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Editor: William Jay Youmans

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APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LV

MAY TO OCTOBER, 1899

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1899

APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

AUGUST, 1899.

PUBLIC CHARITY AND PRIVATE VIGILANCE.

BY FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, PH. D.,

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

The Comptroller of the City of New York deserves the thanks of all good citizens for his serious indictment of the abuses of public charity that have grown up in this city and State within the past ten years. Probably very few of the more intelligent men and women of the community were aware that three million dollars, raised by taxation, are annually appropriated to the assistance of private charitable institutions, over which the public has no real control and only the most shadowy authority through the inspection of the State Board of Charities. Of those who were informed of this fact, very few indeed were acquainted with the specific abuses which the comptroller's article exposes. To a few individuals, however, who have devoted time and money unselfishly to the defense of public interests and to the exposure of the evils of irresponsible relief, these facts have long been familiar. Such can not fail to take satisfaction in the clear presentation of the case by Mr. Coler. Especially to the men and women who have been connected with the work of the State Charities Aid Association and the Charity Organization Society will Mr. Coler's article be welcome, as a strong re-enforcement of arguments which they for years have been presenting to the people of New York, oftentimes, it has seemed, to but unwilling hearers.

It is therefore in no spirit of fundamental disagreement, but rather in the desire to further the reform which the comptroller demands, that I venture to criticise in two particulars the statement as he has left it.

It is an incomplete view of the enormously difficult problem of charity which fails to set forth some of the reasons that have led to the growth of an excessive faith in the excellence of private institutions and in the wisdom of a co-operation between them and the public, which is taken for granted when they receive appropriations of public money.

Great as have been the abuses associated with private charity, they are small when compared with the abuses that have existed in the public administration of poor relief. As all familiar with the history of this subject know, the old English poor law was so administered in the rural parishes that paupers were in a more eligible position than industrious farm laborers; that women with bastard children were publicly rewarded for unchastity; and that, now and again, rent-paying farmers were willing to surrender their lands to the paupers to work them for what could be made, rather than to go on paying rates. The exposure of the evils of the system, which was made in the report of the famous Poor Law Commission appointed in 1832, and the attempt to abolish them by the provisions of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, ought to be studied by every citizen who desires to perform his full duty as a guardian of public interests, and especially by every individual whose sympathies lead him to undertake any practical effort for the amelioration of pauperism. In the United States, on account of the extremely decentralized character of our poor-relief system generally, we have no such impressive body of critical literature as that which was brought out in England during the first half of the present century. None the less, whenever special investigations of the management of town and city relief administration and of the management of almshouses have been made, deplorable abuses have almost invariably been exposed, and individuals acquainted with the facts have argued that any possible misdirection of either private or public funds through private agencies could not equal the corruption and the inhumanity for which officialism has been responsible.

Let us look at one noteworthy example. In 1891 a special committee appointed to report on outdoor alms in the town of Hartford, Connecticut, discovered a state of affairs with which nothing revealed in Mr. Coler's statements can for a moment be compared. The general situation, the committee said, was found to be as follows:

"In 1885 Hartford was paying .07 for each man, woman, and child of its population in poor relief. New Haven was paying .30; Bridgeport, .03; Waterbury, 81 cents; Norwich, .54; New Britain, .39, etc.; for twelve Connecticut cities an average of .22 per capita against our .07; and with Hartford far ahead of her nearest competitor. For outdoor relief the figures were similar. Hartford, 90 cents per capita; New Haven, 51 cents; Norwalk, 23 cents, etc.--an average for the twelve of 61 cents per capita, with only one higher, Hartford in the lead again by fifty per cent. Five Massachusetts cities, including Boston, Worcester, and Lowell, average .16 for all relief, against our .07; and 24 cents for outdoor relief against our 90 cents. Five other New England cities, including Providence and Bangor, average 33 cents for all relief, against our .07; and 12 cents for outdoor, against our 90 cents. Four New York cities--New York, Brooklyn, Buffalo, and Albany--average 63 cents, against our .07; and 43 cents, against our 90 cents. Five cities in Pennsylvania and Maryland, including Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and Baltimore, average 38 cents against our .07; and 4 cents, against our 90 cents. Seven Western and Southern cities, including Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Charleston, average 62 cents for all relief, against our .07; and 17 cents, against our 90 cents."

