relative to the theoretic expression of the velocity of light, by M. Cornu.-Crystalline substances produced from old medals immersed in the thermal waters of Baracci, commune of Olmeto (Corsica), by M. Daubrée. Some of these bronze medals had merely a dark patina resulting from superficial sulphuration. A few others had a thick crystalline crust, the substance being apparently a double sulphide of copper and tin (of which the nearest natural analogue would be stannine). The water, containing only 03 gr. of mineral matters per litre, has chloride of sodium, sulphate of soda, and silica in predominance.-On the star-fishes dredged in the deep regions of the Gulf of Mexico and the Carribean Sea by the American ship the Blake, by M. Perrier. The new collections raise the number of species from twenty-seven to seventy. A pretty large number are new generic types. On a class of linear differential equations, the coefficients of which are algebraic functions of the independent variable, by M. Appell.-On the circulatory ap aratus of isopod crustaceans, by M. Delage.-Phylloxera in California, by M. de Lavignon. The old vine-growers say they have always known it, and they do not regard it as introduced with plants from Bordelais. Its effects are the same in kind as in France, but its progress is very slow by reason of absence (apparently) of the winged insect, quality of the soil (rich and deep), and the existence of an acarian parasite (Tyroglyphus longior).— The Inspector-General of Navigation reported on the variations of the Seine at Paris in 1880. The highest water was on January 4, the lowe t on February 3 and 4.-On a process of astronomical observation for use of voyagers, &c. (continued), by M. Rouget.—On the transformation of reciprocal directions, by M. Laguerre.-On the size and variations of Purkinje's images, by M. Crouillebois. It is proved that the mechanism of the adaptation consists in a simultaneous modification of the curvature of the two faces of the crystalline lens.— Thermo-regulator for high temperatures, by M. D'Arsonval. This is applicable up to 1200° at least. A regulator like that before described has its spice under the membrane connected by means of a capillary tube with a short hollow stem which can be opened or closed with a screw and is connected by two tubes with a mercury manometer, and an air reservoir (of glass or porcelain) to be put in the medium that is to be kept constant. For temperatures over 300° he opens the stem when I atm. has been reached, and so lets the manometer come back to zero before closing again. A new method of reading must then, of course, be adopted.-Investigation of gaseous compounds and study of some of their properties with the spectroscope, by MM. Hautefeuille and Chappuis. With the spectroscope one can follow the isomeric change of ozone into oxygen, and prove that its destruction does not give hyponitric acid. Electrification of a dry mixture of nitrogen and oxygen, containing at least one-seventh of the former, gives a substance not before observed, and having a remarkable absorption-spectrum. It is thought to be pernitric acid, analogous to M. Berthelot's persulphuric acid.-On bromides and iodides of phosphorus, by M. Ogier. -Rapid stoppage of the rhythmic contractions of the cardiac ventricles through occlusion of the coronary arteries, by MM. Sée, Boche ontaine, and Roussy.—On the application of anatomical examination of the blood to diagnosis of disease, by M. Hayem. He gives two methods: examination of pure blood, in a thin layer, of constant thickness; and examination of blood diluted with a special reagent. The phenomena in certain diseases are described. On the quantity of light necessary to perceive the colour of objects of different surfaces, by M. Charpentier. For retinal surfaces to 1 mm. square the illumination necessary to make or perceive colour (o ce the luminous sensibility is obtained) was the same for each colour tried. It may, then, be said that for red, yellow, green, and blue the chromatic sensibility is independent of the retinal surface excited. Influence exerted by environment on the form, structure, and mode of reproduction of Isoetes lacustris, by M. Mer.-On the conservation of grain in closed reservoirs, by M. Muntz. With renewal of air he found about ten times more CO2 produced than in a closed vessel. The volume of CO, found in contact with air is always less than that of O absorbed. The O is chiefly fixed by fatty matters. Too dry grain, not giving much of an asphyxiating atmosphere, is liable to the ravages of insects. The propertion of CO, increases rapidly with the degree of moisture. As the temperature is raised there is physiological combustion up to a point (about 50°), thereafter chemical. Anæsthetics, like sulphide of carbon, diminish, without stopping, the formation of CO-On a simple means of bringing to life new-born infants

