whole physics of our earth, sea, and atmosphere; and mathematics takes heed not only of numbers and quantities in their most abstract form, but also of space, time, matter, and force. Indeed, the application of mathematics to physical science is one of the grandest triumphs of the intellect of the present century. A case in point is Professor Clerk Maxwell's treatise on electricity, which gives a complete account of the mathematical theory of that remarkable phenomenon. In the words of Professor Smith, it is a 'theory which has already added largely to the methods and resources of pure mathematics, and which may one day render to that_abstract science not less than those which it owed to astronomy, for electricity now, like astronomy of old, had placed before the mathematician an entirely new set of questions, and the great practical importance of telegraphy had caused the methods of electrical measurement to be rapidly perfected to an extent which rendered their accuracy comparable with that of astronomical observations, and thus rendered it possible to bring the deductions of theory every moment to the test of fact. Another instance is meteorology, to which mathematics becomes more and more applicable, and which consequently assumes more and more the character of a science.

But in the growth of science, marvellous though it be, there is a harmful tendency towards division of labour, as there is in many manufacturing trades. Set half-a-dozen men to manufacture a razor; the razor will be perfection, but the man will be spoiled. Science, now-a-days, is split up into specialties, and inevitably so, because the range of knowledge is too wide for any one mind to comprehend, and inquirers are compelled to confine themselves to a single track. As a consequence, some persuade themselves in time that there is nothing worth knowing outside that track, and others become unable to see the relations of their specialty to the grand scheme of science. Students should therefore be on their guard against this harmful tendency, because, as Professor Smith remarked, 'in natural philosophy, as in all other philosophy, a certain wideness of view is essential to the achievement of any great result, or to the discovery of anything really new.'

Many of our readers are already aware that among the topics of the address by Professor Williamson, the President of the Association, national scientific education held a prominent place. This opens a question on which much is to be said from more than one point of view, and it may fairly be doubted whether a scientific man, any more than a poet, can be made by education. A word of warning against expecting too much from schooling, college training, or competitive examinations, may perhaps be useful. Intelligence and natural gifts may be cultivated; but where these fail, cultivation will produce no fruit. On the other hand, there are many dull persons who have a remarkable imitative faculty, and these can be educated into painters.

For some years past, physiologists have known that certain parts of the brain have certain special functions-that they govern or affect certain parts of the body, and no other. This knowledge was arrived at by investigations, chemical or electrical, of the living brain, or by observations of the brain in a state of disease. There was some truth in phrenology after all; only, modern research has

shewn that phrenologists were wrong in their mapping out of the brain. Foremost among the newly discovered facts is that the left side of the body is governed by the right side of the brain, and vice versa; and this discovery was made by observing that palsy of either side of the body is accompanied by disease of the opposite side of the brain. One part of the brain governs motion, another sensation, another the operations of the intellect. The function of the cerebellum has long been an obscure question in physiology: that part of the brain is now found to be the great centre for the movements of the muscles of the eyeball. In the disease described as aphasia, the person affected loses the power of expressing his thoughts in words, either spoken or written. He remains intelligent, can comprehend what is going on, has no paralysis of the organs of speech, but is utterly at a loss to find words, and in some cases to tell his name. In such cases, as now ascertained, there is always palsy of the front part of the left side of the brain.

An exposition of these remarkable facts was given at the meeting by Professor Rutherfurd, who stated that many of the discoveries had been made by Professor Ferrier of King's College. He, having examined the experiments of foreign physiologists, has confirmed and extended them by an improved mode of investigation; and now his researches open a field of inquiry so important that therefrom we may expect a new impulse for the science of physiology.

Healthy blood is full of corpuscles: these corpuscles have a tendency to cling together and form rouleaux,' as anatomists call them. In some kinds of disease the quantity of the red corpuscles and of these rouleaux is greatly diminished. Dr Sutherland, Lecturer on Insanity at Westminster Hospital, has examined the blood of more than a hundred lunatics, and he shews that an increase of the white corpuscles, or an absence of rouleaux-forming power, indicates a low degree of vitality and advanced disease of the brain. He remarks further, that in general paralysis, and in epileptic insanity, the blood is more deteriorated, and the vitality more lowered in males than in females: on the other hand, that in mania, melancholia, and dementia, the blood is more deteriorated, and the vitality more lowered in females than in males.

Anatomists are aware that nature sometimes arrests or cures a tendency to apoplexy, and that, when this takes place, cysts, cavities, or depressions are left in the brain. Dr Boyd finds that these signs of disease occur much more frequently among insane than among sane people; that males are much more liable to them than females; and that they occur mostly in advanced life. Epileptics, he adds, seldom live to the age of sixty.

