though success has been in many cases attained by untrained men, no one can say how much greater might have been the achievements of these same men had they enjoyed liberal training before entering the

race.

An apparent exception seems to exist among the doctors, for the code is so strict that no one can be registered as a practising physician who is not a graduate of a medical institute of established rank. But the exception is only apparent; for, although every physician must be a graduate of a registered institution, there is nothing in the code requiring that a medical college student should have been previously a graduate from a classical or scientific college, and the burden of evidence goes to prove that the majority of the physicians of this country, while medical graduates, are not classical or scientific scholars in the collegiate sense of the term.

As a fact, therefore, it may be concluded that college graduates do not play the part expected of them in the affairs of the world at large, nor do they even influence the learned professions as might be supposed they would if the benefits conferred upon them by a collegiate training were as great as teachers and parents would have them believe.

Perhaps the fault is their own, but perhaps also it lies with the college authorities and in the college courses. The courses of study laid down in the catalogues have, year by year, become more encyclopædic, and during every long vacation professors and teachers appear to busy themselves in considering what addition shall be made to the curriculum in order to render it more comprehensive and less practical and practicable.

An examination of the course of study of a large and popular institution shows that in six years' time the young men are supposed to master composition, zoology, drawing, arithmetic, book-keeping, botany, algebra, physics, geometry, trigonometry, solid geometry, chemistry, laboratory-work, physiology, physical geography, hygiene, United States history, American literature, spherical trigonometry, spherical astronomy, English history, analytical geometry, calculus, political science, economic botany, English literature, entomology, French, American history, political economy, German, medieval history, "Semetic languages" (whatever that expression may mean), ancient history, Anglo-Saxon, logic, psychology, physical laboratory, geology, field-work, paleontology, ethics, and philosophy, both mental and moral. In addition to these, Latin and Greek appear in every halfyear but the first, making a total of forty-six different studies; or, if the Latin and Greek are counted as separate studies in each half-year, as indeed they may be, for different text-books are employed, a total of sixty-eight studies to be skimmed over-for mastery is an inapplicable word-in the six years' course of study.

This seems bad enough; but what shall we think when the inspection of the catalogue of a girls' college shows that in the same length of time a young lady, to become a candidate for graduation, is expected to understand composition, zoology, drawing, arithmetic, book-keeping, rhetoric, botany, algebra, physics, German, medieval history, plane geometry, plane trigonometry, solid geometry, chemistry, English,

laboratory-work, physical geography, physiology, hygiene, calisthenics, United States history, American literature, domestic chemistry, French, modern history, spherical trigonometry, spherical astronomy, English history, physics, art, Greek literature, political science, economic botany, systematic botany, literary criticism, English literature, entomology, political economy, Italian, quantitative analysis, Semitic languages, ancient history, Anglo-Saxon, mineralogy, lithology, psychology, logic, æsthetics, horticulture, landscape-gardening, geological museum, geology, palæontology, ethics, and mental and moral philosophy, besides eight half-years each of Latin and Greek,-a total of seventy-three studies in six years!

Now, suppose that only two books are used for each subject,—which is a low estimate, for in some studies eight or ten would be nearer the truth, and we have one hundred and forty-six volumes, large and small, which the young-lady student is supposed to go through after some fashion in the course of six years. Let each volume contain only five hundred pages,-probably a fair statement, and we have seventythree thousand pages which she is presumed to study, more or less carefully, in the same length of time. The school year, however, is not the calendar year, but consists of forty weeks of five days each, and the unfortunate youths who go through the colleges of our time are thus understood to master about sixty pages a day, not of light reading, such as novels, story-books, or even history, but solid matter which is to be pored over to ascertain its meaning and carefully considered for the purpose of assimilating and making it a part of the mind. In the nature of the case, real learning is a practical impossibility, and no wonder can be felt at the superficiality of college education. Students are misled and mislead themselves, gaining the idea that they have mastered a study, when they have only finished a text-book.

