Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

an especially porous structure; but not a wanting in nature, we conceive that the ex single observation existed to prove the exist-planation thus offered must be accepted. ence of the assumed peculiar porosity, nor have subsequent observers been enabled to find it.

With respect to the veined structure, again, Prof. Tyndall has observed (as Agassiz appears also to have done) clear instances In the year 1856, therefore, ample scope of that structure disposed in planes intersectexisted for any one who was disposed to de- ing those of the primitive stratification of vote himself to the experimental investiga- the nèvé at a high angle; so that the stratition of the three great problems involved in fication theory is at once put out of court. the glacier question. Those problems were He also proves that the veined structure is not -1. In virtue of what experimentally de- best developed in those parts of the glacier monstrable physical property is that emi- in which the differential motion is greatest, nently brittle body, ice, capable of moving and that it is best developed where the preslike a semi-fluid mass when subjected to a sure to which the ice is subjected is greatest, great vis à tergo? 2. By what experimen- and, as Professor Forbes originally noticed, tally demonstrable physical properties of ice in a direction perpendicular to that pressure. can the veined structure be accounted for? Now, what is the veined structure ? It is in 3. What are the conditions on which the de- reality, an elimination of the air bubbles, to velopment of dirt bands in a glacier depends? which the ice produced by the consolidation To all these questions Professor Tyndall of- of the nève owes its whiteness, from certain fers answers which, at any rate, possess the regions of its substance, whereby these areæ merit of definiteness and of being open to appear blue; and hence the question of the the test of direct experiment and observation. origin of the blue veins resolves itself into A glacier, he tells us, behaves, so far as its an inquiry into the cause or causes of this motion is concerned, as a semi-fluid, be- local expulsion of air bubbles. Professor cause of that wonderful power of regelation, Tyndall points out two causes competent to originally discovered by Mr. Faraday, which produce this effect which must come into all ice possesses, and in virtue of which, play in the glaciers, and which therefore cerwhenever two pieces of ice at a temperature tainly may, and probably do, give rise to it. near the freezing point are brought into The one of these causes is pressure, whose contact, they immediately freeze together. tendency to produce that re-arrangement in Hence, under these conditions, a mass of the particles of all bodies which is called ice mends as fast as it is broken; and, how-cleavage has been so largely demonstrated ever crushed and distorted, regains its solid- by himself. If a glacier were formed of wax ity, so that it may be moulded under a Bra-full of air bubbles, that wax would assuredly mah's press into all sorts of shapes. But a develop a cleavage in the same planes as glacier valley is a gigantic mould, and its icy contents, impelled by the stupendous weight of the nève and ice of the higher regions, are slowly pushed down its gorge. The lateral and the inferior parts of the ice are held back by the friction of the rocky boundaries of the valley, while the central and superior parts are comparatively free to move; and when the strain at any point is greater than the cohesion of the brittle mass, it breaks, the parts take new positions, the more central and superficial portions having advanced relatively to the others, and then regelate together into a mass as compact as before. By the incessant repetition of the process at all points of the glacier the appearance of semi-fluidity is produced. But it is a gross breaking and mending again, not a molecular sliding, as in the case of fluid or viscous motion. Here, then, is a deduction of the mode of motion of a glacier from the properties of ordinary ice-a perfect reconcilement of apparently inconsistent facts-and, unless it can be shown that the physical properties of glacier ice are different from those of ordinary ice, or that some of the conditions of the experiment are

those in which the veined structure occurs, and the air bubbles would tend to be forced out at all the weak points of the mass, so that these weak points would be free of air sooner than the intervening area.

But besides this tendency to assume a cleavage in planes perpendicular to the lines of pressure, which ice shares with all other solids, ice has, as such, a property which is peculiar to itself and one or two other bodies, such as bismuth. Pressure, as Mr. James Thomson discovered, lowers its melting point, and hence if an absolutely homogeneous mass of ice, at precisely 32°, could be subjected to an absolutely equable pressure, it would immediately begin to melt throughout. But no ice is homogeneous, and hence Professor Tyndall has been enabled to show experimentally, that when a prism of ice at 32° is subjected to pressure, its weak points give way first, discs of water, with planes perpendicular to the pressure, being formed at those parts of the prism. On the removal of the pressure, the discs immediately freeze again and become solid ice. The application of this singular fact to the explanation of the veined structure is

obvious. The white vesicular ice of the nève, when it suffers the great pressure to which it is subjected in the glacier, must behave in the same way. Watery lamelle will be formed in it, destroying the individuality and facilitating the escape of the air bubbles, and thus promoting the formation of blue ice within the area they occupied.

