Science and Art Examinations

THE subject of Science and Art Examinations by the Department of Science and Art is one which really requires looking up, and I wish to make one or two suggestions and remarks as to the mode of examination.

In the first place, take the examination itself. The candidates make their appearance at the appointed time and place. Their forms are given them, and their places assigned to them. Now the candidate is told to write on both sides of the form, thus leaving no back pages on which to do his rough calculation. Blottingpaper in 1870 was not allowed; but in 1871 the Department fixed a sheet to the bottom of each form in such a position that it was very difficult to make use of it; much time-time that was of the utmost consequence to the candidate-being lost in doing This, of course, stopped him from doing so much work, and so lessened his chance of success. This may be all very well for the Department so far as it affects grants on results; but what about the unfortunate student who is made the victim of this very arbitrary custom?

Then again for the questions set. In all the papers the questions set were very difficult. "The Department" having, without any notice, raised the standard of examination, the subjects of questions set in the first stage of mathematics were placed in the syllabus a stage higher, viz, the second stage Then in chemistry (inorganic) the standard was considerably raised. The questions in this subject are very unfair in the opinion of many persons who have seen them. Take the following:

"HONOURS 1871

"Describe the process of manufacturing sulphuric acid, as carried on in an alkali works, illustrating the various chemical changes by equations, and, as far as possible, the constitution of the compounds formed by graphic formula.

Now about the sulphuric acid part, or about the equations, I have nothing to say; but when the question requires a knowledge of graphic formulæ I protest against it. Graphic formula are not in sufficient use to warrant their introduction into an examiration-thus enforcing their general adoption whether right or wrong; and I do not think the examiner should be allowed to enforce his peculiar views-the views taken by himself and a few other chemists-into the great system of Science examination in the country, thus compelling it to be learnt by any person wishing to compete.

Now for the results. The results of the examinations for 1871 are very unsatisfactory, and a very high ratio is shown of failures, and second classes to first classes obtained. This, of course, must lessen the amount of money to be paid on results by the Department, and a report was circulating a short time ago, to the effect that "The examiners, after having made their reports, had the papers returned to them, with an instruction to reduce the number of successful candidates, as an intimation had been given by a right hon. gentleman that the amount of grant due upon those papers must be reduced 20,000!. The examiners were thus obliged to eliminate half the names from their lists." The question was asked by Mr. Dixon, M. P., in the House of Commons, whether this was or was not true, and Mr. Forster, M.P., denied it. But, previous to that, a provincial local secretary, hearing the rumour, wrote to ask the Department if it were true, and received a reply saying it was true, and that instead of the amount being 20,000/. it was 40,000/. (The Department's letter can be produced.) Now I would suggest that the Department reform these matters referring to the forms, blotting-paper, questions, and results, and that if they do not do so that the House of Commons take the matter up and do justice

to Science teachers and students.

HENRY UHLGREN

New Zealand Forest Trees

IN the last number of NATURE is a paragraph relating to some New Zealand woods, which the writer observes are "deserving of

a better fate than to be cut down wholesale and used as firewood." Five timber trees are mentioned, of which the native names only are given.

Knowing that it is the province of NATURE to give as acurate information as possible on all points with which it deals, I send you the botanical names of four of these New Zealand trees. The Rimu or red pine is probably Dacrydium cupressinum Soland, a tree 83 or more feet high, the fleshy cup of the fruit of which is eatable. D. laxifolium Hk. fil., a small creeping bush, is also known occasionally as Rimu. The Mataii or black pine is Fodocarpus spicata Br., likewise a large tree, and having an eatable fruit. The Totara is Podocarpus totara A. Cunn., a tree about 60 feet high, producing a durable and close-grained wood much valued in the islands, and, like the others, having an eatable drupe. These trees are all more or less abundant in the Northern and Middle islands, and all belong to the natural order Coniferæ, though we are told in the paragraph referred to that "none of them are Coniferæ."

