The fossil plants are, as might be expected, very numerous, and many of them are well known through the memoirs, as well as the fine monograph on Fossil Plants, by Dr. Schimper.

In thus noticing some of the chief objects which attracted our attention during a visit to this Museum in January last, it is well also to remember that this grand collection owes its very existence to the lifelong labours of Dr. Schimper. Since 1838 he has been the Director of the Museum, which before that time existed only in name. Throughout the terrible bombardment the Museum escaped almost without any damage, and has now become one of the most valuable prizes of war gained by the conquerors. The thanks of the world of science are due to the excellent director of this collection, for all that he has done for it and for science, and we hope we are not wrong in here expressing the wish that, should Prof. Schimper, having been all his life a Frenchman, find it impossible to change his nationality and so continue to reside in Strasbourg, that that new rule which knows so well when it likes how to appreciate the man of science, will not forget to whose care it is indebted for the magnificent prize which it has won.

DUST AND SMOKE*

E. P. W.

AFTER a few preliminary experiments illustrative of

polarisation of light, Prof. Tyndall adverted to the polarisation of light by fine dust, by the sky, and by the coarser particles of smoke. In the former the direction of maximum polarisation, as in the case of the sky, is at right angles to the illuminating beam. In the latter, according to the observations of Govi, the maximum quantity of polarised light was discharged obliquely to the beam. Govi's observation of a neutral point in such beam, on one side of which the polarisation was positive and on the other side negative, was also referred to. The additional fact was then adduced that the position of the neutral point varied with the density of the smoke. Beginning, for example, with an atmosphere thickened by the dense fumes of incense, resin, or gunpowder, and observing the neutral point, its direction was first observed to be inclined to the beam towards the source of illumination. Opening the windows so as to allow the smoke to escape gradually, the neutral point moved down the beam, passed the end of a normal drawn to the beam from the eye, and gradually moved forward several feet down the beam. The speaker did not halt at these observations, they were introduced as the starting point of inquiries of a different nature, and after their introduction the discourse proceeded

thus:

But what, you may ask, is the practical good of these curiosities? And if you so ask, my object is in some sense gained, for I intended to provoke this question. I confess that if we exclude the interest attached to the observation of new facts, and the enhancement of that interest through the knowledge that by-and-by the facts will become the exponents of laws, these curiosities are in themselves worth nothing. They will not enable us to add to our stock of food or drink or clothes or jewellery. But though thus shorn of all usefulness in themselves, they may, by leading the mind into places which it would not otherwise have entered, become the antecedents of practical consequences. In looking, for example, at this illuminated dust, we may ask ourselves what it is. does it act, not upon a beam of light, but upon our own lungs and stomachs? The question at once assumes a practical character. We find on examination that this dust is organic matter-in part living, in part dead. There are among it particles of ground straw, torn rags, smoke, the pollen of flowers, the spores of fungi, and the germs * Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, Friday evening, June 9, 1871.

How

of other things. But what have they to do with the animal economy? Let me give you an illustration to which my attention has been lately drawn by Mr. George Henry Lewes, who writes to me thus:

"I wish to direct your attention to the experiments of von Recklingshausen should you happen not to know them. They are striking confirmations of what you say of dust and disease. Last spring, when I was at his laboratory in Würzburg I examined with him blood that had been three weeks, a month, and five weeks, out of the body, preserved in little porcelain cups under glass shades. This blood was living and growing. Not only were the Amoeba-like movements of the white corpuscles present, but there were abundant evidences of the growth and development of the corpuscles. I also saw a frog's heart still pulsating which had been removed from the body (I forget how many days, but certainly more than a week). There were other examples of the same persistent vitality or absence of putrefaction. Von Recklingshausen did not attribute this to the absence of germs-germs were not mentioned by him; but when I asked him how he represented the thing to himself, he said the whole mystery of his operation consisted in keeping the blood free from dirt. The instruments employed were raised to a red heat just before use, the thread was silver thread and was similarly treated, and the porcelain cups, though not kept free from air, were kept free from currents. He said he often had failures, and these he attributed to particles of dust having escaped his precautions."