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in a state of apparent death, by M. Gozard. He describes a successful application of M. Le Bon's suggestion for young asphyxiated animals, immersing in a water-bath heated 45° to 50°.-M. Boutigny invited attention to the fact that boiling water projected on an incandescent surface instantly falls in temperature to 97°. He attributes this cooling to work done in production of the spheroidal state.

BERLIN

Geographical Society, January 8.-Dr. Nachtigal, president. The President gave a sketch of the work of the Society's explorers for the past year. It was hoped that Dr. Lenz would have been present at the meeting, but he had been unable to leave St. Louis in Senegal, as yellow fever prevailed there. After a long interval letters had been received from Dr. Buchner, dated February, May, and July last. He had been for six months in Mussumba in Muatà Janvo's kingdom, carrying on topographical, photographic, and natural history work. After sending most of his papers and collections to Angola he proceeded northwards, writing on July 1 from Muene Chikambo. Dr. Nachtigal then referred to the East African Expedition, which, along with Capt. Ramaeckers, has arrived at Tabora, and Dr. Rohlfs' party, who on December 12 were at Massowah.Herr Buchter exhibited a large number of photographs and drawings from the Upper Nile.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 1881

UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY Unconscious Memory, &c. By Samuel Butler. Op. 5. (London: David Bogue, 1880.)

MR. BUTLER is already known to the public as the

author of two or three books which display a certain amount of literary ability. So long therefore as he aimed only at entertaining his readers by such works as "Erewhon," or "Life and Habit," he was acting in a suitable sphere. But of late his ambition seems to have prompted him to other labours; for in his "Evolution, Old and New," as well as in the work we are about to consider, he formally enters the arena of philosophical discussion. To this arena, however, he is in no way adapted, either by mental stature or mental equipment; and therefore makes so sorry an exhibition that Mr. Darwin may well be glad that his enemy has written a book. But while we may smile at the vanity which has induced so incapable and ill-informed a gravely to pose before the world as a philosopher, we should not on this account have deemed "Unconscious

man

Memory" worth reviewing. On the contrary, as a hasty glance would have been sufficient to show that the book is bad in philosophy, bad in judgment, bad in taste, and, in fact, that the only good thing in it is the writer's own opinion of himself-with all that was bad we should not have troubled ourselves, and that which was good we should not have inflicted on our readers. The case, however, is changed when we meet, as we do, with a vile and abusive attack upon the personal character of a man in the position of Mr. Darwin; for however preposterous, and indeed ridiculous, the charges may be, the petty malice which appears to underlie them deserves to be duly repudiated. We shall therefore do our duty in this respect, and at the same time take the opportunity of pointing out the nonsense that Mr. Butler has been writing, both about the philosophy of evolution and the history of biological thought.

The great theory which Mr. Butler has propounded, and which with characteristic modesty he says seems to himself "one, the importance of which is hardly inferior to that of the theory of evolution itself" this epochmaking theory is as follows. The processes of embryonic development and instinctive actions are merely "repetitions of the same kind of action by the same individuals in successive generations." Therefore animals know, as it were, how to pass through their embryonic stages, and, after birth, are taught by instinctive knowledge, simply because [as parts of their ancestral organisms they have done the same things many times before; there is thus a race-memory as there is an individual memory, and the expression of the former constitutes the phenomena of heredity.