The Rata, "that wonderful vegetable production forming itself out of numberless vines," &c., is referable to some species of Metrosideros. M. robusta A. Cunn, and M. florida Sm., are both known as Rata, but the hard and very dense wood usually known under that name is mostly derived from M. robusta. This, however, is not a climbing plant, but an erect tree 50 or 60 feet high; therefore the plant referred to in the paragraph before us is probably M. florida. The Makia I do not know, but its extreme hardness would seem to indicate it as belonging to the same order as the last, namely the Myrtaceae. JOHN R. JACKSON

Kew, Nov. 7

The Glacial Drift at Finchley

A FURTHER examination of the railway cutting at the Finchley and Hendon Station shows that the glacial beds now revealed there have a greater thickness and range than I at first imagined. On Saturday last I visited the place in company with Dr. Hicks, of Hendon, a gentleman well-known for his researches in the Cambrian formation. Above the blue clay, and right up within With

a few inches of the vegetable soil, we found drift fossils. an interruption here and there from the underlying London clay, these chalky glacial beds, consisting of blue (Oxford?) clay, blueish clay with flints, marl, sand, and gravel (in no regular descending order), have an average thickness of 30 feet. They are open for about 500 yards, and they might perhaps be traced farther north-west, towards the Dollis Brook Viaduct. Dr. Hicks and I afterwards visited Mr. Plowman's Manor brickfields, a little south-east of the railway station; here too we found fossils in the brick-earth.

From what has transpired during the last few weeks, it would seem that the Muswell Hill deposit need no longer figure in geological literature as an outlier, at a long distance from the general deposit; and Londoners may in future find glacial drift without much difficulty about Highgate, Finchley, Whetstone, and Barnet. I am indebted to Professor Morris for the information that the Great Northern Cemetery at Barnet lies almost wholly in the glacial clay. The forthcoming Survey memoir upon the drift in this district is looked for by London geologists with much interest, HENRY WALKER

100, Fleet Street, E.C., Nov. 7

ON THE ORIGIN OF INSECTS*

ΤΗ HE metamorphoses of this group have always seemed to me one of the greatest difficulties of the Darwinian theory. In most cases the development of the individual reproduces to a certain extent that of the race, but the motionless, imbecile, pupa cannot represent a Blattidae probably most closely represent the original mature form. Fritz Müller considers that the wingless insect stock; Haeckel is inclined rather to the PseudoNeuroptera. I feel great difficulty in conceiving by what natural process an insect with a suctorial mouth like that

*Abst act of a paper read before the Linnean Society, Nov 2, 1871, by Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., F.R.S.

of a gnat or butterfly could be developed from a powerfully mandibulate type like the Orthoptera, or even from the Neuroptera. M. Brauer has recently suggested that the interesting genus Campodea is, of all known existing forms, that which probably most nearly resembles the parent insect stock. He considers that the grub form of Jarva is a retrograde type, in which opinion I am unable to concur, though disposed to agree with M. Brauer on the first point. M. Brauer in coming to this conclusion relies partly on geological considerations; partly on the fact that larvæ, more or less resembling Campodea, are found among widely different groups of insects. I think there are other considerations which offer considerable support to this view. No one, so far as I know, has yet attempted to explain, in accordance with Mr. Darwin's views, such a life history as that, for instance, of a butterfly, in which the mouth is first mandibulate and then suctorial. A clue to the difficulty might, I think, be found in the distinction between developmental and adaptive changes, to which I called the attention of the Society in a previous memoir. The larvæ of insects are by no means mere stages in the development of the perfect animal. On the contrary, they are subject to the influence of Natural Selection, and undergo changes which have reference entirely to their own requirements and condition. It is evident then that, while the embryonic development of an animal in the egg gives us an epitome of its specific history, this is by no means the case with species in which the immature forms have a separate and independent existence. Hence, if an animal when young pursues one mode of life, and lives on one kind of food, and subsequently, either from its own growth in size and strength, or from any change of season, alters its habits or food, however slightly, immediately it becomes subject to the action of distinct forces; Natural Selection affects it in two different, and it may be very distinct, manners, gradually leading to differences which may become so great as to involve an intermediate period of change and quiescence.