Finally, with regard to the "dirt bands," Professor Tyndall endeavors to show that they depend, not on any peculiar porosity of the ice at intervals along a glacier, but, to use his own words, upon

"The transverse breaking of the glacier on the cascade, and the gradual accumulation of the dirt in the hollows between the ridges, the subsequent toning down of the ridges to gentle protuberances which sweep across the glacier, and the collection of dirt upon the slopes and at the bases of these protuberances."

To borrow an illustration from another branch of science, in fact, the existence of the dirt bands depends, not on the histological, but on the anatomical, peculiarities of the glacier on which they are found.

We have thought it better, in the course of this brief notice, to direct the attention of our readers mainly to the bearing of Professor Tyndall's labors upon the theory of glaciers, because if the progress of science confirms his results, they have inau

gurated a new epoch in our knowledge of a very difficult subject. Of the beautiful researches on the absorption of heat by gases, and on the decrystallization of ice by the solar rays-both of which have a most important though less direct tendency to throw light upon the same question-we must abstain from speaking; but it would be unjust to refrain from noting the eminent fairness and candor with which Professor Tyndall treats his predecessors and his contemporaries. The coolness of the subject-matter has not, always extended itself to those who have and the taking observations in a "couloir discussed glacier facts and glacier theories, has occasionally been a less unpleasant process than the occupation of the moral" couloir" brought about by the publication of the results of those observations. Professor Tyndall has had his share of this part of glacier life also; but we rejoice to find that here, as elsewhere, he comes out a true reping his strength in mildness and courtesy of phraseology and in an obvious desire to do both friend and foe. To him who can wield justice, and sometimes more than justice, to

resentative of muscular science-manifest

a pen with effect, the pleasantest of all sins and in proportion to the pleasure should be is the merciless showing-up of an adversary; the meed of praise assigned to the man who bravely abstains from it.

ORIGINAL LETTER OF GEORGE Fox.-The art gon wee haue sent all passeges to londen & following is a literal copy of the last leaf of at louer hath given you a count of the seshones. letter in the handwriting of George Fox, the all people disliketh the iuesteses proceding & founder of the Society of Friends, written whilst saith it is like toboner & som claped ther he was in confinement in Worcester Jail, to his handes & said it was a snar soe be ouer all & wife Margaret Pox. The first leaf has been lost. out of all free Soe noe mor but my loue g ff This manuscript has been for more than a cen- "Woster gale mo: 11 day 21 1673: tury and a half in the possession of the Pemberton family of this name, and now belongs to Frank M. Etting, Esq. of this city :

"Wheat was the last day at seven & sixpence a bueshell & 4 shilens pease & barley & woates 2 shilens a bueshell & the poore people ar redy to mutany in the market her is such a cry for corne to make them bread her§ was a great ster with the mare & the people son sakes g ff

was cut

"but the lordes pouer is over all

[ocr errors]

'&rie at seven & this day ther was a great up rore lykes that the mare & constables was faine to sese the people for the ¶ cut the bages."

"2 der to whom is my loue & the rest of frends &thy Childern Sarye & Suasone & der rachell i deser ther groth in the trouth & in the wisdom of god that by it you may all be ordered to his glory & not to touch nothing but the life in any & to be sepretated from the evell & to stand as noserey* consecrated to god that in the life all may be a good saver to god i recud thy leter by 1: f & another from r: t from londen & shee strangeth that thee hath not writen to her for shee & the rest of london frends generall thinkes that thou ar with mée in preson & did stay & not-Notes and Queries. gon in to the north ther for thou should wright * Nursery. to her & them for the oft rembing ther loue of § Here. those tha was hert & doe not think that thou |

Endorsed

"ffor M: ff these att Swarthmoore." Philadelphia.

UNEDA.

[blocks in formation]

SYRIA.