Dr Elam, of the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, states that bichloride of mercury is a good remedy for disease of the brain, for partial paralysis, and for epilepsy. It is a remedy which should only be taken under proper advice.

Patients with weak lungs are generally recommended to try the effect of a few months' residence in a southern climate. Dr Symes Thompson, of the Brompton Hospital for Consumption, argues, in a communication to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, that what is wanted is not so much a few months' change as 'prolonged sojourn in a climate and under circumstances diverse from those

in which the disease originated.' Locomotion being comparatively easy in these days, patients should be encouraged to take long voyages, and dwell for the needful time in a well-selected climate; and Dr Thompson points to India, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia as offering the desired conditions. The health-resorts of India are well known places, at different elevations on the hills; and the long sea-voyage is recommended as preferable to the Suez route. At the Cape, the places to sojourn at are Wynberg and Graham's Town; in Natal, the chief town, Maritzburg, and adjacent hills; in the Transvaal, or Free State, Bloemfontein. The country thereabouts is at an elevation of five thousand feet. The air,' says Dr Thompson, 'is very exhilarating; whereas Natal is somewhat too relaxing for a perfect sanitarium;' but he describes the winter of Natal as being more healthy for invalids than the summer or winter in Victoria, Australia. As suitable places in Australia, he mentions Darling Downs behind Sydney, and Mount Lofty behind Adelaide.

The Pharmaceutical Society held their annual conference also at Bradford, last month. The President in his address mentioned the endeavours made by the British and Dutch governments to introduce the cultivation of the cinchona into their eastern possessions. We have more than once called attention to the large and increasing plantations of this medicinal tree, all under the care of government inspectors in India; and now we learn with satisfaction that the Dutch have planted two million cinchona-trees in Java. From this topic the President passed to the subject of adulteration in drugs, for one of the objects of the Pharmaceutical Society is to secure that none but genuine drugs and chemicals shall be sold. The President is of opinion that the standard of the Society's examinations is too low. 'We are ready enough,' he said, 'to urge the claims of our body for scientific appointments, such as those which have recently arisen out of the Adulteration Act, but it seems to me that if attention were first paid to raising a class of men who were competent to undertake the responsible scientific duties involved in such offices, the public would see its own advantage in according them to us.' The President does not consider the Society's diploma, at present, as a sufficient guarantee that the holder thereof is properly qualified. "There is much to be accomplished, both in scientific and ethical relations, before pharmacy in this country can stand in the place which belongs to it of right.'

We may fittingly mention here the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which was held at Portland, Maine, at the end of August, where many interesting topics were discussed. Among them was the 'Darwinian hypothesis, and a practical application was suggested for the evolution theory' which deserves to be widely known. The evolution theory,' said Professor Morse, as compared with that of special creation, presented similar features to the undulatory theory of light as compared with the emission theory. Newton's theory required a new modification with every discovery in optics, until, as a writer said at that time, the emission theory was a mob of hypothesis. The undulatory theory of Young not only explained all that was difficult to Newton, but gave physicists the power of prevision. So with evolution. It not only accounts for exist

ing phenomena, from the modification of a flower, or the spot on a butterfly's wing, to the genesis of the solar system, but it has endowed naturalists with the gift of prophecy, and enabled them to predict the intermediate forms afterwards discovered in the records of the rocks.' From this we learn that the evolution theory may be kept in use as a convenient scientific implement, until time and experience shall have confirmed it, or brought a better into existence.

Professor Peirce, foreign member of the Royal Society, in a statement involving the nebular theory, argued that we have never yet seen anything of Jupiter and Saturn except the clouds which cover them ;' and he is of opinion that those planets are still at a white heat, surrounded by clouds always pouring down a heavy rain. Concerning the sun, which, as readers are aware, has been specially observed of late, Professor C. A. Young shewed that, while mainly gaseous, it may have a liquid crust. This crust may consist of a more or less continuous sheet of descending rain, not of water, of course, but of the materials whose vapours exist in the solar atmosphere, and whose condensation and combinations are supposed to furnish the solar heat. As this tremendous rain descends, the velocity of the falling drops would be retarded by the resistance of the denser gases underneath; the drops would coalesce and a continuous sheet be formed; and those sheets would unite and form a sort of bottomless ocean resting upon the compressed vapours beneath, and pierced by innumerable ascending jets and bubbles.' We need hardly say that this is to be taken as speculative only; at the same time it is not inconsistent with observations of solar phenomena.

