their duty. One shilling is paid for calls, or notifications of fires.*

The New York department is organized on a strictly military basis. The city is divided into nine battalion districts, and fifty company districts. The force consists of a chief engineer, with a salary of $4,700 per annum; 12 assistant engineers, with a salary of $2,200 each per annum; 52 foremen, with a salary of $1,500 each per annum; 52 assistant foremen, with a salary of $1,300; two engineers to each steamer, with a salary of $1,300; 8 firemen to each company, with a salary of $1,200. The men receive regular instruction in their duties, and perform patrol service in their several districts. They are gov erned by general or special orders, issued from head-quarters in military form. The apparatus consists of 38 steam-engines (one a self-propeller), with tenders carrying hose, and 15 hook and ladder carriages. Under the new charter, the department is managed by a board of three commissioners, appointed by the Mayor for a term of six years. There are three bureaus in the department: one charged with the duty of preventing and extinguishing fires, and protecting property from water used at fires, the principal officer of which is called the Chief of Department; another charged with the execution of all laws relating to the storage, sale, and use of combustible materials, the principal officer of which is called the Inspector of Combustibles; and another charged with the investigation of the origin and cause of fires, the principal officer of which is called the Fire Marshal.

The departments in Paris, Berlin, and other large cities on the Continent of Europe, are organized in a manner so entirely different from ours that they can hardly be compared, except as to the results accomplished. With inferior apparatus (mostly hand-machines of little power) they accomplish far better results in the preservation of property from fire than the American departments; but how much is owing to superior discipline. and training, and how much to the superior construction of the buildings, it is impossible to tell. Their success is largely due, undoubtedly, to the celerity with which

* General Rules, etc., of Metropolitan Board of Works, revised to 25th November,

1870.

they bring their forces to bear. They recognize the fact that a small quantity of water, properly applied, in the early stages of a fire, is more effective than a large quantity a few minutes later. Although the telegraph is not made use of so extensively for giving alarms as in our cities, the men whose duty it is to put the fire out are, on the whole, more promptly notified. In Berlin no public alarm is given upon the discovery of a fire. The fact is telegraphed from the nearest police station to all the fire-stations in the city, and the corps designated for duty responds on the instant. It should be stated that the city is divided into a large number of police districts, and that the whole fire department can be called out by this system in two minutes. The defect of the American system is the uncertainty of having an alarm given when the fire is first discovered, or when it ought to have been discovered. The police departments in most of our cities are not organized in such a manner as to make it safe to rest the entire responsibility upon them; and, unless there is some penalty for neglect, the citizens generally cannot be relied upon with any degree of certainty to aid in the matter. The defective construction of our buildings makes it imperatively necessary, in order to prevent a repetition of the disastrous fires of Chicago and Boston, that the attendance of the firemen should be sure and prompt.

Since the foregoing was written, Mr. Joseph Bird's book on "Protection against Fire" has been published. The author has collected a great amount of curious information in regard to the origin of fires and the best manner of extinguishing them, and has produced a book as entertaining as "Pepys's Diary." It covers a wide field of personal observation and reading, and although it cannot lay claim to much consideration as a literary or scientific work, it is entitled to a good deal of consideration for the practical suggestions which it contains for the security of life and property. The purpose of the book is to impress upon the people the importance of providing means for the extinguishment of fires as soon as discovered. The comments of Captain Shaw on the neglect of our departments to provide such means have already been given. In a discussion before the London Society of Arts, in 1863, Mr.

Baddely, the experienced engine-builder, said: "Of all modern inventions for fire-extinguishing purposes, nothing, in my opinion, is so really useful as the little hand-pump. Many years of controversy ensued before the late Mr. Braidwood could be brought to regard the hand-pump with favor. The result of the experiments with the little hand-engines was so satisfactory that every fire-engine in London travels with one; and they have been the means, in the hands both of firemen and civilians, of saving thousands of pounds' worth of property."

Mr. Bird's plan is to have the fire departments of cities composed of two brigades: the first to have charge of the heavy apparatus now in use (the steam-engine to be altered so that steam may be thrown into buildings where the flames have not burst from the doors, windows, or roof); the second brigade to have charge of the light apparatus. He would have a small engine, three buckets, and one axe placed in every large building used for the storage of combustible materials, or for manufacturing or public purposes, with a card of directions as to their use; at the expense of the owner or occupants of the building. In certain dwellings, work-shops, and stores he would have small engines placed, at the expense of the city, so near each other that one of them can be brought into use within one minute from the time a fire is discovered in any building situated in the thickly settled portion of the city; these engines to be operated by volunteer organizations.