There are, however, peculiar difficulties in those cases in which, as among the Lepidoptera, the same species is mandibulate as a larva and suctorial as an imago. From this point of view, however, Campodea and the Collembola (Podura, &c.) are peculiarly interesting. There are among insects three principal types of mouth, firstly, the mandibulate, secondly, the suctorial, and thirdly, that of Campodea, and the Collembola generally, in which the mandibles and maxillæ are attached internally, and though far from strong, have some freedom of motion, and can be used for biting and chewing soft substances. This type is intermediate between the other two. Assuming that certain representatives of such a type found themselves in circumstances which made a suctorial mouth advantageous, those individuals would be favoured by Natural Selection in which the mandibles and maxillæ were best calculated to pierce or prick, and their power of lateral motion would tend to fall into abeyance, while, on the other hand, if powerful masticatory jaws were an advantage, the opposite process would take place.

There is yet a third possibility-namely, that during the first portion of life the power of mastication should be an advantage, and during the second that of suction, or vice versa. A certain kind of food might abound at one season and fail at another; might be suitable for the animal at one age and not at another: now in such cases we should have two forces acting successively on each individual, and tending to modify the organisation of the mouth in different directions. It will not be denied that the ten thousand variations in the mouth parts of insects have special reference to the mode of life, and are of some advantage to the species in which they occur. Hence no believer in Natural Selection can doubt the possibility of the three cases above suggested, and the last of which seems to explain the possible origin of species which are

mandibulate in one period of life and not in another. The change from the one condition to the other would no doubt take place contemporaneously with a change of skin At such times we know that, even when there is no change of form, the temporary softness of the organs often precludes the insect from feeding for a time, as, for instance, is the case in the silkworm. When, however, any considerable change was involved, this period of fasting would be prolonged, and would lead to the existence of a third condition, that of pupa, intermediate between the other two. Since other changes are more conspicuous than those relating to the mouth, we are apt to associate the pupa state with the acquisition of wings, but the case of the Orthoptera (grasshoppers, &c.) is sufficient proof that the development of wings is perfectly compatible with continuous activity. So that in reality the necessity for rest is much more intimately connected with the change in the constitution of the mouth, although in many cases no doubt the result is accompanied by changes in the legs, and in the internal organisation. It is, however, obvious that a mouth like that of a beetle could not be modified into a suctorial organ like that of a bug or a gnat, because the intermediate stages would necessarily be injurious. Neither, on the other hand, for the same reason could the mouth of the Hemiptera be modified into a mandibulate_type like that of the Coleoptera But in Campodea and the Collembola we have a type of animal closely resembling certain larvæ which occur both in the mandibulate and suctorial series of insects, and which possesses a mouth neither distinctly mandibulate nor distinctly suctorial, but constituted on a peculiar type capable of modification in either direction by gradual changes without loss of utility. If these views are correct, the genus Campodea must be regarded as a form of remarkable interest, since it is the living representative of a primæval type from which not only the Collembola and Thysanura but the other great orders of insects have all derived their origin.

DIED THE 20TH OF OCTOBER, 1871

THE HERE is no fear that the worth of the late Charles Babbage will be over-estimated by this or any generation. To the majority of people he was little known except as an irritable and eccentric person, possessed by a strange idea of a calculating machine, which he failed to carry to completion. Only those who have carefully studied a number of his writings can adequately conceive the nobility of his nature and the depth of his genius. To deny that there were deficiencies in his character, which much diminished the value of his labours, would be useless, for they were readily apparent in every part of his life. The powers of mind possessed by Mr. Babbage, if used with judgment and persistence upon a limited range of subjects, must have placed him among the few greatest men who can create new methods or reform whole branches of knowledge. Unfortunately the works of Babbage are strangely fragmentary. It has been stated in the daily press that he wrote eighty volumes; but most of the eighty pub'ications are short papers, often only a few pages in length, published in the transactions of learned societies. Those to which we can apply the name of books, such as "The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise," "The Reflections on the Decline of Science," or "The Account of the Exposition of 1851," are generally incomplete sketches, on which but little care could have been expended. We have, in fact, mere samples of what he could do. He was essentially one who began and did not complete. He sowed ideas, the fruit of which has been reaped by men less able but of more thrifty mental habits.

