SOCIOLOGICAL

THE COMING INDUSTRIAL ORDER.

OUR industrial order has reached its last form of life and expression. Among the masses it has degenerated out of old-time neighborly competitive rivalry into the questions as to where the next job and meal are to come from, or who are to be the next victims of commercial cannibalism. Among capitalists it has evoluted into the combine, where all individual conscience and moral responsibility are stifled, if not altogether ignored, while greed and selfishness are abnormally developed and stimulated in the pursuit of unlawful spoils, and dividends on watered stocks. At the same time the sentiment of human brotherhood, the world over, is just rising into its first general expression and assertion, warm with all the vitality and vigor of aggressive youth. More and more the masses are becoming conscious that there is no real "self-preservation" save through an extension of the "first law of nature" until the law reaches out from and beyond and above the mere individual, and serves and vitalizes the interest of all. It is too late to ignore or oppose socialism as an idea. The principle, as already accepted and applied, has proved so indispensable that a proposition to narrow its orbit would provoke far more discussion and opposition than are now arrayed against its further extension; for latter-day socialism, as understood by its authorized advocates, simply means co-operative interest and effort-in short, public partnership-in the public advantages and wealth-producing agencies of a community, especially those staple necessities now owned, controlled and manipulated by private parties and limited corporations "for the benefit of the stockholders and for all the traffic will bear."

The competitive instinct is in the travail throes of a new birth through which it is to be delivered from the lower levels of animalism and the struggle for physical existence to a plane where it shall take the form of emulation. It is certain that economic competition must soon give place to reciprocity among the masses as it already has among the classes. I am aware that certain excellent reformers oppose socialism on the plausible ground that personal character evolution, through which the lion is to become a vegetarian-"eat straw, and lie down with the lamb"-is the only complete remedy. But we must not forget that State socialism alone can destroy the teeth and claws of the man-eating monster in our midst. In short, socialism, in its comprehensive and spherical sense, is the legitimate offspring of justice and intelligence, and grows in stature as fast as ignorance decreases. There comes a time not only of harvest but of planting and sowing, when the seeds of a purer and more divine civilization are Beeking higher planes and warmer soil. That time is now and here. The question is, Shall those seeds be irrigated with the dews and showers of peace, or with the blood and tears of another civil war? I believe that general co-operative industry alone can bring a peaceful answer and Bolution, and that its rejection by government force means, in a republic, the ultimate extinction of the old order of wage slavery through violence.-James G. Clark, in the Arena, Boston, January.

SOCIALISM, as a practical system, can never be put into operation; and if It could, it must surely fail unless the primary instincts of human nature could be abolished. Yet the agitation of socialism has led men of the greatest gravity to consider whether our present society is adequately fulfilling all the functions which are necessary to its own wellbeing and to the wellbeIng of the individuals of which it is composed. The uniform answer is that it is not, and the spirit of the age tends more and more to recognize that Bociety has a duty to the individual which it is bound to fulfill. Society owes it to itself, and also to the individuals of which it is composed, to see that the latter shall at least have a possibility of decent living; and in a city like New York, where the population of a certain district is twice as dense as anywhere else in the whole world, decent living in those crowded tenements is not possible. Yet the tenements must stand and teem with filth and vice and pauperism, until a means of cheap and rapid transit to less crowded districts shall be afforded. Individual effort cannot afford it. The inference is that society ought to afford it, and that until society shall do its duty in this respect, the battle with pauperism in the metropolitan city of this country is a battle of despair.-The Church Standard (Epis.), New York.,

A NEW STUDY OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. VALUABLE results ought to follow the study of the practical effects of moderate drinking of intoxicating liquors which a volunteer committee, under the chairmanship of President Low of Columbia College, has undertaken. The committee has fifty members, and includes such trained students of social and economic problems as Prof. F. G. Peabody and President Eliot of Harvard, President Andrews of Brown, Felix Adler of New York, James C. Carter, one of the United States counsel before the Bering Sea Commission, Prof. J. J. McCook of Hartford, Carroll D. Wright, President Gilman of Johns Hopkins, and others of equal capacity and standing. These names are a guarantee that this investiga tion is not only undertaken with a serious purpose, but in a purely scientific spirit, with the determination to accept no conclusion which the gathered facts do not compel. The entire liquor problem is within the scope of the committee's proposed investigation, and all facts in relation to any of its many aspects will be welcomed, and as fast as gathered will be studied and classified, to be made the basis of future inferences. Such a work as this committee proposes appears never to have been thoroughly done, if done at all, in this country. Not but that there has been a great deal of study of the liquor problem, and a great mass of statistics of considerable value gathered, but most of this study has been desultory, and from somewhat narrow standpoints.

