Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/861

Rh in which they may exist only in lesser degree on their guard,

Mr. Barnett has also made a few observations in this country. He found in San Francisco a form of government "so democratic as to leave hardly a grievance for the most ardent demagogue." And yet "the poor increase, and the talk is as the talk of East London about starvation cases and the inadequacy of the poorhouse; the demand is for laws to prevent vagrancy, to reduce rents and limit immigration." There is abundant charity; the officer of the Associated Charities, we are told, "confessed that it was impossible to control the impulses of the rich men of the city; and if he complained that gifts did mischief, the answer was, 'What is that tome?'"

In Boston there is a very perfect system for the organization of charity; but when Mr. Barnett inquired whether the clergy and philanthropic persons made use of the records kept in the central office, the answer was, "No." Here, as elsewhere, "private charity is wayward and willful; gifts go as passing emotion directs, institutions are created which represent the fancy rather than the sympathy of the creators." Then, when gifts are found to be of no avail, repressive legislation is resorted to—laws against drinking and even cigarette smoking. The drink must be taken in a perpendicular position, and the cigarette must not be smoked by any person under a certain age. Mr. Barnett's article is good reading, and as a capital appendix to it we recommend the chapters on Negative and Positive Beneficence Mr. Spencer's last volume. The philosopher is justified by every wide and impartial survey of the facts.

shows the American Association that it can have a large attendance at its meetings only by keeping to the main highways of travel, and by choosing large cities. With the World's Fair as a magnet, drawing and holding hundreds of its members, the association was fortunate in assembling as many as it did, some two hundred and ninety, at Madison. Those who attended were rewarded by good papers and stimulating discussions, and if the sectional meetings were smaller than usual, they were uncommonly earnest and interesting from the absence of the distractions not to be avoided when a maltitude gathers together. Hospitality was hearty; the people of Madison—a city, by the way, of singular beauty—with the University of Wisconsin, renewed the best traditions of the Association in manifold opportunities for bringing old friends together, for presenting beginners in science to leaders grown gray in the service of truth.

In his opening remarks President William Harkness, of Washington, touched on a practice of the Academy of Sciences of France well worthy of imitation in America—the conferring membership upon those of its friends who, while not themselves men of science, provide financial aid for research. At Nice, for example, an observatory of world-wide repute has arisen as a gift of Mr. Bischoffsheim, a banker, whose name is rightfully enrolled beside those of the astronomers whose labors he has lightened and promoted.

Evolution was the keynote in the addresses of the vice-presidents in the Sections of Zoölogy, Botany, and Economics. Prof. H. F. Osborn, in sketching the Ascent of the Mammalia, traced the succession of typical species plainly derived one from another. Exploration within recent years, he said, has but served to confirm Prof. O. 0. Marsh's demonstration of the horse's genealogy through forms with which Prof. Huxley in his American lectures has made the world familiar.

Prof. Charles E. Bessey, in his address on Evolution and Classification,