474 



SCIENCE. 



scribed for all students. To the third year class, lectures 

 are delivered upon electro-statics, the mechanical theory 

 of heat, mathematical optics, and the undulatory theory 

 of light. Some of the lectures are accompanied by ex. 

 perimental demonstrations. This course is required of 

 all students except those in chemistry, with whom it is 

 optional. 



Mechanics is taught in the third year to the students 

 in mining engineering, civil engineering, and metallurgy. 

 The mechanics of solids is studied in the first term and 

 the mechanics of fluids in the second. 



No physical laboratory work is mentioned in the hand- 

 book of information. 



Chemistry. — Professor, C. F. Chandler; instructors, 

 Elwyn Waller, Pierre De Peyster Ricketts, Alexis A. 

 Julien, James S. C. Wells, Henry C. Bowen, Francis N, 

 Holbrook, and Louis H. Laudy. General inorganic chem- 

 istry, stoichiometry, qualitative analysis, quantitative 

 analysis, and blowpiping are required studies in all the 

 courses. Assaying is taught to students in mining, met- 

 allurgy, and chemistry. In the geological and chemical 

 courses, organic chemistry is studied. The chemical 

 students have also a large amount of work in applied 

 chemistry. Quantitative blowpipe analysis is an optional 

 study in all of the courses. 



In general chemistry the first year students attend 

 three exercises a week throughout the year. This course 

 is preliminary to practical instruction in the laboratory. 

 The students are drilled upon the lectures, with free use 

 of the best text books, and take notes which must be sub- 

 mitted to the professor. At the end of the year there is 

 a rigid examination. The second class also attend three 

 times a week during the year, and receive instruction in 

 theoretical chemistry adapted to the needs of special 

 scientific students. 



For analytical chemistry there are three laboratories, 

 one for qualitative analysis, one for quantitative analysis, 

 and a third for assaying. Each of these is thoroughly 

 equipped and is in the special charge of an instructor 

 with an assistant. Every student is provided with a con- 

 venient table containing drawers and cupboards, and is 

 supplied with a complete outfit of apparatus and 

 reagents. The laboratories are open daily, except Sat- 

 urdays, Sundays, holidays, and vacations, from 10 A. M. 

 to 4 P. M. 



During the second year, qualitative analysis is taught 

 by lectures, blackboard exercises, and constant laboratory 

 practice. The spectroscope is freely used. When the 

 student shows, by written and experimental examination, 

 that he is sufficiently familiar with qualitative work, he is 

 allowed to enter the quantitative laboratory. In the third 

 and fourth years, quantitative analysis is taught, the labor- 

 atory exercises being accompanied still by lectures and 

 blackboard work. The laboratory course is graded after 

 the usual manner, the student beginning with compara- 

 tively simple substances of known composition and pass- 

 ing on by degrees to the analysis of more complex 

 bodies, such as coals, pig iron, various ores, slags, mat- 

 tes, and so on. Both volumetric and gravimetric 

 methods are employed. In the fourth year the student 



is admitted to the assay laboratory, where he is furnished 

 with a suitable table and a set of assaying apparatus. 

 Here he has access to crucible and muffle furnaces and to 

 volumetric apparatus for the assay of alloys of gold and 

 silver. The general principles and special methods of 

 assaying are described in the lecture-room, and at the 

 same time the ores of the various metals and their ap- 

 propriate fluxes are exhibited and described. The student 

 is then supplied with different ores and is required to 

 assay each ore in duplicate under the supervision of 

 the instructor. 



Stoichiometry is taught, by lectures and blackboard ex- 

 ercises, as a part of the course in general chemistry, 

 through the first and second years ; and its practical ap- 

 plications are developed in lectures upon quantitative 

 analysis and assaying. 



In applied chemistry, the instruction extends through 

 the third and fourth years and consists of lectures illus- 

 trated by experiments, diagrams, and specimens. The 

 cabinet of industrial chemistry is very large and com- 

 plete, containing several thousand specimens and ma- 

 terials and products. 



It will be noticed that the course of study at this 

 college is thorough, practical and technical, " the de- 

 sign being to train analysts and technologists." Pro- 

 fessor Chandler has brought to bear in this work the 

 full weight of his well-known administrative abilities, 

 and the School of Mines of the City of New York 

 may well be taken as a model for all future establish- 

 ments of the same class on this continent. 



A perusal of this report will make the fact evident, 

 that in this country ample facilities exist for the most 

 thorough instruction in both Physics and Chemistry, 

 and the record shows that since the year 1865 the 

 course of instruction in these departments of science 

 has been one of continuous progress. 



Of Columbia College, New York, we have spoken, 

 but it might appear that we made an invidious selec- 

 tion if we did not refer to other prominent centres ot 

 physical and chemical research. Among many of 

 such we may name the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology; the Stevens Institute, Hoboken; the 

 Universities of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Cincinnati ; 

 Yale, Harvard and the Johns Hopkins University. 

 To-day the higher chemistry can be studied in a score 

 of places where twenty years ago no adequate facili- 

 ties were offered, and the modern physics, with its 

 mathematical methods and its laboratories, is rapidly 

 coining into vogue. . 



One other feature of the new movement remains to 

 be mentioned, namely, the spread of scientific teach- 

 ing downward into the secondary schools. These, 

 too, are organizing laboratories, teaching young 

 scholars to see and experiment for themselves, prepar- 

 ing the way for higher work, and rendering the latter 

 more easily possible. The "summer schools" of 

 chemistry at Harvard and elsewhere, the Woman's 



