Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/151

Rh studied the quadrature of the circle; Mésian went to Guiana and published an important book on the insects of Surinam. Maria Mitchell and Yvon Villarceau were well-known astronomers; and among contemporary women of science in different nations the names of Agnes Clarke and Clemence Royer are those of foreign workers best known to our readers.

College Athletics and Health.—Speaking, in an address on the Influence of College Life on Health, of College Athletes, Dr. Edwin Farnham says that "they are, as compared with the whole number of students, but few, and must always be so; for the true athlete, like every real artist, is born, not made. Much has been written about training, as if by some mysterious process an athlete could be developed out of any sort of material. As I understand training, it is a process by which a man is put into a condition which enables him to make the greatest skilled muscular effort of which he is capable, in a certain way, for a certain time. It may be beneficial to health, but that is not its object. You must have the proper material to work upon, or all the training in the world will be of no avail. At many colleges large sums of money have been spent on the various preparations necessary for athletic contests, and a great deal of time and labor devoted to them. At some colleges special privileges have been granted to the men composing the athletic teams. Has an equal amount of attention been given to the care of the health of the students, considered in the light of a subject in no way connected with muscular development? What I know about this matter relates mainly to Harvard University, but I am disposed to think that other colleges would not be found superior to Harvard in this respect. I am, and for more than thirty years have been, intevested in athletic sports, but I hold it true that the first duty of a great educational institution is to the scholar—not to his intellectual needs alone, but to everything that makes for the preservation and improvement of health as well. None can know better than the body of physicians here assembled that the use which a man may be able to make in his life work of the knowledge acquired during his school and college days will depend largely on the condition of his health. Physical exercise has been a mania for some time, and much nonsense has been written about it. Even so great an authority as Dr. Parkes says, in his Practical Hygiene, 'Exercise is a paramount condition of health, and the healthiest persons are those who have most of it.' Exercise in the proper amount is indeed one of the means conducive to the preservation and improvement of health, but there are others as important, and some more so. The scholar should always bear in mind that in his case exercise is intended as a means to health which shall enable him to do his proper work in the best manner. He should never try to combine great mental with great bodily labor. I feel sure, from personal experience and from what prominent athletes have told me, that this can not be done with safety."

Archæology at the University of Pennsylvania.—The purposes of the department of Archæology and Paleontology of the University of Pennsylvania are to provide instruction in those subjects and in ethnology, and to extend scientific inquiry by means of original investigation in them. It will accomplish this by means of a library, courses of lectures, and the sending out of exploring expeditions. In the section of Babylonian antiquities excavations have been continuously carried on at Niffur, Mesopotamia; the Temple of Bel there has been nearly uncovered, many inscribed stones, cuneiform tablets, etc., of 4000 years have been obtained, and a collection of inscriptions published; and Dr. H. V. Hilprecht has spent five weeks in examining the cuneiform inscriptions collected at Constantinople. In the Egyptian section lectures have been delivered by Mr. Cornelius Stevenson; an exhibition of the Graf collection of rare Græco-Egyptian portraits and other objects has been secured. In the section of Glyptology special provision has been made for the Summerville collection of gems and talismans and it has been considerably increased; while no opportunity has been neglected that might afford new acquisitions. A section of casts has been established, and arrangements have been made for filling it. A collection of photographs illustrating archæological objects at Copan, Honduras, has been obtained.