Now this view, in which Mr. Butler was anticipated by Prof. Hering, is interesting if advanced merely as an illustration; but to imagine that it reveals any truth of profound significance, or that it can possibly be fraught with any benefit to science, is simply absurd. The most cursory thought is enough to show that, whether we call heredity unconscious memory, or memory of past states VOL. XXIII.-No. 587

of consciousness the hereditary offspring of those states, we have added nothing to our previous knowledge either of heredity or of memory. All that lends any sense to the analogy we perfectly well knew before-namely, that in the race, as in the individual, certain alterations of structure (whether in the brain or elsewhere) when once made, tend to remain. But the analogy throws no light at all upon the only point which requires illumination -- namely, how is it that, in the case of heredity, alterations of structure can be carried over from one individual to another by means of the sexual elements. We can understand in some measure how an alteration of brain structure, when once

made, should be permanent, and we believe that in this fact we have the physical basis of memory; but we cannot understand how this alteration is transmitted to progeny through structures so unlike the brain as are the products of the generative glands. And we merely. Stultify ourselves if we suppose that the problem is brought any nearer to a solution by asserting that a future individual while still in the germ has already participated, say in the cerebral alterations of its parent-and this in a manner analogous to that in which the brain of the parent is structurally altered by the effects of individual experience. But Mr. Butler goes even further than this, and extends his so-called theory even to He "would recommend the reader to inorganic matter.

see every atom of the universe as living, and able to feel and remember, though in a humble way." Indeed he can conceive of no matter which is not able to remember a little"; and he does "not see how action of any kind is conceivable without the supposition that every atom retains a memory of certain antecedents." It is hard to be patient with such hypertrophied absurdity; but if the bubble deserves pricking, it is enough to ask how it is "conceivable" that an atom," even if forming part of a living brain, could possibly have "a memory of certain antecedents," when, as an atom, it cannot be conceived capable of undergoing any structural modification.

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So much for Mr. Butler's main theory. But he has also a great deal to say on the philosophy of evolution. "Op. 4" was called "Evolution, Old and New,” and now “Op. 5" continues the strain that was struck in the earlier composition. This consists for the most part in a strangely silly notion that "the public generally"-including, of course, the world of science-was as ignorant of the writings of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck as was Mr. Butler when he first read the "Origin of Species." That is to say, "Buffon we knew by name, but he sounded too like 'buffoon' for any good to come from him. We had heard also of Lamarck, and held him to be a kind of French Lord Monboddo; but we knew nothing of his doctrine. . . . Dr. Erasmus Darwin we believed to be a forgotten minor poet," &c. No wonder, therefore, when such was our manner of regarding these men, that we And required a Mr. Samuel Butler to show us our error. no wonder that Mr. Charles Darwin, who doubtless may have peeped into the literature which Mr. Butler has discovered, should so well have succeeded in his life-long purpose of concealing from the eyes of all men how much he owes to his predecessors. No wonder, also, that Mr. Darwin, when he chanced to see an advertisement of a forthcoming work by Mr. Butler with the title "Evolution,

Old and New," should have inferred, as Mr. Butler observes, "what I was about," and forthwith began to tremble in dismay that at last the Buffoon, the French Lord Monboddo, and the forgotten minor poet had found a champion to vindicate their claims. For now the hideous corruption of the monster was about to be exposed who had fed as a parasite upon these "dead men," till he stands before our eyes bloated with honours undeserved, and extending "his power of fascination all over Europe," not only "among the illiterate masses