That the young gentlemen and ladies who graduate after skirmishing through a college course should imagine that the sum total of human knowledge is theirs, and that the world is at their feet, is not to be wondered at. Year after year the maxim "Knowledge is power" is dinned in their ears, and they have been led to believe the statement true in the abstract, with no possibility of modification. While, however, it is perfectly true that knowledge may be power, the question whether it is or not, depends on the kind of knowledge. For knowledge may be either a weapon to aid the traveller in cutting his way through the jungle of life, or a piece of useless luggage to encumber his march, and it is still an open question whether the colleges provide the young with weapons or impediments, for after one has mastered and stowed away in his cranium all the knowledge of a college course he is likely to find his mind in the condition of the old-fashioned attic lumber-room, full enough of all sorts of things, but piled in so hurriedly that it is impossible to find any needed article without overhauling the whole.

The value of knowledge does not, of course, depend altogether on its utility or immediate applicability, but it is impossible not to see that in the ponderous mass of learning presented in the college courses the greater part is not likely to be either immediately or remotely useful or

ornamental, for, if it were, evidence of that fact would be visible in the greater influence of college graduates on the business, social, professional, and literary affairs of the world, whereas the truth seems to be that the graduate must unlearn much, if not the most, of what he has learned at college before success is within his reach.

The truth seems to be that most of our colleges are from twenty-five to two hundred and fifty years behind the times, and seem likely to remain so, from the fact that the ideals held up by themselves before their own eyes are the semi-mediæval universities of Europe,-institutions that at present derive their chief patronage either from the wealthy who have leisure, or from those who go through the curriculum in order to fit themselves for the task of leading others in the same or parallel paths. The attempt at aping the European colleges has kept Latin and Greek foremost in the courses of study, together with much more of the dead past which cumbers the educational ground. But such is the importance still attached to the classics in many of our institutions of learning that a young man who cannot name the Presidents of the United States will glibly deliver himself of a list of the Emperors of Rome, will know more of the Peloponnesian war than of the American Revolution, and will be more familiar with the geography of Greece than with that of his own State.

To be sure, it is well enough to know who reigned in Rome, or who commanded the opposing forces during the wars between two petty Grecian states, and to be able to locate Thebes and Sparta on the map, if you have time to learn these things in addition to facts which should be the property of every fairly-educated man; but the latter should have the preference, and sooner or later college authorities must recognize the difference between the useful and the useless.

As at present constituted, too many of our institutions seem to build students on a wrong gauge, so that after leaving school the gauge must be altered to allow them to run on the track used by the rest of mankind; but how soon this fact will be seen and acknowledged by professors and teachers, is a conundrum. A general impression exists in educational circles that the class-room is the crank round which the world revolves; but sometimes, when the connection between the crank and the grindstone has slipped, the axe-grinding boy may be seen diligently at work turning as fast as his arms can move, unmindful of the fact that the grindstone does not stir. Thus, perhaps, it is with too many of our educational institutions: the crank is going, but the wheel does not respond.

D. R. McAnally.

VOL. XLIV.—47

THE QUESTION OF PURE WATER FOR CITIES.

WITH

a view to improving the purity of public water-supplies, in what direction are we to look? This question is certainly first in order, if it be a question. I think it is not usually treated as a question; that it is not usually considered; but that it is taken for granted as axiomatic, that of course we are to look to the sources of contamination, and shut them off.

But what are those sources ?

Well, first, the entire atmosphere, with all the exhalations and effluvia that can ascend by the method of diffusion or by the rarefying energy of the sun, and with all the comminuted solids that can be raised and sown upon all waters by the force of ordinary winds, not to speak of cyclones.

Second, the whole deciduous material of organic life, animal and vegetable, perpetually strewn upon land and water, falling in the rain, rotting on the margins and in the channels of streams, and leaching into water-supplies from every inch of the habitable earth.

Third, in addition to the regular and constant course of death and decomposition throughout nature, the overwhelming organic débris precipitated upon land and water by the breaking up of the vast annual accumulations of winter, and by frequent extraordinary shocks or pestilent changes such as occasionally choke considerable streams with dead and putrefying fish that thicken both the water and the air with the products of their decomposition.