That the water supply is laid on' to houses is a familiar fact. In some of the manufacturing establishments in Staffordshire, where blacksmiths are employed, wind is laid on ' from one great central fan, so that each forge can be fed with wind by simply opening a valve. Now a chemical operator at a college in Virginia suggests that it would be a great advantage in laboratory work if a vacuum were laid on to be used at pleasure. A large chamber, kept constantly exhausted, could, he suggests, be connected by pipes with all parts of a scientific establishment, and made available at any moment by turning a tap. Practical men will decide the question; meanwhile, we may mention that we have heard the suggestion that half-a-dozen neighbouring churches might 'lay on' music from one central organ.

Mr Farjat of Rouen, makes what may be described as graduated door-mats; coarse near the door where most mud is brought in, and becoming finer and finer for a distance of six or eight yards, so that all the dirt is rubbed from the shoes before the house is entered. In the approaches to public assembly rooms, churches, government offices, or on a stair, Mr Farjat's mats would be useful. The coarsest are made of leather fixed on a metal grating, and from this the quality becomes softer up to the softest; but all are described as remarkably durable. For a rental of two francs for each square mètre per month, the inventor will furnish a set of mats, and keep them in good condition.

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No. 514.

A SUMMER EVENING TALE. 'I TELL you, I am uneasy about the girl, and cannot help my forebodings.'

Lady Elderton was speaking of her grandchild, and addressing her daughter, the mother.

'But, dear mother,' replied Mrs Dudley, 'what is it you have observed about Isabel? You know she never was such a merry chatterbox as Lotty.' 'Exactly so. And those quiet, reserved, sentimental girls are always the ones most open to the danger I am apprehending. I do not like the listless fits of reverie, and the absence of mind about trifles, which I have observed lately. I believe I shall have to relate my early experiences at the first suitable opportunity.'

Ι

'Will you, dear mother?' exclaimed Mrs Dudley joyfully will you really once more recite the story of your youth, that your grand-daughters may profit by it? But oh, I fear the recollection is painful!? "That may be. But once in a dozen years or so, I am constrained, like the Ancient Mariner, to tell my tale; and the mood is on me to-night.'

Lady Elderton was not only a stately dame, but a beautiful woman, with the rare peculiar beauty that sometimes lingers round the sixtieth year. Tall and upright, she had the easy grace of walk and gesture that belonged to the well-bred people of her generation, who, it might be said, emulated the glide of the swan rather than the strut of the peacock. Across her forehead and down her cheeks, thick braids of hair revealed how richly her tresses were streaked with silver. Not for their weight in gold and jewels would she have had them other wise. Her sense of the real fitness of things was too keen for her to have any doubt that nature, in thus touching her hair, had been a kindly beautifier. Nor did she wish for any deeper tint on her cheeks, or fairer bloom of skin, than became her

autumn season.

Hardly had Lady Elderton finished her remarks, when the object of them-Isabel Dudley and her sister Charlotte-were seen in the dim twilight crossing the lawn, and the next minute they stepped under the verandah, and entered the drawing-room.

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'Shall I ring for the lamp to be lighted?' asked Lotty, who was ever the thoughtful aid of her invalid mother.

'Not yet, my dear,' said Mrs Dudley. 'I am watching the moon coming up behind the trees, and I think we need not shut out its glory this lovely summer night.'

'I like talking in the twilight,' observed Lady Elderton.

'Do you?' exclaimed Lotty. Then do tell us something about old-fashioned times. It must have been so funny, and yet so slow, when there were no railroads.'

'If I tell you a story,' replied Lady Elderton, 'it will certainly have nothing to do with railroads ; yet it shall be something of real life. However, I shall not detain you with moralisings, but at once begin my tale, if I may call it so ;' and her ladyship accordingly commenced.

'I think you know I was an only child-an heiress, in fact; but let that pass. Honestly, I may say that my parents thought only of wealth as a stewardship. They had weaknesses of pride; but the pride of ancestry, of the brave men and virtuous women, whose honour in some sort they shared, and felt bound to keep untarnished. That they were fastidious in their choice of friends, and kept a good deal aloof from what is called general society, is quite true; but this reserve did not arise from vulgar pride. Half a century ago, irreligion was more open, and frivolity more frivolous, than they are at the present day. The coarse language and manners of an earlier period had not yet disappeared, even among what are called the higher classes.

'My mother had much about her of what would now be called the Puritan type; and she had a womanly intolerance for those who differed from her in opinion. Happily, she and my father were one on all great questions; and this might well be the case, as, with love's devotion, she had modelled her mind-perhaps unconsciously--on his. Yet he, as became the man, had wider views than she ever entertained. In his youth, he had travelled; and youthful travelling opens out rivers of thought,