.. but among experts and those most capable of judging." No wonder then that Mr. Darwin, knowing that at last a wise young judge had come to judgment and to open the eyes of the "experts," should at once have set about a book on his own grandfather to disarm by anticipation the justice of the avenger. But natural as all this unquestionably appears, it scarcely prepares us, as it did not prepare Mr. Butler, for the depths of deceit and depravity to which Mr. Darwin would condescend" in order to thwart the arm of justice. Yet the fact is that Mr. Darwin entered into a foul conspiracy with Dr. Krause, the editor of Kosmos, to slay by infamous means the righteous but damning work of Mr. Butler. "The steps," as he points out, are perfectly clear." A whole number of Kosmos was devoted to Mr. | Darwin and his antecedents in literature, at about the time when "Evolution Old and New was "announced as in preparation. Soon afterwards arrangements were made for a translation of Dr. Krause's essay, and were completed by the end of April, 1879. Then "Evolution Old and New " came out, was read by Dr. Krause, who modified a passage or two in a manner that "he thought would best meet 'Evolution Old and New,' and then fell to condemning that book in a finale that was meant to be crushing." So far all was fair enough; but now comes the foul play. "Nothing was said about the revision which Dr. Krause's work had undergone, but it was expressly and particularly declared in the preface that the English translation was an accurate version of what appeared in the February number of Kosmos, and no less expressly and particularly stated that my book ["Evolution Old and New"] was published subsequently to this. Both these statements are untrue," &c. Having discovered this erroneous conspiracy, Mr. Butler wrote to Mr. Darwin for an explanation. With almost incredible complacency this arch-hypocrite had the hardihood to answer that it "is so common a practice" to modify articles in translation or republication, that "it never occurred to him to state that the article had been modified,” but that now he would do so should there be a reprint. This, as Mr. Butler says, was going far beyond what was permissible in honourable warfare, and it was time in the interests of literary and scientific morality . . . to appeal to public opinion." He therefore communicated the facts to the Athenæum, expecting as a consequence to raise a "raging controversy." Strange to say, however, the thing fell flat. Not only did Mr. Darwin remain perfectly quiet, but all reviewers and littérateurs remained perfectly quiet also. It seemed. . . as if public opinion rather approved of what Mr. Darwin had done." Nevertheless Mr. Butler had a salve to his disappointment in that he saw "the 'Life of Erasmus Darwin' more frequently and

more prominently advertised than hitherto,” and “presently saw Prof. Huxley hastening to the rescue with his lecture 'On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species."" Truly, therefore, in some, if not quite in full measure, Mr. Butler's "vanity," as he himself observes, was well fed by the whole transaction"; for he saw by it that Mr. Darwin "did not meet my work openly," and therefore that Prof. Huxley had to "hasten to the rescue" with a Royal Institution lecture. How sweet it doubtless was, if

Mr. Butler attended that lecture, to think what a large proportion of the audience must have seen through the whole plot! Enough, surely, to "feed" any ordinary "vanity." But Mr. Butler's vanity is inordinate, and so requires a more than ordinary amount of nourishment. He therefore felt it desirable to give a detailed exposition of the whole affair, and this we have in some charmingly temperate and judicious chapters of "Op. 5."

A

But to be serious. If in charity we could deem Mr. Butler a lunatic, we should not be unprepared for any aberration of common-sense that he might display. His "Op. 5," however, affords ample evidence that he is not a lunatic, but a man who wants to make a mark somewhere, and whose common sense, if he ever had such a thing, has been completely blinded by self-conceit. To us, no less than to him, "the steps are perfectly clear." certain nobody writes a book accusing the most illustrious man in his generation of burying the claims of certain illustrious predecessors out of the sight of all men. In the hope of gaining some notoriety by deserving and perhaps receiving a contemptuous refutation from the eminent man in question, he publishes this book, which, if it deserved serious consideration, would be not more of an insult to the particular man of science whom it accuses of conscious and wholesale plagiarism, than it would be to men of science in general for requiring such elementary instruction on some of the most famous literature in science from an upstart ignoramus who, until two or three years ago, considered" himself "a painter by profession." The eminent man however did not administer the chastisement: hence these tears of rage and chagrin; hence too the morbid fancying of the great man's discomfort-of the rallying round of his friends, Krause's article, Huxley's lecture, &c., till such an explosive state of feeling was fermented that a mere omission to supply a reference to a book was magnified into a dark conspiracy-notwithstanding that a moment's thought might have shown how such a conspiracy, even if attempted, would not have been worthy of imbeciles.

