We notice also her occasional contributions to different periodicals: to Le Temps, the Revue des Revues, the Journal des Économistes, etc. Her last two treatises were published in 1895: La Matière (or Matter), and L'Inconnaissable (or The Unknowable).
So great intellectual activity has given Madame Royer a first place among women as students of science. Hence, on March 10, 1897, her numerous admirers and friends offered her a jubilee banquet, under the chairmanship of M. Levasseur, member of the Institute of France. The toasts spoken to on this occasion retraced the brilliant career of the heroine of the feast; and, as the chairman justly declared, the occasion was "the glorification of woman's knowledge." Madame Clémence Royer is at present living a very retired life in the Maison de Retraite founded by the Duchess Galigani at Neuilly, near Paris, where she enjoys the rest earned by a half century of persevering labor. Her body is feeble, but her ample brow and her yet lively eyes seem still to have preserved the recollections of the struggles of other days.
Dr. Sheldon Jackson, superintendent of Government schools in Alaska, corrects a report that has been published, that his experiment in naturalizing reindeer in that Territory has failed. Three hundred and twelve of the five hundred and twelve head imported died, it is true, at Seattle and Haines, "because of a combination of circumstances and Government red tape," but the two hundred and twenty-eight deer that were allowed to reach the moss, fifty miles from the coast, are doing well, and will be used next winter in carrying the mails. Instead of scarcity of moss, the pasturage is more abundant than in Lapland or Siberia, and the reindeer thrive better than they did in their native habitat.
Editor's Table.
WORDS OF A MASTER.
The address, which we print elsewhere, delivered by Sir Archibald Geikie to the students of Mason College, Birmingham, is one to which we feel it a duty to draw special attention. It would be difficult, we think, to state more lucidly than the eminent author has done the advantages to be derived from a course of scientific study, and the principles which must be kept in view, not only during the period of study, but through life, if a training in science is to have its best results.
The address begins with a few words of caution as to the drawbacks which are apt to attend on the exclusive, or nearly exclusive, pursuit of science. In the reaction which the present age has witnessed against the old literary and linguistic curriculum of studies, a tendency is manifesting itself to undervalue the older learning. This Sir Archibald considers to be a matter for serious regret. He recognizes the impossibility of combining any large amount of literary or philological study with the requirements of an extensive scientific course; but he advises those who make choice of the latter to "cherish the literary tastes they have acquired, and to devote themselves sedulously to the further cultivation of them during such intervals of leisure as they may be able to secure." A training in science, he observes, "admirable as it is in many ways, fails to supply those humanizing influences which the older learning can so well impart." Times will therefore come, even to the most enthusiastic student, when "scientific work, in spite of its absorbing interest, grows to be a weariness"; and it is then that the value of any literary culture which may have been received at school or college will be appreciated.