A subcommittee has already attacked one aspect of its problem, concerning which there are wide differences of opinion among supposed experts, and that is moderate drinking. If there is anything about which doctors disagree it is the effect of the use of a moderate amount of spirituous drinks upon the drinker who takes them regularly. This subcommittee, composed of four physicians, among them the head of an insane asylum, a chemist and an economist, has contented itself with inquiring into the physiological and pathological effects of moderate drinking. To this end a circular bearing these questions has been sent all over the country:

1. Is the regular consumption of a moderate quantity of whisky, wine or beer conducive to the maintenance of health and working power in any class of men ? If so, in what class, and what is the average quantity thus useful?

2. What is the quantity of whisky, wine or beer which the average man in good health may consume daily without special risk of injuring his health? Does this vary in connection with variations of age, of climate, or of occupation, and what are those variations?

These questions are especially intended for physicians and others who will answer from observation, as well as experience. Accompanying them are blanks to be filled by individuals, which bring the inquiry into the region of personal experience. The age, occupation and habits, as regards the use of wine, beer or spirits, are asked about, and then the drinker is asked how much and what kind of liquor he drinks, and how regularly, and as to the observed effect of such drinking on his health. If candid answers to these questions, and from large numbers of individuals, are received the value of the information thus gained will be very great. In the interest of truth and sound judgment concerning the problem it is to be hoped that these questions will be generally and honestly answered. One further line of inquiry ought to be included in these circulars or afterward taken up, and that is the relation of moderate drinking to drunkenness. We are not aware of any facts which show the proportion of drunkards to the whole number of intoxicants, and certainly of none which prove that moderate drinking usually or in a majority of cases leads to drunkenness.-Springfield Republican.

SPENDING AND SAVING.

It seems to me true that in our day and generation the desire to live wisely here has eclipsed the desire to live safely hereafter. Moreover, to enjoy the earth and the fullness thereof, if it be legitimately within one's reach, has come to be recognized all the world over, with a special point of view for each nationality, as a cardinal principle of living wisely. We have been the last to recognize it here for the reason that a contrary theory of life was for several generations regarded as one of the bulwarks of our Constitution. Never was the sympathy for the poor man greater than it is at present. Never was there warmer interest in his condition. The social atmosphere is rife with theories and schemes for his emancipation, and the best brains of civilization are at work in his behalf. But no one wishes to be like him. Canting churchmen still gain some credence by the assertion that indigence here will prove a saving grace in the world to come; but the American people, quick, when it recognizes that it has been fooled, to discard even a once sacred conviction, smiles to-day at the assumption that the owner of a log cabin is more inherently virtuous than the owner of a steam yacht. Indeed, the present signal vice of democracy seems to be the fury to grow rich, in the mad struggle

to accomplish which character and happiness are too often sacrificed. But it may be safely said that, granting an equal amount of virtue to Rogers [with $2,200 income] and to me [with $8,000 income], and that each pays his bills promptly, I am a more enviable individual in the public eye. In fact, the pressing problem which confronts the civilized world to-day is the choice of what to have, for so many things have become necessaries of existence which were either done without or undiscovered in the days of our grandmothers, that only the really opulent can have everything.

We sometimes hear it said that this or that person has too much for his own good. The saying is familiar, and doubtless it is true that luxury unappreciated and abused will cause degeneration; but the complaint seems to me to be a Sunday school consoler for those who have too little rather than a sound argument against great possessions. Granting that this or that person referred to had the moral fiber of Rogers or of me, and were altogether an unexceptionable character, how could he have too much for his own good? Is the best any too good for any one of us? The sad part of it is, however, that even those of us who have four times, or thereabouts, the income of Rogers, are obliged to pick and choose and cannot have everything. Then is the opportunity for wisdom to step in and make her abode with us, if she only will. The perplexity, the distress, and too often the downfall of those who would fain live wisely, are largely the direct results of foolish or unintelligent selection on their part. And conversely, is not the secret of happy modern living, the art of knowing what to have when one cannot have everything there is?— Robert Grant, in Scribner's Magazine for December.

HOW TO DEAL WITH VAGRANTS.

THIS simple and unscientific way of handling the vagrant question has the poorest results. It does not punish the degraded vagrant. It furnishes him shelter and food without the necessity for work. It deprives him of little, for it is only in the winter, when outdoor life is far from agreeable, that he is usually caught and sentenced. On the other hand, it is the ruin of self-respect in those whom misfortune or curiosity has thrown into the ranks of trampdom. And finally it puts a heavy burden on the community for the support of these men who give nothing in return, and the great cost and bad results of the remedy deter courts and communities from enforcing it generally.