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But, in conclusion, let us ask what this work on "Evolution, Old and New" contained to produce, as its author imagines, such a scare among the leading "experts" in science. The work has already been reviewed in these columns (June 12, 1879) by Mr. Wallace, who, while fully exposing its weakness, treats the author with more consideration than he deserves-doubtless because Mr. Wallace is himself so personally associated with the theory of "natural selection." It is therefore sufficient for us here to say that "Evolution, Old and New," conveys a confession on the part of its author that until two or three years ago he was totally ignorant concerning the history of biological thought. His attention having at length been directed to the fact that some of

the best naturalists had speculated on the probability of evolution, he for the first time found, as he innocently enough observes, that evolution and natural selection are not quite the same thing. Having made this highly original discovery, he forthwith proceeds to display a feebleness of judgment even more lamentable than his previous ignorance. For he concludes that the older speculations on the causes of evolution are more satisfactory than those advanced by Mr. Darwin. In the columns of a scientific journal any comment on such a conclusion might well be deemed superfluous, although Mr. Wallace, in his review above mentioned, had the courtesy to expose its folly. The older evolutionists deserve indeed all honour for having perceived early in the day that some theory of descent must be true, even though they were not able to find the theory that could be seen to be in any measure satisfactory. But a man who in the full light of Darwin's theory can deliberately return to "the weak and beggarly elements" of Lamarck-such a man only shows that in judgment he is still a child. The extreme weakness of Mr. Butler's argumentation has, as we have said, already been shown by Mr. Wallace; but it is of more interest to ask what infatuation it can have been that led him to suppose "all Europe and those most capable of judging" required him as an author to make himself ridiculous as an expounder of this subject. The answer is not far to seek. As Mr. Butler himself has told us, he has vanity, and his vanity is not less childish than his judgment. Thus, to give only one illustration. Of so much importance does he deem his own cogitations, that in the book we are reviewing he devotes two chapters, or more than thirty pages, to "How I wrote 'Life and Habit,'" and "How I wrote 'Evolution, Old and New ""; entering into a minute history of the whole course of his speculative flounderings. This is the only part of the book that repays perusal; but that this part well repays perusal may be judged from the following, which we present as a sample :—

"The first passage in 'Life and Habit' which I can date with certainty is one on p. 52, which ran as follows: "Do this, this, this, which we too have done, and found our profit in it," cry the souls of his forefathers within him. Faint are the far ones, coming and going as the sound of bells wafted on to a high mountain; loud and clear are the near ones, urgent as an alarm of fire.' This was written a few days after my arrival in Canada, June 1874. I was on Montreal Mountain for the first time, and was struck with its extreme beauty.... Sitting down for a while, I began making notes for 'Life and Habit,' of which I was then continually thinking, and had written the first few lines of the above, when the bells of Nôtre Dame in Montreal began to ring, and their sound was carried to and fro in a remarkably beautiful manner. I took advantage of the incident to insert then and there the last lines of the piece just quoted. I kept the whole passage with hardly any alteration, and am thus able to date it accurately. . . . Early in 1876 I began putting these notes into more coherent form. I did this in thirty pages of closely-written matter, of which a pressed copy remains in my commonplace-book. I find two dates among them-the first 'Sunday, February 6, 1876"; and the second, at the end of the notes, 'February 12, 1876.'"

This historical sketch, which is without the smallest interest to any one but Mr. Butler himself, winds up with the following burst of eloquence :

If it appears that I have used language such as is rarely seen in controversy, let the reader remember that the occasion is, so far as I know, unparalleled for the cynicism and audacity with which the wrong complained of was committed and persisted in. I trust, however, that, though not indifferent to this, my indignation has been mainly roused, as when I wrote Evolution, Old and New,' before Mr. Darwin had given me personal ground of complaint against him, by the wrongs he has inflicted on dead men, on whose behalf I now fight, as I trust that some one-whom I thank by anticipation-may one day fight on mine."

