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the solution of all possible equations, every unknown quantity in these sciences may be exactly determined. In biological sciences the case is thus far quite different. Here the unknown quantities are legion in every equation. Hence the extreme difficulty of any solid advance; hence the many mistakes, the many disagreements. In the best of experiments it is only possible to mass one series of unknown quantities against another series of unknown quantities so that they balance as nearly as possible, and then with our one unknown quantity, about which the experiment turns, make the best temporary solution of our problem possible. Thus the science must be content to proceed until the vast series of unknown conditions which influence life have been dealt with one by one. Thus, if the science is to advance, if we are ever to learn under what conditions life is most favorably placed, we must vary the conditions in every possible wayi. e., experiment physiologically; and, as we have seen, everything in the divine ordering of Nature is in complete harmony with this method, and bids man Godspeed in this great work."

SOME WORLD RECORDS

Yet to be Broken.

THEE is which will be read with interest by a

HERE is an article in the Gentleman's for Sep

very wide public. It is entitled "Extremes of Human Achievement," and is in fact an account of "Records" which the modern athlete has established, and which it is the object of all athletes to break with as little delay as possible. The writer thinks that "the introduction of the present day system of athletics in this country dates from about 1850, when the great athletic meetings began to be held." Here are some of the facts and figures :

CYCLING, SKATING AND STILTING.

"One mile has been cycled in 1 minute 50 seconds, 100 miles in 3 hours 53 minutes; in one hour 28 miles 1,034 yards have been covered, and in 24 hours 529 miles 578 yards. As tours de force of endurance, note may be specially taken of the cycling of 1,4043⁄4 miles in six days of eighteen hours a day, of 1,000 miles cycled on the road in 5 days 5 hours 49 minutes, and of Mill's wonderful ride from Land's End to John o' Groat's, 900 miles, in 3 days 5 minutes 49 seconds. The skater far outstrips the runner in speed, but does not nearly come up to the cyclist. A mile has been skated in 2 minutes 12 seconds, five miles in 17 minutes 45 seconds, and 100 miles in 7 hours 11 minutes 38 seconds.

"A form of competition quite unknown in this country-stilt walking-is practiced to a considerable extent in some districts of France. Recently, at Bordeaux, a young man beat the record by covering 275 miles in 76 hours 35 minutes. The stilts used were about six feet long and weighed 16 pounds. With these rather ungainly implements he took

steps of four feet in length, thus being enabled to cover the ground with comparative ease.

RUNNING AND WALKING.

"There is little doubt that twenty-five years ago there were very few men who could run a mile in five minutes, whereas now four minutes and a half for the same distance is considered to be below the standard of first-class performances. The mile,

indeed, was actually run, in 1886, by W. G. George, in 4 minutes 1234 seconds. Eriefly to recount some of the most prominent present day 'bests on record,' in running, one hundred yards has been run in 9 seconds; half a mile in 1 minute 53 seconds; five miles in 24 minutes 40 seconds; twenty miles in 1 hour 51 minutes 68 seconds, and a hundred miles in 13 hours 261⁄2 minutes. The celebrated 'Deerfoot,' in 1863, ran 11 miles 970 yards in an hour, and in 1882 another performer ran 150 miles 395 yards in 23 hours.

"In walking contests, which are by no means so attractive to the ordinary spectator, a mile has been done in 6 minutes 23 seconds; five miles have been walked in 35 minutes 10 seconds, and a hundred miles in 18 hours 8 minutes 15 seconds. In one hour 8 miles 270 yards have been covered by walking. The only other pedestrian feat of which mention need here be made is the remarkable distance of 623 miles 1,320 yards done in a six days' contest in 1888 by Littlewood of New York-a truly remarkable example of what can be done by unaided human effort.

JUMPING AND THROWING.

"In no department of athletics has a more remarkable improvement taken place than in jumping. At the first Oxford and Cambridge meeting in 1864 the best high jump was only 5 feet 6 inches, and the best long jump 18 feet. Not many years ago it was supposed to be beyond human power to jump higher than 6 feet, and to cover by a long jump more than 22% or 23 feet was thought little short of an impossibility. Yet these have all been exceeded, to the incredulous amazement of foreigners who take the trouble to interest themselves in such matters. The record for high jumping stands-and probably will long remain-at the remarkable height of 6 feet 55% inches, and a running long leap has been made of 23 feet 6 inches. In pole jumping, in which human effort is aided by the use of a pole, a height of 11 feet 9 inches has been cleared.

