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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their own classics and literary style, while all 

 they learn of foreign subjects is through the 

 medium of a new and difficult language, 

 these youths must be made of the finest ma- 

 terial to make any progress at all. The 

 learning capacity and memory of a good 

 Chinese student are almost beyond credi- 

 bility. It is only in the invention or origi- 

 nating of new ideas or in making deductions 

 that they are weak. Those subjects which 

 depend chiefly on the use of mathematics 

 have received the most particular care and 

 attention. 



Sound Economics. — Judging from the 

 summary in the London Spectator, some 

 sound economics are embodied in the utter- 

 ances in a recent speech by Mr. Balfour 

 touching upon questions of labor and social 

 relations. The speaker animadverted on the 

 unhappy consequences that might ensue from 

 admitting that every one who wants work 

 has a right to get it from the municipality 

 or the state if he can not find a private em- 

 ployer. The admission of such a principle 

 means municipal or state bankruptcy as the 

 not distant consequence of works begun only 

 in order to find employment for the unem- 

 ployed without any guarantee that they will 

 pay those who set them on foot. When pri- 

 vate employment becomes hard to obtain, it 

 is generally because the conditions of the 

 time are unfavorable for effective labor. 

 Now, if just at this crisis the public em- 

 ployer comes in, does it not mean that either 

 the municipality or the state will pay as 

 much for ineffective and ill-supervised labor 

 as private employers have been paying for 

 effective and well-supervised labor? That 

 is only saying, in other words, that they will 

 be paying high for bad labor. Mr. Balfour 

 also gave a warning against attempting so to 

 improve the distribution of wealth as to pre- 

 vent its production where it is now success- 

 fully accumulated. The worst of the new 

 combinations against the present rate of wages 

 is that the rate of profits, already low, must 

 fall lower if higher wages are to be paid, and 

 the consequence of that must be the retire- 

 ment of a good deal of capital from produc- 

 tive enterprises altogether. The rich manu- 

 facturers say to themselves: "We are as 

 rich now as we really care to be. We would 

 go on if we could secure our former profits ; 



but as we can not, we may as well wind up 

 business and retire." Tbe consequence, of 

 course, is that a great deal of wealth which 

 was lately employed in reproductive opera- 

 tions is no longer so employed, and the rais- 

 ing of the general rate of wages becomes 

 more and more impossible. 



Solid Air, — At the meeting of the Royal 

 Society, March 9th, Prof. Dewar communi- 

 cated the results of his experiments upon air 

 at very low temperatures. Having liquefied 

 air at ordinary atmospheric pressure, the au- 

 thor has since succeeded in freezing it into a 

 clear, transparent solid. The precise nature 

 of this solid is at present doubtful, and it can 

 be settled only by further research. It may 

 be a jelly of solid nitrogen containing liquid 

 oxygen, much as calves'-foot jelly contains 

 water diffused in solid gelatin. Or it may be 

 a true ice of liquid air in which both oxygen 

 and nitrogen exist in the solid form. The 

 doubt arises from the fact that Prof. Dewar 

 has not yet been able by his utmost efforts 

 to solidify pure oxygen, which, unlike other 

 gases, resists the cold produced by its own 

 evaporation under the air-pump. Nitrogen, 

 on the other hand, can be frozen with com- 

 parative ease. It has already been proved 

 that in the evaporation of liquid air nitrogen 

 boils off first. Consequently the liquid is 

 continually becoming richer in that constitu- 

 ent which has hitherto resisted solidification. 

 It thus becomes a question whether the cold 

 produced is sufficiently great to solidify oxy- 

 gen, or whether its mixture with nitrogen 

 raises its freezing point, or whether it is not 

 really frozen at all, but merely entangled 

 among the particles of solid nitrogen, like the 

 rose-water in cold cream. 



Psychology of some Words. — In his essay 

 on The Language of the Mississaga Indians 

 of Skugog (a tribe remnant of less than fifty 

 members living on Skugog Lake, opposite 

 Port Perry, Ontario), Mr. A. F. Chamberlain 

 touches upon some questions connected with 

 what may be called the psychology of lan- 

 guage. Only a few of the words appear to 

 have an onomatopoetic origin. Neither the 

 theory of Dr. Carl Abel of the designation by 

 primitive man of the " A " and the " not A " 

 by the same word — no trace of this combina- 

 tory process being perceived — nor that of 



