Report of the Council Field-Day at Beloeil THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION :-- The Devonian Group; by Prof. GODWIN-AUSTIN The Source of the Miocene Clays; by W. PENGELLY.. The Exploration of Kent's Cavern.. The Entrance of the Mammoth; by H, HOWORTH Report of the Close-term Committee.. On Deep Sea Dredging 209 209 216 217 218 301 302 302 303 303 304 304 306 307 308 309 310 The Improvement of Cereals; by F. F. HALLET 314 The Acrogens of Lake Superior Note on the Name of Aspidium spinulosum var. dilatatum. THE CANADIAN NATURALIST AND Quarterly Journal of Science. NOTES OF A VISIT TO SCIENTIFIC SCHOOLS AND MUSEUMS IN THE UNITED STATES. By Principal DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S., &c. Away from snow and frost, on the rail, rapidly sweeping through New England villages with their snug homes and busy factories, we approach the great western emporium, the lesser London, the commercial capital of the "greater Britain" of the western world-already numbering its million and a half of people, and rivalling old London in all the higher and lower phases of a city life. Our business is not with either its trade or its gaiety. We have first to tell to such of its people as care to know of such old world things, our story about "Primeval Forests," and then to scrutinise, under the guidance of our friend Dr. Newberry, the class-rooms, laboratories and museums of Columbia college, a workshop of mind, aiming to train young men to that practical grasp of science which shall enable them to apply its principles to the better extraction and working into useful purposes of the dark treasures of mother earth. Columbia College is a brick building in a quaint old fashioned square, once out of town, but overgrown by the rapid increase of the great city, which swallows up farms, estates, and country houses as if they were mere morsels to its voracious appetite. The building, which was intended for an asylum, forms three sides of a quadrangle, and has many long narrow rooms well lighted by windows in the sides. It is regarded as merely a temporary VOL. I. B No. 1. residence for the college, whose large endowment of nearly $1,500,000 is being in great part retained by its trustees as a basis for more extended operations than those of the present "School of Mines." Still it is well adapted to its use, and has been admirably arranged. Three of its long rooms, like the wards of a hospital, but with tables and shelves instead of beds, are fitted up as working laboratories in which a hundred and twenty students may at once pursue qualitative and quantitative analysis. Another room in the basement is furnished with furnaces and other appliances for assaying in the dry way. Another is arranged for drawing, and there are several plainly furnished but commodious class rooms. One of the rooms is devoted to the collection of minerals, which is very neatly arranged in flat cases, with abundant illustrations of crystalline forms interspersed. Another contains the collections of geology and palæontology, in great part consisting of the private cabinet of Professor Newberry, and especially rich in the flora of the coal period, and in illustrations of the ores and other economic products of America. The staff of Columbia College consists of eighteen Professors, lecturers, and assistants, representing the subjects of mineralogy, metallurgy, chemistry, botany, mathematics, mechanics, physics, geology and paleontology, assaying and drawing. Its course extends over three years, and embraces the work necessary to qualify for practical operations in mineral surveying, mining, metallurgy and practical chemistry. Students are required on entrance to pass an examination in algebra, geometry and trigonometry. Though it has been in operation on its present basis only for a few years, it had in its last catalogue 109 students, the greater part of whom, on attaining to the degree of “Engineer of Mines" or "Bachelor of Philosophy," will go out as practical workers in mines and manufactories. An important feature of the course is that students are expected in the vacation to visit mines and metallurgical and chemical establishments, and to report thereon and make illustrative collections; while during the session short excursions are made to machine shops and metallurgical establishments in and near the city. It is probable that Columbia College is little cared for or thought of by the greater part of the busy multitudes of New York; yet if a map of the city were made on the principle of the missionary maps, but illustrating the places where true industrial progress is being pro vided for, it would be a very white spot, though but a very small one, in the great Babel. From New York to New Haven is from a great city with small science to a small city in which science bulks relatively larger. On Christmas Day we looked in upon Professor Marsh, almost buried among all that is richest and rarest in new scientific literature and choice specimens, and enjoyed again the genial look and kindly greeting of our friend Silliman, and chatted for a little with the keen philosophic Dana, shattered indeed in health, but still growing inwardly in spirit. The Sheffield Scientific School is a modern outgrowth of the old University of Yale College; and originated in 1847 in the organization of the "Department of Philosophy and Arts," under Professors Silliman and Norton, representing respectively the subjects of Applied Chemistry and Agriculture. The scheme seems to have been devised by the elder Silliman, and to have had its birth in his private efforts in previous years to give practical instruction to special students. This department was maintained with moderate success for several years; but at length in 1860 Mr. Sheffield, a wealthy citizen of New Haven, came forward to its aid with the handsome gift of a building and apparatus valued at over $50,000 and a fund of $50,000 more to endow Professorships of Engineering, Metallurgy and Chemistry. This enlightened benefaction at once placed the school on a respectable footing, and in 1863 it was further enlarged by the application to its use of the share of the State of Connecticut in the large grants of land made by Congress in that year for purposes of scientific education, grants which have borne similar good fruit in many other States. The Sheffield School will also be a large sharer in the benefits which the University will derive from the great Museum founded by Mr. Peabody, and endowed by him with the sum of $150,000. The present extremely valuable collections of Yale College are stored in rooms of quite inadequate dimensions, and are being rapidly augmented and improved. Prof. Marsh and Prof. Verrill alone have vast stores of fossils, corals and other specimens, in basements and cellars; and when the whole shall be arranged in Mr. Peabody's Museum, Yale College will be inferior to few Academic institutions in the world in regard to its facilities for teaching the science of nature through the eye. A special collection in the Sheffield School, very valuable and well worthy of study, is that of economic geology. It is admirably arranged, and gives at one view an idea of nearly all the sources of the mineral wealth of the United States from the Atlantic border to the Pacific. The building of the Sheffield School is better than that of Columbia College, though it is an old medical school adapted to its present use; and the scope of the institution is wider, including six distinct courses, any of which may be followed by the student. These are: 1st, Chemistry and Mineralogy; 2nd, Engineering and Mechanics; 3rd, Mining and Metallurgy; 4th, Agriculture; 5th, Natural History and Geology; 6th, A Select Scientific and Literary Course. The class-rooms and laboratories struck me as remarkably ingenious and neat in all their arrangements, and combining in a great degree all possible contrivances for the convenience of Professors and students. The bungling and uncomfortable arrangements too often seen in Academic rooms had evidently here been replaced by the exercise of some engineering and mechanical skill and contrivance, and by a combination of lecture room and cabinet the means of illustration had been rendered extremely accessible. In token that the Sheffield School is not altogether a school of mines looking down into the bowels of the earth, its liberal founder has presented it with an Equatorial Telescope, made by Clark, with an object glass having an aperture of nine inches. It is placed in a tower constructed for it; and with a meridian circle and other instruments, enables students to learn all the work of a regular observatory, as well as the operations of astronomical geodesy. Any one interested in the training of the young men of Canada can scarcely avoid a feeling of envy in visiting such an institution as this, furnished with so many facilities for enabling the active mind of youth to grasp all that is of practical utility or provocative of high and noble thought in the heaven above and in the earth beneath. At this moment a Canadian Sheffield, judiciously aiding any University having an adequate and permanent basis, would do more to promote the trade and manufactures of this country, and its scientific reputation, than can be done by any other agency. The faculty of the Sheffield School includes twenty-three names, and its roll of students numbers one hundred and forty. It is scarcely necessary to say that several of the Professors at Yale are active and successful original workers, and that the place is not only an effective scientific school, sending out each |