Prof. Lister, who has founded upon the removal or destruction of this "dirt" great and numerous improveinto the blood of wounds. He informs us what would ments in surgery, tells us of the effect of its introduction happen with the extracted blood should the dust get at it. The blood would putrefy and become fetid, and when you examine more closely what putrefaction means, you find the putrefying substance swarming with organic life, the germs of which have been derived from the air. bearing particularly significant at the present time upon Another note which I received a day or two ago has a this question of dust and dirt, and the wisdom of avoiding

them. The note is from Mr. Ellis, of Sloane Street, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for advice given to me when sorely wounded in the Alps. "I do not know," writes Mr. Ellis, "whether you happened to see the letters, of which I enclose you a reprint, when they appeared in the method of vaccination as here described, because it has, Times. But I want to tell you this in reference to my as I think, a relation to the subject of the intake of organic particles from without into the body. Vaccination and thrusting into the punctures made by the lancet the in the common way is done by scraping off the epidermis, vaccine virus. By the method I use (and have used for more than twenty years) the epidermis is lifted by the effusion of serum from below, a result of the irritant canthapricked, a drop of fluid let out, and then a fine vaccine radine applied to the skin. The little bleb thus formed is point is put into this spot, and after a minute of delay it is withdrawn. The epidermis falls back on the skin and quite excludes the air-and not the air only, but what the air contains.

"Now mark the result-out of hundreds of cases of revaccination which I have performed, I have never had a single case of blood poisoning or of abscess. By the ordinary way the occurrence of secondary abscess is by no means uncommon, and that of pyæmia is occasionally observed. I attribute the comparative safety of my method entirely, first, to the exclusion of the air and what it contains; and, secondly, to the greater size of the apertures for the inlet of mischief made by the lancet."

I bring these facts forward that they may be sifted and challenged if they be not correct. If they are correct it is needless to dwell upon their importance, nor is it necessary to say that if Mr. Ellis had resigned himself wholly

to the guidance of the germ theory he could not have acted more in accordance with the requirements of that theory than he has actually done. It is what the air contains that does the mischief in vaccination. Mr. Ellis's results fall in with the general theory of putrefaction propounded by Schwann, and developed in this country with such striking success by Prof. Lister. They point, if true, to a cause distinct from bad lymph for the failures and occasional mischief incidental to vaccination; and if followed up they may be the means of leaving the irrational opposition to vaccination no ground to stand upon, by removing even the isolated cases of injury on which the opponents of the practice rely.

We are now assuredly in the midst of practical matters. With your permission I will recur once more to a question which has recently occupied a good deal of public attention. You know that as regards the lowest forms of life, the world is divided, and has for a long time been divided, into two parties, the one affirming that you have only to submit absolutely dead matter to certain physical conditions to evolve from it living things; the others, without wishing to set bounds to the power of matter, affirming that in our day no life has ever been found to arise independently of pre-existing life. Many of you are aware that I belong to the party which claims life as a derivative of life. The question has two factors: the evidence, and the mind that judges of the evidence; and you will not forget that it may be purely a mental set or bias on my part that causes me throughout this discussion from beginning to end, to see on the one side dubious facts and defective logic, and on the other side firm reasoning and a knowledge of what rigid experimental inquiry demands. But judged of practically, what, again, has the question of Spontaneous Generation to do with us? Let us see.

There are numerous diseases of men and animals that are demonstrably the products of parasitic life, and such disease may take the most terrible epidemic forms, as in the case of the silkworms of France in our day. Now it is in the highest degree important to know whether the parasites in question are spontaneously developed, or are wafted from without to those afflicted with the disease. The means of prevention, if not of cure, would be widely different in the two cases.