From The Press.

of Zenobia, where the wild Arabs hailed her with pride queen of Palmyra,-it was there she bearded the unscrupulous power of the Emir Besheer, chief of the mountains. And there, too, reading the stars and the lines of his hand, she told the poet Lamartine that one day he would be monarch of France. Strange prediction, as strangely verified when the eloquent visionary for a brief season ruled the revolutionary multitude of Paris in 1848.

LET us view Syria-that old historic land, now at its lowest ebb of desolation, but certain in the march of time to regain in a new form its ancient importance. It is easily described. One long range of limestone mountains forms the backbone of the country, reaching its highest in the country of the Druses and Maronites above Tripoli and Beyroot, and thereafter spreading and sinking into lesser ridges, southwards through Sailing onwards, before us shoots out into Palestine and around the Dead Sea to the the sea the triangular headland of Beyroot, stony wastes of the Arabian desert. With sloping gently down to the shore, the old the blue Levant on one side and the hot plains town looking dingy beside the new suburbs, of the Syrian desert (within which stands the and clumps of mulberry-trees rising with still lovely Palmyra) on the other, it presents greenest foliage among the houses. "Beauthe same aspect to both-a cloud-capped tiful Bey root!" wrote poor Warburton, and ridge running north and south as far as the every one will repeat those syllables of adsight extends, and distributing itself in off-miration. It is the busiest and most thrivshoot ridges in various directions,-only, on ing place in Syria-half Oriental and half the side of the Desert the cliffs are bare and European. Steamers are constantly arrivwhite, whereas the showers and saline dews ing and departing-the manufactures of from the sea cover the western slopes with amplest verdure.

Europe and America are exhibited in its shops, and the stranger will be luckless indeed if he do not find some native who understands his language. Now, too, Lebanon-the goodly mountain-appears in its glory; villages studding its picturesque slopes like bird's-nests, and its sides seamed with dells fresh with the gray-green foliage of the olive groves. Mountain of strong, fierce, industrious men, of delicious spark

If, sailing from Egypt, we coast the Syrian land from the south, the first town we pass is Jaffa-insignificant in all respects save that it is the port of Jerusalem, which lies forty miles inland across the hot plain where once grew the roses of Sharon, and over the barref robber-frequented hills at whose foot stands the village of Ranleh. Next we round the hill-promontory of Barmel, wooded and ling waters, of scant though fruitful soil, full of caverns, in one of which took place where freedom has maintained itself almost the wierd interview between the God-for- unimpaired amidst all the fearful waves of saken king of Israel and her of Endor-and conquest that have overswept the land. lo! we enter the bay of Acre, and behold the Seven hours' journey up the heights is Dartown that has stood so many famous sieges el-Kamar, with its palace or citadel of Betwhere English prowess has won, from Cœur-eddin, in the country of the Druses, where de-Lion down to Sydney Smith and Commo- the old Emir Besheer ruled the mountains, dore Napier; and behind it, extending inland until he took himself off to Malta after to the hills above Nazareth, lies the great having sided with Ibrahim Pasha in 1840. plain of Esdraëlom, where Hebrew, Philis- Weighing anchor again, a few miles north tine, and Egyptian-Crusader and Saracen of Beyroot we pass the mouth of the Nahr-Turk and Frenchman have contended in el-Kelb (Dog-River) the nominal boundary turn for the mastery of Palestine. Still stream between the Druse and Maronite coasting northwards we pass the rock of Tyre, countries, and where, engraven on the rocks, and behold fishermen drying their nets where still appear the cuneiform letters which reonce stood the powerful city that set at defi- cord the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar in ance the hosts of Nebuchadnezzar, and with that region. Passing also Djebail, more difficulty was captured by Alexander the famous in Syria for its tobacco than Latakia Great. Then the town of Saida (Sidon) itself, we arrive off the last-named town, comes in view, with its miles of smiling gar- built on a spur of the Ansayrii mountains, dens and shady lanes, now loathsome with which here form a cape, and presenting a the debris of the recent massacre. Up the picturesque luxuriant aspect from the sea. heights there-three miles up-is the hill of The river Adonis too here falls into the sea Djoun, where the brave, haughty, eccentric-reminding us of the old worship of the niece of Pitt built her a house, and spent in Cyprian Goddess, which in another form proud solitude the latter half of her life. It still prevails among the strange Ansayrian was from thence she set out on that vent- scct in the mountains. Two days' journey urous expedition to the desert-encircled city by land north from Beyroot, but quickly

