In such an arid and hot climate, evaporation alone would probably prolong the time of flooding for hundreds of years: indeed, the time might be prolonged indefinitely, for the loss by evaporation might ultimately be equal to the supply by inflow. We have a case in point in Pyramid Lake, in Nevada, into which the bold and rapid outlet of Lake Tahoe (Truckee River) perpetually flows without flooding it. Of course, by increasing the dimensions of the Inlet Canal, or augmenting the velocity of the inflowing water, the computed time of flooding might be proportionately shortened; but, after all, the feeble efforts of man are insignificant in relation to the great hydraulic systems of nature.

Berkeley, Cal., June 29.

JOHN LECONTE.

A dissolving smoke-ring.

The remarkable breaking-up of a smoke-ring from a locomotive in Chicago was observed by me, a few days since, in company with a mechanical engineer of New York, whose estimate of size and height I adopt. The ring rose to an elevation of about one hundred and fifty feet, and attained a diameter of twenty or twenty-five feet, as nearly as could be estimated. It broke up suddenly with a rush of the smoke along the line of the ring toward two centres; namely, the smoke of the south half coming together in the centre of that half of the line, and the smoke of the north half correspondingly to a centre in the north. After these momentary and confused aggregations, all semblance of form disappeared. A vortex ring is different from the theoretic planetary ring breaking up into satellites, but aggregation of the dissolving smoke-ring is suggestive.

Grinnell, Io.

H. W. PARKER.

Surface tension and muscular contraction.

I would offer as an attempt to explain the nature of muscular contraction the hypothesis that the contraction is due to the phenomena of surface tension.

By surface tension of a liquid is meant a peculiar ity presented by its surface, due to a difference in state between the molecules in the surface and those in the interior of the liquid. That there must be an essential difference between the surface of a mass and its interior follows from the fact that the molecular forces acting on any particle within the mass are equal in every direction, and so must balance one another; while the particles in the surface film, having no particles above them, are acted on only from below and at the sides, and so are constantly drawn down against the mass: so that the liquid must be under a definite surface tension.

This surface film behaves as a perfectly elastic membrane stretched in every direction by equal tensions, and takes the form of smallest area consistent with the conditions. This tendency of the film to become as small as possible is well illustrated by the soap-bubble, which may be considered as a layer of water with two surface films. So, when left to its own molecular forces, a drop of liquid assumes that form having the smallest superficies, with a given content, which is the sphere.

When a drop of liquid rests upon a surface which it does not wet, it assumes the form of a sphere more or less flattened out; and the greater the surface tension of the liquid forming the drop is, the more

nearly does it approach the spherical form, and whatever alters its surface tension causes a corresponding alteration in the form of the drop.

Many substances, even in small quantity, exert a considerable influence on the surface tension of liquids.

If a drop of water resting upon a greasy surface, which it does not wet, be touched with a little alcohol, its surface tension is diminished, and it immediately spreads out over a larger area; but. when the alcohol evaporates, the surface tension of the water is increased, and it again contracts into a more globular form.

Remarkable changes in form are caused when a globule of mercury is electrically polarized. In organic substances the surface tension increases with the increase of certain elements entering into their composition, and diminishes with the increase or diminution of others; e.g., in butyric acid and acetic anhydride the increase of oxygen and diminution of hydrogen increase the surface tension.

Now, to see the bearing of this upon the contraction of a muscular fibre, it is necessary to remember that the surface tension of a liquid may be changed by a change in its composition, that the contracting elements of a muscular fibre are the cells, and that the composition of the cells is changed at the time of a contraction.

The cells are of an oblong shape extended in the axis of contraction; and when contraction occurs the cells grow shorter and thicker, just as an oblong drop of water grows shorter and thicker when its surface tension is increased.

Now, a tendency to contraction must follow an increase in the surface tension of the cell; and that there probably are changes in the surface tension of the cell during contraction, follows from the fact that there are chemical changes in the cell, more rapid during contraction than rest. The changes occurring in acting muscle may be identical with those in resting muscle; but in resting muscle, restoration keeps pace with destruction, while in contraction, destruction largely exceeds restoration: so any thing hastening the decompositions within the cell may cause con

traction.