But this is by no means all. Besides these universally admitted cases, there is the broad theory now broached and daily growing in strength and clearness-daily, indeed, gaining more and more of assent from the most successful workers and profound thinkers of the medical profession itself-the theory, namely, that contagious disease generally is of this parasitic character. If I had heard or read anything since to cause me to regret having introduced this theory to your notice more than a year ago, I should here frankly express that regret. I would renounce in your presence whatever leaning towards the germ theory my words might then have betrayed. Let me state in two sentences the grounds on which the supporters of the theory rely. From their respective viruses you may plant typhoid fever, scarlatina, or small-pox. What is the crop that arises from this husbandry? As surely as a thistle rises from a thistle seed, as surely as the fig comes from the fig, the grape from the grape, the thorn from the thorn, so surely does the typhoid virus increase and multiply into typhoid fever, the scarlatina virus into scarlatina, the small-pox virus into small-pox. What is the conclusion that suggests itself here? It is this:-That the thing which we vaguely call a virus is to all intents and purposes a seed: that in the whole range of chemical science you cannot point to an action which illustrates this perfect parallelism with the phenomena of life-this demonstrated power of selfmultiplication and reproduction. There is, therefore, no hypothesis to account for the phenomena but that which refers them to parasitic life.

And here you see the bearing of the doctrine of Spon

taneous Generation upon the question. For if the doctrine continues to be discredited as it has hitherto been, it will follow that the epidemics which spread havoc amougst us from time to time are not spontaneously generated, but that they arise from an ancestral stock whose habitat is the human body itself. It is not on bad air or foul drains that the attention of the physician will primarily be fixed, but upon disease germs which no bad air or foul drains can create, but which may be pushed by foul air into virulent energy of reproduction. You may think I am treading on dangerous ground, that I am putting forth views that may interfere with salutary practice. No such thing. If you wish to learn the impotence of medical science and practice in dealing with contagious diseases, you have only to refer to a recent Harveian oration by Dr. Gull. Such diseases defy the physician. They must burn themselves out. And, indeed, this, though I do not specially insist upon it, would favour the idea of their vital origin. For if the seeds of contagious disease be themselves living things, it will be difficult to destroy either them or their progeny without involving their living habitat in the same destruction.

And I would also ask you to be cautious in accepting the statement which has been so often made, and which is sure to be repeated, that I am quitting my own métier when I speak of these things. I am not dealing with professional questions. I am writing no prescription, nor should I venture to draw any conclusion from the condition of your pulse and tongue. I am dealing with a question on which minds accustomed to weigh the value of experimental evidence are alone competent to decide, and regarding which, in its present condition, minds so trained are as capable of forming an opinion as on the phenomena of magnetism and radiant heat. I cannot better conclude this portion of my story than by reading to you an extract from a letter addressed to me some time ago by Dr. William Budd, of Clifton, to whose insight and energy the town of Bristol owes so much in the way of sanitary improvement.

As to the germ theory itself," writes Dr. Budd, "that is a matter on which I have long since made up my mind. From the day when I first began to think of these subjects, I have never had a doubt that the specific cause of contagious fevers must be living organisms.

"It is impossible, in fact, to make any statement bearing upon the essence or distinctive characters of these fevers, without using terms which are of all others the most distinctive of life. Take up the writings of the most violent opponent of the germ theory, and, ten to one, you will find them full of such terms as 'propagation,'' self-propagation,' 'reproduction,' 'self-multiplication,' and so on. Try as he may-if he has anything to say of those diseases which is characteristic of them-he cannot evade the use of these terms, or the exact equivalents to them. While perfectly applicable to living things, these terms express qualities which are not only inapplicable to common chemical agents, but as far as I can see actually inconceivable of them."

Once, then, established within the body, this evil form of life, if you will allow me to call it so, must run its course. Medicine as yet is powerless to arrest its progress, and the great point to be aimed at is to prevent its access to the body. It was with this thought in my mind that I ventured to recommend, more than a year ago, the use of cotton-wool respirators in infectious places. I would here repeat my belief in their efficacy if properly constructed. But I do not wish to prejudice the use of these respirators in the minds of its opponents by connecting them indissolubly with the germ theory. There are too many trades in England where life is shortened and rendered miserable by the introduction of matters into the lungs which might be kept out of them. Dr. Greenhow has shown the stony grit deposited in the lungs of stonecutters. The black lung of colliers is another case in point

