Japanese Paper.—The peculiar qualities of Japanese paper, most of them excellent ones, and the great variety of uses to which it is applied, are known everywhere. It is a wood or bark paper, and derives its properties from the substances of which it is made and the method of its manufacture. Several plants are cultivated for the manufacture, which, in the absence of English names, must be called by their Japanese or scientific ones, of which the principal are “mitsumata” (Edgeworthia papyrifera), the “sozo” (Brossonia papyrifera), and the “gampiju” (Wiekstroannia canecensis). Bamboo bark also furnishes a good paper, but is not much used. The mitsumata ramifies into three branches, and is cultivated in plantations, being propagated from seeds and by cuttings. It is fit for use in the second year if the soil is good. Its cultivation and exportation have reached an enormous importance, largely because the Imperial Printing Office uses it for bank notes and official documents. The sozo is propagated by seeds, and somewhat resembles the mulberry. The gampiju is a small shrub which is cut in its third year. To make paper, the bark is steeped in a kettle with buckwheat ashes to extract the resin in it. When it is reduced to a pulp, a sieve-bottomed frame with silk or hempen threads is plunged within, very much as in Western paper-making. This, letting out the water, holds the pulp, which, felting, is to form the future sheet of paper. This is pressed, to squeeze all the water out, and is left to dry. The uses made of paper in Japan are innumerable, particularly in old Japan, which treasures up its past. The papers, though all made in a similar way, are called by different names, according to the uses to which they are applied and their origin. Window lights are made of paper, and partitions between rooms, when it is stretched on frames, which work as sliding doors. The celebrated lanterns, called gifu, are made of it at Tokio and Osaka. Under the name of shibuganni it is applied to the covering of umbrellas which are sold in China and Korea. As zedogawa shi bank notes are printed on it. Oiled it is kappa, impermeable and suitable for covering packages and for making waterproof garments. Handkerchiefs are made from it, cords by twisting. For light, solid articles it is mixed and compressed very much as our papier-maché. Covered with thick paste and pounded, it forms tapestries. Imitations of Cordova leather are made of it by spreading it and pressing it with hard brushes upon boards in which suitable designs have been cut. It is then covered with oil and varnish. Japan produced nearly five million dollars’ worth of paper in 1892. Unfortunately, European methods of manufacture have been introduced, and there is danger of the paper losing its distinctive qualities.
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The Deeps of the Ocean.—In his geographical address at the British Association, Sir John Murray showed that the deep oceanic soundings are scattered over the different ocean basins in varying proportions, that they are now most numerous in the North Atlantic and Southwest Pacific, and in these two regions the contour lines of depth may be drawn with greater confidence than in the other divisions of the great ocean basins. On the whole, it may be said that the general tendency of recent soundings is to extend the area with depths greater than one thousand fathoms, and to show that numerous volcanic cones rise from the general level of the floor of the ocean basins up to various levels beneath the sea surface. Considerably more than half of the sea floor lies at a depth exceeding two thousand fathoms, or more than two geographical miles. On the Challenger charts all areas where the depth exceeds three thousand fathoms have been called “deeps,” and distinctive names have been conferred upon them. Forty-two such depressions are now known—twenty-four in the Pacific Ocean, three in the Indian Ocean, fifteen in the Atlantic Ocean, and one in the Southern and Antarctic Oceans. The area occupied by these deeps is estimated at 7,152,000 geographical square miles, or about seven per cent of the total water surface of the globe. Within these deeps more than 250 soundings have been recorded, of which twenty-four exceed 2,000 fathoms, including three exceeding 5,000 fathoms. Depths exceeding 4,000 fathoms, or four geographical miles, have been recorded in eight of the deeps. Depths exceeding 5,000 fathoms have been hitherto recorded only within the Aldrich Deep of the South Pacific, to the east of the Kermadecs and Friendly Islands, where the greatest depth is 5,155 fathoms, or 530 feet more than five geographical miles. This is about 2,000 feet more below the level of the sea than the summit of Mount Everest, in the Himalayas, is above it.
