not know an element from a compound, and those who have passed the searching college-entrance examination.

Wishing to know what is the actual practise in the higher institutions. I sent to each of the twenty-three colleges and universities that contribute to the College Entrance Examination Board, the following among other questions: 'Are those students that have passed elementary chemistry on entrance obliged to take general chemistry again if they continue the subject, or may they go on at once with more advanced work?' The College Entrance people were selected because they are united on a definite object, and are supposed to allow candidates for admission to offer chemistry. The result would probably not vary much if other colleges had been interviewed. Of twenty-three replies to this question (for every one answered it) seventeen are to the effect that the subject must be repeated, though a few say that if the course has been as thorough in the high school as it is in the particular college, the student may go on, implying at the same time that this rarely, if ever, happens. In two cases chemistry was not allowed as an entrance elective. One states unqualifiedly that students may go on, another that they may, but that very few continue the subject. Thus the almost unanimous verdict is: Repeat. And the offense with which the high school is charged is inadequate preparation.

Wishing to get at the evidence which weighed in the minds of the judges, I put to the same twenty-three institutions this question: In what part of the work do you find those offering chemistry most deficient?' To this question fifteen direct answers were given, and as they form the important evidence on which my client is convicted, I quote them.

ANSWERS.

1. Elementary general principles. 2. A comprehension of underlying principles. Pupils acquire facts but do not understand their relation to general principles.

3. Want of application.

4. Work is not thorough; mostly taught from books, ground covered too great for time devoted to it.

5. Elementary logic. Students coming to college are very deficient in reasoning. 6. Equations and laboratory work. 7. Making, putting up and using apparatus; a thorough knowledge of the nonmetals; quantitative experiments.

8. Their failings will vary with the instruction they have received.

try does not amount to much. The student does not get enough of it to amount to a row of pins. Now, on the other hand, the university professor begins at the beginning. He can not skip oxygen or hydrogen or nitrogen or water or the atmosphere because the students have heard these names once or twice in school," etc. Such a scathing anathema, besides degrading the high school teacher's work, and elevating to the pedestal the university professor's, shows ignorance of high school chemistry as taught to-day. Hundreds of these schools have as teachers graduates in chemistry from colleges and technological schools, and scores have degree men from German and American universities who are 'real chemists,' and whose work compares favorably with that done in college. Again, it is the exception that high schools now building and recently built are not well equipped with laboratories. Within ten miles of this spot there is a high school chemical laboratory on which there was laid out for repairs alone last year more than $10,000, and another high school plant in the same city whose original cost more than thirty years ago was $40,000. Two weeks ago, happening to be in a city of only 25,000 people, in another state, I visited a high school laboratory better equipped than any college laboratory doing the same grade of work that it has been my fortune to examine.

This statement might have been true twenty-five years ago; it is probably true now of some remote country high schools. Its iteration by only one out of twentythree shows that most colleges recognize the improved conditions in high school work.

Yet from these replies of representative higher institutions there seems no doubt that preparatory schools are trying to do too much and are really doing too little. Where is the fault, and what is the remedy?

A majority of the replies state distinctly that the deficiency is in laws and general principles; that students can not sufficiently correlate facts and theories. The teaching of laws, general principles and chemical theory assumes, therefore, paramount importance and constitutes the great desideratum. Elsewhere I have dwelt upon the importance of theory teaching, and the verdict of these colleges is a convincing corroboration.

While the inculcation of principles and laws is acknowledged by every instructor to be the most difficult part of his work, something to be avoided by the easy-going teacher and slothful student, yet it is recognized as the only thing that can give a broad grasp of the subject and, with requisite experiments, yield the largest results. The tendency in some quarters to omit the application of these broad principles, to abolish the text-book, to abuse the laboratory by excessive use to the exclusion of recitation and lecture, should be viewed with only temporary alarm, for such abnormalities will finally right themselves when the ideal course is adopted.

Entering college on chemistry is a comparatively recent thing. The colleges are the pacemakers, and the high schools are trying their best to keep up.