Exhaustion is explained by the accumulation of products of decomposition, since fatigue in muscles in which circulation has ceased may be readily removed by renewing the current of blood.

This hypothesis may be thus summed up: the active shortening of the fibre is due to an increase in the surface tension of the substance of the cell, caused by an increase in the proportional amount of the products of decomposition. Equilibrium is restored-after the stimulus which hastened the chemical changes has ceased by a part of the products of decomposition finding their way into the blood-current, and possibly by the remaining products helping to build up the original compound.

Buffalo, N.Y., June 25.

ELMER STARR, M.D.

FRIDAY, JULY 9, 1886.

THOUGHTS ON UNIVERSITIES.

No one can visit Cambridge this summer without remembering that two hundred and fifty years ago an acorn was here planted from which an oak has grown. No scholar can come from a distant state without wishing to offer his tribute, however inadequate it may be, to the wisdom which has governed the counsels of Harvard through eight generations. A graduate of Yale will, I trust, be pardoned for associating the name of his own alma mater with that of her elder sister. Their united influence has not only been strong in New England, but strong in other portions of the land. It is difficult to surmise what would have been the condition of American society if these foundations had never existed. Their graduates have promoted the literature, the science, the statesmanship, and the religion of the land; but more than this is true. Their methods of instruction, their unwritten laws, their high endeavors, and their academic spirit have re-appeared in each new state of the west, as each new state has initiated its social order. To be governed by the experience of Harvard and Yale is in many an educational court an appeal to common law. To establish another Harvard or another Yale, to nurture the germ from which a great university might grow, has been the aspiration of many a patriot, of many a Christian. It was a laureate of both Harvard and Yale, the sagacious Manasseh Cutler, who initiated the policy of securing in the states beyond the Alleghanies a certain portion of the public lands for the foundation of universities. Among the pioneers of California was one who went from New England with college on the brain; and now every ship which enters the Golden Gate faces the buildings of a university which Henry Durant did much to establish.

The history of higher education as guided by the two oldest foundations in this country may be considered in four periods: in the first, extending from the earliest settlement until the revolution, the English college idea was dominant in its simplest form; the second, following the severance of allegiance to the crown, was the time when profes

sional schools in medicine, law, and theology were begun; the third, beginning about the middle of this century, was marked by the formation of scientific schools; and in the present period we are looking for the fulfilment of the university ideal, brought hither by the earliest immigrants from England.

The colonial vocabulary was modest. Whatever else it might be, university' seemed a very great noun, to be used as guardedly as episcopacy' or 'sovereignty.' In the earliest mention I remember of the cradle of Harvard, the alternative is found, 'a school or colledge;' and in Connecticut, 'collegiate school' was in vogue for seventeen years. "We on purpose gave your academy as low a name as we could that it might the better stand in wind and weather," said the well-known civilians who were consulted in 1701 by Pierpont and his colleagues at the mouth of the Quinnipiac. Elsewhere, under other influences, there was not the same caution, nor the same success. Several years before the settlement of Massachusetts Bay. the Virginia company determined to set apart, at Henrico, ten thousand acres of land for 'a university,' including one thousand for a college for the children of the infidels.' There was another project for a university as early as 1624, which has lately been brought to light. Dr. E. D. Neill, in Virginia Vetusta,' calls attention to the fact that an island in the Susquehanna, which the traveller may see to the north as he crosses the railroad-bridge at Havre de Grace, was conditionally given for "the foundinge and maintenance of a universitie and such schools in Virginia as shall there be erected and shall be called Academia Virginiensis et Oxoniensis." The death of the projector, Edward Palmer, interrupted his plans.