It was not time that was wanting to him. Born as iong ago as the 26th of December, 1792, he has enjoyed a

working life of nearly eighty years, and, though within the last few years his memory for immediate events and persons was rapidly decaying, the other intellectual powers seemed as strong as ever. The series of publications which constitute the real record of his life commenced in 1813 with the preface to the Transactions of the Analytical Society, a small club established by Babbage, Herschel, Peacock, and several other students at Cambridge, to promote, as it was humorously expressed, the principles of pure D-ism, that is, of the Leibnitzian notation and the methods of French mathematicians. Until 1822 Mr. Babbage's writings consisted exclusively of memoirs upon mathematical subjects, which, however little read in the present day, are yet of the highest interest, not only because they served to awaken English mathematicians to a sense of their backward position, but because they display the deepest insight into the principles of symbolic methods. His memoir in the "Cambridge Philosophical Transactions" for 1826, "On the Influence of Signs in Mathematical Reasoning' may be mentioned as an admirable example of his mathematical writings. In this paper, as in many other places, Mr. Babbage has expressed his opinion concerning the wonderful powers of a suitable notation in assisting the human mind.

As early as 1812 or 1813 he entertained the notion of calculating mathematical tables by mechanical means, and in 1819 or 1820 began to reduce his ideas to practice. Between 1820 and 1822 he completed a small model, and in 1823 commenced a more perfect engine with the assistance of public money. It would be needless as well as impossible to pursue in detail the history of this undertaking, fully stated as it is in several of Mr. Babbage's volumes. Suffice it to say that, commencing with 1,500l., the cost of the Difference Engine grew and grew until 17,000/. of public money had been expended. Mr. Babbage then most unfortunately put forward a new scheme for an Analytical Engine, which should indefinitely surpass in power the previously-designed engine. To trace out the intricacies of negotiation and misunderstanding which followed would be superfluous and painful. The result was that the Government withdrew all further assistance, the practical engineer threw up his work and took away his tools, and Mr. Babbage, relinquishing all notions of completing the Difference machine, bestowed all his energies upon the designs of the wonderful Analytical Engine. This great object of his aspirations was to be little less than the mind of a mathematician embodied in metallic wheels and levers. It was to be capable of any analytical operation, for instance solving equations and tabulating the most complicated formula. Nothing but a careful study of the published accounts can give an adequate notion of the vast mechanical ingenuity lavished by Mr. Babbage upon this fascinating design. Although we are often without detailed explanations of the means, there can be little doubt that everything which Mr. Babbage asserted to be possible would have been theoretically possible. The engine was to possess a kind of power of prevision, and was to be so constructed that intentional disturbance of all the loose parts would give no error in the final result.

Although for many years Mr. Babbage entertained the intention of constructing this machine, and made many preparations, we can hardly suppose it capable of practical realisation. Before 1851 he appears to have despaired of its completion, but his workshops were never wholly closed. It was his pleasure to lead any friend or visitor though these rooms and explain their contents. No more strange or melancholy sight could well be seen. Around these rooms in Dorset Street were the ruins of a life time of the most severe and ingenious mental labours perhaps ever exerted by man. The drawings of the machine were alone a wonderful result of skill and industry; cabinets full of tools, pieces of mechanism, and various

contrivances for facilitating exact workmanship, were on every side, now lying useless.

Mr. Babbage's inquiries were not at all restricted to mathematical and mechanical subjects. His work on the "Economy of Manufactures and Machinery," first published in 1832, is in reality a fragment of a treatise on Political Economy. Its popularity at the time was great, and, besides reprints in America, translations were published in four Continental languages. The book teems with original and true suggestions, among which we find the system of Industrial Partnerships now coming into practice. It is, in fact, impossible to overpraise the work, which, so far as it goes, is incomparably excellent. Having assisted in founding the Statistical Society of London in 1834, Mr. Babbage contributed to their Trans actions a single paper, but as usual it was a model research, containing a complete analysis of the operations of the Clearing House during 1839. It was probably the earliest paper in which complicated statistical fluctuations were carefully analysed, and it is only within the last few years that bankers have been persuaded by Sir John Lubbock to recognise the value of such statistics, and no longer to destroy them in secret. In this, as in other cases, many years passed before people generally had any notion of the value of Mr. Babbage's inquiries; and there can be little doubt that, had he devoted his lofty powers to economic studies, the science of Political Economy would have stood by this time in something very different from its present pseudo-scientific form.

