SEPTEMBER
13, 19071
SCIENCE
353
there Megatherizcm, Mylodon, Macrauchenia, attention to the physical well-being of pupils.
Hippidium, Mastodon and many other quad- -The New York Evening Post.
rupeds. Mr. Otto Nordenskjiild has found
OURRBh7T NOTES ON LAND FORYX
tertiary plants there; remains of quadrupeds,
will also be met with.
OTAGO PENINSULA, NEW ZEALAND
The Antarctic world offers a magnificent
OTACOPENINSULA
is a land-tied island on
field for discovery to explbrers.
the east coast of southern New Zealand. An
ALBERTOAUDRY
interesting account of its features is given by
P. Marshall, professor of geology in Otago
University at Dunedin, near the head of the
THE PHYSICIAN IN THE SCHOOL
THE International Conference on School Otago Bay, which the peninsula encloses.
Hygiene, held in London this month, raised ("The Geology of Dunedin, New Zealand,"
.
GeoZ. Boc., LXII., 1906, 381many questions which should search the hearts Q u a ~ t Journ.
424).
The
peninsula
is a complex mass of
of teachers, parents, and taxpayers in America.
volcanic
rocks,
which,
while
the district stood
Some of these questions we have alreltdy been
debating. I n this city last winter Superin- towards 1,000 feet higher than now, was subtendent Maxwell urged that the eyes of school maturely dissected; that is, the valleys, still
children be examined, and that glasses be narrow and of rapid descent in their upper
courses, became more open and of gentler
provided-if necessary at public expense-for
descent
in their middle and lower courses;
those whose sight is defective. The shortest
and
the
slopes came to have only moderate
way with such a proposal is to give i t a bad
name and damn it. Accordingly, the plan was declivity. During submergence to its present
received by a part of the press with jeers and level, the mountainous mass was cut off from
cries of Socialism! " Mr. Maxwell's reply the mainland by the drowning of a connecting
was in effect that we are spending millions a ridge on its northwestern side; it thus became
year for teachers, buildings, text-books, and an island, about 14 miles long northeast-southapparatus; and that it is worth while to lay west, and not more than six miles wide, with
out a little more in order to enable all the summits still reaching more than 1,000 feet
children to profit by these facilities. I n an above the sea, and with much irregularity of
article in our own columns last April he said: outline as would be expected. Since the disIt seems folly to supply books to children who trict assumed this attitude, the exposed headcan not read them, or to place children in class- lands, on the mainland as well as on the isrooms when they can not see what is written or land, have been cut back in strong cliffs, from
drawn on the blackboard. If the sight is de- 300 to 800 feet high; the smaller reentrants
fective, the child is hopelessly handicapped. The have been filled with beach-fronted sands; the
expenditure of a few thousand dollars for glasses larger reentrants have been more or less comwould enable thousands of children who are now pletely enclosed by bay-mouth spits and bars;
unable to do their school work to stand on the and Otago strait, as the original water passame level with their fellows.
sage back of the island might be called, has
These words sum up briefly the whole argu- been closed at its southwest end, under the
ment for the physical examination of school guidance of the prevailing long-shore current
children and the attempt to keep them in such from the southwest, by a beach-fronted sandhealth that they can fairly avail themselves of isthmus, which converts the strait into a long
the advantages offered. We can not dismiss bay. The southward direction of growth of
the matter with a question-begging epithet. several bay-mouth spits and reefs suggests
Our American school boards must consider that they are controlled by backset eddies,
the project on its merits, and decide whether, which sweep around the new-built shore lines
in justice to the children as well as to the com- between the projecting headlands in a direction
munity as a whole, we should not devote more opposite to that of the main, long-shore cur-