The first requisite of a good vagrant law is to recognize the three classes into which vagrants are divided. The next is that it should lay down rules for separating these classes and dealing with them according to their deserts. The tramp element is composed of, first, men who are willing or anxious to work; second, men who will work if they have to, but prefer to depend on begging, and, lastly, men who will not work under any circumstances short of physical compulsion. The German method of dealing with these classes has the reputation of being the best and most successful in the world. The first class is assisted to find work; the second is put in a workhouse where, under mild discipline, a few industries are carried on and attempts are made to secure the men employment outside, and the third is put in another workhouse where the strictest discipline is maintained and the rule is enforced that a man who will not work shall not eat.-San Francisco Examiner.

FOR AND AGAINST STATE MILITIA.

I AGREE with the position taken by the Central Labor Union of Boston, which deplores the disposition of those in authority to increase and centralize the numbers of State and Federal troops, to multiply costly and medieval armories, thereby making more heavy the burden of taxation which at the last is borne by the producing classes, and I desire, on behalf of the W. C. T. U., to repel any insinuation that the peace of the country Is threatened by the attempts of workingmen to better their condition, for we believe and think that the adjustment of the labor problem should be made by those free and peaceful methods provided by the founders of our National institutions, and by the rational and Christian method of conciliatory boards of arbitration.-Frances E. Willard.

THE assault of the Central Labor Union of Boston on the State militia as the instrument of tyranny, hired by capitalists to shed the blood of the slaves who work for them, is another indication of the dangerous extent to which the poison of socialism-and even blatant anarchy-has spread among the masses. Only a few years ago utterances of this sort would have aroused something like a feeling of horror among peaceful citizens. Now they are accepted as the customary thing. But it is, nevertheless, a dangerous frame of mind for the workingman to be in.-Providence Journal.

THE INCREASING COST OF COLLEGIATE EDUCATION.

THE average cost to the student per year at the better college is larger than the total income of the average American family. The cost, too, has greatly increased. I have lying before me tables which indicate the cost of education in certain respects at three such old and representative colleges as Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth since their foundation. Ishall begin with the former. From 1825-30 the average annual expenses of a student at Harvard were $176, of which half went for tuition and half for board and room; from 1831-40 the average was $188.10; from 1840-48, $194; 1849-60, $227 ($138 went for board and room); in the 'sixties it jumped from $263 to $437, two-thirds of which went for board and room; in 1881-82 the average expense to an economical student ranged from $484 to $807, the latter sum including a few more material comforts, and in 1893-94 these last figures had been slightly reduced. At Yale the increase of expenses was nearly in the same ratio, the average for the opening year (1821) being $175, and the average for 1893 being $687.50. Eleven catalogues of Dartmouth College which I examined mention no expenses prior to 1822, in which year the cost of tuition was $26, other expenses amounting to about $75. This scale of expense changed little until 1862, when tuition cost $51, and other expenses amounted to about $101. In 1892 the figures were higher, tuition being $90 and other expenses about $191. In 1830 the total expenses per student at Waterville, Hamilton, Amherst, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania ranged from $84 at the first named to $180 at the last; in 1893 from $275, or more, at Waterville to $335, or more, at the University of Pennsylvania.

These facts necessitate the conclusion that every element of the cost of an education has in the last sixty years increased three or four fold. It cannot be said that this increase of cost can in any way be avoided. It is simply a part of the increase which belongs to the cost of living in a simple and rural community to living in a community whose relations are more or less elaborate. The college is a part of the community; it is moved by all that moves the community. The ordinary family of the community is spending several times as much money as the family of the community of two generations ago. The college-man does as the family does of which he is a member. It is also to be said that the cost of the administration of a college has vastly increased. Though complaints as to the present small salaries of college professors abound, yet these salaries have increased quite as rapidly as most incomes. At the period of the American Revolution the average salary of a professor at Harvard was £200. Early in the century the salary was $1,500 and remained at that figure till 1838-39. At this time it was increased to $1,800. In 1854 it was raised to $2,000. In the next twelve years it was by successive increments so increased that in 1866 it was $3,200. In 1869 it became $4,000. The maximum salary now paid in the college is $4,500, and in the Law School $5,000.

The most expensive part, in certain respects, of a college to-day is the laboratory and the library. The laboratory is wholly a new creation, and the library in its present extensive relations is also new. The library of Harvard College cost for the year for which the last report is made $50,000. What a laboratory costs it is hard to separate from other elements of expense. But each college is spending in scientific instruction and in scientific apparatus many times what it expended some years ago. All this increase of cost must directly or indirectly increase the cost of an education to each student. Yet the cost to a student for an education does not consist only of the amount of his formal fees and the cost of board and room. The expenses which are called incidental are now in a few colleges larger than all others. Not a few college men of an economical turn find that when they have added together the three things -the cost of tuition, room and board-that the expenditure of the whole year will be represented by this sum multiplied by two. Now there can be no doubt that the cost of an education is keeping many men from receiving it, and the question therefore recurs, Can anything be done to open the way to boys who want to go to college but who cannot pass through the narrow financial doorway?—Prof. Charles F. Thwing, in the Forum for January.