In fact a hundred obvious cases might be cited, and others that are not obvious might be added to them. We should not, for example, think that printing implied labours where the use of cotton-wool respirators might come into play; but I am told that the dust arising from the sorting of the type is very destructive of health. I went some time ago into a manufactory in one of our large towns, where iron vessels are enamelled by coating them with a mineral powder, and subjecting them to a heat sufficient to fuse the powder. The organisation of the establishment was excellent, and one thing only was needed to make it faultless. In a large room a number of women were engaged covering the vessels. The air was laden with the fine dust, and their faces appeared as white and bloodless as the powder with which they worked. By the use of cotton-wool respirators these women might be caused to breathe air more free from suspended matters than that of the open street. Over a year ago I was written to by a Lancashire seedsman, who stated that during the seed season of each year his men suffered horribly from irritation and fever, so that many of them left his service. asked me could I help him, and I gave him my advice. At the conclusion of the season this year he wrote to me that he had simply folded a little cotton-wool in muslin, and tied it in front of the mouth; that he had passed through the season in comfort and without a single complaint from one of his men.

He

The substance has also been turned to other uses. An invalid tells me that at night he places a little of the wool before his mouth, slightly moistening it to make it adhere; that he has thereby prolonged his sleep, abated the irritation of his throat, and greatly mitigated a hacking cough from which he had long suffered. In fact, there is no doubt that this substance is capable of manifold useful applications. An objection was urged against the use of it that it became wet and heated by the breath. While I was casting about for a remedy for this, a friend forwarded to me from Newcastle a form of respirator invented by Mr. Carrick, an hotel-keeper at Glasgow, which meets the case effectually, and, by a slight modification, may be caused to meet it perfectly. The respirator, with its back in part removed, is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of the space under the partition of wire-gauze qr, intended by Mr. Carrick for "medicated substances," and which may be filled with cotton-wool. The mouth is placed against the aperture o, which fits closely round the lips, and the air enters the mouth through the cotton-wool, by a light valve v, which is lifted by the act of inhalation. During exhalation this valve closes; another breath escapes by a second valve, v, into the open air. The wool is thus kept dry and cool; the air in passing through it being filtered of everything it holds in suspension.*

We have thus been led by our first unpractical experiments into a thicket of practical considerations. In taking the next step, a personal peculiarity had some influence upon me. The only kind of fighting in which I take the least delight, is the conflict of man with nature. I like to see a man conquer a peak or quench a conflagration. I remember clearly the interest I took twenty years ago in seeing the firemen of Berlin contending for mastery with a fire which had burst out somewhere near the Brandenburger Thor; and I have often experienced the same interest in the streets of London. Admiring as I do the energy and bravery of our firemen, and having heard that smoke was a greater enemy to them than flame itself, the desire arose of devising a fireman's respirator. But before I describe what has been done in this direction, let me draw your attention to the means hitherto employed to enable a man to live in dense smoke. Thanks to the courtesy of Capt. Shaw, I am enabled to show you the action of the smoke-jacket," known abroad as the "Appareil Paulin," from its supposed inventor. The jacket is of pliable cowhide. It has arms and a hood, with Mr. Ladd, of Beak Street sells these respirators,

eye-glasses. With straps and buckles the jacket is tied round the wrists and waist, and a strap which passes between the legs prevents it from rising. On the left side of the jacket is fixed a screw, to which the ordinary hose of the fire-engine is attached, and through the hose air instead of water is urged into the space between the fireman's body and the jacket. It becomes partially inflated, but no pressure of any amount is attainable, because the air, though somewhat retarded, escapes with tolerable freedom from the wrists and waist. Hence the fireman, when his hose is long enough, can deliberately walk into the densest smoke or foulest air. But you see the use of the smoke-jacket necessitates the presence of several men; it also implies the presence of an engine. A single man could make no use of it, nor indeed any number of men without a pumping engine. Its uses are thus summed up in a communication addressed to me by Captain Shaw:

"This smoke-jacket is very useful for extinguishing fires in vaults, stopping conflagrations in the holds of ships, and penetrating wells, quarries, mines, cesspools, &c.— any places, in short, where the air has become unfit for respiration.