reached by the steamer, is Tripoli, the sec- southwards towards the Holy City. Fortyond in importance of the maritime towns of two miles eastwards, we come to Aleppo, Syria, the merchants' offices forming a sub-in population the second city of Syria, and urb on the shore, and the main part of the where in 1850 the fanatical Mussulmans town being about two miles inland, which perpetrated a horrible massacre of the Chrisdistance you can be conveyed on a donkey tians. Like Antioch it is on the direct line for 2d.! The town is divided by the stream from Suediah to the Euphrates, and will one of the Kadesha, from whence water is drawn day be wakened from its slumbers by the in rivulets to the luxuriant shady far-spread-whistle of the steam engine and shaken out ing gardens, blooming with the rose and of its fanaticism by the rushing throng of jasmine, and laden with the orange, pome- railway passengers. granate, peach and apricot, whither the inhabitants repair for evening pastime, and where the damsels of Tripoli, unrivalled in Syria for grace and beauty, may be seen seated in picnic parties by the rippling streamlets beneath the odorous shade.

Next turning due southwards-along the road which may be said to form the line be tween Syria and the desert, which extends to the Euphrates-we enter a district covered with mounds and other vestiges of ancient habitations and where the untenanted soil of As we close this voyage along the Syrian pure earth, unmixed with stones, exhibits its coast, the cloud-capped summit of Mount marvellous fertility wherever man gives it Cassius rising 5,300 feet above the sea, and the opportunity to be luxuriant. Here we by and by Mount Rhossius also, proclaim pass Famia, where the veteran soldiers of our approach to the spacious sheltered sandy- Alexander reposed after their victories, and bottomed bay of Antioch, with the little where the Selucida had the nursery of their town of Suediah-the poor remains of the cavalry,-thirty thousand mares, three hunancient Seleucia-standing in a narrow dred stallions, and five hundred clephants plain near the mouth of the river Orontes. finding abundant pasturage where all is now Further northward still, in the angle where marsh, sustaining only a few buffaloes and Lesser Asia joins to Syria, is the bay of sheep. Still proceeding southward, we come Scandroon or Alexandretta, furnishing the again to the Orontes, at the town of Hamah, best shelter and anchorage on the Syrian with its four thousand inhabitants, situated coast, but with the most pestilential of in a narrow valley on the banks of the river. marshes extending along its shore. From Continuing our way, thirty miles up the river, this place a highway leads inland, passing we reach Homs, the Emessa of the Greeks, through the mountain-pass of Beilan-fa- once a strong and populous city, now a ruinmous of old as the Syrian Gates-through ous place, containing about two thousand inwhich almost every conqueror of Western habitants. All the way from Aleppo we Asia has passed with his host, from Alexan- have been journeying over a dead plain,-in der the Great to Ibrahim Pasha. But we the latter half of the road, with the snowy shall go no further north than Suediah, as tops of Lebanon visible to the west,—and famed for its salubrity as Scandron is the the population are taller and more robust reverse, where the route inland is less diffi- than the rest of the Syrians. Leaving Hons cult, and which will ere long be the mari- and the blue waters of the Lake of Kades, time terminus of the Euphrates Railway. which mirror the adjoining summits of the Proceeding inland up the valley of the river Anti-Lebanon, we journey southwards other Orontes, clad with noble oaks and forest- seventy or eighty miles and descend into the trees, fragrant with the myrtle and box, and lovely oasis of Damascus, the capital of where rocks and crags topple in wild disor- Syria,-lovely with the almond and rose, der over the road and river-bed, we emerge and set like a pearl amidst the emerald into the hill-inclosed plain of Antioch, and groves, sparkling streams, and the amethysbehold the city once the royal seat of the tine blue of its cool lake. A straight line Selucida, containing a quarter of a million drawn westward from this place over the souls, but now a poor dilapidated place, mountains would reach the coast a little south beautiful only from the surrounding scenery of Beyroot. South of Damascus spreads the and the gardens of mulberry and fig trees, vast desert plains of the Hauran, tenanted with tall slender poplars casting their shad- by lawless tribes: so that we turn westwards ows on the murmuring waters of the Orontes. It was by this route that Alexander followed the host of Darius routed at Issus, -it was here that Zenobia made her gallant struggle against the legions of Aurelian,and hither too came Godfrey and Tancred to capture Antioch ere they could venture

for some fifty miles, and at the foot of the lofty Mount Hermon come upon the sources of the Jordan, with the towns of Hasbeiya and Rasheiya, which have suffered so dreadfully in the recent massacres. Journeying down the Jordan we enter Galilee, pass Nablous, with its lawless, fanatical population,

and thence onwards by Jerusalem and the Dead Sea to the frontiers of the Arabian desert.

