Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/82



62

SCIENCE-

After one failure, due to Cmbir***** the high surf, the shore

end of the American Pacific cable has been successfully laid, and the cable steamer, the Silverton, is now speeding toward Honolulu, pay- ing out the cable as she goes. After the vessel's long voyage around the Horn, she anchored off San Francisco, several miles from the shore. A smaller steam- er took a six-mile length of the cable and carried it to a point near the shore, where it was coupled to a rope in the hands of a life-saving crew. Horses hitched to the rope then pulled the end of the cable to the shore and through a conduit to the company's offices. The sea end of the six-mile length was then made fast to the end on board the Silverton, and the steamer got under weigh for the long voyage. Communi- cation with the shore is maintained by means of the cable.

In a little over a year

JJ:- m:;::. f™'" "^^ t^e Niagara power plant on the Can- adian side will be in operation. The power is derived from five Swiss tur- bines of 10,000 horsepower each. These immense wheels are sunk in a wheel pit above the falls, 170 feet deep, 480 feet long and 21 feet wide. The water is brought from a point one-half mile above the falls, through a channel 25 feet deep. IBoth wheel pit and race are cut from the solid rock. The two plants on either side of the river will operate in unison, being connected by three great cables. This will develop about 150,000 horsepower.

The Department of Ag- riculture has instituted in Washington experi- ments to determine the relative value of food products, and the eflfects of adulterants, such as coloring, preser- vatives, etc., and especially borax, sul- phurous and salicylic acids. Twelve young men, most of them students of science, have volunteered for the experiments, which will be more exhaustive than any heretofore con- ducted. Previously, animals have been used almost exclusively, but this time the human stomach itself will

THe Food

testify, and much valuable knowledge should result. The large number of subjects and the length of the experi- ments — one year — will supply excellent data of great value to physicians, the government and the public at large.

EDUCATION-

The second annual ?"«.«^«::*** meeting of the board

of trustees of the Car- negie Institution was held recently in Washington, D. C. It was decided to make no report of the procedures of the past year, in order to obviate the dan- ger of jealousies and criticisms. Two hundred thousand dollars was appro- priated for the assistance of scientific researches during the ensuing year^ and $40,000 more for the publication of the results. In addition, the board defined what it will and what it will not undertake. In general, the princi- pal aims are the promotion of original research and the increase of facilities for higher education. Further, it de- cided that the policy of the institution would be: not to enter thefield occupied by existing organizations ; not to aid institutions when it is possible to ac- complish the same results through in- dividuals; not to provide for general courses of instruction ; not to enter the fields of applied sciences.

I A DofOASO of

Co* Kdoc^mt ion

The stand taken by Chicago University ^ antagonistic to co- education, has aroused President Jor- dan of Stanford to its defense. He ad- mits that the system holds some dan- gers, but thinks that to know these is to avoid them. The association of the sexes in college, he holds, tends to de- velop in each the useful traits found in the other. In the education of men, alone, the elements of beauty and fit- ness are subordinated to the sense of reality, while in women's colleges the reverse condition prevails. The. edu- cated woman, he says, "masters tech- nique rather than art, method rather than substance." In co-education, women meet men who can do things, and are thus turned away from senti- mentalism and caprice toward useful- ness and high ideals.