Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/654

 20' south, longitude 19° 40' east, the waters of a great river, Ikelembo, otherwise the Kasai, coming from the south, and a little below, another river from the north, the Congo flows southwesterly in a mighty stream, till at the mouth of the Kwango it is compressed between two ranges of hills. The rapids commence 180 miles above Yellala Falls, there being a series of sixty-two cataracts; these it took the party five months to pass. Mr. Stanley reached the coast on August 11th with the ragged and half-starved remnant of his followers, having followed the river for about 1,800 miles. They were received on board a British naval vessel, and the natives carried back to Zanzibar. Mr. Stanley himself has returned to England.

German Handicraft.—A correspondent of the Manufacturer’s Review, now visiting Germany, cites numerous facts confirming the criticisms passed by Prof. Reuleaux upon the quality of the work done by German artisans. Last winter, this writer occupied a room richly furnished and decorated, but hardly a day passed without some accident happening. The ornaments were all glued on, and one day it was the cornice of a wardrobe, another the slat of the dressing-table, that fell off. Not a single lock in the bureau would hold a drawer closed. On a windy night a match was extinguished by a gust of air coming through the double windows. This case was typical. "Whenever," says the author, "I had occasion to call in an artisan, the job was badly done, or delayed, or bungled. I never had a suit of clothes or a pair of boots that fitted." His experience extended over all Germany, both north and south, in small villages and towns up to 25,000 inhabitants, and it was everywhere the same. The best specimens of German manufacture are exported, as the home market requires cheap goods. Now, as the author remarks, Germany is preeminently the land of technical education, and the question naturally arises, "Is this the fruit of the system, and is the system itself a failure?" Various answers have been given: "It has been pointed out that as domestic industry has no use for them, a large number of the skilled, technically educated artisans and workmen emigrate to where their services are better appreciated, and that they are to be found in the workshops of Paris, London, and New York, occupying leading and well-paid positions. There is undoubtedly a great deal of truth in that, but it is also evident that it fails to cover the case; the cause must be deeper. It has been asserted, by men who certainly ought to know, that the instruction in German technical schools is too purely theoretic and scientific, and too little practical; that the professors, able men though they be, often have no practical knowledge of the arts of which they expound the underlying principles. It is evident that in this way the students, instead of being trained, are spoiled for their work. To illustrate, you need simply look at some of our American agricultural colleges; the professors may be excellent chemists, physicists, botanists, and zoölogists, but how many of them know practically anything about farming? It is thus that the question I have discussed has a practical bearing upon our own institutions. We are beginning to introduce technical schools everywhere, and we must guard against the danger mooted."

The Whitney Glacier.—While visiting the Pacific slope, on business of the United States Entomological Commission, Mr. A. S. Packard, Jr., ascended Mount Shasta, in Northern California, and studied the Whitney Glacier, one of the three glaciers on its flanks. The Whitney Glacier is about three miles long, and extends from the summit of Shasta peak down to or quite near the line of trees. The surface is white and clean near the top. Ice cascades and crevasses begin very near the upper termination. On the upper portion on the east side, under a perpendicular wall of rock, is a lateral moraine; and a little farther down, where the glacier abuts against the crater-cone of Mount Shasta, is a lateral moraine on the west side. The terminal moraine covers the bottom of the glacier, and connects the two lateral moraines. The end of the glacier, instead of being free of detritus, pushing the mass before it, as in most European glaciers, runs under the terminal moraine for a considerable distance, the ice here and there projecting above the surface of the moraine. At and beyond the end of the