The special advantages of this jacket are its great simplicity, its facility for use, and the rapidity with which it can be carried about and put on; but its drawback is that it requires the use of an engine or air-pump, and consequently is of no service to one man alone. For this latter reason smoke-jackets, although very effective for enabling us to get into convenient places for extinguishing fires, have very rarely proved of any avail for saving life." Now it is that very want that I thought ought to be supplied by a suitable respirator. Our fire-escapes are each in charge of a single man, and I wished to be able to place it in the power of each of those men to penetrate through the densest smoke into the recesses of a house, and there to rescue those who would otherwise be suffocated or burnt. I thought that cotton wool, which so effectually arrested dust, might also be influential in arresting smoke. It was tried; but, though found soothing in certain gentle kinds of smoke, it was no match for the pungent fumes of a resinous fire, which we employ in our experiments in the laboratory, and which, I am gratified to learn from Captain Shaw, evolves the most abominable smoke with which he is acquainted. I cast about for an improvement, and in conversing on the subject with my friend Dr. Debus, he suggested the use of glycerine to moisten the wool, and render it more adhesive. In fact, this very substance had been employed by the most distinguished advocate of the doctrine of spontaneous generation, M. Pouchet, for the purpose of catching the atmospheric germs. He spread a film of glycerine on a plate of glass, urged air against the film, and examined the dust which stuck to it. The moistening of the cotton-wool with this substance was a decided improvement; still the respirator only enabled us to remain in dense smoke for three or four minutes, after which the irritation [became unendurable. Reflection suggested that in combustion so imperfect as the production of dense smoke implies, there must be numerous hydrocarbons produced which, being in a state of vapour, would be very imperfectly arrested by the cotton wool. These in all probability were the cause of the residual irritation; and if these could be removed, a practically perfect respirator might possibly be obtained.

I state the reasoning exactly as it occurred to my mind. Its result will be anticipated by many present. All bodies possess the power of condensing in a greater or less degree gases and vapours upon their surfaces, and whe the condensing body is very porous, or in a fine state of division, the force of condensation may produce very remarkable effects. Thus, a clean piece of platinum-foil placed in a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen so squeeze; the gases together as to cause them to combine; and if the experiment be made with care, the heat of combina

tion may raise the platinum to bright redness, so as to Cause the remainder of the mixture to explode. The promptness of this action is greatly augmented by reducing the platinum to a state of fine division. A pellet of "spongy platinum," for instance, plunged into a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, causes the gases to explode instantly. In virtue of its extreme porosity, a similar power is possessed by charcoal. It is not strong enough to cause the oxygen and hydrogen to combine like the spongy platinum, but it so squeezes the more condensible vapours together, and also acts with such condensing power upon the oxygen of the air, as to bring both within the combining distance, thus enabling the oxygen to attack and destroy the vapours in the pores of the charcoal. In this way, effluvia of all kinds may be virtually burnt up, and this is the principle of the excellent charcoal respirators invented by Dr. Stenhouse. Armed with one of these, you may go into the foulest-smelling places without having your nose offended. Some of you will remember Dr. Stenhouse lecturing in this room with a suspicious-looking vessel in front of the table. That vessel contained a decomposing cat. It was covered with a layer of charcoal, and nobody knew until told of it what the vessel contained.

I may be permitted in passing to give my testimony as

bent substances is prolonged to a depth of four or five inches (see Fig. 2). On the partition of wire gauze qr at the bottom of the space which fronts the mouth, is placed a layer of cotton-wool, c, moistened with glycerine; then a thin layer of dry wool, c'; then a layer of charcoal fragments; a second thin layer of dry cotton wool, succeeded by a layer of fragments of caustic lime. The succession of the layers may be changed without injury to the action. A wire-gauze cover, shown in plan below Fig. 1, keeps the substances from falling out of the respirator. In the densest smoke that we have hitherto employed, the layer of lime has not been found necessary, nor is it shown in the figure; in a flaming building, indeed, the mixture of

to the efficacy of these charcoal respirators in providing warm air for the lungs. Not only is the sensible heat of the breath in part absorbed by the charcoal, but the considerable amount of latent heat which accompanies the aqueous vapour from the lungs is rendered free by the condensation of the vapour in the pores of the charcoal. Each particle of charcoal is thus converted into an incipient ember, and warms the air as it passes inwards.

But while powerful to arrest vapours, the charcoal respirator is ineffectual as regards smoke. The particles get freely through the respirator. In a series of them tested downstairs, from half a minute to a minute was the limit of endurance. This might be exceeded by Faraday's method of emptying the lungs completely, and then filling them before going into a smoky atmosphere. In fact, each solid smoke particle is itself a bit of charcoal, and carries on it, and in it, its little load of irritating vapours. It is this, far more than the particles of carbon themselves, that produces the irritation. Hence two causes of offence are to be removed: the carbon particles which convey the irritant by adhesion and condensation, and the free vapour which accompanies the particles. The moistened cottonwool I knew would arrest the first, fragments of charcoal I hoped would stop the second. In the first fireman's respirator, Mr. Carrick's arrangement of two valves, the one for inhalation, the other for exhalation, are preserved. But the portion of it which holds the filtering and absor

SECTION ON AB

PLAN OF BOTTOM COVER

FIG. 2,

air with the smoke never permits the carbonic acid to become so dense as to be irrespirable. But in a place where the gas is present in undue quantity, the fragments of lime would materially mitigate its action.

In a small cellar-like chamber downstairs, with a stone flooring and stone walls, the first experiments were made. We placed there furnaces containing resinous pine-wood, lighted the wood, and placing over it a lid which prevented too brisk a circulation of the air, generated dense volumes of smoke. With our eyes protected by suitable glasses, my assistant and I have remained in this room for half an hour and more, when the smoke was so dense and pungent that a single inhalation through the undefended

mouth would be perfectly unendurable; and we might have prolonged our stay for hours. Having thus far perfected the instrument, I wrote to Captain Shaw, the chief officer of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, asking him whether such a respirator would be of use to him. His reply was prompt; it would be most valuable. He had, however, made himself acquainted with every contrivance of the kind in this and other countries, and had found none of them of any practical use. He offered to come and test it here, or to place a room at my disposal in the City. At my request he came here, accompanied by three

of his men. Our small room was filled with smoke to their entire satisfaction. The three men went successively into it, and remained there as long as Captain Shaw wished them. On coming out they said that they had not suffered the slightest inconvenience; that they could have remained all day in the smoke. Captain Shaw then tested the instrument with the same result. From that hour the greatest interest has been taken in the perfecting of the instrument by Captain Shaw himself. He has attached to the respirator suitable hoods. The real problem is practically solved, and I can only say that if a tithe of the zeal, intelligence, and practical skill were bestowed on the cotton-wool respirator that Captain Shaw has devoted to the fireman's respirator the sufferings of many a precious life might be spared, and its length augmented.*

The lecture was concluded as follows:-"Thus have we been led from the actinic decomposition of vapours through the tails of comets and the blue of the sky to the dust of London, from the germ theory of disease down to this fireman's respirator. Instead of this trivial example, I could, if time permitted, point to others of a more considerable kind in illustration of the tendency of pure science to lead to practical applications. Indeed those very wanderings of the scientific intellect which at first sight appear utterly unpractical, become in the end the wellsprings of practice. Yet I believe there is a philosophy embraced by some of our more ardent thinkers (who I fear on many points commit the well-intentioned, but fatal mistake of putting their own hopeful fancies in the place of fact) that would abolish these wanderings of the intellect and fix it from the outset on practical ends alone. I do not think that that philosophy will ever make itself good in the world, or that any freedom-loving student of nature could or would tolerate its chains."

A short time before the lecture I had an opportunity of inspecting the apparatus of Mr. Sinclair, which has been tested and highly spoken of by the superintendent of the Manchester Fire Brigade. The original idea is due to Von Humboldt, who proposed it for the Hartz mines. Galibert constructed the apparatus in an improved form, and it has been still further improved by Mr. Sinclair, who has purchased Galibert's patent. It consists of an air-tight bag, from which issue two tubes that unite on a single one with a respirator mouth-piece. The bag is filled with air, and the wearer inspires through one valve and expires through another. The expired breath is carried to the bottom of the bag, and is stated to remain there in consequence of the chilling experienced in its passage downwards. A bag of not inordinate size is stated to be sufficient to supply aman with air for twenty minutes. Mr. Sinclair's apparatus was exhibited during the lecture. J. T.

NOTES

We are able to state that the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society are considering the steps necessary to be taken to insure observations being made of the Total Solar Eclipse visible

* Mr. Ladd has also proposed a form of mouth-piece which promises well, and Mr. Cottrell has attached to it an ordinary fencing-mask. This will probably be the form of apparatus finally adopted.

in Ceylon next December. We need scarcely remark that there is no subject which is at present engaging the attention of scientific men more important than that of the nature of the Corona, and it will be a disgrace to the science of the age if the next eclipse is allowed to pass over without every effort being made to increase our knowledge.

THE Astronomer Royal requests us to state that he will be

obliged for the loan of any unpublished observations made during the recent total eclipse. Communications to be addressed to him at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

WE are glad to learn that the Right Hon. Mr. Robert Lowe has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. We have before in these columns stated our belief that Science has every reason to expect a favourable recognition of her claims from him as Chancellor of the Exchequer if proper claims are put forward in a proper manner, and we reiterate the assertion. It was unfortunate that the first grant of public money for which Mr. Lowe was asked, for scientific purposes, was allocated in a way which made Mr. Lowe somewhat indignant, a feeling which was however shared by many men of science. It was also unfortunate that the requirements of science in the matter of the Eclipse Expedition were not properly put before the Government in the first instance, but it is now a matter of history that Mr. Lowe was satisfied with a semi-official statement of the claims of Astronomy, and not only at once granted the required aid, but threw all the power of the Government into completing the necessary arrangements. The same may be said of the Dredging Expeditions. The willingness of a Chancellor of the Exchequer after all, however, is not the only thing requisite for State recognition of the claims of Science. We want a proper scientific or ganisation, and proper scientific representation. here is in a chaotic state, is the well-founded opinion of many of our scientific men; and if this condition of things is allowed to continue, students of Science must expect that their wishes shall be ignored or lost sight of in the rush of other more emphatically asserted claims.

That Science

THE official statements made under the head of "University Intelligence" in the daily papers have been lately very remarkable. We noticed, not very long ago, that Prof. Max Müller was called Professor of Comparative Physiology! What will Dr. Rolleston say to this? A few days afterwards it was announced that Mr. Reinold, the Lee's Reader of Physics at Christ Church, would give a course of lectures on Statistical Electricity!! Surely no one but Mrs. Malaprop herself could have made such blunders; while to cap all, a day or two ago we that the Commemoration at Oxford was an "interesting event!" were informed (again in the official "University Intelligence") Surely this is rather hard on Alma Mater!

being put on a new footing at Constantinople. For many years ASTRONOMY, may we say astrology, like many other things, is the chief functionary in this department of science has been the Sultan's chief astrologer, but we believe he is now little called upon by Abdul Aziz to cast horoscopes for a lucky time, as the Sultan starts at a punctual hour, and the astrologer has chiefly to cast the ephemerides for the Salnameh, or official almanack, a periodical growing in respectability. Lectures in Physical Science are given in Turkish by Mussulman Professors at the Darul Funoun, or University, though there are godly men in Islam who maintain that such teaching is contrary to scripture. The time in Constantinople is a sore puzzle. As the day begins at sunset, and has to be divided into twenty-four hours, at sundown begins a general setting of watches, because steamboat departures and other incidents are regulated by Turkish time. The chief object for which expensive clocks and watches are bought by the Turks is for working out the canonical hours of