And they are also symptomatic evidences of the constitutional disease at the very heart and core of modern civilization. MR. FRANKLIN S. HOLMES: I must differ with one of the speakers when he states that no building in New York is to-day well ventilated. Good and scientific ventilation can be had if paid for. The Metropolitan Club building, corner of Sixtieth Street and Fifth Avenue, which was opened a week or two since, is an instance in point of a building artificially ventilated throughout. To accomplish this work power machinery, fans and ducts have been provided throughout, without stinting cost. The Carnegie Music Hall is another building similarly ventilated. Here one of the assembly rooms is entirely below ground, and without a window of any kind. The capacity of the ventilating apparatus is entirely adequate to the removal of the air from the hall in a few minutes. agree with what has been said as to the indifference of people in general to the matter of ventilation, but differ with the speaker as to his wholesale denunciation of all modern ventilating practice. Suitable ventilation can be obtained, but it requires the employment of a specialist and the outlay of considerable money. I I am tempted to say a word concerning the modern office building. As we cross the Brooklyn bridge on a cold morning the silver clouds of exhaust steam everywhere rising from the New York buildings are a silent witness to the enormous energy consumed in operating elevators; while we almost mistake the roofs of the four and five story buildings for the ground, so high do the tall office buildings forming New York's second story rise above them. This new class of architecture was brought in by the steam elevator. Formerly a builder was his own architect and engineer, but this is so no longer. Construction is becoming specialized. The modern architect may design and arrange and supervise construction, but, to be successful, he must call to his aid a variety of professional help-a mechanical engineer to arrange foundations and iron construction, a steam engineer for the power plant, an electrical engineer for lighting. The creation of a well-equipped twenty story office building is no insignificant feat in modern engineering. COLLATERAL READINGS SUGGESTED, Spencer's Principles of Biology, Sections 302-303, and Principles of Psychology, chapter on "The Physical Synthesis;” Carpenter's Mental Physiology; Maudsley's Physiology of Mind; Sully's Sensation and Intuition; Huxley's Animal Automatism, and The Physical Basis of Life; Proctor's Hereditary Traits; James's The Laws of Habit, in Popular Science Monthly, February, 1887. HABIT. BY JOHN WHITE CHADWICK. In his declaration that conduct is three-fourths of human life Matthew Arnold may or may not have made an accurate calculation. Four quarters would, perhaps, be nearer to the mark, but, three or four, the major part of it is habit, good or bad. Proverbially "we are creatures of habit. That we are equally the creators of habit seems not to be proverbial, but happily it is no less true. Whether we submit to habit as a fate or make it the means of our self-conquest and our social help, is a matter of first rate importance. As for the individual so for the community, the state. The subject is one which has many and various implications. Concerning some of these I have read and thought too little, or too much, to speak of them with the authority of personal conviction. Habit is not monopolized by man, nor by him in conjunction with his poor relations of the animal world. Nature has her orderly arrangement and succession. How many of our habits are conformed to hers! Our very life depends on such conformity--the adjustment of our organization to her environment. "The stars have us to bed," as Herbert quaintly sings. Our plantings and our reapings are in unison with her springtime and her autumn weather. The waters run down hill and seek their own level with infallible fidelity. The attraction of gravitation is always inversely to the square of the distance. The radius vector of a planet always describes equal areas in equal times. Ordinarily, we speak of these uniformities of coëxistence and sequence as laws. By calling them habits we should better express our meaning and be better un derstood; so many understand by laws something analagous to the statutory laws of kings and parliaments. The uniformities of nature are the habits of the mighty |