w i t h other teachers, pay far more a t t e n t i o n to the needs of the eighty per c e n t w h o do not g o to college and less to the t w e n t y per c e n t who do the public will require a harsh reckoning with them. My own experience has brought m e to believe that just as the mathematics teachers are reorganizing their work and giving unified a n d combined mathematics courses in secondary schools, instead of pigeon-holing t h e m as algebra, geometry, a n d trigonometry, the science teachers must finally come to a four-year combined science course on a u n i t basis to reach the "drop-out" who otherwise will get few rudiments of physics or chemistry at all. The general science course does n o t serve the purpose. In chemical and metallurgical centers t h e ~ e m e d is y pandemic chemistry i n the first year of high school, and the unhampered vocational school. Gentlemen, you cannot sit longer in Olympian calm, ignoring t h o s e w h o never reach your class-room or sneering at t h e m for their failure t o do so. You m u s t c a r r y chemistry down to them.
School Libraries Need More Trade Journals. A plea that high-school libraries allot a larger portion of their funds for scientific reading material to the purchase of trade journal subscriptions was made by Dr. Hanor A. Webb, professor of chemistry a t the George Peabody College for Teachers. S~eakinpbefore the American Association for the Advancement of Science in session a t ~hiladelphia,Dr. Webb stated his belief that trade journals rather than books science should form the bulk of such reading material, especially in schools on applied - where vocational guidance is practiced either formally or informally. The trade journal, he believes, will provide more strictly m e n t information, better descriptions and illustrations of present practices in the use of raw materials, modem Service equipment, and finally a more human aspect of industry.-S&we Spectnun Lines Reveal Calcium Clouds in Space. Two dark lines in the rainbowlike spectrum of certain very hot stars, obtained by passing their light through the prisms of a spectroscope, indicate the presence of calcium clouds in space and not directly connected with the stars, Dr. Otto Stmve, of the Yerkes Observatory, recently told members of the American Astronomical Society. Dr. Struve has attempted to learn whether these so-called "detached" calcium ~r. o ~ e r t iof e sthe calcium clouds. For this.ournose he has studied lines reveal any of the. . their intensity in many spectral photographs, mostly of stars whose surface temperatures are greater than 17,000 degrees. He has found that the lines are much more oronaunced in stars farther away from the sun than in our nearby neighbors, up to a distance of about 700 or 800 parsecs, a parsec being the astronomer's unit of measurement. It is equal to about 206,000 times the distance between the earth and the sun, or about nineteen trillion miles. Beyond 700 or 800 parsecs, however, the indications are that the lines are weaker, as in the nearer stars. This distance at which the lines are most intense, Dr. Struve said, is about the same as the distance of the boundaries of the local cluster of stars, of which our sun is a member, near its center, so that his results indicate that these calcium clouds are most abundant near the borders of our local star cluster.-Sciesce Sm'ce
