The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

1901.] THE LOCOMOTIVE. |5
tion the students may work at problems in comparative physiology and comparative
psychology without being disturbed. Three of the tanks are for marine and two for
fresh-water animals and plants. The great advantage as an adjunct to teaching of
having alive such animals as medusae, star-fish, sea-cucumbers, and anemones, is appar-
ent to any one who has attempted to gain a natural conception of such forms from alco-
holic material only. In the attic is a large pigeon house for breeding purposes. Glass
bee-hives and ant-nests are used for the study of community life.—In fact, it is planned
to have every order of animals represented by typical species in the aquaria and vivaria,
so that the study of function may go hand in hand with the study of form. In the
museum each order is represented by specimens in alcohol, skins, skeletons, a dissec-
tion (accompanied by a water-colored sketch with all the parts plainly labeled;, by
and embryological models with explanatory charts, in order that the visitor or student
may learn as much as possible of the forms exhibited, rather than become overwhelmed
with the wealth of species."
A Census Prophecy.
The December issue of the National Magazine contains an article by Mr. H. J. Lewis
entitled "A Census Prophecy of a Century ago." There doubtless were various prophecies
of this sort made, but the particular one referred to in this article was that which
was published by Professor Edward Wigglesworth, in the year 1775. Professor Wig-
glesworth included Nova Scotia (now Dominion of Canada) in his estimates, and he
based his calculation on the hypothesis that "British Americans have doubled their
numbers in every period of twenty-five years from their first plantation." Takino- this
statistical fact as a basis, and assuming that the population of the country in 1775 was
two and one-half millions, Professor Wigglesworth estimated five millions for 1800 ten
millions for 1825, twenty millions for 1850, forty millions for 1875, and eighty millions
for 1900. These figures have proved themselves to be remarkably accurate. The pop-
ulation of the United States and Canada in 1900, for example, was about eighty-one
millions, instead of eighty millions, as predicted.
'• When we look back to the state of the colonies at the middle of the last century."
says the Professor, in the course of his prophecy in 1775, "and compare it with the
present, we are surprised to find that our ancestors, amidst all the difficulties they had
to encounter, have been able in so short a period to put a face entirely new on all the
country extended from Nova Scotia to Georgia, by changing the forest into a fruitful
field; that they have opened such an extensive commerce as is carried on from America:
and that by their cultivation of the liberal arts they have a posterity of two and one-
half millions enjoying all the necessities and many of the elegancies of life." Professor
Wigglesworth was evidently fully appreciative of the wonderful progress that the coun
try had made tip to his time; and that he appreciated the possibilities that lay before us
is shown by his exclamation, "To anticipate the population and improvements at the
close of the twentieth century overwhelms the mind with astonishment!" At the time
when his paper was written the difficulties between England and America, which pres-
ently led to the war for independence, were abundantly in evidence, and in speaking of
these difficulties he appears to foresee clearly that in a century or two we should be
England's most valuable ally. " If these difficulties could be smoothed over," he says,
"such a union of interest and affection would succeed, as would render the two coun-
tries the envy of Europe and the glory of the world."