A similar comparison extended by the committee to the principal cities of Europe, including Berlin, Dresden, and Stuttgart, showed that here again Hartford led them all. In short, it appeared to be proved that Hartford was spending on the poor more money per capita of population than any other city in the United States, and more than any other in the world, with certain exceptions in Italy, and the noteworthy exceptions of London, .75 per capita, and Paris, .66 per capita. Hartford, however, outranked even London in its percentage of pauper population, which was 6.2 in Hartford, against 2.46 in London. While in Hartford every sixteenth person was a recipient of municipal bounty, in London the proportion was only one in forty. Paris led all, with one in eight.

Investigation of the causes of this deplorable state of affairs revealed an astonishing understanding between the paupers and the officials. Tramps were given residence and support for the sake of their votes on election day. Grocery stores were practically subsidized. Families whose individual members could be made useful politically were supported in outdoor relief.

That the showing was so much better for New York and other great American cities was not a proof of greater honesty or wisdom of administration on the part of municipal officials. The difference was almost wholly due to the enormous extension of private as over against public charity outside of typical New England Commonwealths like Connecticut, where the town method of dealing with such matters still holds its own against other forms of philanthropic enterprise. Proof on this point would be overwhelming were we to take the necessary space to present it. One has only to go through the annual reports of the New York State Board of Charities and read the exposures that have repeatedly been made of the state of affairs on the islands of the East River and in the county almshouses of the State to satisfy himself that were the whole burden of supporting the pauper population of this Commonwealth, and especially of this city, thrown upon the public, private enterprise withdrawing from the competition, the appropriations mentioned by Mr. Coler would sink into ridiculous insignificance by comparison. The appropriation of public money to private institutions has become a scandalous abuse, but we shall never understand its strength until we frankly face the fact that the public has been experimenting with it, hoping thus to find a way of escape from the greater abuses that attend the administration of public relief by public agencies except when they are incessantly watched and held up to the broadest light of publicity by the disinterested efforts of private citizens.

The omission of this side of the matter from Mr. Coler's discussion may perhaps be regarded as a mere failure to deal with the whole of a very large and difficult problem. But it is more than a mere omission; it is, I think, a positive error, and a serious one, into which the comptroller falls when he lays as much stress as he does upon the expenditure, for salaries and wages, of a large proportion of the sums appropriated by the city for private institutions. The real question here, as all sound experience has repeatedly demonstrated, is not whether the expenditure is for salaries in general rather than for relief. This Mr. Coler practically admits when he says that a great deal of money spent for relief is worse than wasted, because it fosters pauperism instead of repressing it, and when, at the close of his article, he says that he found it necessary to create in his department a bureau to investigate the character of institutions asking aid. This is a frank confession that the expenditure of money for salaries or for wages may be wiser than its expenditure in relief, provided the salaries or wages are earned in actual investigation, which results in exposing fraud and preventing expenditures on improper applicants. This is the very kernel of the whole matter, whether it is a private or a public administration of charity that we are considering. The use of money, public or private, for the payment of salaries that are mere sinecures is dishonesty pure and simple, and neither the comptroller nor any of those private organizations that make it their business to watch and criticise administration can have a more imperative duty than that of putting an end to such corruption. But, on the other hand, there could be no better index of positive progress in solving the practical problems of charity than a steady increase in the ratio of expenditures in salaries and wages on account of investigation and prevention to the amount spent in actual relief. That, in fact, would be an ideal administration of public and private charities in which the efficiency of investigators and the practical sagacity of relieving agents was so high that nearly the whole sum expended had to be charged to their salary account.

This is precisely the principle which private organizations like the State Charities Aid Association and the Charity Organization Society have labored in season and out of season to make the public and the officials comprehend. Innumerable exposures of the impostures practiced upon a credulous public by the great class of professional mendicants, tramps, and place seekers have furnished all the evidence that sensible men need to satisfy themselves that large sums expended by the public and by private individuals of charitable proclivities have no other result than that of encouraging pauperism and misery. It is largely due to the tireless efforts of the State Charities Aid Association for many years past that the institutions receiving public moneys in this State have been watched with such vigilance that there is now a strict system of accounting in all of them, and that it has become the duty of the State Board of Charities not only to insist upon such accounting and to carry out a thorough inspection, but also to frame and enforce rules for their government.

These criticisms I offer, however, only because, as I said at the outset, I desire to see the fundamental proposition of Mr. Coler's statement strengthened and made to bear practical fruit. It is indeed a very serious question whether the appropriation of public money to private institutions has not become so great an evil that it would be better to put a stop to it once for all. And yet I must confess to a doubt whether, upon a complete survey of all the facts, this would be the judgment of the most practical and far-seeing men. The granting of appropriations gives to the city and the State a reason and an excuse for a strict inspection of organizations that otherwise might do incalculable mischief by preying upon the credulity of a generous public while concealing their actual operations. I therefore am inclined to think that the path of practical wisdom lies through an attempt to perfect the existing co-operation between public and private agencies, and to bring it to a sounder business basis by developing inspection, publicity, and accountability. If private organizations are encouraged to do all in their own power under a system wherein the State grants them aid under strict conditions, lays down necessary rules for their government and guidance, and remorselessly exposes all their transactions, the actual result may be better in the long run than if State and private associations proceeded independently of one another, often duplicating each other's work, or, if not that, working at cross-purposes.

RECENT LEGISLATION AGAINST THE DRINK EVIL.

BY APPLETON MORGAN.

Five years ago it was sought in these pages to discover the cause or causes of the total failure in the United States of prohibitive legislation.

Our conclusion, so far as a conclusion could be said to have been reached, was that the failure lay in the misapplication of ways to means, rather than of means to ends--namely, that an attempt to abolish the crime of drunkenness by punishing, not the criminal, but the community in which he committed the crime, and to prevent law-breaking by legislating out of existence the neutral instrument which happened to form the particular temptation to the particular law-breaker , was quite too logical to be practicable; as, for instance, laws abolishing the use of spoons, as so many temptations to housebreakers; or of railways, because trespassers on railway tracks were often killed; or steamboats, because steamboat boilers sometimes burst, would be quite too logical for public convenience. Whence it followed that there was no demand for prohibitive liquor laws, and therefore only failure had resulted from attempting to enforce them.

In the five years since that paper was printed almost every one of the United States have recognized such failure and striven to so recast each its statutes as to plant the responsibility for breach of public order upon the real offender without hardship to the law-abiding classes. The results of these attempts have evolved many novel and unusual contrivances and much curious operation of statutory and statistical wisdom, and some remarkable propositions--so much so that it is believed that an effort to digest them will be interesting consideration for readers of the Popular Science Monthly. If the following summary shall develop two apparent paradoxes--first, that the fewer the places where liquor is sold the larger the consumption of liquor; and, second, that the larger the consumption of liquor the less drunkenness--the present writer can only submit that these paradoxes are not his own, but seem to arise from the official statistics submitted under the oaths of the authorities commissioned to collect them, as hereinafter will more fully appear:

Of the forty-nine States and Territories in the United States, the solitary exception above noted is the State of Maine. With a heroism that is actual martyrdom of self-interest and convenience, the State of Maine has clung with imperious tenacity to her policy of absolute prohibition, and to the logic of the report of her citizen, who, sixty-three years ago, carried her first prohibition law through her Legislature. Said that report: "The objection will doubtless be made that had we such a law it could not be enforced. Now, admit the validity of this objection, and it proves the utter hopelessness of the case; for no one, we presume, will venture the supposition that you can accomplish, against law, that which you could not effect with it."

Admitting, as all the world does admit, that the abolition of drunkenness is desirable, against such pitiless, such iron, logic as this, there is no appeal, and from it there is no escape even to-day. But the trouble was, and is, that it is placing an entire Commonwealth in time of peace under martial law. It was in the fitness of things that General Appleton, a soldier, who had seen intoxication in a form most likely to impress him with dangers to the public--i. e., in soldiers to whom the safety of the State in time of war was intrusted--should have brought in the first prohibition law on record; and that, in the teeth of more than two generations of failure, the sovereign State of Maine should have adhered to his martial logic, with the loss of her commerce and the reduction of her census, is a tribute to both the logic of a soldier or the self-insistence of the State which must compel admiration! In sixty-three years Maine has seen her commerce disappear and her population dwindle. She has seen not only her contemporary sister States, but those admitted yesterday and the day before, pass her in affluence and prosperity. But the only remedy for her failure she will listen to the suggestion of is an increased severity of prohibition statutes and an increased crucifixion of her law-abiding citizens, lest one of her own or a single stranger within her gates should obtain a glass of alcoholic compound within her borders.