Mighty champion of the mighty dead! When our children's children shall read in Westminster Abbey the inscription on the tomb of Mr. Samuel Butler, how will it be with a sigh that in their day and generation the world knows nothing of its greatest men! But as it is our misfortune to live before the battle over Mr. Samuel Butler's memory has been fought, we respond to his abounding presumption by recommending him, whatever degree of failure he may have experienced in art, once more to "consider" himself "by profession a painter"

or, if the painters will not have him, to make some third attempt, say among the homoeopathists, whose journal alone, so far as we are aware, has received with GEORGE J. ROMANES

favour his latest work.

We observe

The parts of Prof. Newton's work now before us conclude the account of the Passeres and contain the commencement of the history of the British Picariæ. We need hardly say that the article upon each species is worked out in the same careful and accurate way as in the former portion of this work. Prof. Newton, as every ornithologist knows, is our leading authority on this subject, which, during a course of many years of constan attention, he has made specially his own. with great pleasure the elaborate manner in which the distribution of each species is described, not only within the area of the British Islands, but also wherever it is known to occur on other parts of the world's surface. We likewise notice the entire absence of misprints and the excellence of the type and paper, which do credit alike to the author and publisher, and will no doubt greatly contribute to extend the circulation of the work. Having said thus much, it is with regret that we must add one word of discontent, for which we trust Mr. Van Voorst and Prof. Newton will alike forgive us. The rate of issue of the numbers is so slow that it is difficult to calculate when the new edition will be completed. As

may

have been published during the four past years. If, as we suppose, about twenty more parts are required to finish the work, it is manifest that unless the present rate of progress be expedited it will be twenty years before we are able to send our new "History of British Birds" to the binders. The edition was commenced, we believe, in 1871. Now thirty years seems rather long for the execution of a new edition of any work, even with all the improvements which, as we have shown above, the present editor has doubtless bestowed upon it We would fain ask therefore whether the author and publisher cannot manage to move on a little faster. If this cannot be done it appears to us that the first portion of the work will be almost out of date before the last part is published, and that the subscribers will have good reason to complain.

OUR BOOK SHELF

Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Botanik. Herausgege; ben von Dr. N. Pringsheim. Elfter Band, drittes und viertes Heft. With twenty-four plates. (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1877 and 1878.)

DR. JAKOB ERIKSSON describes in a lengthened paper the protomeristem of the roots of Dicotyledons, and directs attention to the four great types of structure observable in these roots. In the first type the apex consists of three separate zones of meristem: the plerome, periblem, and dermocalyptrogen. In the second type only two zones are present: the plerome and a common zone for primary cortex, epidermis, and rootcap. In the third type there is a common meristem zone from which all the others develop; while in the fourth | there are two zones, the periblem and the plerome. Two additional types are met with in Monocotyledons: (1) in which there are four zones of meristem: calyptrogen, dermatogen, peroblem, and plerome; and (2) in which there are three zones: the calyptrogen, the plerome, and a common zone for cortex and epidermis.

The germination of Equisetum and Schizæaceæ forms the subject of two papers, one by Sadebeck and the other by Bauke, whose work was arrested by premature death. Woronin contributes a paper on the Plasmodiophora Brassica, the remarkable Myxomycete which seems to be the cause of the so-called Hernia of the cabbage plant, which has recently attracted so much attention.

The remaining papers are by Reinke, on Monostroma bullosum and Tetraspora lubrica. Wydler discusses at great length the morphology of certain forms of inflorescence, chiefly dichotomous; and lastly there is a paper by Pitra on the pressure in stems during the appearance of bleeding in plants. The contents of the parts are, as will be seen, very varied and deal with many different departments of botany, and will be found to sustain the reputation of the "Jahrbücher so long associated with the name of Pringsheim.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. No notice is taken of anonymous communications. The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great that it is impossible otherwise to ensure the appearance even of communications containing interesting and novel facts.]

Unconscious Memory-Mr. Samuel Butler WILL you kindly allow me a portion of your valuable space in order that I may demonstrate the completely groundless character of a series of insinuations which Mr. Samuel Butler

has made not only against myself, but also against Mr. Charles Darwin, in the work which he has recently published, entitled Unconscious Memory" (Op. 5).

