Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/449

. Men who have for years been connected with railways admit that at most they can distinguish the sounds of only very few locomotive-bells as compared with the great number Hicks can name almost without thought. Not long ago an old switch-engine, used in the yards at Buffalo, was sent to Rochester for some special purpose. As it passed near Hicks's house he heard the bell, and remarked that the engine was number so-and-so, and that he had not heard its bell for six years. A boarder in the house ran to the railroad and found that the number given was the correct one. Not long since the young man went to Syracuse, and, while there, hearing an engine coming out of the round-house, remarked to a friend that he knew the bell, though he had not heard it in five years. The number which he gave proved to be the correct one.

Lubbock on Science in the Primary Schools.—Sir John Lubbock, advocating in the British House of Commons the cause of science-teaching in schools, urged that elementary science should be placed on an equality in the education-code with grammar, geography, and history. The practical difficulties in the way could be easily overcome, and his proposal, so far from upsetting the equilibrium of the code, would really establish it, seeing that, at present, the code was entirely one-sided, all knowledge of natural phenomena being excluded. It was often said, he urged, that it was ridiculous to teach "ologies" before the children could read and write thoroughly. But, in the first place, it wag a misnomer to call the lessons he proposed "ologies"; secondly, it should be remembered that, when children were learning to read, they had to read something, and the question was what that something was to be. He wished for nothing difficult or abstruse, nothing beyond the range of the children's minds and daily experience. "In mechanics, the simple forces might be explained to them—why carts were put on wheels, how levers and pulleys acted, the use of the screw and wedge; then the nature and relative distances of the principal heavenly bodies, the primary facts relating to air and water in agricultural districts, the character of the soil, the reason for the rotation of crops, the origin and principal qualities of such substances as chalk, coal, iron, copper, etc.; the succession of the seasons, the flow of rivers, the growth of plants; the fundamental rules of health, the necessity for ventilation and cleanliness, and, last, not least, the need for industry, frugality, and economy. Explanations of these simple and every-day things would be most interesting and useful to the children. So far from cramming and confusing them, you would introduce light and order into their minds, and give them an interest in their lessons, which, under the present system, they rarely felt."

Ancient Uses of Cork.—A writer in the "Pharmaceutical Journal" has collected a large amount of interesting information on the subject of the cork-tree and its bark, and the uses of the latter in both ancient and modern times. The tree, and the application of its bark to useful purposes, was well known to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. The former used to construct their coffins of this material. Theophrastus, the Greek philosopher, who wrote on botany, etc., four centuries mentions this tree among the oaks, under the name of phellus, and says that it has a thick, fleshy bark, which must be stripped off every three years to prevent it from perishing. He adds that it was so light as never to sink in water, and on that account might be used for many purposes. Pliny describes the tree under the name of suber, and relates everything said by Theophrastus of phellus. From his account we learn that the Roman fishermen used it as floats to their nets and fishing-tackle, and as buoys to their anchors. The use of these buoys in saving life appears to have been well known to the ancients, for Lucian ("Epist. 1," 17) mentions that two men, one of whom had fallen into the sea, and another who jumped after to afford him assistance, were saved by means of an anchor-buoy. The use of this substance in assisting swimmers was not unknown to the Romans. By Plutarchus, in his "Vita Camilli," we are told that, when the imperial city was besieged by the Gauls, Camillus sent a Roman to the Capitol, who, to avoid the enemy, swam the Tiber with