Perhaps the most admirable of all his writings was the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, an unexpected addition to that well-known series, in which Mr. Babbage showed the bearing of mathematical studies upon theology. This is one of the few scientific works in which the consistency of natural laws with breaches of continuity is clearly put forth. That Power which can assign laws can set them aside by higher laws. Apart from all particular theologic il inferences, there can be no question of the truth of the views stated by Babbage; but the work is hardly more remarkable for the profundity of its philosophy than for the elevated and eloquent style in which it was written, although as usual an unfinished fragment.

Of all Mr. Babbage's detached papers and volumes, it may be asserted that they will be found, when carefully studied, to be models of perfect logical thought and accurate expression. There is, probably, not a sentence ever penned by him in which lurked the least obscurity, confusion, or contradiction of thought. His language was clear, and lucid beyond comparison, and yet it was ever elegant, and rose at times into the most unaffected and true eloquence. We may entertain some fear that the style of scientific writing in the present day is becoming bald, careless, and even defective in philosophic accuracy. If so, the study of Mr. Babbage's writings would be the best antidote.

Let it be granted that in his life there was much to cause disappointment, and that the results of his labours, however great, are below his powers. Can we withhold our tribute of admiration to one who throughout his long life inflexibly devoted his exertions to the most lofty subjects? Some will cultivate science as an amusement, others as a source of pecuniary profit, or the means of gaining popularity. Mr. Babbage was one of those whose genius urged them against everything conducive to their immediate interests. He nobly upheld the character of a discoverer and inventor, despising any less reward than to carry out the highest conception which his mind brought forth. His very failures arose from no want of industry or ability, but from excess of resolution that his aims should be at the very highest. In these money-making days can we forget that he expended almost a fortune on his task? If, as people think, wealth and luxury are corrupting society, should they omit to honour one of whom it may be truly said, in the words of Merlin, that the single wish of his heart was "to give them greater minds"?

A NEW FORM OF SENSITIVE FLAME

R. PHILIP BARRY, of Cork, has sent the following flame to Prof. Tyndall:-"It is in my experience the most sensitive of all sensitive flames, though from its smaller size is not so striking as your vowel flame. It possesses the advantage that the ordinary pressure in the gas mains is quite sufficient to develop it. The method of producing it consists in igniting the gas (ordinary coal gas) not at the burner but some inches above it, by interposing between the burner and the flame a piece of wire

gauze.

"With a pressure of ths at the burner, I give a sketch of the arrangement I adopted, the space between burner and gauze being two inches. The gauze was about seven

inches square, resting on the ring of the retort-standordinary window-blind wire-gauze 32 meshes to the lineal inch. The burner was Sugg's steatite pin-hole burner, the same as used for vowel flame.

"The flame is a slender cone about four inches high, the upper portion giving a bright yellow light, the base being a non-luminous blue flame. At the least noise this flame roars, sinking down to the surface of the gauze, becoming at the same time almost invisible. It is very active in its responses, and being rather a noisy flame, its sympathy is apparent to the ear as well as the eye.

"To the vowel sounds it does not appear to answer so discriminately as the vowel flame. It is extremely sensitive to A, very slightly to E, more so to I, entirely insensitive to O, but slightly sensitive to U.

"It dances in the most perfect manner to a small musical snuff box, and is highly sensitive to most of the sonorous vibrations which affect the vowel flame, though it possesses some points of difference."

NOTES

THE following telegram has been received from the English Government Eclipse Expedition :-"On board the Mirzapore, Malta, Saturday, November 4. We have arrived here in safety. All the members of the Eclipse Expedition are quite well, no thanks, however, to the weather, which during the voyage has been very bad. It was so bad that there was no possibility of Last night Mr. Lockyer, at practising with the instruments.

the request of all on board the Mirzapore, gave a scientific lecture with experiments. You may form some idea of the novel character with which the lecture was invested when I state that it was blowing half a gale at the time."

