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Thought and Language. By Ada 8.
Ballin

First Star Lessons. (With Map.)
By Richard A. Proctor....
Gossip. By R. A. Proctor............
Reviews...

Correspondence: The Great Sunspot-The Oldest Solar MythThe Mathematical Theory of Evolution-The Nature of Consciousness-Vital Force-Infinite Divisibility, &c.

Our Inventors' Column.................. Our Chess Column

FEMININE VOLUBILITY.

BY THOMAS FOSTER.

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MONG the minor miseries of life, which become by frequent repetition, and by steady continuance, very serious troubles, perhaps the querulous volubility of kindly women, is as apt as any to embitter life. The scolding vixen is endurable by comparison with the unselfish woman, whose anxiety for the welfare of those around her leads her to make them all exceedingly uncomfortable. I can imagine a man of sense exposed to the angry vituperations of a Xantippe, finding in them after awhile a fund of amusement. I cannot imagine such a man becoming very angry with a mere shrew, save perhaps for the effect of her vile temper on the comfort and happiness of others. But it is different with the complaints of those whom we know to be wellmeaning. Their querulousness is infinitely more trying, because we cannot separate from our sense of annoyance the sense of utter incongruity between the object they really have in view and the effect they as a matter of fact produce.

A vixen's anger may be compared to a storm which interests more than it annoys; the complaints of kindly but over-anxious women resemble the steady downpour of rain, the purpose of which is excellent, but the effect while it lasts most wearisome and annoying. One cannot get angry with rain or drizzle, but one can get no comfort out of it; whereas one can enjoy the sense of opposition roused by a fierce storm through which one may have to make a way.

I recall here, by the way, that George Eliot, who noted more closely than most persons the sources of domestic happiness and misery, has dwelt on this difference between the mere vixen whom everyone contemns and the Mrs. Gummidges who trouble those around them by constant complaints which have their origin in overanxious love. "Women who are never bitter and resentful," she says, "are often the most querulous; and if Solomon was as wise as he was reputed to be, I feel sure

that when he compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy day, he had not a vixen in his eye-a fury with long nails, acrid and selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make uncomfortable-putting by all the tit-bits for them, and spending nothing on herself-a woman at once patient and complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the livelong day over what happened yesterday, and what is likely to happen tomorrow, and crying very readily both at the good and

the evil."

How many families know this kind of good woman, and the misery her voluble manifestations of anxiety occasion to every one within range of her voice. She is generally possessed with the notion that much more depends on her than is actually the case. But one feels that it would be unkind to tell her so. Her volubility about her multitudinous cares and anxieties produces a distressed silence among those around. The thought of all-that matters would go well enough if she could but leave them a little alone is expressed by none. Wearily she laments what is past and cannot be altered, or proclaims anxieties about what may never happen. Over and over again, in ever-varying forms, the same imagined troubles or long-past misfortunes are lamented over with wearisome iteration, and the patient hearers, among whom may be those who have the real work of keeping things straight, can never find courage to ask for some remission of their misery. She gets at last, the idea that the ceaseless worry which deprives all around of half the comfort of life, is all that preserves the family from rack and ruin. "Your father has all his worry abroad," one of these unhappy ones will say, "I have to bear all the worry at home," where-if she knew the real truth she would say, "My husband's work and worry abroad is made for him by others; I make all the worry at home, or most of it,-for him when he comes home tired with his day's work, and still more for the unfortum nate folks who are at home through the day."

I sometimes wonder whether in homes made miserable by constant worries of the kind I am dealing with, the kinder way would not be to speak plainly, even at the risk of causing some little pain, or even at first somewhat sharp and bitter pain. At the outset, were not fathers and husbands too apt to be unduly indulgent, the querulous humour might, I believe, be easily checked. I know that most men put up with it as a feminine weakness which should be indulged; they even deem it a part of manly duty to be patient under the infliction. If no one suffered but the husband or the father, there might be little harm in this mistaken view of duty. But the case is otherwise. Many suffer besides him. Amongst others none suffers in the long run more than the offender herself. She may not consciously recognise how wrong her conduct is, or how much misery it causes; but it does make her unhappy both directly and indirectly, directly as her growing querulousness shows, indirectly because she cannot but feel that those whom she wishes to see happy are uncomfortable if not miserable while she mourns and laments on their behalf. For want of a few words of good advice, or even, if necessary, of very definite warning and command, many a well-meaning woman has made her own life and the lives of those dear to her, a long spell of discomfort where they might have been most happy, and has ended by alienating the heart of the man who had not the heart to check at the right time, her querulous ways. There is more true love in kindly severity of rebuke before the mischief is done, than in

mere patience to bear the misery-patience which after all may be at last overworn, or remaining, may become the patience of disgust instead of the patience of love.

