Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/589

Rh four were strongly in favor of outdoor exercise, or a combination of calisthenics and the old-fashioned recess. While wide divergence of opinion marked the answers of fifty-three educators and thirty-four physicians concerning the effect of home study, all insisted that the work should be carefully guarded and not carried to extremes, and that the health should be properly looked after at the same time. Some thought it did no more harm than attending parties and keeping late hours socially.

Cereal Foods.—In a recent bulletin of the agricultural experiment station at the University of Wyoming there is an interesting examination into the composition of prepared cereal foods, whose results are summed up as follows: "Leaving aside the customary claims of each food to be the best in the market, and considering only the more specific statements of composition, food value, etc., it may be said that these are in many instances entirely unreliable and misleading as to the real character of the food. . . . If purchasers of goods in packages and cans would always note the brand, and afterward buy according to the quality, it would be an encouragement to honest manufacturers, and the grade of such foods would no doubt be raised. There is more variation in price than in composition, and there is no discoverable relation between quality and price. Some articles are four or five times the cost of others of the same class, and apparently of the same merit. . . . The oatmeal sold in bulk is practically the same in composition and, so far as can be judged by personal taste, in quality and flavor as that sold in packages for several times the price. . . . The claims made for quick cooking are generally fallacious. Almost all such preparations should be cooked for at least half an hour, and usually longer, to insure the complete digestibility of the starch."

Value of Disinterested Science.—The address of President F. M. Webster before the sixth annual meeting of the Association of Economical Entomologists, on The Past and Future of Applied Entomology in America, contains an earnest argument in favor of independent investigation as against work in official bureaus and an emphatic denunciation of attempts to harness science to utility as "the worst of all the ill-matched and mismated combinations possible." The author regrets that the mass of mankind can not seem to comprehend that the naturalist, in order to secure results of value, "must work out his problems in a natural way and not as a part of a machine, and that this condition is universal and one which no power on earth can change." In illustration of the value of international work in entomology, the author refers to the monetary value of the benefits this country has derived from the work of two entomologists who were sent several years ago to Australia, one of whom at least "has been able to serve his country and State better since his return," and adds that an American expert is now the official entomologist of Cape Colony, South Africa, and another is in the Argentine Republic, engaged in the investigation of some injurious insects in that country. The author sees that public opinion regarding the entomologists and their work has been changing for the better; but if this change is to continue they must do better work, the results of which will be far reaching and permanent. "The 'powers that be' over and among us must be brought to understand that science is truth and not something that is to be trifled with and debauched, or made to answer for cheap advertisements, or used for the purpose of paying political indebtedness."

Flora of the Sandwich Islands.—Isolated from a continental area, and almost equally so from the other islands of the Polynesian system, says Mr. A. A. Heller, in Minnesota Botanical Studies, Hawaiian vegetation has developed independent of extraneous modifying conditions. That it has done so in a satisfactory way is evinced in the enumeration in Hillebrand's Flora of 999 species of phanerogams and vascular cryptogams, of which 139 are introduced and 653 are endemic, leaving 297 species found elsewhere. Of the 653 endemic species, 250 belong to 40 endemic genera; and these are found principally among the Rubiaceæ, Compositæ, Lobeliaceæ, and Labiatæ. Besides these larger genera, there are smaller ones which have representation only on the northern islands. The great number of ferns appeal to the eye of the botanist. Omitting