cannot 

 [^sic .'] be literally translated into English in less than 

 nineteen words and one hundred and four letters." 

 A very small difference ! Suppose one exclaims 

 'tram' 'Pferdebahnwagen,' — one word and four 

 letters, and one word and fifteen letters ; or ' wood- 

 master ' and ' Holzversorgungsinspector.' In Aus- 

 tria the full title of the ofiicial is kaiserlich-koniglich- 

 Staatseisenbahnholzversorgungsinspector. Such ]petty 

 comparisons are, of course, only jeux-d' esprit, and 

 have little argumentative value. 



To return : the English of Mr. Frazer's perspica- 

 cious phrase might be ; in strictly literal translation : 

 "A reward is hereby promised to whomever tells 

 who removed the warning sign," — thirteen words 

 and sixty -two letters ; or if we put, as would be 

 natural in English, ' notice ' instead of ' warning 

 sign,' twelve words and fifty-seven letters. There is 

 some difiiculty, as there is no exact equivalent for 

 Verbot. In English, ' die das Verbot enthaltende 

 Tafel' might well be 'notice to trespassers,' or some- 



thing of the kind. It would be interesting to known, 

 what Mr. Frazer's lengthy translation was : it can. 

 hardly have been any thing but a ludicrous render- 

 ing of word for word, and not real English at all, 

 either in spirit or construction. The examjile will 

 serve my purpose : German permits very lengthy 

 and involved sentences, — I think of my friend, a 

 distinguished professor, who rejoiced that the twelfth 

 part of a work on mineralogy had come ; it com- 

 pleted, he said, the first volume, and he hoped to 

 find the verb in the second ! — a mere droll exagger- 

 ation. But what miist be the possibilities of a lan- 

 guage when such a joke about it makes one laugh ? 

 The gist of the whole matter is, that a great many 

 German writers do display the bad possibilities of 

 their tongue ; and when Mr. Frazer says that the best 

 writers seldom or never use the involved sentences, 

 he makes an implication about the good and medio- 

 cre writers which shows that he agrees in reality 

 with the general ojDinion that German authors have 

 too frequently a faulty and obscure style. I com- 

 mend to his notice Matthew Arnold's criticisms on 

 the Germans, or Rivarol's. M. 



Boston, Feto. 10. 



On certain electrical phenomena. 



At one time it was very hard for me to believe, in- 

 deed, that any person living possessed such a power 

 as being able to shuffle across the carpet of a room, 

 and light the gas as it issued from the jet of the 

 burner, by simply touching it with the tip of the 

 finger. I have at present, however, two friends, at 

 least, among my acquaintances, who seem to be ca- 

 llable of performing this feat at all times, and under 

 any circumstances. Now, I find similar phenomena 

 exhibited to a very high degree in my own person, 

 at Fort Wingate here. This point is over 6,000 feet 

 above sea-level ; the only water in the neighborhood 

 is a small pond — a puddle, really — and a few insig- 

 nificant sjarings. The air is usually clear, and highly 

 rarified ; indeed, all the conditions seem to be favor- 

 able to the exhibition of electrical appearances. 



Only the other day, while pacing my room, passing, 

 as I did so, each time, over a large woollen Navajo 

 blanket that lay spread out on the floor, a circum- 

 stance arose which called upon me to touch the cast- 

 iron urn that ornamented the top of a small wood- 

 stove in the apartment, and which had a fire in it at 

 the time. Before the tip of my index finger touched 

 it, by a distance of fully a centimetre, there wasi 

 displayed in the intervening si3ace a brilliant elec- 

 tric flash, accompanied by a report that could be 

 distinctly heard in the adjoining room above ordi- 

 nary conversation. The experiment was repeated 

 three or four times, but the display became more and 

 more feeble with each trial; it regained its original 

 force, however, after I paced across the blanket 

 on the floor a few times. Additional experimenta- 

 tion went to show that this electrical discharge was 

 considerably greater from the tip of the index flnger 

 than from any of the others of the hand, and grad- 

 ually diminished in regular order as we proceeded to 

 the little finger ; and, further, it seemed in my case, 

 more evident in the left index rather than in the 

 right one. When all ten finger-ti^DS were drawn to- 

 gether and then brought up to within a centimetre's 

 distance of this stove-urn, the flash and report ap- 

 peared no greater than it did from the index finger 

 alone. 