THE CRIMINAL RECORD OF 1894.

THE mine of facts that the Chicago Tribune includes in its annual record of lynchings. murders, suicides and embezzlements for 1894 will furnish the student of social subjects a century hence with some of his most valuable material. The statistics for the year just past have a more than ordinary interest, as they make it possible to estimate in a crude way whether times of depression in business are an inducement to crime. So far as the record of 1894 has weight it will go to prove the theory that adverse times are more fertile in crime than prosperous times, for the number of murders, suicides and embezzlements all show a startling increase, not only over last year, but also over any previous year's record. This would seem to strengthen the belief that "the devil finds some work for idle hands to do."

Either past records have been incomplete or else the crime of murder was unusually prevalent in 1894. There were 9,800 murders reported, an increase of almost exactly 50 per cent over the previous year. This is a startling record. In 1893 there were 6,615 murders reported, 6,791 in 1892, and 5,906 in 1891. Allowing for the increase in population and the greater care taken in gathering information, there is still a larger increase in the number of murders than can be accounted for except by a growing propensity for this crime. The causes of these murders appear in the following table, quarrels maintaining the lead, as they probably always have, and the large number due to strikes being noticeable: Highwaymen killed.........

Quarrels........ Unknown

.............

.... ...............

Jealousy..........................

Liquor

By highwaymen...............

Infanticide..

Resisting arrest..........

4,536

1,856

Strikes.......

812

Insanity.

776

Self-defense...

.......... .....

204 179 126 99

49

25

The number of legal executions in the year looks ludicrously small in comparison with the number of murders. There were only 132, which, while an increase of 6 over the executions in 1893, bears no comparison to the increase in murders. The doubtful honor of having the largest number of hangings belongs to Alabama, which had 13, Texas and Missouri followed with 9 each, and Pennsylvania comes fourth with 8 hangings, while New York electrocuted only 2. Forty-one legal executions occurred in the North and 91 in the South. Judging from the small proportion that the legal executions bear to the murders, that crime appears to be one of the safest to commit. A murderer had about one chance in seventy-four of being legally executed, while, calculating the population of the country at 65,000,000, every man, woman and child ran one chance in 6,653 of being murdered, a greater chance than it is comfortable to contemplate.

It is not encouraging to know that the lynchings exceeded the legal executions by nearly 50 per cent. The latter numbered 132 and the former 190. The colored race furnished the lynchers with more than twothirds of their victims, 134 negroes having been lynched and 56 white persons. The South lynched 166 persons and the North 24, or in the proportion of about seven in the former neighborhood to one in the latter. Georgia saw the largest number of lynchings, 20 having occurred in that State, while Alabama and Kentucky followed with 19 each. Mississippi had 16 lynchings and Tennessee and Alabama 15 each. Pennsylvania, to its shame be it said, had one lynching. Only about one-fifth of the lynchings of colored men were due to the offense which has been held up as an excuse for taking summary vengeance on the perpetrator. A large number were for such offenses as stealing and barn burning, showing how rapidly the violation of the law in one instance leads to other violations. The total lynchings number ten less than in 1893.

Another proof that idleness leads to crime is furnished by the increase in the number of suicides. The total suicides in the country in 1894 were 4,912, as compared with 4,436 in 1893 and 3,860 in 1892. The causes were the same and bear nearly the same proportion to each other as in past years. They are given in the following table:

A surprisingly small number of suicides is ascribed to business losses, only about half the number that is ascribed to disappointment in love. This would tend to show that the loss of love has a more depressing Influence than the loss of money. For the first time the record shows that poison was preferred to the pistol as a means of suicide, 1,729 persons having chosen the former method to 1,504 who chose the latter. Hanging was preferred by 720, drowning by 373, and throat-cutting by 847.

Five starved themselves to death and four scattered themselves with dynamite, Still another discouraging feature of the year was the

embezzlements, public and private, which amounted to the enormous total of $25,234,112, as compared with $19,929,692 in 1893, and the largest of any year on record.—Philadelphia Press.

DOCTORS ON THE BICYCLE.

THE place of the bicycle in modern civilization was rather strikingly illustrated the other evening when the New York Academy of Medicine listened to an elaborate paper by Dr. Graeme Hammond on the wheel, its great uses and possible abuses in health and sickness, and then engaged in an animated discussion which resulted in a cordial and unanimous acknowledgment of its manifold and enduring merits. It was conceded, of course, that extravagant and otherwise ill-judged use of the bicycle may have serious consequences, but so far from showing that wheeling is peculiarly open to objection on this score, the observation and personal experiences of the medical gentlemen present tended to demonstrate the precise reverse.