MR.

GROWTH OF A FAMILY.

BY RICHARD A. PROCTOR.

R. FRANCIS GALTON has expressed a wish to obtain from heads of families statistics about the development of children in height, weight, &c., at various ages. But I imagine he will not get a very large supply of accurate statistics, and that without much fuller information than the average British paterfamilias is likely to supply, the statistics will not be much more valuable than those stupendous collections of meteorological records which thus far have proved such utterly useless loads on official shelves. For statistics are "kittle cattle to shoe behind": properly employed they may lead us to truth, but unless well treated they are apt to project us on the road to error.

Still there can be no doubt that carefully collected and compiled statistics about the development of children would be interesting and valuable. The mere records of the heights of children at different ages, for example, may possess high physiological interest, especially if accompanied by information as to circumstances which may have affected growth.

I have not myself been very attentive to such matters, although so far as numerical relations are concerned I have had as good opportunities as most men. Since 1866 (when the Corner House fell, and by its fall condemned many innocent persons to hard labour for life), I have not been so constantly with my family as Mr. Galton's statisticians are expected to be. Many times I have been away from home for seven or eight months at a stretch; and once I was away nearly two years. And indeed, it has been merely in a casual way that I have taken measurements, usually when by some lucky chance my whole family were gathered together and the question of growth chanced to be started.

I was surprised, therefore, to find that the records I had scrawled on the margin of a certain page, gave so much information as, when analysed, they appear to me to convey. That page is the one in Lardner's "Common Things Explained," in which Quetelet's curve of growth is given. I used to compare the heights of my children with those due to their several ages according to Quetelet's mean curve; and so I naturally pencilled in my notes alongside that curve of comparison.

A short time since I made a clean copy of these pencilled notes. In the course of the work it struck me that a series of curves for comparison with Quetelet's would be interesting. The smaller figure in the accompanying engraving arose out of this idea. It will be seen that the heights for the five children dealt with are shown in curves set down on the same plan as Quetelet's growth curve, so that one can see at a glance whether the height of a child at any age was above or below the average height for that age. (Quetelet's curve corresponds to a height, when full grown, of rather more than 5 ft. 6 in.)

But I first set out the heights of the different children dealt with (I omit the records of several of my children who died young) as they were recorded on given dates, obtaining the very curious series of curves occupying the larger-scale portion of the drawing.

When I had completed these figures they seemed to me suitable as rough examples of the kind of information we may expect to obtain from family height-records such as Mr. Galton has suggested. Of course, had my records been made in pursuance of a definite plan they would have been better worth publishing.

The figures need little explanation. The progress of time is supposed to take place from left to right, one division to each year in each figure, but the time divisions in the smaller figure are only one-fourth those in the larger. Height is represented vertically, as is natural, one space to three inches in each figure, but the height spaces in the smaller are only one-third those in the larger.

The heights were obtained in a systematic manner. They are the heights in "stocking-feet" (to use an absurd expression), and although I had no regular measuring staff, I secured accuracy by using always a squareedge, slid down a vertical surface until it just touched the head. (Putting a flat surface on the head is a very inaccurate method, as it is not easy to determine when it is level, but with any square surface set with its plane vertical, and one edge against a vertical wall, you can get all the accuracy of a regular height measurer.

The records from which the drawings were made are as follows: :-

RAMBLES WITH A HAMMER.

BY W. JEROME HARRISON.
(Continued from p. 215, Vol. VII.)

FROM NUNEATON TO TAMWORTH-THE WARWICK-
SHIRE COAL-FIELD.

