The Boston Institute of Technology is somewhat noted for its boldness in making educational experiments; its efforts so far having been directed toward the introduction of practical trade instruction into an advanced school. Some years ago it endeavored to establish a model room for dressing ores and another for smelting them; but the success of this trial seems to be more than doubtful. Both of these pursuits are too extensive to be represented by one shop or by sample work. Nothing daunted by this failure, President Runkle has lately introduced a "filing shop" as the first step toward practical instruction in engineering work. This shop has about thirty work tables, each provided with a vise and tool drawers. Filing is one of the first things the young apprentice has to learn; and those who think that anybody can file who has hands may be surprised to learn that the filing of a hexagon bolt head is one of the tests for a Whitworth prize scholarship. The difficulty of making a flat surface is in that task combined with the necessity of having the faces of equal size and placed at equal angles to each other. The plan in the Boston institute is to have the student spend ten weeks in filing, and then the same length of time in each the forging shop and the turning shop. The two latter are not yet ready. These three steps form part of a two years' course in mechanical engineering, the tuition fee to which is $125 yearly. The main objection to such schools is that engineers and practical men persist in refusing to accept such instruction as a substitute for actual work. The Boston institute is making praiseworthy efforts, but it seems to be adopting a system which has never been in favor just at a time when the smelting works and machine shops of the country appear willing to unite with the scientific schools in supplying students with real experience of work as a requirement for a diploma.
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A new mode of compressing arteries is by the use of a hard pad having a prominent projection, which is pressed against the artery or vein by a strong elastic ring of rubber passed over the limb.
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The Harvard summer schools were so far successful that the last catalogue reports forty students in geology, twenty-five in chemistry, twenty-five in phenogamic botany, and six in cryptogamic botany.
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A case in which the heart was severely wounded without causing immediate death lately occurred in England. The wound was made by a knife which passed between the third and fourth ribs, through the wall of the heart into the cavity of the left ventricle. The man lived sixty-four hours.
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M. Peligot warns housekeepers against the advice so often given, to use borax for the preserving of meat. He finds that borax and the borates affect plants very seriously, and doubts whether it can be innocuous to animals. French beans watered once with a solution of borax quickly withered and died.
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