Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/292

This page needs to be proofread.
Editorial Department.

masses of sandstone, ironstone or granite. The '•kopjes " are the Boers' fortifications, and they have any number of them. SCOTLAND Yard widely known as the head quarters of the London police, is an historical place, said to have been the site of a palace where kings of Scotland were received when they came to London. It is located near the banqueting hall, Whitehall. The Scotch kings retained possession of it from 959 till the rebellion of William of Scotland. Milton. Sir Christopher Wren and other notables lived in Scotland Yard. GERMAN surgeons made the discovery that the delicate membrane that lines the inside of an egg shell will answer as well as bits of skin from a human being to start healing over by granulation in open wounds which will not otherwise heal. The discovery was used, for the first time in this country on a patient in the Seney Hospital in Brooklyn, and it proves to be a successful trial. The patient left the hos pital and resumed his customary work, a well man. . . . Surgeons have long known that healing by granulation requires, in a weak patient, some point (or points) around which the granulations can clus ter and grow. For this purpose they have had to rely upon bits of human skin, taken from some person who is willing, for love or money, to submit to the painful process of having these bits cut out. In this case, the patient's wife, his nephew, and a young man in his employ, all offered to furnish the required cuticle. But luckily one of the surgeons then remembered the German discovery, and getting some fresh eggs, tried the lining membrane of the shell. It proved a successful substitute. THE slow flapping of a butterfly's wings, accord ing to Sir John Lubbock, produces no sound, but when the movements are rapid a noise is produced, which increases in shrillness with the number of vibrations. Thus the house fly, which produces the sound F. vibrates its wings 21,120 times a minute, and the bee, which makes a sound of A. as many as 26.400 times. Professor Narcy, the naturalist, has succeeded by a delicate mechanism in confirming these numbers graphically. He fixed a fly so that the tip of the wing just touched a cylinder which was moved by clockwork.

LITERARY NOTES. THE April ATLANTIC opens — very appropriately to the season — with An Acadian Easter, a series of striking lyrics by Francis Sherman, commemorative

265

of the fate of castle La Tour and its fair commander on Easter Sunday two hundred and fifty years ago. George F. Parker, United States Consul at Birming ham, England, gives an inside view by an expe rienced observer of the character and weaknesses of our Consular System; the status and duties of con suls : the vicious methods of appointment; the neg lect of the service by congress and its unsatisfactory manage by the State Department. W. J. Stillman in his autobiography describes his art studies and his experiences at Paris (while waiting for a Hunga rian call to arms which never came), followed by his artistic and camping life in the Adirondacks after his return to America. The Perplexities of a Col lege President, by One of the Guild, is a valuable and startling exposition of the difficulties under which the heads of most of our collegiate institutions labor. The author points out that, contrary to all business practice, the president of a college is largely so iu name only. His actions are continually trammeled or opposed by his faculty or his trustees, while his pro fessors look upon advice or interference from him in their work as insulting to them. He demonstrates that education is a business and should be directed by business methods, and that the heads of such in stitutions should be so actually, and be given an au thority commensurate with their responsibility. Ix the REVIEW OF REVIEWS for April, Professor J. W. Jenks, who has served the United States In dustrial Commission as expert adviser in the trust investigation, sets forth the merits of publicity as a remedy for the evils of trusts, with special reference to the conclusions of the Industrial Commission, and to the pending legislation in New York known as the •• Business Companies' Act." In an article enti tled "The Constitution of the Territories," Prof. Harry Pratt Judson, of the University of Chicago, defines the powers of congress in relation to our new possessions, exposing some of the fallacies that have crept into the discussion of the subject, both within and without the halls of congress. THE complete novel in the NEW LIPPINTOTT for April is entitled •' The Heart of the Ancient Wood," by Charles G. D. Roberts. The few but large souled human characters in it live in the woods of the North, close to nature's heart, with the beasts of the forest for their friends. Yet even here the old, old story is very present; the wild surroundings cannot entirely efface the coquetry natural to woman and there is rivalry of a unique kind to bring this out. This issue is replete with good fiction : A com plete novel and four short stories. Seumas Mac