J20 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Dr. Ogle, an English statistician, while 

 admitting to the full extent alleged the move- 

 ment, in England and the United States, to- 

 ward the towns and cities, denies that it is 

 attended by a depopulation of the rural dis- 

 tricts. He has found that the rural popula- 

 tion in England did not decrease between 

 1851 and 1881 by more than one per cent, a 

 rate quite within the limit of allowance for 

 error. The author believes that the rural 

 population is only stationary, and is ample, 

 with the modern improvements in farming, 

 for the tillage of the land, while only its in- 

 crease and surplus pour into the towns ; but 

 the continuous migration of the most vigor- 

 ous and energetic to the manufacturing dis- 

 tricts, and the higher mortality there, may be 

 producing a gradual deterioration. 



While asserting that attention has hith- 

 erto been largely paid to the preservation of 

 the unfit members of society by not allow- 

 ing them to disappear according to natural 

 causes, and thus propagating unfitness, Dr. 

 Thomas Searcy, of Tuscaloosa, Ala., sug- 

 gests that a higher field of effort lies in the 

 direction of increasing the proportionate 

 numbers in society of the more fit. Appar- 

 ently, in modern society, the object of effort 

 is to reach such a degree of competency 

 that one's children will not have to strive. 

 Degeneracy then sets in. The first genera- 

 tion may succeed by force of the brain-power 

 transmitted from its parents, but the after- 

 generations have no bottom to stand upon. 



In a recent lecture on the education of 

 girls, Mr. James Oliphant condemned the 

 impression that the education of the two 

 sexes should be governed by the same rule. 

 Physical deterioration, he said, could best be 

 prevented by a suitable distribution of stud- 

 ies during the day, and by allowing hourly 

 short interludes of muscular exercise. There 

 was, in our modern plan of study, too much 

 reiteration and too little thought, a conse- 

 quent sense of drudgery, and a lack of the 

 interest which comes of using the reasoning 

 power. Home lesson work had become a 

 sort of tyranny. The possession of special 

 aptitudes did not justify the preference often 

 given to them in cultivation, at the expense 

 of less developed faculties. 



In the lack of any national registry of 

 vital statistics, the Superintendent of the 

 Census of 1890 will rely upon the physicians 

 to furnish an approximate estimate of the 

 birth and death rates of most of the coun- 

 try. He is accordingly issuing to the medi- 

 cal profession " Physicians' Registers," with 

 blanks, which they are invited to fill, and 

 thus furnish more accurate returns than it is 

 possible for the enumerators to make. In 

 order that the returns of farm products and 

 live stock may be as full and complete as 

 possible, farmers are requested to keep ac- 

 counts of such matters from June 1, 1889, to 

 May 31, 1890. 



The demand for its leather, which is so 

 pleasant for summer shoes, has brought the 

 kangaroo into imminent danger of extinc- 

 tion ; and the Australians are contemplating 

 measures for restricting the slaughter of the 

 animal. 



Dr. Koch's theories respecting the func- 

 tions and work of the cholera bacillus, which 

 have been disputed, and even discredited by 

 certain commissions, have now been con- 

 firmed in their most important points by the 

 researches of Drs. Neil Macleod and Milles. 

 These gentlemen, who practice in a part of 

 the British Empire where cholera is endem- 

 ic, have identified, isolated, and cultivated 

 Koch's spirillum, and confirm his original 

 statement as to its pathogenic character. 



Out of more than five hundred letters 

 received by the Principal of the Detroit 

 High School in answer to questions concern- 

 ing the effect of the studies on the health 

 of the children, 8*7'81 per cent sustain the 

 work of the school. The sixty-two com- 

 plaints are of various character, and refer 

 among other things to " hard studies," bad 

 air, long lessons, and worry. In fourteen of 

 the cases of complaint the pupils were doing 

 more than the regular work ; and requests 

 to be allowed to do this had in some in- 

 stances followed complaints. 



According to Dr. Ozerctskofski, hysteria 

 exists among Russian soldiers, and presents 

 as various diversities of form as it does 

 among women. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Eugen Ferdinand ton Hameter, an 

 eminent ornithologist, and President of the 

 Ornithological Society of Berlin, died in 

 Stolp, Prussia, June 1st, at eighty years of 

 age. He was the author of several books, 

 and possessed the largest existing collection 

 of European birds. 



Mr. John F. La Trobe Bateman, the 

 engineer who supplied Glasgow with water 

 from Loch Katrine, died June 10th, aged 

 seventy -nine years. 



Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach, Pro- 

 fessor of Botany and Director of the Bo- 

 tanic Garden at Hamburg, died there, May 

 6th, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. 

 He was born in Leipsic, the son of a bota- 

 nist and professor at Dresden, and co-operated 

 with his father in the preparation of the later 

 volumes of the " Icones Florae Germanicae 

 et Helveticse." He devoted more than forty 

 years of his life chiefly to the study of or- 

 chids, in knowledge of which he was the first. 



Charles Harvey Bollman, museum as- 

 sistant in the University of Indiana, a young 

 naturalist of great promise, died July 13th, 

 at Waycross, Georgia. He was in charge of 

 the explorations of the United States Fish 

 Commission in Georgia. 