But, cling as the State of Maine may to the fierce logic of prohibition, it appears that her forty-eight sisters have found its unappealable rigor too rigid, and have modulated it in the diverse ways now to be considered.

In these remaining forty-eight States and Territories of the Union the statistics regulating liquor seem to divide themselves, as to the remedies attempted, into ten heads, as follows:

For No. I, pure and simple, we have but a single report, perhaps not exemplary, or safe to guide the more interior States, but given exactly for what it may be worth. The Governor of Montana reports as follows:

"Saloons are run wide open night and day; while there is a great deal of drinking there is very little drunkenness, and one in an intoxicated condition is promptly arrested and fined." One other State, however , has the continental idea that liquor laws are for "revenue only." Louisiana, therefore, has an elaborate excise, guiltless of any suggestion of reformative objects. So far as her statistics go, she is the most temperate State in the Union.

These considerations have not, however, deterred certain States from ingrafting example upon the statute-book, as nearly as it could be made a subject of legislation, by enacting that there shall be held before the eye of the possible drinker the spectacle of his neighbors drinking rum: trusting, doubtless, to the rum itself to work a condition in the drinker to afford the example required, and so add to the unestimated but hoped-for good example to bad example at hand. Three States--i. e., Indiana, Michigan, and Utah--and the city of Atlanta, Georgia, by municipal ordinance, provide that the premises on which liquor is retailed by drinks shall have no screen or other obstruction before its windows, so that passers-by may see the drinking which goes on therein and its horrible accompanying circumstances. The reports from these States, however, are not such as to commend this policy of example to universal acceptance.

Stripped of detail, this system provides that stock companies called brandy companies shall receive from the crown a monopoly of liquor sales, on condition of maintaining eating houses, reading rooms, lodgings, and other conveniences for the community, and out of surplus profits contribute to the police, the poor, and the educational, funds of the community. The companies shall be under inspection of the royal governor, with no appeal from his discretion, and also under inspection of officers of the three funds entitled to the surplus profits. The companies must close their places of sale on Sundays, can sell only to persons over eighteen years of age, and in the rooms devoted to drinking alone there must be no chairs or settees. After drinking, the purchaser must depart. Such rooms must not be in communication directly with the eating and lodging rooms. In these latter cleanliness and cheapness must prevail, but the company may raise the price and dilute the strength of the brandy sold.

With much amendment and revision, this system appears to be to-day substantially in effect, with what good results opinions differ. It was speedily rejected after brief trial in Georgia for a high-license system pure and simple. In South Carolina its introduction from Georgia provoked riot and even bloodshed on account of the right of search which it involved. The main feature is, of course, that the State becomes the real buyer, jobber, and retailer of all ardent spirits. Here it has been found difficult of complete administration, and, unless its success should be more distinguished than at present, it probably is but a short-lived expedient.

I am not unconscious of the fluent answer to these figures. It will be of course urged by the prohibitionist that they only show deaths the "direct" cause of dram-drinking. But such answer is correspondingly unsafe. For, since death, albeit normal to us all comes from some cause , a better formula would be that, since many deaths are caused by old age, and as old age is caused by living too long, we should be careful not to live too long. Hence, as life is prolonged by eating, as well as shortened by drinking , to abstain from the use of food is the only course of wisdom!

This encouragement to the drinking of light wines has, so far, only positively found its way into the statute-books of the one essentially wine-growing State, California, though in other States it has made its limited appearance. Nor does there seem to be any reason why every State should not include in its laws such a provision, for example, as that of Oregon , which provides that "owners of vineyards may sell their products without license"; or of Utah, which, however, adds to a similar provision that the sale must be in quantities not less than five gallons. Even Kansas provides that wine or cider, grown by the maker for his own use or to be sold for communion purposes, is not within the prohibitions. However, as in most of the States, the price of a license to sell only wines, or wines and beers, is less than the price of a license to sell ardent spirits, it may fairly be said that an encouragement to drinking wines in preference to distilled liquors has become parcel of the public policy in most communities. In Georgia the sellers of wines who are also manufacturers thereof are exempted from paying any license. The State of Michigan is justly proud of its Dairy and Food Commission, which provides for the examination and secures the purity not only of fruits, butter, milk, cheese, but of buckwheat flour, jellies, canned goods, lard, vinegar, coffee, sirups and molasses, chocolate, cocoanuts, baking powder, flavoring extracts, mustard, and other spices. And this same law seems to encourage light wines by a distinct provision that "the blending of liquors will be permitted if spirits or other ingredients are not added." In Rhode Island, if manufactured from fruit or grain grown in the State, no license is required for the manufacture of cider, wine, or malt liquors; and alcohol, while subject to a heavy license for home consumption, may be produced for exportation without any license at all.