It scarcely needed to be pointed out that bicycle riding may endanger persons afflicted with heart disease, and that such persons ought to take competent advice as to their individual liability to ill-results from this mode of exercise. It is a more important and a more cheerful fact that in some varieties of heart disease the bicycle may be better than any medicine, and that numerous human ailments are practically incapable of resisting its curative powers. To persons living in cities, and therefore presumably leading lives of comparative confinement predisposing them to physical degeneration, and especially to nervous disorders, the bicycle as an instrument of exercise and diversion is a potential blessing of the first magnitude. There are thousands of men and women who have proved this fact for themselves, to their great benefit and satisfaction, and who require no medical certificate to confirm their personal discov. eries. But for the skeptical and the indolent who need to be not only convinced but stimulated into practicing a new creed of physical well-being, the conclusions of the Academy of Medicine are important and timely. Dogmatic criticisms of the bicycle have not been wanting in the past and will probably be repeated in the future. It has been accused of producing all manner of organic and functional derangements, and especially of grotesque partiality in developing the legs at the expense of the rest of the body. A malicious and insidious influence upon the heart, brain, lungs and liver has been attributed to it, and the art of caricature has been employed to convey alleged truth by obvious exaggeration. It is a satisfaction to see Dr. Hammond and his professional brethren confronting these reckless charges with the deliberate assertion that there is no part of his physical organism which the bicycle rider may not confidently expect to benefit by moderate use of this admirable vehicle, with corresponding advantage to his mental, and they might have added, his moral faculties.

We are glad to find in the discussion a note of warning not merely against general excess but against the "century run" in particular--a present and growing fad which subjects youthful enthusiasts to peculiar temptation. But there is one point on which we should not be extremely sorry to convict the New York doctors of error. They agree, we believe, that the hunchback position which tens of thousands of amateurs have copied from professional wheelmen produces no spinal deformity or injurious effect upon the vital organs, so far as their observations have extended. Therein, unless the London Lancet has been misquoted, they are at variance with that eminent authority, which has not only diagnosed a specific disorder attributable to that cause, but given it the appalling name of Kyphosis Bicyclistarum. If there is cause for congratulation in the fact that our own medical men have been able to find no trace of such a malady, there is also reason to fear that their candid declaration will tend to multiply the number of riders guilty of assuming an ugly and irrational posture. The Academy of Medicine does not approve, indeed, it inferentially condemns the professional stoop; but its utter ances contain no warning calculated to deter the thoughtless and the obstinate. Aside from this, its verdict is altogether satisfactory. The bicycle needed no vindication, but it amply deserved a eulogy.—New York Tribune.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

Bishop J. P. Newman denies a story published in a Baptist paper that he baptized General Grant when the latter was unconscious. He says the General was in full possession of all his faculties when the rite was administered.

Miss Nellie Cushman, of Arizona, who has the reputation of being the only woman mining expert in the world, is a Kansas girl, and began her work in examining ore at Tucson, Ariz., nine years ago, when she was a girl of seventeen. She first became interested in the work through her brother, a mineralogist, and her own quickness soon made her an authority in the unusual line she had adopted.

Julian Tennyson, grand nephew of the late Lord Tennyson, resides in Long Island City, where he is cultivating his voice, a fine barytone, under tuition of a composer. It is his intention to become a professional vocalist-not a poet.

Miss Ida Welt, the only woman chemist in Paris, is a graduate of Vassar. She distinguished herself at the Universities of Geneva and Paris, and the Academy of Science has just published her "Researches on Dissymmetrical Hydrocarbons."

The railways in the State of Ohio have carried 85,000,000 passengers during the last two years without a fatal accident to one of them-a creditable fact which appears to confirm the assertion that a seat in a railway train is one of the safest places in the world.-Railway Age.

There are at Vassar two beautiful vases sent from Japan by a former graduate, who is now the wife of Count Oyama, who led the successful land forces in the capture of Port Arthur. The countess, although a Japanese, was so thoroughly Americanized by her four years in this country that she spreads an American table and wears Paris gowns.

The will of the late Henry Saltonstall, of Boston, bequeaths all his property to his wife during her life, and at her death the following public bequests are to be made: Harvard College, $59,000; Boston Society of Natural History, $15,000; Institute of Technology, $50,000; Massachusetts General Hospital, $10,000; the Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston, $10,000; and $20,000 to be given in charities at the discretion of the trustees under the will.

Queen Marguerite, of Italy, is not only the best looking but the best educated Queen in Europe. She knows English, French, German, Spanish and Latin thoroughly, and she speaks them as fluently as she does her own Italian. She is a good Greek scholar, and is not only familiar with the masterpieces of European literature, and quotes Petrarch, Dante and Goethe, but is so fond of Shakespeare that she has written for her own amusement a little work on his heroines.