"In other branches of athletics, which do not attract so much public attention as the more showy walking, running, or jumping, weight-putting and hammer throwing have also had their champion performers, who, by training other muscles, have been able to make remarkable records. The sixteen-pound weight has been thrown a distance of 47 feet 10 inches. This performance dates only from last year, and this year the hammer, also weighing sixteen pounds, was thrown 147 feet. An

apparently much more astonishing performance is that of throwing a cricket ball the extraordinary distance of 127 yards 1 foot 3 inches before it struck the ground, which has not been surpassed since 1873."

A PROPOSED AMERICAN HENLEY.

A WRITER in the Bachelor of Arts, Mr. S. Stor

ville. Jr.. waxes enthusiastic over the Henley Regatta, the glories of which he longs to see reproduced, in some measure, in America. He shows that we have nothing" on this side" that at all fills the place of the English Henley. As to the feasibility of maintaining such a regatta here, he says: "The successful way in which the Continental nations have imitated England's Henley should lay all doubts on this question. In Germany the Hamburg Amateur Regatta was instituted in 1884. closely imitating the English model, and within the decade the Teutons have proved themselves apt enough pupils to defeat some of the crack English crews. The Union des Sociétés des Sports Athletiques holds a successful regatta every year, and frequently enters crews at Henley, as does the Deutscher Reuder Verband, and both are accorded special privileges at Henley, while the Neptunus and Nereus boating clubs of Amsterdam hold annual aquatic meetings. The former has the proud distinction of being the only foreign rowing club that has ever produced a winner of the Diamond Sculls, while the Amsterdam University crew won the Visitor's Challenge Cup in 1895. Austria, too, has her regattas, and turns out some creditable crews, as Cornell learned to her cost, in 1881. Some of the members of the Bohemian eight that won the Senior and Junior eights at Harlem Regatta in New York in 1894 and 1895 first began their rowing on Austrian waters. If such a boating festival can succeed among races where the love of sport is an acquired characteristic, it should of a certainty flourish in athletic America."

DECLINE OF INTEREST IN ROWING.

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At present there are hardly more than five rowing colleges" in the whole country, though many years ago there was a time, the writer recalls, when thirteen colleges competed "all in a row."

"Princeton, Amherst, Brown, and a host of smaller colleges all supported strong crews. But in the old days there was none of the management or that system which has made the English Henley such a success. The crews all started in a helter skelter line, and the regattas were marred and finally killed by the constant fouls and resulting bad feeling that were a necessary consequence of this clumsy system. But assume that an American Henley be founded, an event held pre eminently in the interests of college oarsmen, with a distance that does not require tedious months of training (the winners of the Grand Challenge Cup this year at Henley trained together less than a month); and

how quickly the colleges would swing in line! None of the present annual regattas, such as the Harlem, the People's or the National, appeals to the distinctively college element, and many of them are marred by professional events. But a week that would offer to every small college an equal chance with the larger ones, that would encourage class crews and offer a cup for fraternity and public school crews, that would persuade the club whose membership is composed of college men to go in for rowing-such a regatta would fill a long felt want, and once more put rowing well up in the front as a branch of collegiate athletics. There is no reason why St. Paul should be almost the only pub. lic school that goes in for boating, nor why the university clubs-the University Athletic Club, the Harvard Club, the Crescent Athletic Club, and a score of others--should not support crews of excollege men, as the Leander Boating Club does on the other side."

Mr. Scoville would do away with the present system of tedious four-mile races, which now keeps the smaller colleges out altogether, and would introduce several English features. He is confident that the new methods would react favorably on the athletic spirit of American colleges.

T

DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION.