TEACHERS' SCHOOL OF SCIENCE.

BY FRANCES ZIRNGIEBEL.

During a conversation held at the council room of the Boston Society of Natural History, in 1870, between Prof. Alpheus Hyatt and the late Mr. John C. Cummings, a Boston merchant interested in natural history and curator of the plant collection of the society for twenty odd years, the latter expressed regret that the Lowell lectures for teachers had been discontinued. Professor Hyatt then suggested to him a plan for lectures for teachers exclusively. That afternoon Mr. Cummings gave five hundred dollars for the commencement of such a course, and soon after the matter was brought before a committee consisting of Mr. Cummings, Professor Hyatt, and Professor Niles.

Under the direction of the committee the courses of lessons were given as follows: physical geography, by Prof. William H. Niles, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; mineralogy, by Mr. W. C. Greenough, of the Providence Normal School; zo?logy, by Prof. Alpheus Hyatt, then custodian of the Boston Society of Natural History; botany, by Dr. W. G. Farlow, of Cambridge--in all thirty-three lessons. These courses were wholly tentative and experimental, but attained success that was most encouraging.

Through the kindness of Professor Runkle, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Huntington Hall, in which so many great scientists have spoken, was opened for the first lesson in geography. Professor Niles here delivered six lectures. "He undertook to give the more general features of the earth's surface, and then to apply these general principles to the explanation of the physical characteristics of Massachusetts." The success of this course may be judged by the average attendance, which was about six hundred teachers of all grades, and by the fact that the teaching of geography in some of the public schools at once underwent a change in favor of the more natural method introduced by him.

"On account of the necessity of actually handling and dissecting specimens, the tickets issued for the succeeding lessons were limited, and at the six lessons on mineralogy and eleven on zo?logy there was an average attendance of about fifty-five. The materials for the course in zo?logy were gathered in sufficient abundance through the extraordinary facilities for collecting marine animals afforded by Prof. S. F. Baird, United States Commissioner of Fisheries; those for the course in botany were furnished with equal readiness and generosity by Prof. Asa Gray from his botanical garden at Cambridge."

The society's attempt to introduce natural history into the public schools met with favor at the hands of the superintendent, Mr. Philbrick, and a committee of school principals was appointed, with Mr. James A. Page as chairman, who canvassed the teachers regarding this matter. Accordingly, in October, 1871, a circular was sent to teachers which said that lessons were to be given by "professors familiar with the object methods of teaching and skillful in the use of chalk." Seven hundred teachers signed this circular, and so signified their pleasure at the prospect of receiving such instruction.

While Mr. Cummings was generously providing these courses of lectures exclusively for the benefit of teachers, Mr. John A. Lowell, trustee of the Lowell Institute Fund, made liberal provision for free courses on different branches of natural science, to which teachers were specially invited and which were well adapted to their wants, although not intended exclusively for them. During the winter of 1872-'73, on account of the large fire in Boston and the absence of Professor Hyatt in Europe, the lessons in The Teachers' School of Science were necessarily suspended. In the autumn of 1874 they were resumed and supported by renewed donations from Mr. Cummings. Mr. L. S. Burbank gave thirty lessons on minerals, and distributed the specimens used at the lectures among the teachers. These minerals were then used in the schools for instruction. This was virtually the introduction of the teaching of natural science in the public schools of Boston. The following winter Mr. Burbank continued his teaching by giving fourteen lessons in lithology to a class averaging ninety in attendance. One hundred sets of seventy-five specimens each were distributed, and many of these sets placed in collections of the city schools. "A supplementary course of field lessons about Boston was voluntarily conducted by Mr. Burbank, who had in his class this year seventy-five per cent of the members of the class in mineralogy of the previous year. This class included a large number of the busiest teachers of Boston and vicinity, and each member of the class was provided with tools, consisting of a small hammer, magnet, file, streak stone of Arkansas quartzite, a bottle of dilute acid, a glass rod, and the scale of hardness previously used in the mineralogical course."