Although Henrik Ibsen and Bjornstjerne Bjornson are more generally known outside of Norway, it is Jonas Lie who has in that country been called "the poet of family life." When he celebrated his 60th birthday last year the streets of Christiansand, where the novelist lives, were decked with flags and bunting, and the musical societies combined and sang odes composed in his honor. In the capital itself a great banquet was held to express the admiration of Norway's most cultured society for their great fellow countryman.

Mr. Andrew Lang received from R. L. Stevenson, a week before the novelist's death, a letter in which the latter showed for the first time a certain anxiety about himself. He said that he was haunted by a dread of paralysis, of a lingering mental malady, of living on, no longer himself, like Swift. This most unhappy fate for a man of genius it is good to know that Stevenson escaped. Mr. Lang notes that his friend took a boyish and exuberant delight in the success of the new Edinburgh edition of his works. He was busy with many plans for new books. One of these concerned a romance on the unknown, mysterious years of Prince Charles Edward, for which, only a month ago, MS. materials were sent out to him.

SCIENTIFIC

EXTINCT BIRDS.

THE question of extinct animals is being made a subject of study by scholars more and more, and it is to these studies that the science of the evolution of species owes much of its present status. Madagascar is one of the countries which has supplied the greatest number of documents on this subject. In this connection may be mentioned the gigantic egg, or rather a drawing of it, which was given to the well-known explorer, Jules Verneaux, by M. Sganzin, a captain of artillery in the navy. Later, Messrs. Goudot and Dumarèle, contributed some very interesting data on the same subject. Mr. Dumarèle in particular, mentions having seen at Port Leven, on the northeast coast of Madagascar, an immense egg which contained about thirteen liters. In 1851, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire communicated to the Academy of Sciences the discovery of two gigantic eggs in the Island of Madagascar. These, together with the skeleton which was found beside them, were purchased for the Museum of Natural History at Paris. The French scholars reconstructed the animal, of which they had but the remains, and found it to be the Epyornis maximus, which played the same rôle in the world of birds which the whale plays in the world of fishes and the elephant that of animals. The eggs, which were brought to France a short time after by Mr. Abadie, corroborated the data of Saint-Hilaire. One of these eggs was equal to 147 hen's eggs and held eight liters. Gigantic eggs began to pour into France, and each one was honored with an official communication to the Academy of Sciences.

First among the questions which were raised was this: Were these eggs of living or extinct birds? Mr. Alfred Grandidier, a brave man and distinguished naturalist, decided to solve this question and to find these gigantic birds and bring them, living or dead, to the Academy. The birds proved to be very dead indeed, and Mr. Grandidier was only

able to bring to the Academy their gigantic skeletons. But the materials furnished by Mr. Grandidier and others who followed in his footsteps, enabled the museums to resuscitate the world of extinct birds of Madagascar.

Messrs. Alphonse Milne-Edwards and Alfred Grandidier particularly distinguished themselves in this connection, and their works have obtained scientific renown. Mr. E. Blanchard, of the Academy of Sciences, tells us, in the last number of the Journal des Savants, that "The birds, or rather their bones, found in Madagascar, belong to numerous and varied species. To-day there are less than a dozen species, some of great size, others of medium dimensions. Their anatomical character permits them to be divided into two sections: that of the Epyornis, with broad and massive feet, and that of the Mullerornis with smaller feet, resembling the cassowary of New Guinea. The greatest of all the Epyornis, the Apyornis ingens, was even more immense than the Epyornis maximus. The thigh, short and massive, showed and even exaggerated the character of the species as described by Saint-Hilaire. The numerous bones of the Epyornis Titan, brought by Messrs. Greve and Samat, shows a less massive species and with finer joints. The Epyornis maximus is very much smaller than the other two species just mentioned. The head shows it to be very far removed from the Moa of New Zealand and shows some resemblance to the Nandu of South America. The Mullerornis, birds of medium size, have not the massive appearance of the Æpyornis, and are more nearly like the cassowary. They can now be recognized only by some of the bones of the feet, but these allow of their being separated into three different species. The Mullerornis Betsilei lived in the center of the island; the Mullerornis agilis occupied the southwest side; and the third species, Mullerornis rudis, was found in the west side. The conditions in which they were found seemed to indicate that these birds frequented the borders of streams and, if they did not swim, they lived among the reeds bordering the lakes and the rivers. Wherever they have been found, their bones are much like those of small hippopotami, crocodiles and turtles, that is to say, of semi-aquatic animals. The Epyornis must have lived in the low and marshy plains; they must also have built their nests there, if one may judge by the number of pieces of skeletons of very young birds which are found in abundance. During late years, bones of the Epyornis have been collected in the center of the island and from various points on the western shore. Mr. Andrews has made a serious study of these remains; and he has drawn from them the conclusion that the Epyornis had very different forms under the connection of size and proportion.