In the elective system that subject must take the place of so much mathematics, or some ancient or modern language. To be the equivalent of any one of these, a great deal of ground must be covered-the nonmetals and the chief metals, laws and general principles, the chemical theory including nomenclature, symbolization, etc. The fitting schools have tried to cover all this extensive ground, and, as most of these schools give but one year of three to five hours per week to chemistry, the result has been to borrow Mr. Morgan's phrase of 'undigested securities'-a vast amount

of undigested facts. Little wonder the students are deficient in ‘elementary logic,' in power of 'application,' and that 'their failures vary with the instruction they have received,' or failed to receive. The colleges, on the other hand, have set examinations to fit a one-year crammed course and have admitted students that were confessedly unable to go on with the higher branches of the subject, and were thus forced to repeat in a more thorough manner the work of the preparatory school. This unnatural loss of time and energy can not long continue in a quickened educational atmosphere. Two roads lead out of the woods. Let the authorities explicitly state that thorough preparation in the entire field of general chemistry can not be had in less than two years of five hours per week in a well-equipped laboratory. Make the examination rigid enough to meet this demand, and when the student has entered college, do not require him to repeat his work, but give him advanced standing, as he would have in Latin or mathematics. This is one road. The other, and I believe better one, is: Limit the requirement to one year's work; cut out the consideration of metals except as they incidentally appear in salts and acids radicals; demand a thorough course in the non-metals, the chemical theory, laws and general principles. Then, as in the other case, do not ask the student to waste another year or half year in repetition, but give him advanced work, beginning with metals.

Either of these plans would relegate the rudiments of the science to the high schools as is fitting. Why should the college teach high school chemistry any more than high school English, or high school algebra believe it is almost, if not altogether, as important that every high school graduate should know something of the composition

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of the air he breathes, the constituents of the food that nourishes him and the reactions of the fuel that keeps him warm, as to know the binomial theorem or the proof of the pons asinorum. Why require the latter as a prerequisite to entrance upon a liberal education, and omit the former? When colleges take the same stand concerning the fundamentals of chemistry which they assume in English and in mathematics, a great advance will have been made. As Cæsar is read in a preparatory Latin course, and not again studied in college, let oxygen, carbon and silica be relegated to the secondary schools, and the college course begin with metals, analysis, etc. This division line is purely arbitrary, but it serves my purpose of illustration. Any other division mutually agreed upon by conference of representatives of the two classes of institutions would serve equally well. I believe it to be entirely practicable for a conference of college and high school men to lay out a course with experiments to cover the required ground so satisfactorily that no repetition shall be needed.

I believe this subject is worthy of the most serious consideration from an economic standpoint. Last year President Butler gave an address before this association on the waste of time between the primary school and the university, and this week the discussion has been renewed under other forms by the college presidents. Right here is our chance for contribution. Save a year in chemistry. I believe it to be the plain duty of colleges and high schools to cooperate in formulating such a plan. Especially it seems to me that a strong point can be scored by the examination board that has undertaken the task of unifying entrance examinations and preparatory work, of setting a model which the high schools shall attain unto, in order that a

year of school life be not lost, that the student may begin in college where he leaves off in the high school, with preliminary work reasonably complete and satisfactory.

RUFUS P. WILLIAMS.

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS.

Municipal Public Works, their Inception, Construction and Management. By S. WHINERY, Civil Engineer. New York, The Macmillan Company. 1903. 8vo. Pp. 241. 8 in. by 53 in.

This is an excellent book on a subject which is more and more attracting the attention of the general public. It is written by an experienced engineer for the inexperienced city official and for the urban citizen.' Although it treats of engineering subjects it is not a book of engineering. It is rather a book of public policy in municipal engineering affairs, and as such it differs from many books which have recently appeared with similar titles.

The early chapters in the book are elementary, describing the scope of municipal works, the relation to them of the engineering departments and the manner of financially providing for their support. The author then takes up the question of contract work, and discusses various details of it, such as advertising, preparing specifications, opening bids, awarding contracts, supervising the work, etc. He favors contract work as opposed to work done directly by the city, but points out many weak points in the ordinary contract. Contractors he divides into three classes-the honest and responsible contractor, the irresponsible and unreliable contractor and the boodler; and his descriptions of the conditions which operate to develop these different individuals are most instructive. He is strongly opposed to the compulsory award of contracts to the lowest bidder, and believes that in this, as in many other matters, the engineer or the commissioner should have more latitude and be held personally responsible for the result. In some of these matters the author is at variance with present custom, his theory being,

apparently, that there is less chance of bad results due to the use of autocratic power by an occasional dishonest or unfit official than by the operation of laws which continually hamper honest officials and which are ignored or broken by the dishonest ones.