Mr. Dexter has established the fact, that, before 1647, nearly a hundred graduates of English universities had migrated to New England, threefourths of whom were from Cambridge; and the elaborate volumes of Mullinger exhibit in great fulness the conditions of collegiate and university life as they were known to these Cambridge wanderers in the earliest half of the seventeenth century. It is evident that the university idea was then subordinate to the collegiate; logic was riding a high horse; science and literature, as then represented by mathematics and Greek, were alike undervalued. An anecdote recorded by Mullinger reveals at a glance the situation. "Seth Ward,

having lighted on some mathematical works in the library of Sidney, could find no one to interpret them. The books, says his biographer, were Greek,

I mean unintelligible to all the fellows." The spirit of observation, experiment, and research, was rarely apparent; discipline by masters and tutors took precedence of the inspiration of professors. When we consider this origin, still more when we recall the poverty of the colonists, and still more when we think of the comprehensiveness of the university ideal, even in the seventeenth century, it is not strange, that, before the revolution, American colleges were colleges, and nothing more. Even degrees were only conferred in the faculty of arts. In 1774, when Governor Hutchison was discussing colonial affairs in Lord Dartmouth's office, Mr. Pownall asked if Harvard was a university, and, if not, on what pretence it conferred degrees. Hutchison replied "that they had given Masters' and Bachelors' degrees from the beginning; and that two or three years ago, out of respect to a venerable old gentleman they gave him a doctor's degree, and that the next year, or next but one, two or three more were made Doctors. After so long usage he thought it would be hard to disturb the college." It is a significant fact that at the beginning of the revolution, in 1776, George Washington was made a doctor of laws at Harvard, and, at its close in 1783, John Warren, a doctor of medicine. From that time on, there was no hesitation in the bestowal of degrees in other faculties than that of arts.

...

I need not rehearse the steps by which the schools of medicine, law, and theology were added to the college; cautiously, indeed (as outside departments, which must not be allowed to draw their support from the parent trunk), and yet permanently. It is a noteworthy fact that the example of Harvard and Yale in establishing theological schools has rarely been followed in other places, even where schools of law, medicine, and science have been established. It is enough to add that professional education was organized during the first thirty or forty years of this century, in a much less orderly way than that in which the colleges were instituted.

The third period in the development of higher education was the recognition of the fact, that, besides the three traditional professions, a multitude of modern vocations required a liberal training. In consequence of this, came scientific schools, often, at first, adjacent to the classical colleges, and sometimes on independent foundations, many of these schools being aided by the national provision for technical instruction and by other noteworthy gifts,

We are now fairly entered upon the fourth period, when more attention than ever before will certainly be given to the idea of the university, an idea long dormant but never dead. The second decennium of this century was but just begun, when a university was chartered in Maryland; and before it closed, the first of the western universities, endowed by a gift of the public lands, was organized in the county and town of Athens, O., precursor of the prosperous foundation in Michigan, and of like institutions in other parts of the old north-western territory. Early in this century, Americans had frequently gone abroad for medical and scientific training, but between 1820 and 1830 many turned their eyes to Germany for historical and philological study; and the line which began with Everett. Ticknor, Bancroft, and Woolsey, has been unbroken to this day. Through these returning wanderers, and through the importation from Germany, England, and Switzerland, of foreigners distinguished as professors, Lieber and Beck, Sylvester and Long, Agassiz and Guyot, and their compeers, the notion of a philosophical department of a university, superior to a college, independent of and to some extent introductory to professional schools, has become familiar. But the boldest innovation, and the most influential, was the work of one whose name is perpetually associated with the Declaration of Independence and the University of Virginia. It was in 1826 that his plans assumed form, and introduced to the people of this country - not without some opposition - the free methods of continental universities, and especially of the University of France.

Thus, as years have rolled on, the word 'university,' at first employed with caution, has been reiterated in so many connections, that it has lost its distinctive significance, and a special plea must be made for the restoration to its true sovereignty, of the noblest term in the vocabulary of education. Notions injurious and erroneous are already abroad. Poor and feeble schools, sometimes intended for the destitute, beg support on the ground that they are universities. The name has been given to a school of arts and trades, to a school of modern languages, and to a school in which only primary studies are taught. Not only so, but many graduates of old and conservative institutions, if we may judge from recent writings, are at sea. There are those who think that a university can be made by so christening it; others who suppose that the gift of a million is the only requisite; it is often said that the establishment of four faculties constitutes a university; there is a current notion that a college without a religion is a university, and another that a college without a curriculum is a university. I have even read in the newspapers the description of a building which "will be, when finished, the finest university in the country; " and I know of a school for girls, the trustees of which not only have the power to confer all degrees, but may designate a board of lady managers possessing the same powers.