The Epyornis of Madagascar, like the Moa of New Zealand, are adding fuel to the old discussion as to the communication which existed between foreign countries. Starting out with the principle that running birds unable to fly are found in countries very distant from each other, as the ostrich in Africa, the nandu in America, the moa of New Zea land, the Epyornis of Madagascar, the deduction has been drawn that if no communication had existed between these countries, the birds would not have been able to acclimatize themselves.

According to Mr. Blanchard one can only perceive in these facts "that there must have been a geographical division very analogous to that of the representatives of the zoological types. With regard to the group of which the cock and the hen form a part, under the form most generally known, the gallinaceous, we see the pheasants in Asia, the guineas in Africa, the penelope in South America and the turkey in North America. Does not this distribution of this family indicate that the lands which they inhabit must have had some intercommunication during a late age of the earth?"

However that may be, it is indisputable that the disappearing fauna of Madagascar has in store some surprises for the science of evolution and promises to throw upon it some new light, which may possibly clear up some obscure points on the theory of the descent of man.-Translated for PUBLIC OPINION from the article in the Paris Revue des Revues.

THE influences that go to the making of a man are commonly put into two classes, labeled respectively "heredity" and "environment." The result of this classification is endless confusion of thought, The word "heredity" should, in philosophy, be limited to indicate that which flows in the blood, that which is contained in the constitution of the child at the moment the umbilical cord is severed and the first breath is taken. In practice the word is never so limited, because the domestic and legal uses of the word are familiar, and because what are called the facts concerning heredity have a twofold nature. In the philosophic sense a prince inherits from his royal father only what runs in the blood, only

that which would come out in the character if the prince were at birth removed from every kind of association with the royal line of his ancestry. In the ordinary course of events the prince inherits the titles, estates, heirlooms, customs, modes of thought, estimates of himself and of his fellow men, education, national idiosyncrasies, standards of morality, personal habits and social regulations which are current in his family. In the philosophic sense none of these things are hereditary. But there are few lists of hereditary qualities that are not largely made up of traits which are hereditary by contagion and not by transmission through the blood.

In the environment of a man are innumerable things which affect his nature and destiny. There is a physical environment and a mental and moral environment. Commonly the environment is regarded as that which is outside of a man, which remains outside of him, and which is always the subject of action and reaction. Hence the confusion of thought. For in a third something, between the heredity that runs in the blood and the environment which remains outside of a man, are to be found most of the facts which illustrate the course of human evolution. There is a real heredity which mimics the continuity of the germplasm, and runs along the line of life from generation to generation, not outside of human minds, but inside of them. The child is born with organs, aptitudes, powers, possibilities, appetites, desires, impulses and (probably) with a few instincts. But it is born without ideas, knowledge, habits or moral character. These furnishings of the mind, however, are at hand, waiting to press into the new-born child and to become a part of him. Once inside, they are no longer a part of his environment, and are commonly supposed to have been born in him. If a magnet were alive and had the power of drawing into its own substance the thing it attracts, it would serve as an illustration of the new-born babe and its relations to the ideas which leap into its constitution and become its own. Heredity and tradition, its mimic and twin companion, work together within the field of the fixed environment afforded by the external world. Through the germ-plasm run from parent to child the fixed qualities of the race. Through contact of mind with mind run the prepossessions, prejudices, ideas, forms of thought and specific devices which result in knowledge, culture, habits and character. This mimic heredity is the most extraordinary factor in the evolution of the intellect, and ought to have new honor as the channel through which flows the moral life of the world.

During the last quarter of a century the doctrine of heredity has played a giant's part. For good or for evil, it has shaped the thought of every philosopher, theologian, teacher, statesman, political economist and reformer-of every one who has aspired to rule his fellow men, from anarchist up, or down, to tyrant. Yet it is admitted now that all our beliefs about heredity must be revised. Shem, Ham and Japhet have lost their ancient distinction. The ancestral home of the Aryan race has wandered from that hypothetical Lemuria in the Indian Ocean to the bogs of northern Europe, seeking for an ancestor and a progeny. A while ago anthropologists classified races and nations by the color of the skin, the tint of the iris or the kink of the hair, and, so doing, furnished an explanation of racial distinctions and prejudices. Then they discov ered ancestral lines of influence running back through language, religion and domestic customs to Sanscrit and other fountain heads. Thereupon they introduced to each other as near of kin white, brown and yellow races, and the European linguist embraced the Hindoo pundit as his longlost cousin. But the mutual congratulations of these long separated kinsfolk were soon interrupted by the announcement that language, religion, domestic customs and folk-lore held in common were not proofs of a common descent. Religions have a trick of passing the bounds of race and settling themselves deep in the hearts of people born to other faiths. Languages leap like monkeys from one genealogical tree to another. Folk-lore travels around the world seeking its own, and finding shelter wherever a good story is loved and repeated. Customs cross the track of migration and settle where they fit the needs of the people. The marguerite in America, the watercress in New Zealand and the rabbits of Australia show that life the most abundant and growth the most luxuriant may indicate, not hereditary possession of the soil, but novelty and a lack of continuity in the line of evolution.-George Batchelor, in the New World Quarterly for December.