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1. Mr. Butler insinuates that Mr. Darwin caused my essay on Dr. Erasmus Darwin to be translated simply in order to throw discredit on his work, "Evolution, Old and New" (Op. 41, which was published in May, 1879. Upon this point I have to observe that Mr. Darwin informed me of his desire to have my essay published in English more than two months before the appearance of Mr. Butler's book; that the translation did not appear earlier is due to the fact that I asked for a delay in order that I might be able to revise it.

2. The assumption of Mr. Butler that Mr. Darwin had urged me to insert an underhand attack upon him (Mr. Butler) in my sketch, is not only absolutely unfounded, but, on the contrary, I have to state that Mr. Darwin specially solicited me to take no notice whatever of Mr. Butler's book, which had in the mean. time appeared. Since however I thought it desirable to point out that Dr. Erasmus Darwin's views concerning the evolution of animated Nature still satisfy certain thinkers, even in our own day (a fact which must add greatly to Dr. Darwin's reputation), I have made some remarks upon the subject in a concluding paragraph, without however naming Mr. Butler. And I may here emphatically assert, that although Mr. Darwin recommended me to omit one or two passages from my work, he

neither made nor suggested additions of any kind.

3. Mr. Butler's assertion that the revision of my translation was made by the light" of his book is only in so far justifiable that I looked over the latter before sending off my work, and that my attention was thereby called to a remark of Buffon's. From Mr. Butler's book I have neither taken nor was I able to take the slightest information that was new to me concerning Dr. Erasmus Darwin's scientific work and views, since in it practically only one portion of the "Zoonomia" is discussed at any length, and this portion I had already quoted and analysed, while Mr. Butler only refers to one comparatively unimportant part of the "Botanic Garden," and absolutely ignores the "Phytologia" and the "Temple of Nature." So that no single line of Mr. Butler's far from profound work was of the slightest

use to me.

Mr. Butler's contention that I have quoted from his book a remark from Coleridge is entirely without foundation. I have been acquainted with this remark for years, and from the source quoted. It is also quoted in Zoeckler's work (vol. ii. p. 256), mentioned by me on p. 151, which appeared prior to Mr. Butler's book (Op. 4). The whole of my indebtedness to Mr. Butler reduces itself therefore to a single quotation from Buffon.

4. Finally, as concerns the main accusation that no mention is made in the preface of the fact that my essay had been revised previously to publication, it is clear, as even a child could not fail to see, that this is not due to design, but is simply the result of an oversight. It would be simply absurd for a writer intentionally to attack a publication which appeared subsequently to the date indicated on his title-page; and the so-called falsification, so far from injuring Mr. Butler, could only be most agreeable to him, because it might induce the careless reader to fancy that no reference whatever was intended to Mr. Butler in the closing sentence. Should however such a reference be clearly intended-and to every reader posted up in the subject this could not be doubtful-every man of common sense would recognise this terrible falsehood to be a simple oversight. Belia, January 12

Hot Ice

ERNST KRAUSE

I VENTURE, in referring to Dr. Lodge's letter of this week, to put before your readers the meaning of the remarks made on Dr. Carnelley's experiment at the Chemical Society by Prof. Ayrton, who is now away from England. I understood him to say that as Dr. Carnelley's hot ice is obviously in a condition which cannot be represented within the as yet known fundamental water surfaces, it is necessary to produce these surfaces beyond the places at which, hitherto, abrupt changes have been supposed to take place in them. He took as an instance the icewater surface which has hitherto been assumed to stop at Prof. James Thomson's "triple point," and showed that although Sir Wm. Thomson's experiments have proved that it is nearly plane for the stable state of water and ice, yet in the imaginary district beyond the triple point a change of latent heat might give such a change of curvature as to bring this surface into the hot-ice region.