472 
perhaps, to fill it, but no beer, no milk, no good 
water, only bad tea and bad coffee! A few 
days of such living, a glance into a ‘ muskeag,’ 
a ride over the streets of Winnipeg, and how 
mistaken will appear the managers of the as- 
sociation in planning an American meeting ! 
Tue visits of foreign astronomers to obser- 
vatories on American soil have of late years 
been very frequent; and it is not, perhaps, 
too much to say that the impressions they 
have carried away have in the main been of a 
pleasantly favorable and in some instances of 
even a surprising character. Occasionally they 
have made free to express themselves with 
regard to the somewhat rapid development of, 
and the future outlook for, their science in this 
country; but only infrequently have their 
opinions and criticisms been placed on perma- 
nent record. During the latter part of the 
summer of 1883, Dr. Ralph Copeland, astron- 
omer to the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, 
and editor of the lately discontinued journal 
Copernicus, passed through the United States, 
and visited a goodly number of the more active 
observatories, among them those at Cambridge, 
Washington, Princeton, Albany, and Clinton. 
His general impressions, as he modestly styles 
them, are far from uninteresting; and, while 
there is much that has been suggested before, 
American astronomy has not yet advanced to 
a stage where no opportunity offers for advan- 
tage from such suggestions. 
Tue decision of our treasury department, 
by which fine weights, such as are necessarily 
used by every chemist, are for customs pur- 
poses not to be regarded as ‘ philosophical 
apparatus,’ but as articles worked in metal, 
is as plain a violation of the spirit of the law 
as could well be imagined. A similar case 
presented itself a few years ago, when a college 
imported bottles for use in the chemical labo- 
ratory. ‘There was no doubt about the fact 
that the bottles were to be used for purely 
scientific purposes. They were without ques- 
tion ‘ philosophical apparatus ’ in the sense in 
which that expression is used in the tariff 
SCIENCE. 
“eet eee 
(Vou. IIL, No. 63. 9 
law; and yet the secretary decided that the 
bottles were to be classed as bottles, and not 
as ‘ philosophical apparatus ;’ and the college 
had to pay duty on them to the extent of forty 
per cent ad valorem. If the law, as it stands, 
has any object, that object is, by relieving 
educational institutions from certain burdens, 
to encourage the spread of knowledge. With-— 
out this object, the law is meaningless. By 
what right, then, does the secretary of the 
treasury decide that educational institutions 
shall not have the benefit of the law? 
Tue child, seeing for the first time the even- 
ing star, exclaims, ‘O mamma! God has made 
a star.” How should this wondering admira- 
tion of the novelties to the opening mind be 
received? The parent has seen many a star, 
has possibly a great objection to stars from be- 
ing obliged to watch them for hours. Next 
morning the child may rush in with open eyes, 
and demand the mother’s sympathy, in its ex- 
citement over a passing wagon heavily loaded, 
and drawn by six horses; or at the quaint 
humanism of the organ-grinder’s companion 
at the street-corner. These, again, are familiar 
experiences to the mother, and of themselves 
would only call forth a moan at the rumbling 
of the wheels or at the squeaking of the pipes. 
The child feels hurt if sent away with only a 
‘Yes, dear,’ or ‘Run along,’ and next time 
wonders to itself, and another time not at all. 
To the teacher and to the editor rushes the 
boy of all ages, and with trembling voice an- 
nounces that ‘the thickness of a mercury-drop 
on a glass plate is constant,’ and suggests its 
adoption as a standard of length, or that a 
rotating wheel resists a change in the plane 
of its rotation, and immediately builds upon 
his experiment a perpetual motion, or that he 
has found some relation between the physical 
constants of a few bodies, and warps the others 
to fit some preconceived theory. How is 
all this enthusiasm to be met? With the 
child, it is the evidence of an active intellect, 
and gives promise for the future, and may be — 
enjoyed with it; with the boy of tender age, 
there is no harm in pointing out that he has” 