AN ATTACK ON THE DIPHTHERIA ANTITOXIN. A PAPER of the greatest interest and importance was read at a recent meeting of the Berlin Medical Society, by Dr. Hansemann. The paper carries especial weight because the author is announced as an assistant of Professor Virchow's, and his work and conclusions are presumably indorsed by the dean of modern pathology. Dr. Hansemann comes out In flat contradiction of the alleged properties and powers of the Behring

immunizing serum. He asserts that in Bretonneau's diphtheria the Loeffler bacillus is not always present, and is not its sole cause. This view will appeal to some clinicians and bacteriologists at least, for it is admitted that the Loeffler bacillus is present in some very mild cases of diphtheria as well as in apparently healthy throats, while, on the other hand, it is also known that a streptococcus diphtheria (or sore throat) is sometimes extremely severe and dangerous.

Dr. Hansemann asserts that Loeffler's bacillus is found constantly in rhinitis fibrosa, without producing diphtheria, and that these alleged pathogenic microbes may multiply in the throat without modifying the course of the diphtheria. All this, we believe, will have to be admitted by pathologists who have without bias studied the disease. Dr. Hansemann asserted further that in the case of animals an injection of a Loeffler bacillus culture caused not diphtheria, but a disease sui generis, the Loeffler bacillus disease; that epidemic diphtheria had never been observed in animals; that guinea-pigs, in contact with diphtheria patients, had never taken diphtheria; but that a case is known where a cat, with which a child suffering from diphtheria had played, had developed all diphtheria symptoms, without, however, any Loeffler bacilli being discoverable. He then proceeded to describe the three qualities claimed for the antitoxin-namely, its therapeutic action, its harmlessness and its immunizing power. He said that the present statistics give an erroneous impression (as already shown by Gottstein in his recently published pamphlet), as many children suffering from lighter forms of throat complaints are now sent to the hospitals to be treated with serum, thus swelling the proportion of cured cases, which would, he said, otherwise not be higher than the usual average. He said that the serum injections could by no means be considered harmless, as affections of the kidneys had frequently followed-in one case more severe in type than had ever yet been observed after diphtheria. He said that it was clear, from Behring's new direc tions, to increase the immunizing dose from sixty to one hundred and fifty unities, that no results have yet been achieved as far as immunizing goes. The final criterion of the efficacy of the antitoxin treatment is clinical experience. Even if Hansemann's pathology is correct, therefore, it will make no difference provided the diphtheria patients get well.

The difficulties in estimating exactly the value of a new therapeutic procedure which comes loudly heralded and solidly indorsed are very great. Unusual attention is paid to every patient, greater watchfulness, more thorough supervision and earlier diagnosis and treatment are always found. These factors must all be considered in estimating the results of the serum treatment.. It would be not only a disappointment to all well-wishers of humanity, but would be a serious blow to the rising prestige of medical science, if, after all, the serum treatment should fall short of its high expectations.-New York Medical Record.

FOUR HUNDRED DEGREES BELOW ZERO.

FOUR hundred and twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit below zero! Just what this means it is almost impossible to imagine, and, yet, it is one of the temperatures which have been reached and used in laboratory research, and has been made the subject of some highly interesting experiments and explanations by Professor Dewar before the British Royal Institution. Four hundred degrees below zero is not an everyday temperature, nor can it be reached by more everyday means than the expansion of liquid air, which latter Professor Dewar has succeeded in producing in comparatively large quantities, and in storing by novel and ingenious methods, to be used as required in the study of matter at abnormally low temperature, exactly as a spirit lamp or a Bunsen burner is used in studying the properties of different bodies at higher temperatures. The tensile strength of iron at 400 degrees below zero is just twice what it is at 60 degrees above. It will take a strain of 60 instead of 30 tons to the square inch, and equally curious results have come out as to the elongation of metals under these conditions. It was an idea of Faraday that the magnetism in a permanent magnet would be increased at very low temperatures, and experiments with comparatively low temperatures had rather negatived Faraday's suggestion, but Professor Dewar has completely verified the opinion of the famous savant, having shown that a magnet at the extremely low temperature made possible by the liquid air had its power increased by about 50 per cent. Very low temperature was shown also to have a remarkable effect upon the color of many bodies. For example, the brilliant scarlet of vermilion and mercuric iodide is reduced, under its influence, to a pale orange, the original color returning with the rise of the temperature. Blues, on the other hand, are unaffected by cold, and the effect is comparatively small upon organic coloring in matters of all tints.-Cassier's Magazine for January.