THE north-eastern corner of Warwickshire contains a THE basin-shaped coal-field, whose surface-area is but small, but whose coal-seams, passing under newer rocks, extend far to the south. On the eastern side of the basin there are collieries and remains of many old pits between Bedworth and Polesworth; while on the western side the colliery shafts run in a narrow line south of Tamworth from Fazeley and Wilnecote to Dosthill. The strata consist of dark-blue shales, about 1,500 ft. in thickness, containing five workable seams of coal, whose total thickness is 30 ft. These coal-seams lie near the base of the shales, so far as that is exposed; south of Bedworth they run together to form one seam 26 ft. in thickness, comparable with the Ten-yard Seam" of the South Staffordshire Coal-field, formed under the same conditions and probably about the same time. Taking the year 1879, we find that the thirty-one collieries then at work raised a little over a million tons of coal. Very near the top of the coal-measures is an interesting band of limestone, which contains a little shell (a Serpula), by which it can everywhere be recognised. The same bed is well known in North Staffordshire, and may prove of service in correlating the strata of the various Midland coal-fields- -now detached, but probably once continuous. Upon the coal-measures lie red sandstones and marls (2,000 ft. thick) to which the name of Permian has been applied, but which many geologists now consider to form the uppermost division of the Carboniferous Formation; these extend southwards to within a short distance of Leamington and Warwick. On the north, east, and west, the true relations of the coal-measures to the surrounding strata are obscured by faults-great dislocations of the rocks by which the beds are displaced from their true level to the extent of thousands of feet. (Fig. 1.)

But it is of the rocks which undoubtedly lie below the coal-measures in this district that we especially desire to treat. In the maps and sections of the geological survey the coal-seams of Warwickshire are shown as underlain by 2,000 feet of "lower coal-measures," below which is shown "millstone grit " 1,000 feet in thickness. Within the last two years all this has been proved to be a great mistake. The so-called lower coal-measures are actually Cambrian shales; while the so-called millstone grit turns out to be a quartzite of at least equally high antiquity. Moreover, below the quartzite, a group of volcanic rocks peeps out, which must be assigned to the pre-Cambrian formation, a division which includes the oldest known strata upon the surface of the world.

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of the minerals felspar and hornblende. Looking now to the north-west we find ourselves at the foot of a ridge about 500 ft. high, composed of quartzite, which extends for two and a half miles between Nuneaton and Hartshill. It will be best to walk along the rather abrupt eastern slope of this ridge, and then to return to Nuneaton vid Stockingford, which lies on the western side. Crossing the main road at the canal bridge we turn to the left across the fields and begin an examination of the quartzite, which is exposed in a succession of quarries all along its out-crop from Tuttle Hill to Hartshill, the sections

-Faults. (The arrows show the direction of dip.)

miles; or, if time does not permit of the latter town being reached, the main facts may be seen between Nuneaton and Hartshill. Getting out at the Midland Station at Nuneaton, the rock behind the platform is seen to be a much-jointed, reddish quartzite, exactly like that which forms the Lower Lickey Hills, in Worcestershire, and which also crops out round the Wrekin, in Shropshire. Crossing the line, there is a fine section exposed in a quarry close to the canal. Here the quartzite is traversed by an intrusive rock, which Mr. Allport has shown to be a diorite, composed

brick-pit close to this point, the Triassic red marls are exposed, having a rather high easterly dip and a disturbed appearance. They are separated from the quartzite by a fault. The quartzite varies in colour from white to red, and contains many specks of decomposed felspar. At its base it is full of angular fragments of felstone and slate, derived from the rocks beneath. Estimating the thickness of the quartzite at 1,000 ft., we find that bands of shale appear about the middle, and as we approach the top these shaly beds become thicker and more numerous. No fossils have yet been found in

the quartzite not even a worm-burrow-but as it is clearly a sandstone which has been consolidated by the deposition of silica (from heated waters which formerly traversed the rocks) it is possible that fossils may yet be found. It is extensively quarried for road-metal. The prevailing pink tinge of the stone seems to be due to the presence of a little manganese. This quartzite dips to the south-west at angles of from 25 to 45 degrees. To see the very old-probably pre-Cambrian-rocks which lie beneath the quartzite, we must walk along the ridge, which attains a height of 500 feet, to Caldicote Mill. Looking east from this point we see that the rock upon which we are standing has a rather abrupt slope to the north-east, from the foot of which a plain of Triassic sandstones and marls extends to the blue hills of Charnwood, 15 miles distant. At the foot of the slope-less than five minutes' walk from the mill-stands a large house, and between the mill and the house there is an old disused quarry in a field, in which the strata lying below the quartzite are exposed. The quarry is surrounded by a fence and a little spinney, but clambering over at the northern end we at once find ourselves among rocks of a totally distinct nature to those of both the ridge and the plain. First there is a small area of a hard, compact, much-jointed, slaty, or platy rock which is traversed by an intrusive dyke of a very handsome

rock

-a quartz felsite-which sends tongues ramifying through the slaty rock. But the mass of the rock seen in the quarry is a dark-almost black-rock, of a dull, compact appearance, resembling basalt; it is decidedly of igneous origin, and of an intrusive nature. It is unfortunate that no exposure exists of the junction of the quartzite with these lower beds, but they are certainly separated as to the time of their formation by an immense number of years.