Fourth, the most energetic of all filth-producers and accumulators, man; as much worse than the total of all nature besides, in this respect, as his powers of mind, machinery, and organization exceed the resources of the inferior creatures, while at the same time unprovided with those automatic sanitative faculties that save unintelligent nature from self-destruction. He industriously accumulates large animals in great numbers, with vast products of cultivated vegetation, and concentrates all their refuse and decay, with his own, about his doors. He lines the banks of every stream with manufactories that work up all things in the mineral, vegetable, and animal realms of nature, and pour their changed refuse abroad on the valleys and streams. Worst of all, he accumulates himself, and propagates and packs himself, in dense masses enormously and endlessly growing by the side of all waters, until the perpetual off-castings of his enormous life overwhelm the sanitative powers of nature, and breed unresisted pestilence in water, air, and soil, as far as his encroaching multitudes extend their habitations.

Do we seriously propose to stay these combined and rising floods of impurity with our brooms? Physical force is not given puny man to oppose cosmical

forces like these.

Nature has a perfectly successful way to dispose of her own refuse and that of her own children. It is another thing to cope with the cumulative waste of crowded and artificial human life. This cannot be done by the forces of nature, of engineering, of law, or of all combined. The apparatus of nature is perfect as far as it extends; but it is not concentrated on the lines of civilization, where the pestilent results of wholesale artificial pollution are assembled. Such concentration, therefore, is precisely what is wanting; the one thing needful, effec

tual, and practicable too, by scientific artificial means. We are to take the sanitative methods and agents of nature, adapt them to the changed conditions we have caused, and concentrate them on the concentrated impurity of our waters.

We must do this, because it is impossible to limit these excretions of civilization, or to make room for them outside, or to get along with them by any other method than that which nature has used hitherto with the refuse of the primitive world. We have before us, on the scale of the sparse primitive world, a model apparatus for the perpetual renovation of air, water, and soil to the perfection of wholesome and delightful purity. Nature could not keep out excretion, death, and corruption from these vital elements: no more can we exclude them, in the increasing proportions created by dense civilization, though our very best were done, as it should be, to stop all avoidable defilement. But nature could do something better; and so can we, in the same way: not bar out, but transmute for usefulness, the polluting waste, while daily renovating the vital elements to pristine purity and freshness.

To be more explicit: The rain-water, with the countless impurities it brings from the atmosphere and takes up from the filth of the earth, is first treated by nature with the metallic salts of the soil through which it percolates,—chief in importance those of the ubiquitous potassa and aluminous clay; by which (as every chemist may have found by an imitative treatment) the soluble impurities are withdrawn from solution and coagulated, together with the finer suspended material, for exfiltration. Reaching the sandy sub-soil, filtration commences, and the coagulated impurities are left within reach of the long root-filaments of plants, by which the natural filter is kept cleansed; while the bacteria, whose tendency is to attach themselves, and to work upward rather than otherwise (if we may trust recent demonstrations), also remain in a region of sustenance and usefulness, or else perish infertile in the sterility of the deeper and denser sand. (The above takes place where the proper conditions for coagulation and filtration are combined, as they are not in all places: numerous instances having been noted where polluted, infected, salt-impregnated, or purposely qualified waters have passed through long reaches of sand without undergoing any perceptible change. undoubtedly for want of chemical assistance from the soil.) A third and still further refining process is going on all the while by the intimate mingling of the diffused water with the telluric atmosphere, under increased pressure as the depths of the earth are penetrated, until, at great depths, the oxygenation of the water—increasing in a large geometrical ratio to the increase of pressure— results in that extraordinary refinement and vivacity for which certain deep-well and spring waters are famed.

To defend our surface-water supplies from sewage and the filterage of privies, stable-yards, and graves, is a most important duty, and ought to be a plain one, to intelligent purpose instructed by natural science. But, pending this not-soon-to-be-accomplished task,-or even granting this accomplished,to go on drinking all the vast residue of unavoidable pollution, with all the probable and possible germs of disease and the certain quantum of reptiles and parasites, when cities by the score are actually rejoicing in full supplies of water filtered from streams to the highest known standard of purity,-to go on doing this in the face of present fact and science, I must pronounce a crime for which ignorance is now no more excuse than indifference.

Let facts speak for themselves-and he that hath ears to hear, let him hear