is with streets, sewers, parks and docks; with schools, hospitals and public institutions: with water, light and the means of transportation and communication. But there are equally sound reasons for keeping the government of a state or nation free from politics and conducting its affairs with such skill and efficiency as are attainable. There are certain questions that are quite outside the limits of such science as we now have, for example, the desirability of more or less centralization, paternalism, aristocracy, war or religion. The people may legitimately divide themselves into parties on such lines. Science may be unable to answer the question as to whether the government should conduct the postoffice, the express business or the railways, but when the government has undertaken to manage the mails, it makes no more difference whether the postmaster general is a republican or a democrat, than whether he is a catholic or a protestant. married or single. It would be well if we could separate those questions which must for the present be settled by party government from those which should be decided by expert knowledge, and if the latter could be settled by men having the necessary special training. And of course nearly all the executive work of the government should be done by experts, and a large part by those who are technically men of science.
The main questions before the first session of the fifty-ninth congress were concerned with the extension of federal control by the regulation of interstate commerce, and may be regarded as outside the scope of this journal. But the decisions of the congress rested, or should have rested, on statistical or other scientific data. In the execution of the laws relating to railway rates, meat inspection and pure food, a large number of trained scientific men will be required. The removal of the tax on alcohol which has been 'denatured' will have an important effect on the arts. While we should like to see the decimal system of weights and measures or even a duodecimal system made compulsory, it must be admitted that technical opinion is so divided that the house can scarcely be blamed for rejecting the measure. Of direct scientific interest were the bills protecting Niagara Falls, the Mariposa trees of California and the antiquities on the public lands. Although the main increase in the appropriation for the Department of Agriculture was for meat inspection, its scientific work was enlarged in several directions. The appropriation for rebuilding the Military Academy at West Point was increased to $6,500,000. A lock canal at Panama carried to the height of eighty-five feet was decided on, and the sum of $42.500,000 was appropriated for the work.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
We record with regret the deaths of Dr. Henry A. Ward, president of Ward's Natural History Establishment at Rochester, and Dr. Fritz Schaudinn, recently appointed head of the parasitological department of the Institute for Tropical Diseases of Hamburg and well known for his work on the protozoa.
The Ordre pour le Mérite has been conferred on Professor Robert Koch by the German Emperor.—Dr. Ernst Mach, of Vienna, has been awarded the Bavarian Maximilian order for science and art.—Professor Simon Newcomb has been elected a member of the board of overseers of Harvard College.—The Society of Arts has awarded its Albert medal to Sir Joseph W. Swan, F.R.S., 'for the important part he took in the invention of the incandescent electric lamp, and for his invention of the carbon process of photographic printing.'
Announcement has been made of the resignation of Dr. William T. Harris, commissioner of education, and of the nomination of his successor,