In Paris there are (or were in 1866) one hundred and thirty fire-stations, with one hundred and eighty engines, and an organized force of twelve hundred men, divided into ten companies. One corporal and two firemen are constantly on duty at each station. The engines in use are so light that they can be carried into the upper stories of a building if necessary. This distribution of the fire apparatus enables a number of trained firemen to be on the spot within a minute or two after a fire is discovered.

While Mr. Bird's plan would be an improvement on the methods in use in this country, it is somewhat doubtful whether it would accomplish all that he claims for it. Its success depends too much upon the efforts of inexperienced persons. The present condition of society in our large cities is not favorable to the performance of neighborly offices. The serious

business of putting out fires will be left to those who are paid to do it. The great point is, after all, to secure for the service men who will use such apparatus, and distribute it in such a manner, as will produce the best results.

During the last two years a great many ingenious contrivances have been introduced for the speedy extinguishment of fires; but it would exceed the limits of this article to attempt any description of them. In order to stimulate invention in the proper direction, the National Board of Underwriters should organize a standing commission, composed of competent engineers, to test the various kinds of apparatus in use or proposed, and report from time to time upon their efficiency. The commission would also be able to perform a great public service by establishing general rules for the management of fire departments, the preparation of statistics of fires, and a standard for hose and hydrant couplings.

JAMES M. BUGBEE.

ART. V. Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By JOHN LANGDON SIBLEY, M. A., Librarian of Harvard University, and Member of the Massachusetts and other Historical Societies. Vol. I. 1642-1658. With an Appendix, containing an Abstract of the Steward's Accounts, and Notices of Non-Graduates, from 1649-50 to 1659. Cambridge: Charles William Sever, University Bookstore. 1873.

Ar the right time, and eminently from the pen of the most, if we might not say the only, competent person for the accomplishing of it, Harvard College, as she graduates her two hundred and thirty-second class of alumni, receives from her diligent Librarian this labor of his love. Up to this year the number of her graduates, classified on the Triennial Catalogue, was 11,553. Of these, almost half, as the solemn and suggestive note reads, E vivis cesserunt stelligeri. Of ninetyeight of these who have been the longest among the stars, and who were the first to receive the rude yet tender nursing

of the wilderness College, and to lead off, with honor and love, the line that is to follow them, we have here the memorials in adequate biographical sketches. So much time has spared to us. So much a diligence and a devotion for which there is no reward but in the love which prompted them have gathered and gleaned for us from the search through more than a third of a century into all the nooks and hiding-places of history.

Mr. Sibley has special and eminent qualifications for the task which he has here undertaken. Though the College numbers among its alumni many who take a fond pride in its history, and would gladly search out every historic fact relating to it, and though the taste and skill for such investigations characterize a fair proportion of our studious men, it may be fairly affirmed that no ten persons among us, combining their labors and resources, could have so faithfully or successfully accomplished the work which he has performed. Pecuniary compensation is of course out of the question. This is one of those labors in which the pleasure of congenial toil must offset the outlay of time and all the incidental expenses incurred by journeys, correspondence, the collection of materials, and the remuneration of helpers. More than a score of years ago Mr. Sibley gave proof that he possessed all the best qualities of an intelligent, accomplished, and painstaking investigator, in his "History of the Town of Union, Maine," the place of his birth. This is a model work of its kind, for authenticity, distribution of subjects, exhaustiveness of details, and vivacity and perspicuity of style. Having been appointed Assistant Librarian at Harvard in 1841, and Librarian in 1856, he has ever since been accumulating materials and maturing a wise and apt method for his present work. He has had at hand a large part of the books and papers containing the information he has needed, and he has had the training and practice which have taught him where to look for what he desired from outside sources.. He for the first time edited the Triennial Catalogue in 1842, as it had never been edited before; and ten times since the successive issues of that ever-interesting and expanding publication, so eagerly sought for by the graduates, have shown more and more of the fruits of his diligence. Obituary dates were for the first time attached by him to the names in the Trien