SIR RODERICK MURCHISON has appointed Professor Archibald Geikie, of Edinburgh, his literary executor, and has left him a legacy of 1,000l. The Professor will write Sir Roderick's life, for which the deceased baronet had collected ample materials. Sir Roderick has also bequeathed to each of the professors at Jermyn Street a little remembrance of 100/. To the institution itself he has left the diamond snuff-box and the magnificent Siberian avanturine vase, mounted on a porphyry pedestal, presented to him by the late Emperor of Russia. He has not been unmindful of the scientific societies with which he has been so long connected. To the Geological and Geographical Societies he has bequeathed legacies of 1,000l. each, for the purpose of furthering the cause of science by rewarding men of science by prizes or otherwise as may be deemed proper. To old associates with him in his work he has likewise left legacies as expressions of his regard. Besides that to Mr. Geikie, sums of 350l. are appropriated for Prof. John Morris, Prof. T. Rupert Jones, Mr. Trenham Reeks, and Mr. Bates, and a sum of 100l. to Mr. C. W. Peach. We believe also that in the event of the failure of some of the heirs designated in the will, considerable sums are to go to various charitable and scientific institutions.

In addition to the appointments to the governing bodies of the public schools, made by the Senate of the University of London, which we announced last week, the Council of the Royal Society has made the following :-Prof. P. M. Duncan, for Charterhouse; Prof. Tyndall, for Harrow; Prof. Henry J. Smith, for Rugby; Sir James Paget, Bart., for Shrewsbury ; and the Rev. Prof. Price, for Winchester School.

PROF. P. M. DUNCAN, F.R.S., of King's College, has been appointed Lecturer on Geology to the India Civil Engineering College, Cooper's Hill.

WE learn from the Pall Mall Gazette that a mixed Committee has been appointed by the authorities of the War-Office, to conduct an inquiry into the safety of gun-cotton, and to make the necessary experiments. The committee will also be required to collect evidence with regard to its value as an explosive agent ; and generally to pronounce as to the suitability and safety of the material for use in torpedoes, breaching stockades, mining, &c. The Committee consists of Colonel Younghusband, R. A., president; Colonel Milward, R.A., Colonel Gallwey, R.E., Lieutenant-Colonel Nugent, R. E., Captain Field, R. N., Dr. Odling, F.R.S., Mr. H. Bauerman, and Mr. G. Bidder, C. E. The question of the safety of the new explosive "Lithofracteur," which a German firm is anxious to be permitted to make in this country, has also been referred to the same Committee.

MR. G. M. SEABROKE, the Temple Observer at Rugby, states, in a letter to the Times, for the information of those who possess telescopes of moderate aperture, that Encke's comet is now within their reach. It has been examined at the Rugby Observatory with an 8 in. aperture, and was very plainly seen. It has somewhat the shape of a fan, and there is a marked con. densation on the eastern side, being the leading portion of the

comet. It would probably now be seen with a much smaller aperture than that mentioned above, and, as it is approaching us, small telescopes will probably soon show it.

THE German Astronomical Society has recently held its triennial meeting at Stutgart, under the presidency of Prof. Otto Struve. The gathering was eminently a social one; after papers read in the morning, they adjourned for excursions in the afternoon, one day visiting the birth-place of Kepler, a small town about an hour by rail from Stutgart. The inhabitants, who have recently erected a bronze statue to their great fellow townsman, decorated it with flowers for the occasion.

THE Scientific Societies have now mostly commenced their winter session. The greater number held their first meeting either last or during the present week. The first meeting of the Royal Society for the season is on November 16.

THE Annual General Meeting of the five Academies which constitute the Institute of France was held on the 25th of October, the anniversary of the day on which the Institute was established by the famous Directory suppressed by the first Napoleon. The third Napoleon, by an Imperial decree, changed the day of the anniversary meeting from that instituted by the Republic to his fete day, the 15th of August. Last year the meeting was not held, and on the present occasion the original date has been resumed. The presidency of the Institute is filled each year by the president of one of the five academies in rotation, the Académie des Sciences, Académie Française, Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Académie des Beaux Arts, and Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. This year it is occupied by M. Jules Simon, president of the Académie Française, to which belong M. Thiers himself and four of his colleagues in the Government, including M. Simon. The annual address for the Académie des Sciences was delivered by General Morin, and dealt chiefly with military science, especially with the inventions of the great artillery officer General Piobert.

