Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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