Perhaps the most valuable portion of the book is that which relates to the financial side of municipal works. The subjects of guarantees, special assessments, uniform accounts, municipal ownership, quasi-public corporations are treated in special chapters. His criticisms of the ordinary methods of municipal accounting are severe, but none too severe, as any one will admit who has attempted to compare the cost of any class of municipal work for different cities. And he is quite right when he says that many questions of public policy are being to-day obscured because of false statements issued with no intention to deceive, but simply as a result of bad bookkeeping. Among these questions he places that of municipal ownership' of public utilities, and while not wholly deprecating the modern trend toward public purchase of private water works, electric light works, etc., he believes that such changes should be made only after a more complete study of all the financial elements which enter into the question than is usually given to it. His comments upon the proper treatment of such matters as maintenance, operating expenses, interest, depreciation, sinking funds, in connection with the valuation of private property are worthy of serious consideration.

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Instead of the wholesale municipal assumption of public utilities he favors private ownership under suitable control, and in the last chapter he outlines a plan and offers it as a solution of this vexed question. He would organize all quasi-public corporations under a general state law, similar in its general features to the present interstate-commerce law, and would make the law 'so radical and far-reaching as to assume, within limitations, the absolute control of quasi-public corporations and of their relations between them and the municipal corporations.'

Whether or not the reader agrees with all the author's conclusions upon the questions

discussed, he will admit that his points are well argued and that the book has given him a clear outlook upon the broad subject of municipal works.

GEORGE C. WHIPPLE.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE.

ELECTRICITY AT HIGH PRESSURES.

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Some three or four years ago* I put forward the idea that just as with increase of vacuum and potential the Roentgen rays become more and more penetrating, there may possibly be produced, when cathode ray ions (electrons) move with the very highest velocities, rays that penetrate considerable thicknesses of nearly all bodies without undergoing absorption. Interstellar space may be traversed not only by light and heat waves, but also by rays of the more recently discovered penetrating kinds including those of extreme penetrating powers above assumed as possible.

From what source would such highly penetrating rays as are referred to come? Might they not come from matter (electrons or assemblages of electrons called atoms, or even small masses of matter) moving with such very high velocities as are somewhat comparable with the velocity of light? These assemblages of electrons on impact would probably give Roentgen rays of all orders up to the very highest or most penetrating. Such rays would be absorbed only in larger or denser masses of matter and the absorption would ordinarily be undiscoverable. The celestial bodies, as the stars, planets, etc., would probably absorb the rays, and the rays in being so absorbed would add energy to the masses, tending to some extent to keep up their temperature.

The natural question arises as to whether there are any existing conditions under which the smallest particles could attain high velocities. When an extremely minute particle of matter near the sun or in the outer envelope of gas around the sun is of a nature to absorb the radiation, a radiation pressure will be exerted

upon it which may, if the particle is small enough, be in excess of gravitational force. Such particles continuously expelled, in virtue of the excess of radiation pressure over gravitation, may give rise to the coronal streamers around the sun. If the condition just pointed out be possible, the particle will, under the difference of force, be accelerated outwardly from the sun, and continue to move away with an acceleration which, though diminishing, is still an acceleration. Such particles would naturally be expected to leave or be driven away from any hot star.

That a particle once started away will continue moving outwardly with an acceleration, follows from the fact that both the radiation pressure and gravitation vary as the inverse squares of the distances. This means that if a particle is moving towards the sun under the influence of gravitation, it will not at any time be stopped by the radiation pressure unless it be subdivided into smaller particles. It also means that any set of particles moving from the sun under radiation pressure in excess of gravitation must continue forever moving away, unless such particles are brought together into large masses or collide with other masses. It is possible that the limiting velocity which could be attained would be the speed of light waves in the ether. Such rapidly moving particles, whether consisting of many molecules or atoms (groups of electrons) or consisting of separate electrons or ions would probably, on striking other particles or masses, give out intense radiation of the Roentgen ray order, and accompany the same by heat radiation, or visible radiation, or both. particles might even serve to illuminate some of the apparently cold nebulæ, either by the impact generating heat and light, or by fluor

escence.

Such

Here, then, is the outline of a new corpuscular theory of energy conservation, which is not the Newtonian corpuscular theory, but which supplements the undulatory theory in providing a mode of recovery for at least a portion of the energy of radiation. Any particle which is set in motion by the radiation pressure is within limits converting the energy of radiation into mechanical move