SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, APRIL 20, i888. 



Hundreds of reports have been received at the Hydrographic 

 ■Office of the Navy Department from vessels that experienced the 

 storm of March 11-15, more than seventy of them from vessels that 

 were immediately off the coast of the United States. An interesting 

 -feature of these latter is the descriptions of the use of oil to calm the 

 waves. More than a dozen captains and sailing-masters caught in 

 the storm when it was at its worst say that they believe that their 

 vessels were saved by it. The sailing-master of the yacht ' Iroquois ' 

 :says that the furious waves would be coming down upon them with 

 -an immense comb, threatening to swamp them ; but, when it encoun- 

 tered a patch of oil no larger than a dining-room table, its top would 

 be rounded, and there would not be even a wind-ripple upon it, 

 and the yacht would bob over it like a gull. The reports of the 

 storm have brought no new facts in regard to the use of oil to still 

 the waves, but they confirm the opinions heretofore held, and will 

 ■undoubtedly lead to its more frequent employment. The great 

 service which the Hydrographic Office has rendered to navigation 

 in this regard is now recognized in all maritime countries. Only 

 lately, Capt. W. J. L. Wharton, R.N., hydrographer to the British 

 Admiralty, in Nature, began an article by saying that the employ- 

 ■ment of oil by the ships of all countries was due to the efforts of the 

 United States Hydrographic Office in forcing the subject upon the 

 attention of navigators. Similar testimony has been given by high 

 ■officers of the French Navy in recent publications. 



The Philadelphia Press, in commenting upon some recent 

 .remarks of Scietice touching the wastefulness caused by the delays 

 in printing scientific reports of the government, remarks that good 

 editors are needed in Washington as much as more printers and 

 better management of the Government Printing-Oflice. This is 

 true, and the remark is applicable to all other bureaus and depart- 

 ments as well as those engaged in scientific work. Scarcely a vol- 

 ^ume is published by the government that would not be greatly im- 

 proved by condensation. E,\amples are hardly necessary for those 

 who are in the habit of looking over government publications, but 

 •one or two may be given in illustration. Congress has just ordered 

 an extra edition of twenty-five thousand copies of a report on ' Cat- 

 tle and Dairy Farming,' made by the consuls of the United States 

 abroad, of which the original edition has been exhausted, and for 

 which there has been much call by the cattle-raisers and dairy-farm- 

 ers of the United States. It comprises two volumes, together con- 

 taining 855 pages of letterpress, besides 369 full-page lithographic 

 ■engravings. The book contains a large amount of very valuable 

 information that can be obtained nowhere else ; but, if it had been 

 edited only to the extent of cutting out nothing but duplications, 

 the dimensions of the book might have been reduced one-half, and 

 its value greatly increased. In many instances several consuls in 

 the same country went over the same ground, and sometimes ob- 

 tained their information from the same sources. The best of these 

 reports ought to have been selected for publication in full, and only 

 the additional matter contained in the others added in carefully 

 selected extracts. But instead of doing this, the State Department 

 put the reports and enclosures all in, in full, and thus made a -book 

 that is likely to frighten a farmer by its very size. Another ex- 

 ample of enormous waste in printing, to say nothing of the doubt- 

 ful expediency of preparing the matter, is to be seen in a ' Report 

 ■upon an Examination of Wools and other Animals,' by Dr. Mc- 



Murtrie, prepared under the direction of the commissioner of ag- 

 riculture. It is a quarto book of more than 600 pages, about 100 of 

 which are filled with letterpress and illustrations, and 500 with 

 solid tables of figures. One of these, filling 32 pages, is a ' Table 

 for Reduction of Centimillimetres to Fractions of an Inch.' No 

 printer will have to be told how expensive this rule-and-figure work, 

 with its 21 columns to a page, is. Another, filling 102 pages with 

 solid figures, gives the 'Results of Actual Measurements of Length, 

 Crimp, and Fineness, with Recapitulations and Reductions.' And 

 so on for 500 pages. Now, if it was necessary to make all these 

 measurements, it certainly was not necessary to print them. The 

 results of them are set forth in the body of the report, and these 

 are all practical men want. If a scientific man desired to see all 

 the figures made to obtain these results, he could go to the files of the 

 Agricultural Department and examine them there. An octavo vol- 

 ume of 200 pages would have contained all that it was necessary to 

 print, and would not have cost, with illustrations, more than one- 

 fourth as much. The government needs an editor. 



The work upon the marble terrace which is to surround the 

 Capitol at Washington on three sides is nearly completed, and the 

 effect of it upon the architectural appearance of the building can 

 now be seen. From any point on Pennsylvania Avenue between 

 the Treasury Department and the western entrance to the Capitol 

 grounds, the effect is unquestionably pleasing. The terrace will 

 appear as though it was the foundation of the building, thus making 

 it seem to be decidedly higher, and relieving it of that ' squatty ' 

 appearance which has always offended the eyes of those who have 

 an appreciation of proper proportions in a grand structure. Viewed 

 from a distant point either on the north, south, or west, therefore, 

 this marble terrace seems to be an architectural success. But, 

 as soon as one enters the west Capitol park and approaches the 

 building, he discovers that this so-called improvement, expensive as 

 it has been, is a blemish rather than an embellishment of the Capi- 

 tol. Long before reaching the foot of the grand stairway, the 

 marble terrace not only ceases to appear as a part of the building, 

 but hides a part of its beautiful front. At the Marshall statue the 

 upper edge of it is projected against the marble columns of the two 

 wings of the Capitol halfway from their bases to their capitals, and 

 from many parts of the grounds on the west they greatly disfigure 

 the noble structure. It is just as important that the proportions of 

 the Capitol shall appear to be correct when viewed from a point 

 that is near as from one that is removed ; but the architect seems 

 to have supposed, that, when a person has once entered the grounds 

 from the west, he will be so much impressed with the grand marble 

 stairway that he will not raise his eyes to the building to which 

 they lead. 



The plan of establishing a zoological garden in Boston, 

 which has been pending for twenty-one years, seems to lead at last 

 to practical results. The council of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History has taken the matter in hand. It gained the co-operation 

 of the park commissioners, who offered two separate sites for the 

 garden. The society proposes to make the enterprise thoroughly 

 educational. In view of the climate of New England, no attempt will 

 be made to make the garden of so general a nature as they are made 

 in Europe. It will be rather an effort to show specimens of Ameri- 

 can animals, especially those of New England. Finally it was re- 

 solved to make an attempt to raise a sum of $200,000, and then to 

 proceed with the establishment of a garden and aquaria. The en- 



