SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY. APRIL 15, 1887. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 

 We desire to offer to our readers from, time 

 to time discussions on questions of present educa- 

 tional interest by men of prominence in the teach- 

 ing profession. The first of these discussions is 

 printed in this issue, and deals with the question 

 as to what industry can profitably be introduced 

 into country schools. The contributors are Pres. 

 Francis A. Walker of Boston, Charles H. Ham of 

 Chicago, and Superintendent Samuel G. Love of 

 Jamestown, N.Y. The question was put as to 

 country schools because there are certain condi- 

 tions peculiar to them. As a rule, they are not 

 so carefully organized nor so well managed as 

 city schools. Their resources are usually less, and 

 their opportunities fewer, than those possessed by 

 the schools of the town or the city. And in this 

 one particular of the introduction of an element 

 of industrial training, the country school is at a 

 disadvantage. It is cut off from using many 

 forms of industrial training that are at hand in the 

 city; and on this and other accounts it merits 

 separate consideration. It is to be borne in mind 

 that industrial work can only find access to the 

 schools in so far as it is educational. As manual 

 or technical instruction, there is no room for it 

 save in institutions created especially for it. The 

 schools can, must, and will welcome it as an edu- 

 cational factor. Its theoretical value is conceded : 

 it remains to solve the practical questions as to 

 just how it can be introduced. What changes 

 must be made to accommodate it ? What re-adjust- 

 ments and re-arrangements are necessary ? These 

 are pressing questions just now. 



Gen. James B. Fry, in a paper on compulsory 

 education in the army, takes occasion to go at 

 length into the subject of public-school education. 

 In fact, this forms by far the larger portion of his 

 pamphlet, the considerations relating to the army 

 being relegated to a few pages at the end. Gen- 

 eral Fry's language is strong and direct, and he is 

 very much opposed to compulsory education in 

 particular and to the public-school system in gen- 

 eral. His argument is, in brief, that compulsory 



No. 219 — 1887. 



education by the state involves a pernicious as- 

 sumption of power, and that the state's expedients 

 and processes necessarily call for official surveil- 

 lance and intermeddling, which, to be effective, 

 must be arbitrary and vexatious, and which are 

 hostile to our institutions and to the feelings of self- 

 reliance and personal independence born and bred 

 in our people. It deprives parents of responsi- 

 bility for their children, the writer contends, and 

 does this at the expense of a part of the commu- 

 nity ; and, however high its pretensions, it can- 

 not be free from the demoralization that results 

 from giving alms by law. 



We must confess that this seems to us very 

 silly. General Fry appears to have fallen a victim 

 to platitudes and that most curious cry of ' pau- 

 perizing the intellectual classes ' which is now so 

 often heard. To which of our ' institutions' is the 

 public-school system hostile? We have an idea 

 that it is the chiefest of them as well as their 

 centre. This subject has been gone over so often 

 that it is hardly worth while treating it again. 

 But we could not resist the temptation of merely 

 indicating how even so serious and well-meaning 

 a writer as General Fry may be totally misled by 

 words, when he does not pause to weigh carefully 

 the ideas for which they stand. 



Why the walls of the stomach and intestine 

 are not themselves digested by their own fluids 

 has for more than a hundred years been a mooted 

 question in physiology. John Hunter, in a paper 

 read before the Royal society in 1772, maintained 

 that it was because these tissues were living, or, 

 as he expressed it, " animals, or parts of animals, 

 possessed of the living principle, when taken into 

 the stomach, are not in the least affected by the 

 powers of that viscus so long as the animal prin- 

 ciple remains ; hence it is that we find animals of 

 various kinds living in the stomach, or even 

 hatched and bred there : yet, the moment that 

 any of those lose the living principle, they be- 

 come subject to the digestive powers of the 

 stomach." Other theories have been advanced to 

 explain the facts in the case, but all are unsatis- 

 factory. Dr. J. W. Warren contributes an article 

 to the Boston medical and surgical journal, in 