We

HE address delivered by Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler before the National Educational Association at its Buffalo meeting last July is published in the September number of the Educational Review. The address is wholly devoted to the relations existing between democracy and education. quote Professor Butler's concluding paragraphs: "The difficulties of democracy are the opportunities of education. If our education be sound, if it lay due emphasis on individual responsibility for social and political progress, if it counteract the anarchistic tendencies that grow out of selfishness and greed, if it promote a patriotism that reaches further than militant jingoism and gunboats, then we may cease to have any doubts as to the perpetuity and integrity of our institutions. But I am profoundly convinced that the greatest educational need of our time, in higher and lower schools alike, is a fuller appreciation on the part of the teachers of what human institutions really mean and what tremendous moral issues and principles they involve. The ethics of individual life must be traced to its roots in the ethics of the social whole. The family, property, the common law, the state, and the church, are all involved. These, and their products, taken together, constitute civilization and mark it off from barbarism. Inheritor of a glorious past, each generation is a trustee for posterity. To preserve, protect, and transmit its inheritance unimpaired, is its highest duty. To accomplish this is not the task of the few, but the duty of all.

"That democracy alone will be triumphant which has both intelligence and character. To develop

FRENCH BOYS AND GIRLS.

both among the whole people is the task of educa- IN the October Century Th. Bentzon has an un

tion in a democracy. Not, then, by vainglorious boasting, not by self-satisfied indifference, not by selfish and indolent withdrawal from participation in the interests and government of the community, but rather by that enthusiasm, born of intense conviction, that finds the happiness of each in the good of all, will our educational ideals be satisfied and our free government be placed where the forces of dissolution and decay cannot reach it."

THE "NEW WOMAN'S" EDUCATIONAL DUTIES. 'New Woman' and Her Debts" is the

"THE subject of an article by Miss Clare de Graf

fenried in Appleton's Popular Science Monthly. This writer warns the " not to desert the home.

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new woman

'Clearly, too, we shall continue at an ethical as well as a commercial disadvantage unless we replace the handicrafts of the primitive woman and build up the industrial arts-the all-important, ever-dignified and beautiful pursuits of cooking and sewing, cleaning and repairing, needlework, embroidery, carving, coloring, and house decoration. The most unlovely homes in the world are the bare, untidy homes of our working population. The most wasteful housewife on earth is the thriftless American housewife. To reinstate the skilled industries, to weave in beauty with the life of the people, we must carry manual and technical training and applied art to the point of action, as it were, down among the degraded, the belated, the neglected, the submerged. In the 'slums,' where ignorance revels, crime festers, and decent poverty hides, we should found cooking, sewing and housekeeping schools, with carpentry centres, wood-carving, brass hammering, drawing, modeling, and other creative pursuits that will fascinate the roughest street girl and transform the boy 'tough' into an eager, industrious artisan. Belgium and France, whose products we in vain try to equal, have planted industrial and domestic science schools in every hamlet, technical schools in all the manufacturing towns, dairy and farm schools in the agricultural districts. The teaching is adapted to local industries: on the coast, to shipbuilding and fisheries; in the quarries, to stonecutting; around textile mills, to weaving and dyeing; with drawing everywhere. Hence the industrial supremacy of these countries, their excellent food, absence of waste, national thrift, and the love of art that pervades even the humblest classes. To educate by the same methods the children of America, to improve our homes, to bring order, skill and beauty into the barrenest lives, to carry on the propaganda for universal industrial and art training, is the privilege and duty of the 'new

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usually interesting paper entitled French Children," in which she especially dwells on the difference in the methods of the family and school training between France and America.

THE MANNERS OF FRENCH CHILDREN. "It is needless to say that we teach our children not to sop up their sauce with bits of bread, not to gulp down their soup audibly, and not to eat with their knife; but we specially require that they should not leave anything on their plate after having accepted it from the dish. It is not the waste alone; it is the absolute impoliteness of the act, which consists in a guest leaving half of what he has been helped to untouched, under the anxious gaze of the hostess, who naturally supposes that nothing is to his taste. From the moment our children know how to handle a knife and fork they are told never to express an opinion, favorable or the reverse, as to what they are eating, and to eat everything put before them. The habit clings through life. In general they do not try to attract attention, do not express opinions, are not as loud and noisy as American children.”

FRENCH JUVENILE LITERATURE.

Madam Blanc says that French children are practically forbidden literature, which in France is sup posed to exist not so much for amusement or instruction as for the cause of art. She says:

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I except fairy-tales. Perrault has written masterpieces; Mme. d'Aulnoy and others have followed him; the fairies of other countries may have been more poetic, but they have never been as witty as the French. Leaving fairy-tales aside, children were obliged for a long time to be satisfied with the very slight collection bequeathed by Berguin, Bouilly, Mme. de Genlis, those clever people who know how to coat a moral lesson with a thin layer of pictures, as bitter pills are coated with sugar. In fact, this is the French parents' very ideal in the matter of story-books, and to please them the lesson must not be too well coated, or hard to find, for the spirit of investigation is not encouraged in young readers.