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Death of Sir William Dawson.—By the death of Sir J. William Dawson, at Montreal, November 19th, America loses one of its most highly distinguished geologists. Sir William was born at Pictou, Nova Scotia, in October, 1820, and was deeply interested in the study of Nature from his early college days, when he made extensive collections of various kinds. When he was twenty-two years old a happy fortune brought him in contact with Sir Charles Lyell, then visiting America, and he was that eminent geologist’s traveling companion during his scientific tour of Nova Scotia. He studied chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. Returning to Nova Scotia in 1850, he engaged in teaching, and was associated with the first normal school in the province. He was afterward connected with the new University of New Brunswick, and from 1855 to 1893 was Principal of McGill College and University. Although his duties in the college were very exacting, Professor Dawson’s industry in scientific research was never relaxed, and he was the author of contributions of very great value to the geology and paleontology of Canada. Among these were the discoveries of the Dendrepeton acadianum—the first reptile found in the American coal formations—and the Pupa vetusta—the first-known Paleozoic land shell. His discovery and exposition of the Eozoon canadense attracted great attention, and was much discussed, but his views of its importance do not seem to have been justified, for some doubts now exist among geologists whether it represents any organic structure. He was the first President of the Royal Society of Canada, which was organized in 1882; was one of the sectional presidents of the British Association at its Montreal meeting (1884), and was president of that body at its Birmingham meeting, 1886. Among his published works are the Description of the Devonian and Carboniferous Flora of Eastern North America, constituting two volumes of the Reports of the Geological Survey of Canada; Air-Breathers of the Coal Formation; Acadian Geology; The Story of the Earth and Man; Origin of Animal Life; Fossil Men; the Canadian Ice Age; the Meeting Place of Geology and History; the Geological History of Plants (in the International Scientific Series); Relics of Primeval Life (Lowell Lectures); The Chain of Life in Geological Times; Modern Science in Bible Lands; the Dawn of Life; Modern Ideas of Evolution; a book of travels in Egypt and Syria; and many contributions to scientific periodicals. He received numerous degrees and honors from learned bodies and institutions, among them the Lyell medal of the Geological Society of London, in 1882. A sketch of Principal Dawson, as he was then called, was published, with a portrait, in the Popular Science Monthly for December, 1875 (vol. viii, p. 132).
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Glacial Lakes in New York.—A glacial lake is defined by H. P. Fairchild, in his paper on Glacial Waters in the Finger Lake Region of New York (Geological Society of America, Rochester, N. Y.), as a body of static water existing by virtue of a barrier of ice. Such impounded waters may exist where a glacier blocks a stream, or where the general land surface inclines toward the glacier foot. The lakes described in Mr. Fairchild’s paper belongs to the second class, and were formed in the southern part of the Ontario basin, where the land slopes northward from a plateau of two thousand feet elevation down to Lake Ontario, two hundred and forty-six feet. The high plateau was deeply gashed by the preglacial stream erosion, and in these trenches along the northern border of the plateau lie the present “Finger Lakes.” The topography was peculiarly favorable to the production against the bold ice front of a series of distinct valley lakes, in many respects unequaled elsewhere. Between twenty and thirty of these lakes are described in Professor Fairchild’s paper, which occupied sites now partly represented by nineteen streams and lakes, beginning with Tonawanda Creek on the west and extending to Butternut Creek (Jamesburg and Apulia) on the east. The local lakes were not of long duration, and their surface level was unstable, changing with the down-cutting of the outlets and with the greatly increased volume of the summer melting of the ice sheet. Consequently, true beaches are usually wanting. The conspicuous evidences are the deltas of land streams, with their terraces, embankments, bars and spits, and the outlet channels. The records of these extinct waters are the very latest phenomena connected with the ice invasion, and are the connecting link between the glacial condition and the present hydrography. They are of lively interest, perhaps, to only a few persons, but the details are necessary to the more general study of the Pleistocene. No economic or practical result from the knowledge is foreseen, “but as pure science the study of these waterless lakes, waveless shores, and streamless channels has a fascination and romance.”
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The Environment In Education.—“Two considerations of equal and fundamental importance,” says Mr. Wilbur S. Jackman, “are included in teaching—the choice of the subject-matter and its presentation, and the reaction of the pupil as the result of the presentation. No presentation ever reaches consciousness without a reaction, however feeble, from which results an immediate and inevitable corresponding mental construction. Certain instincts called primitive, it may be generally agreed, exist in children, and, by taking intelligent advantage of these, definite educative presentation may be begun at a much earlier age than was once supposed. Under the theory that the child repeats the racial history in its growth, a practice has arisen of meeting the early instincts of childhood with presentations from the adult lives of primitive peoples. Presentations are made to stimulate the idea of hunting and fishing, of building wigwams and the like.” But it is a fundamental error, Mr. Jackman believes, to suppose that while the child may be Indianlike in his instincts he is to be considered or treated as an Indian. Another factor of which evolution makes a great deal—the nature of the environment—must be considered, and it is very powerful. The material for satisfying the cravings of the early instincts should therefore be chosen from the immediate environment, to which the pupil’s reaction is at once positive and definite. “It is scarcely possible to overmagnify the benefits of an education that seeks first to make the most out of the immediate things of life. Its results and its ideals are about us everywhere. The ability to use in the most intelligent and skillful way the materials of our environment is the necessary condition for the highest purposes and the most glorified ideals. One must have a profound respect for the education that proposes to give us clean cities and hygienic homes.”
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