To compress this study into a small space I have omitted a number of important facts. I pass to the conclusions (a) I have reached. (1) The relative pronoun (b) being essentially an inflectional device, is opposed by the tendencies (c) prevailing in English syntax—tendencies to flat construction. If the reader will look at (a), (b) and (c) in the preceding sentences, he will see specimens of the flat construction. (2) That is dead as a relative pronoun. Its use is a mere carelessness. (3) In some of the so-called idioms for the relative that, the word is not a relative at all, and the “idiom” itself is a case of flat construction. In “All that we know,” the relative usually following the demonstrative that has been omitted. (4) The so-called compound relative what is not a relative at all; in our modern use it is another flat construction to reduce the employment of which and its antecedent demonstrative. (5) I infer that the flat constructions ought to be classified and studied in schools. The effect of such teaching and study will be seen in a more vigorous English, and it will not be long before we shall begin to say, “The relative pronoun must go.”
HOME STUDIES IN CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.
BY PROF. J. T. EDWARDS, D.D.
Director of the Chautauqua School of Experimental Science.
CHEMISTRY OF ORGANISMS.
An organism is a structure endowed with life, and acting by means of organs. Organic beings are of two kinds, vegetable and animal. Ordinarily there is little difficulty in discriminating between them, but there is a border line along which the two great kingdoms meet, which is as shadowy and uncertain as that uniting, in distant view, the ocean and the sky. It is usual to say that animals move their parts, and that plants do not. The former have locomotion, the latter are stationary. Animals have nerves and receive their food in cavities; plants do not. But the most important distinction of all is that the vegetable world draws its support from the mineral world, while the animal lives upon the vegetable.
