October 2, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



291 



dangers that lie in the way of a too early intro- 

 duction to too difficult matter. It is by no 

 means a bad specimen of the way in which a 

 scientific lecture is reproduced in the young 

 student's mind ; it is, on the contrary, a re- 

 markably favorable one. A great part of the 

 information conveyed has been properly as- 

 similated, and made a part of the real furniture 

 of the bo3''s mind ; and it is reproduced with 

 vigor and originalit3\ It is very different from 

 a mere committing to memory of hard names, 

 which might have been the effect ; but it has 

 still important warnings to convey. 



The wise teacher will alwaj's take the ex- 

 amination-papers of her brighter pupils as a 

 sure and searching test of the value of the 

 instruction which she has endeavored to give. 

 There are three plain and easy lessons which 

 she will derive from the one before us. She 

 will shut her eyes to the unchildlike and un- 

 canuN^ air of 'smartness,' — the gamin-like 

 quality which is attractive in a French novel, 

 but nauseating in real life in America ; and she 

 will attend onl}^ to the scientific ideas expressed. 

 She will draw^ two morals for her next lesson 

 on bones, and one for her scientific teaching 

 in general. She will see that the connection 

 between bones and the general idea of motion 

 is far too difficult to be given to a young child. 

 Hereafter she will tie strings or elastic bands 

 to sticks, perhaps, and show how particular 

 movements may be effected ; but she will omit 

 to give principles in regard to the production 

 of motion in general. She will also refrain 

 from caUing the bony outside of certain ani- 

 mals a skeleton. Such fanciful extensions of 

 the meaning of popular names will do for older 

 children ; but older children can also learn to 

 say ' exoskeleton ' and ' endoskeleton,' and 

 the content of a name in a child's mind is a 

 matter which is no more to be trifled with than 

 the logical sequence of ideas. In the third 

 place, the teacher will notice — what she has 

 often noticed before — that it is a hazardous 

 thing to supply a young child with reasons. 

 Facts may be safely given in any amount, so 

 long as they are simple, and such as he could 

 find out for himself if put in the proper cir- 

 cumstances ; but reasons should be given as 

 sparingly as possible. He has not yet any 

 means of knowing what kind of a thing a rea- 

 son is ; and it is of the utmost consequence 

 that he should not be hopelessly set adrift on 

 this subject. Probably the most characteristic 

 of all the quahties of the untrained mind is the 

 facility with which it is able to give a reason 

 for every thing that happens. 



Christine Ladd Franklin. 



THE RESULTS OF THE KRAKATOA 

 ERUPTION.^ 



In the spring of 1884, Messrs. Rene Breon and 

 Korthals sailed from France, under instruction from 

 the minister of public instruction, to explore the 

 island of Krakatoa, and study the effects of the great 

 eruption of Aug. 27, 1883. When they arrived at the 

 bay of Bantam, they gradually passed from islands 

 thickly covered with a tropical vegetation, to those 

 burned and devastated by the rain of cinders and the 

 tidal-waves. Upon Cape St. Nicolas, the cocoa-trees 

 were parched and yellow; and the only signs of vege- 

 table life were the young shoots of the year, which 

 were springing from the tops of the half-dead trees. 

 On the coast of Bantam, the shock of the wave 

 had broken off a reef twenty to twenty-five metres 

 high, and ingulfed it beneath the sea. The wave 

 which rushed with such force upon this coast de- 

 stroyed the forest for a distance of three hundred or 

 four hundred metres inland, leaving nothing stand- 

 ing except the great Ficus religiosa, which stretched 

 their dry and barkless stems toward the heavens. 

 But already nature was repairing the damage, and 

 the powerful tropical vegetation was springing up 

 amid the ruins. 



In the bay of Lampong, there were signs of a more 

 powerful shock. A band of land devastated by the 

 tidal-wave rises to a height of twenty-five metres 

 above sea-level, and the destruction begun by the 

 sea was still farther extended inland by the rain of 

 burning cinders which were thrown from the vol- 

 cano. They proceeded up the bay, and anchored in 

 front of the site of Telok-Betoeng, which was de- 

 stroyed by the tidal-wave. It was situated on a plain 

 but a few feet above sea-level, and was the home of 

 a number of European merchants and dignitaries, in 

 addition to the Malay population. The place where 

 the town stood is now a marsh, covered with cin- 

 ders, and incumbered with trunks of trees, beams, 

 and debris of all kinds. A little back of this, on the 

 sides of a hill, some European houses, and a native 

 hut, still remain, — thanks to their position above the 

 reach of the waves. A small river flows to the sea 

 through the old site of the village; and near this 

 stream, in a dense forest three kilometers from the 

 seashore, there is a native fishing-vessel, lying where 

 it was tossed by the inrushing waters. Near by 

 there are others; and, a few hundred metres from 

 there, on a bend of the stream, a large steamer, the 

 Barrow, forms a bridge from bank to bank. It is 

 reported that the water rose to a height of three hun- 

 dred metres, which cannot be a great exaggeration of 

 the facts. 



Leaving Telok-Betoeng, they proceeded to Sebuku, 

 one of the group of islands to which Krakatoa be- 

 longs. This is not a central volcanic cone like its 

 neighbors Sebesie and Krakatoa, but rather a frag- 

 ment of land detached from Sebesie or Sumatra by 

 some ancient eruption. The forests on this island 

 are much more confused than those on the border of 

 the bay of Lampong, and one can readily see that the 

 centre of volcanic activity is being approached. Con- 

 ^ Condensed from La natxire. 