Surely it is time for the scholars of the country to take their bearings. In Cambridge the anniversary so soon to be celebrated will not be allowed to pass without munificent contributions for most noble ends; the president of Yale college, who this day assumes his high office with the unanimous plaudits of Yalensians, is the representative of the university idea based upon academic traditions; the voice of Princeton, like a herald, has proclaimed its purposes; Cornell has succeeded in a litigation which establishes its right to a large endowment; the secretary of the interior has commended to congress the importance of a national university, and a bill has been introduced looking towards such an establishment; the Roman Catholic Church, at its recent council in Baltimore, initiated measures for a university in the capital of the nation; while on the remotest borders of the land the gift of many millions is assured for promoting a new foundation. Already, in the Mississippi valley, men are laboriously unfolding their lofty ideals. It is therefore a critical time. Wise plans will be like good seed: they will spring up, and bear fruit a hundred-fold. Bad plans will be like tares growing up with the wheat, impossible to eradicate.

It is obvious that the modes of organization will vary, so that we shall have many different types of universities. Four types have already appeared, - those which proceed from the original historic colleges, those established in the name of the state, those avowedly ecclesiastical, and those which are founded by private benefactions. Each mode of organization has advantages which may be defended, each its limitations. If the older colleges suffer from traditions, the younger lack experience and historic growth. The state universities are liable to political mismanagement: ecclesiastical foundations are in danger of being narrow.

Under these circumstances, I ask you to consider the characteristics of a university, the marks by which it should be distinguished.

It is needless before this audience to repeat the numerous definitions which have been framed, or to rehearse the brilliant projects which have been formed by learned, gifted men; but I hope it will not be amiss to recall some of the noble aims which have always inspired endeavors to establish the highest institutions of learning.

Among the brightest signs of a vigorous university, is zeal for the advancement of learning. Another phrase has been lately used, the 'endowment of research.' I prefer the other term; for it takes us back to the dawn of modern science, and connects our efforts with those of three hundred years ago, when Francis Bacon gave an impulse to all subsequent thought, and published what his recent biographer has called the first great book in English prose of secular interest, - "the first of a long line of books which have attempted to teach English readers how to think of knowledge, to make it really and intelligently the interest, not of the school or the study or the laboratory only, but of society at large. It was a book with a purpose, new then, but of which we have seen the fulfilment."

The processes by which we gain acquaintance with the world are very slow. The detection of another asteroid, the calculation of a new orbit, the measurement of a lofty peak, the discovery of a bird, a fish, an insect, a flower, hitherto 'unknown to science,' would be but trifles if each new fact remained apart from other facts; but, when among learned men discoveries are brought into relations with familiar truths, the group suggests a law, the law an inference, the inference an experiment, the experiment a conclusion; and so from fact to law, and from law to fact, with rhythmic movement, knowledge marches on, while eager hosts of practical men stand ready to apply to human life each fresh discovery. Investigation, co-ordination, and promulgation are not performed exclusively by universities; but these processes, so fruitful in good, are most efficient where large numbers of the erudite and the acute, of strong reasoners and faithful critics, are associated for mutual assistance, correction, and encouragement. It is an impressive passage with which the lamented Jevons closed his 'Principles of science. After reminding the reader of the infinite domain of mathematical inquiry, compared with which the whole accomplishments of a Laplace or a Lagrange are as the little corner of the multiplication table, which has really an indefinite extent, he goes on to say that inconceivable advances will be made by the human intellect unless there is an unforeseen catastrophe to the species or the globe. "Since the time of Newton and Leibnitz, whole worlds of problems have been solved, which before were hardly conceived as matters of inquiry. In our own day, extended methods of mathematical reasoning, such as the system of quaternions, have been brought into existence. What intelligent man will doubt that the recondite speculations of a Cayley or a Sylvester may possibly lead to some new methods, at the simplicity and power of which a future age will wonder, and yet wonder more that to us they were so dark and difficult?"

Let me draw an illustration from another science which will be acknowledged as of transcendent importance even by those, if such sceptics there be, who have no confidence in transcendental mathematics. Cohnheim, the great pathologist of Germany, whose death occurred in 1884, declares, in the introduction to his 'General pathology,' that the study of the causes of disease is absolutely without limits, for it touches upon the most heterogeneous branches of science. Cosmical physics, meteorology and geology, not less than the social sciences, chemistry, as well as botany and zoölogy, all bring their contributions to that branch of pathology. So, with all his knowledge and ability, this leader in pathology restricted his own work to the study of disordered physiological functions. But what prevention of suffering, what sanitary alleviations, what prolongation of life, may we not anticipate in future generations, when man thoroughly understands his complex environment, and adapts himself to it?

In the accumulation of knowledge, as of other forms of wealth, saving must follow earning. So among the offices of a university we find the conservation of experience. Ignorant as the nineteenth century appears when we survey the long category of inquiries now held in abeyance by mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, chemists, and biologists, by ethnologists, philologers, historians, and publicists, let us ask how much man has advanced since the ages of stone, of iron, and of brass. Such books as Tylor's and Morgan's, such observations as those of Livingstone and Stanley, show us what man is without a history; what society is where no storage is provided for the lessons learned by successive generations, and where the wisest and best are content to pass away, leaving no sign. It is the business of universities, not only to perpetuate the records of culture, but to bring them out in modern, timely, and intelligible interpretations, so that all may know the laws of human progress, the dangers which imperil society, the conditions of advancing civilization. Experiments upon fundamental laws-such as the establishment of home rule, and the adjustment of the discord between industry and capital - may destroy or may promote the happiness of many generations. That mistakes may not be made, historical politics must be studied, and what is this but the study of the experience of mankind in endeavors to promote the social welfare? As there have been great lawgivers in the past, whose codes have been put to secular tests, so momentous experiments have

run through centuries, and involved the welfare of nations, - experiments which have been recorded and interpreted, but which call for still closer study, by the wisest intellects, before their lessons are exhausted. Can such researches be made in a moment? Can they be undertaken by a knight of labor? Are the facts to be gathered in a circulating library? Or must we depend upon scholars trained to handle the apparatus of learning? Gladstone and Bryce and Morley may or may not be right in all the subordinate features of the measures which they are advocating; but their influence at this very moment is resting on the fulcrum of historic knowledge, the value of local self-government. Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Marshall were far from being 'inspired' when they initiated the constitutional measures by which the United States are governed; and there is abundant evidence to show that they were students of the past experience of mankind in confederated politics. The compact of the Mayflower was reduced to writing within the sheltering arm of Cape Cod; but its ideas are those of men who knew the laws of Moses and Solomon, and who had seen in Holland, as well as in England, what favors and what hinders the development of civil and religious liberty. Within the shadow of the University of Leyden, a stone marks the spot where John Robinson lived, taught, and died; and the name of Elder Brewster of the Mayflower has been recently discovered among the matriculates of Peterhouse. Cambridge. In our day the pioneers of 1849 carried with them to the remotest shores of the continent ideas which soon took the form of laws, customs, colleges, schools, churches, hospitals, unknown under the Mexican sway; but they had learned these ideas in the historic schools of the Atlantic seaboard.

The universities are the natural conservators of educational experience, and should be recognized as the guides of public education. In a better state of society, means will be found to make the men of learning in a given generation responsible for the systems of primary teaching; giving potency to their counsel not only at the end but in every stage of scholastic life. Upon text-books, courses of study, methods of discipline, the qualifications of teachers, the value of rewards, honors, and examinations, the voice of the universities should be heard. The confusion and uncertainty which now prevail are indications that in schools of the lowest as of the highest grades, re-adjustments are needed which can only be wisely directed by those whose learning embraces the experience of many generations. The wisest are none too wise in pedagogics, but they are better counsellors than the ignorant.