"During the past twenty years, however, the meager library at their disposal has grown wonderfully; celebrated pens have contributed toward it; we need but mention Jules Verne, whose scientific fairy-tales have, alas! almost completely dethroned those that appealed to the imagination alone. But neither in his books, nor in those of any of his competitors, will you ever find what both English and American writers currently permit themselves to do-namely, to arraign a relative, as, for instance, the wicked uncle in Kidnapped,' or to make teachers hateful, or merely ridiculous, as is the case in Dickens' works. This would be an outrage upon the respect due them in the aggregate. For this reason translations are nearly always expurgated.

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Of the system of educating young girls in convents, about which so much has been said pro and con, Madam Blanc says:

"To show the transformation that woman's education has undergone in France, and to indicate as clearly as possible what still remains of the old forms, and what new ones the future promises, I ask permission to go back to the last century, when a little girl, far from being her mother's inseparable companion, as she is now, was merely brought to her once a day by her governess. When eleven or twelve years old she was taken to a convent, where, we are told, she acquired the accomplishments necessary to the status of a woman who is to live in society, hold a certain place there, and even manage a household.'

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"This may seem very extraordinary to those who imagine a convent as a prison or a tomb, but it is certain that the unchanging convent has remained just what it was when Rousseau was both praising and blaming it. The boarding pupils still play many games and have plenty of exercise, and the result is that they are usually in very good health; the calm serenity of the moral atmosphere surrounding them seems to preserve them from all nervous excitement. Besides, the convents-and I refer to the great convents such as the Sacred Heart, the Roule, or Les Oiseaux-are still the places where women are best prepared for appearing well in society. How is this done? By keeping up old traditions, the special formulas of a fortunately varnished period when a young girl left the convent only to be married. She was then at once supposed to ignore no single shade of etiquette, to do nothing awkward, to be armed from head to foot for the grand ceremony of her presentation at court."

AMERICAN INFLUENCE.

The girls' lycées cannot plead guilty of any worse charge, Madam Blanc thinks, than that they are "badly made up; " that is, that society holds aloof from them and continues to think that the only true

method of instilling good breeding in a French girl is by the convent. The lycées are destined to take the place of the declining boarding-schools, and when they do, the French girl will be under much more nearly the same influences as the American girl.

"It is quite clear that whether it be for better or for worse, we are gradually approaching an order of things more American than French, in the old sense of the word. As regards children, the prisonlike school has opened its doors, boarding lycées seem to be losing favor, and scholars can enjoy all the bodily exercise that tempts schoolboys on the other side of the Atlantic. At the same time, the number of those who finish their course in the 'humanities,' that splendid name that nothing else can replace, is growing smaller; some are content to follow merely the so called modern course. The hurried and curtailed education which permits an early entrance into practical life has numerous partisans."

THE BOY KING OF SPAIN.

N the English Illustrated Magazine a writer discourses pleasantly concerning Alfonso XIII., the Boy King of Spain, who is the youngest sovereign in Europe:

"Alfonso XIII., when I saw him first, seated in his carriage, was a pale, thin, and delicate looking little fellow. With his fair hair inclined to be curly, his blue eye, and his face gentle in its expression of languor, the little king reminded me of that Philip IV. made famous by the pencil of Velasquez. The thin lips were almost bloodless, the features seemed too fatigued to possess any definite expression except for the far off look of dreaming and patience in the eyes. He smiled, nevertheless, continuously and rather drearily, and looked unmistakably bored. He seemed to be going through his afternoon's drive as he would go through any other of his innumerable royal duties, obediently but mechancially. He was dressed in a sailor costume, his head bare-a small head, moreover, giving no promise of intellect; and the little boy, looking like one in the first days of convalesence from some almost fatal fever, still smiled mechanically as the carriage rolled slowly on

"Alfonso XIII. has an English governess among other instructors, but his education is under the direct and personal supervision of his mother. His exalted rank prevents him indulging in the usual sports of boyhood, and one of the stories related of him has a pathetic side in this respect. He was seen one day gazing with uncommon interest out of one of the windows of the royal palace in the direction of the Manzanares. He was asked what he was looking at, and he pointed out a couple of urchins who were busy and happy making mud pies, and Alfonso XIII. begged, even with tears in his eyes, to be allowed to go and make mud pies

with them. He was little consoled by the information that etiquette forbade kings to indulge in pastimes so unexalted. At other times Alfonso takes his monarchy more seriously, and frequently clinches an argument by announcing autocratically, 'I am the King.'