A mile beyond Caldicote is Hartshill, which is a pretty village, containing one or two modest inns and the ruins of an old castle. From Hartshill it is a pleasant walk of a mile in a north-westerly direction to Oldbury Hall, a modern mansion situated in the centre of an enclosure-a ditch and earthen rampart-which is an old British camp. Half a mile more-across the fields --and we reach a pretty reservoir, close to whose margin is a very large quarry of diorite, worked for road-metal and "setts." Here the diorite clearly breaks through the Cambrian shales, and it is interesting to note the way in which the latter 66 are baked" and altered. A couple of miles' walk-still in a north-westerly direction-will now bring us to Atherstone, and exposures of the hard dioritic rocks and the softer, shivery shales are frequent. Deep, narrow ravines have been excavated by rain and frost in the shaly beds, while the igneous rocks-the dioritesform round-topped ridges between.

merits are now demonstrated by the unanimous verdict of all who have severely tested it; by athletes, by furnace workers, by sailors, by soldiers, by navvies, &c., especially those who are exposed to extreme fluctuations of heat and cold under the most trying circumstances of profuse perspiration due to violent muscular exertion. A man wearing a superfine black Saxony close-fitting dress suit outside, with a fine linen shirt next to his skin, may be killed by an amount of exposure that he could bear with impunity in loose-flannel "whites."

We understand this now, but it was very different in Rumford's time. He says, "I am astonished that the custom of wearing flannel next the skin should not have prevailed more universally. I am confident it would prevent a multitude of diseases; and I know of no greater luxury than the comfortable sensation which arises from wearing it, especially after one is a little accustomed to it."

More or less irritation of the skin is usually suffered on first wearing flannel; in some cases it continues and is quite serious. Besides this, flannel shirts of good quality, made of pure wool, without admixture of cotton, shrink very vexatiously when washed in the ordinary manner, i.e., when soaped and scrubbed in hot water. Such shirts should be washed in cold water. When I lived in Scotland I was not annoyed by this continuous shrinking of soft flannel shirts, neither by the shirts I wore in Norway, and which I washed daily in mountain streams at my mid-day bathing time, and dried by hanging them to my knapsack. In this country, where we are dependent on laundresses, and may not hang them for boiling flannel shirts, this shrinkage difficulty is rather serious, as it appears to have no practical limit where the boiling propensity prevails.

Writhing under this annoyance, about a dozen years ago I made an experiment which was fairly successful, but atrociously heterodox, and was persecuted accordingly.

I had half a dozen shirts made of "towelling;" that fabric of which old-fashioned towels are made, which is dotted all over with a warty appearance, due to the extreme looseness of the weaving of a portion. These spongy warts project above the general surface, thereby keeping it from continuous contact with the skin, and by virtue of their loose structure they readily absorb the perspiration, as they do the water when the material is used as a towel. My theory was that the fabric, which experience had proved to possess the absorbent properties demanded by a towel, would be well fitted for absorbing the sensible perspiration from the skin. They did this admirably, better than flannel, though I doubt whether they equalled flannel in diffusing the insensible or gaseous perspiration. A certain amount of moral courage was exercised in taking off my coat in the presence of specta tors, and the fronts of these shirts were not quite correct for the evening dress of the period.

We are making good progress, however, towards dethroning the despot, Fashion. Country gentlemen are nearly liberated; cravats have gone, the stove-pipe hat is going, and I look forward hopefully to the time when bank clerks, the peculiar people of the Stock Exchange, and other commercial and professional respectables will go to the City in their flannel whites as they now go to cricket and lawn-tennis. When they do so, their employers will discover that the conditions which are favourable to muscular energy in athletic sports are also demanded for the maintenance of that maximum of cerebral activity upon which eminent efficiency in business and professional work depends.