April 15, 1887.] 



SCIEJSrCE. 



35J> 



ing over a pei'iod of several years. The removal 

 of the paper was followed by perfect immunity 

 to those who subsequently occupied the room, 



— A. H. Smythe, Columbus, O., announces an 

 edition of the ' Preliminary report on petroleum 

 and inflammable ^as in Ohio, by Prof. Edward 

 Orton, state geologist. The first edition veas is- 

 sued and distributed by the legislature of Ohio, 

 and no copies were placed on sale. 



— Professor Rhys-Davids is at work upon a se- 

 lection of sacred Pali texts which he expects to 

 publish shortly. 



— The English Goethe society now numbers tvpo 

 hundred and fifty members, and has undertaken 

 the publication of its Transactions. 



— The Athenaeum finds, that, according to the 

 most recent reports, ed iication in the north-western 

 provinces of India amongst males has received a 

 slight check, the number of pupils at the schools 

 having decreased from 249,355 to 244, 146. On the 

 other hand, female pupils increased from 10,746 

 to 11,187. Altogether, 94 boys and 4 girls per 

 thousand of the population of school-going age 

 are under instruction. It is a sign of the very 

 satisfactory progress now being made by Moham- 

 medans in educational matters, that, in propor- 

 tion to their numbers, they contribute four times 

 as many pupils to the primary schools, and nearly 

 twice as many to the secondary schools, as 

 Hindus." 



— No school and colle'^e text-books are as hand- 

 somely gotten up as those issued by Macmillan & 

 Co., and- we are glad ihat they offer the product 

 of their press to students of mathematics as well 

 as to students of literature. We have recently 

 received their ' Text-book of Euclid's elements, 

 books i and ii.,' by Messrs. Hall and Stevens. The 

 little book is handsomely printed, the original 

 riders and deductions clear and useful, and the 

 use of type in the various demonstrations very 

 judicious. We like especially the way in which 

 the given lines and lines of construction are dis- 

 tinguished in the diagrams. It is a great improve- 

 ment upon the old-fashioned use of the dotted 

 line. 



— A performance of the Oedipus Tyrannus is 

 to be given at Cambridge, England, in November 

 next. 



— The Rede lecturer at the University of Cam- 

 bridge for the coming year is J. R. Seeley, regius 

 professor of modern history. 



— There were no fewer than 3,635 matriculated 

 students at Edinburgh university last year, which 

 is the largest number on record. Of these, 1,915 

 were students of medicine; 1,122, of arts; 490, 



of law ; and 108, of divinity. Of the medical 

 students, only forty per cent are Scotchmen. 



— St. Andrews university has conferred a large 

 number of honorary degrees recently. Dr. Philip 

 Schaflf of the Union theological seminary. New 

 York City, was among those who received the 

 degree of D.D. 



— We have received the biennial report of the 

 State school of mines at Golden, Col. It is well 

 gotten up, and contains as an appendix valuable 

 papers by members of the faculty, as follows : 

 ' Notes on iron prospects in northern Colorado,'^ 

 Regis Chauvenet ; ' Mineral resources of Boulder 

 county,' P. H. van Diest ; ' Geology of the Aspen 

 mining district,' Arthur Lakes ; ' The present 

 mining-law chaos,' Magnus C. Ihlseng ; ' Minings 

 notes from Eagle county,' George C. Tilden. 



— The ' Elements of English,' by G. H. Reker 

 (Chicago, Interstate publishing co.), is an intro-^ 

 duction to English grammar for the use of schools. 

 It is very elementary in character, and consists of 

 a series of lessons treating of the parts of speech 

 and their uses, of the simple sentence in its various- 

 forms, fully illustrated by practical exercises com- 

 posed of common words in daily use, so that 

 pupils are gradually, and almost unconsciously, 

 led on to a knowledge of the correct use of their 

 own language. 



— Mr. A. M. Ogilvie recently presented before 

 the Aristotelian society an mteresting paper on 

 Lotze's metaphysics, of which the following is an 

 abstract. The most significant aspect of Lotze's 

 teaching is its many-sidedness. An eminent man 

 of science as well as a philosopher, he also had a 

 most delicate appreciation of the aesthetic and 

 moral standards of value which govern human 

 life. He sought in philosophy an answer to the 

 complex of questions arising out of life as a 

 whole, and not merely an hypothesis satisfying the 

 requirements of physical science. No one felt 

 more strongly that only in actual experience have 

 men a living evidence of reality, but he showed 

 that in experience the significance lies in those 

 ideal forms in which it manifests itself to reason. 

 In his ultimate analysis of our experience of na- 

 ture, Lotze arrived at a conception of a universal 

 absolute working by fixed laws, revealed to us in 

 experience, towards an ideal end. Mental phe- 

 nomena in the same final analysis give evidence 

 of the existence of finite spirits, not independent 

 of the Infinite Spirit, which in the last resort the 

 aesthetic and moral experience of man realizes 

 not merely as a bare absolute, but as a living per- 

 sonal Deity. 



— Sir William Vernon Harcourt has resigned 