"Not long ago the King was taken to his first bull fight. He was much pleased at first with the pomp and glitter and gorgeous pageantry that the Southern races know so well how to make effective, but when it came to the bull goring the defenseless horses with his 'spears '-as they call the horns in bull ring parlance--Alfonso turned pale, became much terrified, and demanded to be taken home. This display of aversion to the national sport of Spain made an unfavorable impression on the populace."

SOM

CHILDREN'S SECRET LANGUAGE.

OME interesting information about the languages employed by children among themselves when they desire secret means of communication is furnished by Oscar Chrisman in the Child-Study Monthly. These languages are not confined, says Mr. Chrisman, to any one place or to any set number of places, but abound wherever children are found. "They occur in all parts of America, from Maine to California and from Canada to Texas. They are spread over Europe and are reported by travelers as being in Asia and other parts of the world. Nor do they exist only among civilized people, for even our American Indian children are reported to be adepts in their construction."

"How old these languages are cannot be known. One of the writers in Am Ur-Quell mentions that the one he gives was in use sixty years ago. Some parties have written me that their languages were used by them as children fifty years since. One gentleman states that one of the most common languages used by children now was very common among his playmates in 1840-50. This time differs with my informants as their time of childhood differs from more than fifty years ago, in regular series down to the present. And they are being made now, as I have an alphabet formed only a short time since by a little eight-year-old girl, who volunteered to make other secret alphabets if desired.

"The duration of the use of these languages differs very much. Some were used only a very short time-a few weeks-as the fever came and went rapidly. Some lasted a year, some two years, some eight years, some ten, and others twelve years. Some began at ten or twelve and now at seventeen and eighteen are used, although this is rare and the language is used mostly at odd moments. A period of five years is perhaps the limit to any extended use of these, yet usually a much shorter period is named as a fever heat time of use. These secret languages very rarely begin before the eighth year and generally disappear before the fifteenth year or about

that age. One gentleman confesses to have used his boyhood secret language, speaking it to himself, during all the fifty years that have passed since his childhood.

"The names of these languages are numerous and varied. Hog Latin, though, is by far the most common name and is used to designate languages which are very far apart in their construction. Why this term is so common can only be guessed at. There is one form of these languages which, in every instance but one, goes by the name of Hog Latin, so it may be that this is the mother-tongue and is strong enough to give name to many other tongues formed after the parties had learned of this."

Mr. Chrisman is inclined to think that the term Hog Latin may be exclusively an American phrase. Dog Latin, he says, is the next most popular name. Tut, Hash, Bub, and A-Bub-Cin-Dud are named from these words occurring in their alphabets. Isolo gets its name from the fact that the sylables alternately end in s or o, is or lo. Mr. Chrisman mentions several other names of similar origin.

"Most of these languages are spoken only, and some of the writers found trouble in writing them for me. Quite a large number are written, and many are both written and spoken. Many of the writers commented upon the great facility they acquired in the speaking of these languages. In some cases they seemed to have usurped the place of English and to have become so natural to use as to require no thought on the part of the children to hold them in mind. Nor are these languages so easily understood, for when spoken by the thorough linguist they are no more intelligible to those outside the charmed circle than are any other for eign tongues."

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"Some of the same cipher alphabets are found in localities very wide apart, but most of such languages are distinct and have been invented by the parties using them. Some of them are most ingenious and show that much thought and pains have been given to their formation, or else the inventors are geniuses of the highest rank. There are a num ber of languages that consist in the transposition of letters. One of the most common forms here is the removing of the consonants at the beginning of a word to the end and then adding long a, as look would become in this ookla. I have learned of two cases of mirror writing (called backhand by the parties sending). One of the parties sending this states that she and her mate became so proficient in its use as to be able to write it as rapidly as they could good writing in the ordinary way. One very

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