THE problem how to secure the most effective and harmonious relationship with their employés is one of rapidly growing importance in the minds of those managers whose duties bring them into close contact with the rank and file of railway service, and is also beginning to force itself upon the attention of investors in this country, as it has already largely done in Europe.
THERE is no branch of education which attracts so little public interest and support as proper medical instruction, yet no one would gainsay the necessity that, if there are to be physicians at all, the community should be guaranteed that they have been most thoroughly trained.
OF insects the Coleoptera, the Lepidoptera, the Diptera, and the Hymenoptera are the orders most concerned in the fertilization of flowers. More rarely, fertilization is effected by one or other species of Hemiptera, Neuroptera, and Orthoptera, but these are not of sufficient importance to demand further attention here.
THE early part of this century saw the establishment of most of the fundamental principles of the science of physics, especially as applied to astronomy. A few decades later saw the science of chemistry emerge from the empirical and enter the philosophical stage. It has been reserved for the second half of the century to witness the discovery of the facts and principles of the history of life on the earth.
ONLY one attempt was made during this year to teach the child the meaning of words. It was done through a simple generalization which had become indispensable in the study of geometry, when she passed from plane to solid figures.By means of wooden models she learned, in addition to the cube—the sphere, ovoid, oblate, cylinder, prism, tetrahedron, octahedron, and dodecahedron.
THE marine fauna of the globe may be divided into the littoral, the deep-sea, and the pelagic faunas. Of the three regions inhabited by these faunas, the littoral is the one in which the conditions are most favorable for the development of new forms through the working of the principle of natural selection.
WHOEVER associates with the name of Siberia the idea of a vast prison is involved in as great an error as the person who conceives the country as an icy desert or an interminable tundra. The tundras, whose icy fields form a prominent feature in the polar regions, with the stunted vegetation of their southern parts, are no myths, nor is it a fiction that the Russian Government, following the example of France and England, has adopted a system of penal colonies, and has planted them in Siberia.
LEARNING to read the English lȧnguage is one of the worst mind-stunting processes that has formed a part of the general education of any people. Its evil influence arises from the partly phonetic, partly lawless character of English spelling.
THERE is, we may remember, a passage in which Plato inquires what would be the thoughts of a man who, having lived from infancy under the roof of a cavern, where the light outside was inferred only by its shadows, was brought for the first time into the full splendors of the sun.
BY morals, or the science of morality, is meant that body of principles and laws, relating to conduct, which are conducive to the well-being of humanity. Morality, or, more accurately, the art of morality, is the carrying out in practice the laws which the science has established.
THE English universities have at various times in their history been remarkable as centers of scientific investigation and progress. The Royal Society took its origin in Oxford about two hundred and forty years ago, and from time to time there have been brilliant groups of scientific investigators in either university who have, though separated by intervals of darkness, sufficed to maintain the character of these institutions as something more than schools of classical training or mathematical gymnastic.
IN his “Roman Questions,” that delightful storehouse of old-world lore, Plutarch asks, “When a man who has been falsely reported to have died abroad returns home alive, why is he not admitted by the door, but gets up on the tiles, and so lets himself down into the house?” The curious custom to which Plutarch here refers prevails in modern Persia, for we read in “Hajji Baba” (c. 18) of the man who went through “the ceremony of making his entrance over the roof, instead of through the door; for such is the custom, when a man who has been thought dead returns home alive."
ALIGHT is defined by two qualities, brightness and color. The comparison of two lights of the same color can be made without the assistance of our eyes, and by physical means alone, but it is impossible to compare different colors without bringing in the intervention of the physiological impression.
THE name of Dr. Gustav Nachtigal is associated with some of the most arduous achievements of African research, which were also not of inferior importance; and in the last year of his life he was prominent, as the designated servant of his Government, in those transactions which had for their object the establishment of German colonies and influence at commanding positions in the “Dark Continent."
SIR: The writer of the paper in the July Monthly on aërial navigation is certainly mild in nis predictions of success, and still he is much too sanguine, as it seems to me. Besides the employment of a new motor, the recent French experiments have accomplished nothing not done before.
SELDOM has the moral sentiment of the civilized world received so severe a shock as it has done in connection with the revelations which a prominent London newspaper has made, within the last couple of months, of the gross and inhuman vices practiced in the metropolis of the British Empire.One of the worst features in the case is the fact that the enormities referred to have been committed, not by the “dregs of the population,” as that expression is commonly understood, but by men of wealth and social station.
WE had carefully read the first edition of this volume of essays, and have now reread it in its expanded form with renewed pleasure. There are but few scientific writers so trained in the skillful use of English as Professor Cooke. Aside from the value and instructiveness of their contents, his essays are a treat to all who appreciate clearness, vigor, and precision in style, while yet the admirable expression is kept subordinate to intense and weighty thought.
Industrial Education in Common Schools. —Mr. B. B. Huntoon recently read a paper before the “Conversation Club” of Louisville, Kentucky, on “Industrial Education,” in which he advocated the introduction of the Russian system into the public schools.
PROFESSOR JOHN S. NEWBERRY has described, in the “Annals” of the New York Academy of Sciences, some peculiar screwlike fossils from the Chemung rocks of Northern Pennsylvania and Southern New York, which at first sight suggest a resemblance that is not real to the fossil fruit Spirangium. Two species are identified, of one of which only one specimen has been found.