Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/389

Rh was opened by an eloquent and suggestive address from the President, Dr. I. Hammond Trumbull, who reminded the Association of the urgent need of attentive study of the structure of the languages of our American Indians, a need all the more urgent as they have no written language, and as year by year they are passing away. The vexed question as to a change in the present mode of spelling in English was also considered, and Dr. Trumbull avers that, while scholars agree on the question of the desirability of such a change, the main difficulty in the way of reform is the want of agreement among them as to the best-way of effecting it. He says, "The objection that reform would obscure etymology is not urged by real etymologists;" and the testimony of Hadley and Max Müller is quoted, sustaining this position.

Again, the objection that words "when decently spelled would lose their 'historic interest' is equally unfounded. The modern orthography is superlatively unhistorical.... The only history it can be trusted to teach begins with the publication of Johnson's Dictionary." The important recommendation is made that a list of words be prepared, "exhibiting side by side the present and the reformed spelling," such that prominent scholars in England and America would recognize either form as allowable.

This subject was referred to a committee of five eminent philologists, who will report at the next annual meeting, and have liberty in the mean time to prepare such a list of words and cause them to be printed. This action assumes an additional interest from the fact that the State of Connecticut has already in contemplation such a change of spelling in its official reports and journals.

Important papers were read by Prof. Albert Harkness, Mr. A. C. Merriam, Prof. F. A. March, Prof. Franklin Carter, and others.

Many of these are, of course, of quite a special nature: among those of more general interest may be mentioned Prof. March's paper on "The Immaturity of Shakespeare as shown in Hamlet." In the report of Prof. March's paper in the "Proceedings," his analysis of the play, from this point of view, is brought into nine short propositions which are comprised within the limits of an octavo page. This brevity rather amusingly recalls Goethe's prolix analysis of the same play in "Wilhelm Meister;" it is by no means certain that Prof. March's summary will not help the puzzled reader of Hamlet quite as much as Goethe's chapters.

Another paper of interest was by Mr. C. M. O'Keefe, of Brooklyn, "On the Proper Names in the First Sentence of Caesar's Commentaries."

report opens with a brief statement of what the Marine Hospital Service of the United States is; amount of collections and expenditures during the year; number of cases of disease and injury treated; and a comparison of the figures with those of previous years. Defects needing legislation; cost of the service to the government; port inspections and office dues; government hospitals; and preventive medicine in the service, are the subjects of succeeding sections. Then follow seventy pages of statistics classified under two heads: first, financial and economic; second, medical and surgical. Eleven papers under the following titles, and a copious index, occupy the last one hundred and fifty pages of the book: "The Hygiene of the Forecastle;" "American Commerce and the Service;" "Unseaworthy Sailors;" "Sailors and their Diseases in Chelsea Hospital;" "The Service on Cape Cod;" "The Freedman and the Service on the Ohio;" "Diseases of River Men, their Causes and Prevention;" "Preventable Diseases on the Great Lakes;" "Syphilis: the Scourge of the Sailor and the Public Health;" "Yellow Fever at Pensacola in 1874;" "The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1873." These papers are by different authors, and will be found of interest by medical men.

articles contained in this volume originally appeared in the English Mechanic, a practical magazine of sterling merit. The information may be relied on as trustworthy,