SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 1886. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 

 In a recent number of the Revue Internatio- 

 nale de Venseignement, M. Breal, who has written 

 before on educational topics, has an essay on the 

 methods of acquiring foreign languages. Among 

 some old considerations of value, he adds the less 

 well-known remark, that, when a person goes to 

 a foreign country to ' learn the language,' he 

 rarely succeeds. But if he goes to pursue some 

 definite profession or business, — M. Breal sug- 

 gests banking at Frankfort, the book-trade at 

 Leipzig, and brewing at Munich, among others, 

 — then he acquires the language very rapidly as 

 well as very thoroughly. The reason for this is 

 plain enough : it is the substitution of natural for 

 scholastic methods. And nature, being the better 

 teacher, comes out ahead. In the former case, 

 dictionaries and grammars figure largely ; while, 

 in following M. Breal's suggestions, the phrases 

 of ordinary conversation, as well as the termi- 

 nology of some particular calling, become part of 

 the student's daily experience from the first. 

 The hint is a valuable one, and it might save 

 time and money, to say nothing of a discouraged 

 spirit, to the numerous young men and women 

 who go to Germany, France, and Italy each year 

 to 4 learn the language.' 



In the death, on May 16, of the aged German 

 historian, the world has lost a scholar who has 

 done as much as, if not more than, any one else 

 for the extension of scientific method, and for 

 the application to history of those rules and tests 

 which mark the nineteenth century as pre-emi- 

 nently the era of science. Born in 1795, when 

 the reign of terror was hardly passed, and when 

 the metaphysical notions as to the theory of the 

 state and the rights of man which had been for- 

 mulated by Bodin, Grotius, Montesquieu, Voltaire, 

 and Rousseau, were finding their logical outcome 

 in anarchy, Ranke grew up in a period of tran- 

 sition. The wave of constitutionalism was gather- 

 ing a force to which even the reaction from the 

 revolutionary excesses of the commune, aided by 

 the holy alliance, could be but a temporary check. 

 No. 174. — 1886. 



With a genius that detected the chain of causa- 

 tion amid a complicated mass of detail, with an 

 exactness and an accuracy that made even the 

 smallest event of importance, and with a power 

 of lucid, graphic statement which attracted and 

 interested while it instructed, Ranke was born a 

 scientific historian. He appreciated to the full 

 the meaning of the contemporary development, 

 but with true historical instinct he turned to the 

 elucidation of that previous period of transition 

 from feudalism to absolutism which is the key to 

 the history of western Europe in the fifteenth, 

 sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. In this 

 field he was the acknowledged master. In addi- 

 tion to his own magnificent labors, we owe to 

 Von Ranke the seminar ium, that peculiarly sci- 

 entific department of university work. And it is 

 from him that Waitz, Giesebrecht, Von Sybel, 

 George Bancroft, and a host of lesser historians 

 have drawn their inspirations. 



Fabry's and Barnard's comets, the two that 

 have been with us since last December, have now 

 disappeared from view in the northern hemi- 

 sphere. Very few astronomers appear to have 

 seen these comets under the most favorable cir- 

 cumstances. Mr. T. W. Backhouse, however, re- 

 ports that on April 26 he followed the tail of 

 Fabry's comet to a distance of thirty -eight degrees ; 

 and Barnard's comet he found on May 1 had two 

 tails, the principal one four and a half degrees in 

 length. To replace these comets we have three 

 new ones discovered by Mr. Brooks, on April 27 

 and 30, and May 22, respectively. They are all 

 fairly bright for what are called 'telescopic* 

 comets. The calculated elements show that the 

 first reaches its nearest point to the sun on June 

 6, and is increasing slightly in brightness : the 

 second comet is decreasing in brightness, having 

 passed its perihelion on May 4. 



HEALTH OF NEW YORK DURING APRIL. 



The total population of New York on April 1 

 was estimated at 1,428,898, and is believed to be 

 increasing at the weekly rate of 799. 



The total number of deaths from all causes was 

 2,965, or about 99 each day. Comparing this with 