In 1876 women were admitted to the Society of Natural History, and in that way further privileges were granted to teachers. As in previous years, through the liberality of Mr. Cummings, the lessons were continued, and a course of twenty-one lessons in morphological, physiological, and systematic botany was given by Prof. George L. Goodale, of Harvard University. Each lesson was illustrated by specimens which were distributed to the students. The analysis of the flowers and the determination of the peculiarities of floral structure were considered by Professor Goodale an important part of the course. For this purpose blank forms were distributed to the teachers, which enabled each one to pursue his examination of the flower in hand independently, and made it possible for the instructor to cover more ground than would have been practical by any other method. There was an unusually large attendance at these lessons, averaging one hundred. The following year Professor Goodale continued to teach in the school, giving twenty lectures on the principles of systematic botany. Printed synopses of the lectures were placed in the hands of the teachers, and nearly all the large orders of plants were illustrated by specimens or diagrams. The teachers were also provided with dried and named specimens of native plants suitable for private herbaria. About one hundred and fifty sets of these plants were distributed during the course, at which the attendance was even greater than that of the previous year.

It was at this time that, through the efforts of Miss Lucretia Crocker, the study of zo?logy was introduced into the high schools of Boston, and the study of Nature in the public schools took a definite form. At this time The Teachers' School of Science attained an extraordinary size and importance, a development which was sudden and unexpected. The supervisor of Nature study, Miss Crocker, assured the directors of the school that their assistance would be of great benefit, and in fact essential, to the success of the introduction of this subject into the schools. It was therefore determined to institute appropriate courses upon elementary botany, zo?logy, and mineralogy, if the means of paying the expenses could be raised. Mrs. S. T. Hooper and Miss Crocker undertook a considerable amount of the necessary work, and fortunately their scheme met with substantial appreciation from Mrs. Augustus Hemmenway, who subscribed most liberally, and they were assured of further support and interest. Obstacles arose on account of the number of applicants and the necessity of providing identical specimens for all. The association and sympathy of Mrs. Elizabeth Agassiz with the undertaking was particularly gratifying, since Prof. Louis Agassiz was the first naturalist who ever taught the popular audiences in this country with the specimens in hand. Large sums of money were contributed by women, many members of the Natural History Society, and the teachers themselves joined in making up the necessary fund. The Institute of Technology generously gave the use of Huntington Hall upon the payment of a nominal sum for cleaning and heating. Count Pourtal?s, Dr. Hermann Hagan, and Mr. E. C. Hamlin, of the Museum of Comparative Zo?logy, which was under the direction of Mr. Alexander Agassiz, at various times assisted by donations from their respective departments. Further assistance in various ways, such as the drawing of zo?logical charts, preparations of models, and donations of specimens, was received from other persons. There were six hundred and sixteen applicants for this winter's course, and the number of specimens distributed did not fall short of one hundred thousand. After an introductory lecture, at which the Superintendent of Public Schools, the President of the Society of Natural History, and the custodian, delivered addresses appropriate to the occasion, Professor Goodale completed a course of six lessons on botany, in which he instructed the whole audience of five hundred. These lessons were followed the same year by twelve on zo?logy by Professor Hyatt, and five on mineralogy by Mr. Burbank, which ended with a geological excursion to Marblehead. These lessons were given to very large classes, and were supplemented by the issuing of pamphlets under the general title of Science Guides. Three numbers--About Pebbles, by Professor Hyatt; A Few Common Plants, by Dr. Goodale; and Commercial and Other Sponges, by Professor Hyatt and others--were published by Messrs. Ginn and Heath, who have since brought out many such helps.

After a winter of intense activity there came a period of repose, and no lectures were given the next season. After lying quiet for a year the school once more came into active operation. Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw and Mrs. Augustus Hemmenway showed their sympathy with the efforts on behalf of education by most generously assuming the whole expense of the lessons given that year. Immediate measures were taken to carry out the plan which had been arranged several years before, which consisted in giving a series of lessons which would be a good preparation for a course in physiography. Accordingly, Professor Cross, of the Institute of Technology, was engaged to give eight lessons in physics, Professor Hyatt following with eight on the physical relations of animals to the earth; Professor Goodale gave four treating of plants in the same way, and Mr. W. O. Crosby concluded the course with four lectures on the relations of geological agencies to physiography. The applications for tickets to these lectures so far exceeded the expectations of the committee that they were forced to duplicate them, each speaker repeating his lesson on the same day before a different audience.

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