In thus coasting along the western, and journeying down the eastern side of Syria, we come upon almost every town and village of note in that oft-desolated country. The plain of the Bekaa-the "hollow Syria" of the Greeks-lying between the parallel ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon; watered by the Leontes, at whose source stand

the noble ruins of Baalbek; and with the thriving Maronite town of Zahlé (now also in ruins) looking down upon it from the eastern slope of Lebanon, completes the picture of that once goodly Syrian land, where to the desolation of centuries are now being added fresh massacres and devastation. It is a bloody baptism, but a new Syria will date its infancy from this crowning iniquity of barbaric rule.

THE objections offered to the hot-air bath as taken in health are, that it is unnatural, that it weakens, and that it causes headache. But to go into a hot-water bath seems equally unnatural. To kill oxen and eat their flesh seems unnatural on the part of a rational, a spiritual, an immortal being. Is it not, on the other hand, unnatural to abstain from cleansing the skin by the best means we possess? We overclothe the body and tie it up in close-fitting garments, carefully shutting out the air; the majority shun soap and water; and fashion envelops the body of the female in a fantastic machine called dress. Could any thing be more unnatural than that the chief energies of the age should be directed towards money-making, which, when got, increases the circumference of man's anxieties, or procures luxuries, or induces indolence, or begets selfishness, or enslaves the world to fashion, and all at the expense of health, and comfort, and happiness? When men and women make it a business to find out and follow nature, they will then be more competent to pronounce on the naturalness or otherwise of the hot-air bath. The entire arrangements of civilized life are more or less unnatural, and may call for somewhat unnatural remedies as a compromise. "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread' is the present law of nature. When this law is not or cannot be followed, sweating produced by the bath may sometimes not be a bad substitute. The bath may disagree with some, and produce weakness and headache; but thousands of others, after fifty years' experience, as in Constantinople, have quite as much faith in its power to refresh and invigorate the body, as the uncleansed inhabitants of this country have in beer and cheese, or in port wine and mutton chops. The bath attendants spend ten or twelve hours daily in the bath, and they are vigorous and healthy men. The bath does occasionally produce languor and headache with beginners viz., before the skin has learned to respond freely to the action of the sweating process.

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE.

543

The baths, also, as already said, will produce languor and headache if not sufficiently ventilated. It is, however, as an agent in the cure of disease that I draw attention to the bath in the pages of this volume. I believe that, for chronic and acute rheumatism and gout, we possess no remedy equal to it; and if so, this has a direct bearing on the tendency to heart disease. Large quantities of uric acid are sometimes found, on evaporating to dryness the copious perspiration poured out of rheumatic patients, while in the bath. For chronic skin diseases, I further believe we have no remedy equal to the hot-air or steam bath. The bath has the power of drawing the blood most actively to the surface, and therefore must be most useful in all cases of internal congestion.-From Diseases of the Heart and Lungs, by George Wyld, M.D.

PROF. CHRISTISON has just published some remarkable experiments, made so long ago as 1831, for the capture of whales by poison. The agency employed was hydrocyanic or prussic acid, inserted in glass tubes, and in weight about two ounces. After various trials to overcome the difficulty of discharging the poison from the tubes, a mode was arranged of attaching one end of a strong copper wire to each side of the harpoon near the blade, the other end of which passed obliquely over the tube, then through an oblique hole in the shaft, and finally to a bight in the rope, where it was firmly secured. When the harpoon struck the whale the tubes were crushed. On one occasion a fine whale was met with; the harpoon was skilfully and deeply buried in its body; the whale dived, but soon rose to the surface quite dead. The crew were so appalled by the effect of the poisoned harpoon, that they declined to use it again; but Professor Christison is confident, from subsequent experiments, that success will be attained in this mode of capture.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »