president will be better able to secure gifts and endowments for his university.

Again, there is far too much attention paid to athletics. A director of football at an American university gets $6,000 a year; a coach, $1,500 for ten to twelve weeks' work, with board and lodg ing. Sports occupy a preposterous amount of space in American papers. New York pays its teachers fairly well, but worse than any other form of work not purely mechanical. No other State pays them nearly so well.

AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC WORK MERELY ANALYTICAL.

The true scientific spirit, according to Herbert. Spencer, is the synthetic spirit, which sees likenesses where the common mind only sees divergences. It is this which M. Jussieu considers is almost wholly lacking in America. Here scientific works are almost always merely analytical,statistics, compilations, etc., requiring an altogether lower order of intelligence.

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Modern positivism has been little understood in America. Two very different propositions have been confounded: basing science on facts, and making science consist in facts."

M. Jussieu concludes by remarking that nothing is further from him than to wish to cast a stone at America. He merely tries to explain that the state of science here is a necessary result of the social conditions. In America "every one must, willingly or unwillingly, enter the unbearable democratic mill." The American professor must waste endless time on social distractions; the scientist can with difficulty avoid doing likewise. What waste of time! What strength spent in futile details!

TEACHING AGRICULTURE IN THE PUBLIC
SCHOOLS.

THE advantage of some form of agricultural

instruction in the rural and village schools, to which is committed the training of about 70 per cent. of the public-school children of our land, hardly seems to require demonstration. It is a fact, nevertheless, that in many parts of the country next to nothing has been done in this direction. Educationists, however, are alive to the pedagogical value of this kind of training in elementary schools; a paper contributed by Superintendent Joseph Carter, of Champaign, Ill., to the September number of the Kindergarten Magazine gives many excellent reasons for the inclusion of the subject in school programmes and at the same time offers helpful suggestions to teachers.

Some of the latter we quote in the following paragraphs:

A HINT AS TO WHAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT.

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Teach the children the lessons of the soil. Tell them the wonderful story of its origin, or, better still, let them tell you what they have seen in the field, and by the brook, and then you give them the charming explanation. Tell them why men plow, and what are the reasons for cultivat ing the soil, and what methods of cultivation are beneficial and what are decidedly injurious. Tell them how the physical condition of the soil may affect its fertility; and tell them what elements have been taken from the soil when it is worn out, and how to replace them. Tell them the marvelous story of the important discovery of modern times, a discovery which places in the hands of every farmer a means, completely under his control, of drawing from the atmosphere the free nitrogen of the air, and of fixing it in any field he may wish to enrich.

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It is a story of minute organisms which are in the soil, or if they are not there, the farmer can put them there, which locate themselves upon the roots of certain plants, and give these plants power to store up in their roots, to be left in the soil, its most valuable constituent of plant food-nitrogen. Tell them what the tassel and the silk of the corn are, and why one is at the top of the stalk and the other very much below it. Tell them why the blossoms of corn, oats, rice, and wheat are colorless and odorless, and why the blossoms of cotton and the clover are so beautifully colored, and why they have such exquisite perfume. Tell them what the bees and the bumblebees are doing, and of what superlative importance they are to the existence of many plants, and how they are most industriously serving man a little by the honey they make, but vastly more in other ways; for they not only increase his apple, peach, and pear crop, but they also aid in adding fertility to the soil."

the white clover, the bumblebee and the red clover, and the great value of the work they accomplish; the angle worm in the field and its work. These things for the child, and more complex things for the young man and the young woman of the farm, how they would change the mental and spiritual attitude of the future farmer toward his vocation! Instead of being either the discontented drudge longing to get to town, as he so often is, or of being the hard-fisted, grasping land grabber, which some, alas! are, he would be a student working joyously and happily and successfully in that greatest of all laboratories -a well-kept farm."

WILL OUR CITIES BE A MASS OF SKY-
SCRAPERS?

MR. BURTON J. HENDRICK contributes

an article on The Limitation of the Production of Sky-scrapers" to the October Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Hendrick says that the imagina. tive pictures of our great cities as they will ap pear twenty-five or fifty years hence, as masses of sky-scraping office buildings twenty to thirty stories high, is not a true one. He says that natural causes have brought a pause to the production of sky-scrapers in New York City at least, and that in future there will be rather a decrease, relatively, in their production.

This is brought about, he says, by the factors of light and air. The tenants that occupy great office buildings are willing to pay liberally for light and air, and it is readily seen that if a street is lined on both sides with twenty to thirty story buildings, a majority of the rooms in these buildings will not have their quota of light and air. This is so true that nowadays, when a company erects a huge structure in New York City, it finds it necessary to buy or lease the adjoining property to insure against the erection on this adjoining property of sky-scrapers similar to its own. Dr. Hendrick gives a number of examples where this has been done in New York City, and he shows that this process will prove a constantly growing limitation to the production of sky-scrapers. In other words, whenever a very tall building goes up nowadays, it is apt to make it certain that adjoining lands will be used for lower structures permanently.

PLAINNESS IN SKY-SCRAPER ARCHITECTURE.

This is, from an architectural point of view, highly desirable, because the constructors of sky. scrapers have found out by experience that it is practically useless to attempt ornamentation of the huge office buildings, and have come down to an absolutely plain and monotonous façade as the

sists of a succession of prosaic stories, one upon another, the whole rising sheer from earth heavenward, its monotony unrelieved by the slightest ornamentation. The largest office building in the world, the Broad Exchange, at the southeast corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place, New York, rising to a height of twenty stories, and occupying 27,000 square feet of ground space, is the final word in what may be called the modern economic system of office construction. The building was erected by a syndicate of operators as a speculative enterprise, and represents invested capital of not far from $7,500,000. Of that $7,500,000 hardly a dollar has been spent in non-productive ornamentation; the whole operation has been conducted with an eye single to rental income."

A GREAT CATTLE KING OF MEXICO.

S.

G. ANDRUS tells of the greatest of the Mexican ranch kings in the October National Magazine. Don Luis Terrazas, of Chihuahua, owns between 20,000,000 and 30,000,000 acres of land, 8,000,000 acres of which are the finest grazing land in Mexico. His brand-marks are on a million head of cattle, half as many sheep, and several hundred thousand horses.

When one leaves El Paso on the Mexican Central train, he starts on the ranch of Terrazas, and rides through it for a hundred and fifty miles, gazing all day on Terrazas' cattle, sheep, and horses fattening on the rich para grass. On the ten mammoth ranches of the cattle king some 10,000 men are constantly employed, and something like 100,000 acres of his estate are under cultivation. Mr. Andrus says that Don Luis, it is estimated, is probably worth $200,000,000 to $300,000,000, Mexican money, and has enormous holdings of bank stock and factory stock in addition to his pastoral wealth. He is a close friend of President Diaz, and a power financially and politically. Mr. Andrus says there is a great future for the grazing industry in Mexico, and that it will come into powerful competition with the cattle-raising in our Southwest. At present about 70 per cent. of the Mexican cattle are sent to the United States. Señor Terrazas has done a great deal to foster and promote the cattle industry of his country, inducing the government to remove the tax on blooded cattle, and importing blooded bulls from the States by the carload. He is teaching the Mexicans to use dressed meats. They are the greatest meat-eaters on earth, but kill their beef one hour and eat it the next. Don Luis has built in Chihuahua a large modern packing house, the only one in Mexico. This packing house is

manned by American workmen and superintend

ents.

Don Luis is a sturdy man of seventy-three, but still supervises personally his vast interests. He knows to the last detail the factors of income and outgo. Just now he is intent upon the problems of irrigation, and has recently spent $300,000 in constructing four reservoirs to save the loss of cattle that always comes in a dry

season.

THE NAVY'S GREATEST NEED.

IT

T is a strange but undeniable fact that what many naval officers and experts regard as the American navy's most urgent need at the present time is hardly understood at all by the general public. The press gives full information about the ships and guns, but very slight consideration is given to the manning and officering of these ships and guns,-or, as the French say, the personnel. It is the purpose of Lieut. -Com. Roy C. Smith, writing in the North American Review for September, to inform the public on this latter phase of the naval problem, and to show the need of men transcends in importance the need of material equipment.

Lieutenant-Commander Smith makes so strong a case that we wonder how Congress could so long have remained blind to the real seriousness of the situation. The facts of the matter, as stated by this officer, are briefly as follows: The number of officers and men in the navy is limited by law. While the tonnage of the navy has doubled and trebled, the number of sea-going officers has not been increased at all, and that of the enlisted men only to a limited extent. Each session of Congress, as a rule, sees an increase in the tonnage, while the increases in the men have come only at rare intervals, and there has been no increase of officers. The personnel act of 1899 made, it is true, a slight increase, but the vacancies thus created, owing to a lack of graduates, have never been filled. It is as if a line of merchant ships had ten vessels in its service, all suitably manned, and then gradually increased its fleet to thirty vessels; but as each new ship is added its officers and men were drawn from the older ships, without any increase of the total number. How long could this sort of thing go on?

It is a fact that Congress at its last session provided for an addition of 3,000 enlisted men, bringing up the total of enlisted men and boys to 28,000. It is explained, however, that this number was thought to be temporarily adequate only because it was expected that a number of ships would be out of commission or laid up for

repairs. The total completed tonnage of the navy on January 1, 1902, was 481,967 tons. This would give a ratio of 60 men per 1,000 tons of shipping. Taking into account the authorized tonnage as shown by the last Navy Register, this same ratio would require a force of 45,000 men and boys for the 750,000 tons.

HOW SHALL THE SHIPS BE OFFICERED?

The problem of officers is far more grave. As already stated, there has been no increase whatever in the number of sea-going officers since the days of wooden steamers. It is estimated that a period of twelve years is required to make an efficient lieutenant, beginning at boyhood. Commander Smith thus describes the difficulties in which the navy now finds itself :

"In the report of the chief of the Bureau of Navigation, already referred to, it is shown that 1,026 additional line officers will be needed by the time all the ships then authorized shall be finished, and the estimate is stated to be at least

30 per cent. smaller than the practice abroad for ships in commission. As the navy then consisted of 1,042 line officers, counting the cadets doing sea duty, it meant that the number of officers would have had to be doubled in about three years from that time, or in two years from now. The 1,042 officers then on the list had been in training anywhere from four to forty-eight years. In the next two years an equal number must be added to the list to bring up the total strength to a minimum of efficiency! The problem is an impossible one. It means that there has been great shortsightedness in the past, but with that we are not now concerned.

For the future, while 1,026 trained officers cannot be provided in two years, still something may be done, and it should be done at once, for every year of delay means the chance of national humiliation, which may, however, possibly be avoided by acting now. From the figures quoted, that is, 2,068 officers and 750,000 tons of shipping, and as in the case of the enlisted men they are an exceedingly moderate estimate, made by considering the individual ships and the prac tice of foreign nations, the proper ratio of line officers to tons of shipping is seen to be about 3 officers per 1,000 tons. This does not mean that all the officers are required for sea duty. There are some technical duties in connection with administration and the preparation of ships that will always require some officers to be ashore. Also, a small reserve will be needed to allow for sickness, leave, and the interchange of duties. The total figure quoted above, that is, 2,068 offi-was made up of 1,479 officers, or 71 per cent., at sea; 425, or 21 per cent., on shore

cers,

duty; and 164, or 8 per cent., as a reserve. The total, as has been seen, amounts to 3 officers per 1,000 tons, which ratio should be authorized by law, as has been recommended in the case of the enlisted men, 1 officer for every 20 men, 3 officers and 60 men for every 1,000 tons of com. pleted and authorized shipping, the tonnage to be ascertained at the beginning of each fiscal year, and the quotas of officers and men to hold for that year. The above refers only to line officers, though the same reasoning applies equally to the staff corps."

The only feasible means of relief would seem to be an immediate increase in the Naval Academy appointments. It is first of all necessary, however, that Congress and the people should be aroused to the urgency of the matter.

THE ENGINEER'S PLACE IN THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN NAVIES.

THE British Admiralty order of January 9 last, directing that in future certain machinery is to pass from the charge and control of the engineer officer to that of the gunnery or torpedo lieutenants, respectively, is the subject of an article by Mr. Charles M. Johnson in the Engineering Magazine for September.

THE ENGINEER'S GRIEVANCE.

Mr. Johnson thus sets forth the present state of things in the British navy :

"Every reading man knows that for many years the engineering department of the navy has been in a more than unsatisfactory condition; it has been in a state of partial collapse. It is not from one public paper alone that the trumpet sound of danger has come. Every correspondent who has been permitted to accompany the ships on the summer cruise or in the autumn manœuvres, has to a greater or less extent, played on the same note. Some, like Mr. Rudyard Kipling, have not hesitated to call a spade a spade.' They have manfully and impartially endeavored to bring home to the man in the street' the deplorable weakness and inefficiency of this branch of the navy. Public men of all classes have joined in protest against this paralyzing state of affairs in Great Britain's first and only line of defense.

"And what has been the result, as far as the Admiralty is concerned, of all this great consensus of thought and opinion? Has it succeeded in removing one single disability from, or in adding even 1 per cent. of either officers or men to, this dangerously undermanned branch of the service? Has it strengthened the hands of the chief engineer by giving him a staff of

better-trained units, although no added numbers ? Has it in any way met the need of the engineer for greater authority and more control over his staff? In fine, has the board done anything to meet this widespread and public demand for reformation in the engineering department of the navy ?"

"If," says Mr. Johnson, these questions were put to the Lords of the Admiralty, they would doubtless be answered in the affirmative, but as a member of this overworked, undermanned, slighted, barely tolerated class, I not only answer it in the negative, but I must go further and charge the Admiralty with deliber ately sacrificing the national interests and the empire's safety to the professional interests and prejudices of their own class-the sailor element."

NO REPRESENTATION AT HEADQUARTERS. The reason, says Mr. Johnson, of the new order is not far to seek. All the four sea-lords belong to one or other of the sections to which by the new order is to be committed the care and maintenance of the machinery and weapons taken away from the engineer, who from their first introduction into the service has had them in charge.

"The Admiralty have for years set their faces resolutely against increasing the engineer staff. Why? Because if they permitted the engineer department to grow to its legitimate proportions, -proportions corresponding to the multifarious duties which naturally and properly belong to it, -it would quickly equal in numbers, if it did not surpass, the sailor element. When we remember that in the present day everything is done as far as may be by mechanical means,that is, by the engineer, and that all the sailor is left to do is to fight the guns and keep the ship clean, are we not naturally surprised to find that the ratio between the sailor and the engineer branches respectively is as 4 to 1? Again I ask, why? Because cominand of men means power, and needs authority to wield that power. The engineer has no executive or military authority, he is a civilian! He can do nothing to reward or punish any member of his staff."

A VITAL QUESTION.

Mr. Johnson asks, "Is machinery of any sort likely to be as efficiently handled, to give as good results, or to last as long in the hands of amateurs as in those of experts ?" A naval engineer, before he is considered competent to undertake the independent charge of machinery, must spend five or six years in the workshops at Keyham; then for some ten years he acts as as

sistant engineer at sea under the orders of a superior engineer. perior engineer. After this he is considered eligible for an appointment in charge of the machinery of a gun or torpedo boat. This training cannot be contemplated for the executive officer in the new order.

A WELCOME CONTRAST.

It is pleasant to turn to Mr. Walter M. McFarland's paper upon "The Naval Engineer of the Future," which immediately precedes Mr. Johnson's gloomy article. Mr. McFarland was for a long time an engineer in the United States navy, and gives an account of the much happier state of things prevailing there. Criticising Mr. Johnson's article, he says:

"It seems to me that Mr. Johnson has missed the point that the Admiralty regulation transferring certain strictly engineering work to executive officers is really an admission that military titles are not inconsistent with engineering duty, and that consequently this move should be looked upon as an admission, although a half-hearted and very unsatisfactory one, that the claims of the engineers are just. In view of the outcome in the navy of the United States, which is well known to all students of the subject, it seems to me that this recent Admiralty regulation should really be a source of some satisfaction to British engineers, but it should not cause them to relax their efforts to secure their proper standing."

ONE REALLY STRONG CIVILIAN.

Mr. Johnson is always careful to exclude Lord Selborne and Mr. Arnold-Forster from his criticisms, on the ground that, being civilians, they cannot do anything except act on the advice of experts. The present fortunate state of things in the American navy is chiefly due to President Roosevelt's initiative when he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. "A really strong civilian has no difficulty at all in getting at the facts of these technical matters," says Mr. McFarland.

AN AMALGAMATION.

The reform introduced by President Roosevelt is really an amalgamation between the engineer and the executive officer. To quote his own words:

"Every officer on a modern war vessel in reality has to be an engineer, whether he wants to or not. Everything on such a vessel goes by machinery, and every officer, whether dealing with the turrets or the engine-room, has to do engineer's work. There is no longer any reason for having a separate body of engineers, responsible for only a part of the machinery. What we need is one homogeneous body, all of whose