MR. J. J. MURPHY delivered the opening address to the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society for the current session. It was occupied chiefly with a résumé of the most important fresh applications of applied science during the year.

MR. RUTHERFORD, of New York, the most eminent American amateur astronomer, and especially known for his magnificent photographs of celestial bodies, has lately presented to Mr. Brothers, the English astronomical photographer, three superb negatives of the moon-one representing her in the first quarter, one when full, and one in the third quarter; and it is proposed to publish these in a volume containing about one hundred pages of descriptive letterpress. The work will also contain a map of the moon, as we see her, and a chart, on the stereographic projection, showing the true shape and the relative dimensions of all the chief lunar features. The letterpress, map, and stereographic chart will be prepared by Mr. Proctor; the photographs by Mr. Brothers. The work will be got out on a magnificent scale, and sold at a guinea and a half to subscribers.

The

MESSRS. TRÜBNER announce the proposed publication of a new magazine, The Pioneer; a monthly journal of Sociology, Psychology, and Biology. The great aim which the Pioneer has in view will be "the expression of truly philosophic principles, and their application to human progress and welfare. opinions of all will be treated with respect when expressed with the clearness and force arising from strong conviction." The subjects of "Psychic Force" and Anthropology are especially alluded to in the prospectus as coming within the range of the proposed serial.

THE Geological Expedition to the Rocky Mountain region under the charge of Dr. Hayden, to which we have already made briet allusion, according to Harper's Weekly, had reached Fort

Hall, Idaho, on the 18th of September. After completing the survey of the Yellow Stone Valley, the party left Fort Ellis on the 5th of September, passing down Gallatin Valley to the Three Forks, and thence by the Jefferson to its very source, exploring many of its branches, and pursuing a direction nearly parallel to that which the party had traversed in the June previous. The valleys of the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson forks of the Missouri, with all the little branches, were found occupied by industrious farmers and miners-a contrast quite striking to the doctor, who, twelve years ago, in exploring that same region, met with not a single white inhabitant. The Rocky Mountain Divide was crossed at the Horse Plain Creek, from which the party passed over into Medicine Lodge Creek, following this down into the Snake River Plain. An interesting fact observed was the occurrence of two species of trout in great quantities in streams such as Medicine Lodge, Camas, and other creeks all sinking into the plains after a course of from fifty to seventy-five miles. The trout appeared to be of the same two species in all, although the waters had no apparent connection. The party expected to leave Fort Hall, and to proceed to Fort Bridger by way of Soda Springs, Bear Lake, and Evanston, and there to disband the scientific corps returning to the East.

IN a very important paper on the "Estimation of Antimony," published in the Chemical News, Hugo Tamm calls the attention of chemists to a new phenomenon which the author describes under the name of "Hygraffinity." This phenomenon was discovered in a peculiar compound of antimony-bigallate of antimony. This compound is totally insoluble in water, and yet it possesses a powerful affinity for moisture, which it absorbs rapidly from the air after being dried at the temperature of 100° Cent. Most powders and precipitates, as it is well known, dried at that temperature, absorb moisture on exposure to the atmo. sphere, but this is a purely physical phenomenon due to porosity. On the contrary, in the case of gallate of antimony, chemical affinity is at work, and this precipitate, after exposure to the air for two or three hours, actually absorbs two equivalents of water. In a word, this insoluble substance has as much affinity for moisture as deliquescent salts. But one of the most curious features in connection with this extraordinary phenomenon is that on being dried at 100° Cent., bigallate of antimony loses the two equivalents of water which it had absorbed from the air, and that on being left exposed once more to the atmosphere, it reabsorbs the same amount of moisture. This interesting experiment may be repeated indefinitely.

IN the Comptes Rendus for August and in the Philosophical Magazine, M. Angström gives an analysis of the spectra which are observed in connection with hydrogen, and criticises the conclusions of M. Wüllner "that hydrogen has no less than four and oxygen no less than three distinct spectra." He explains that the spectrum lines of hydrogen (as observed by Plücker in rare hydrogen) spread out in disruptive discharges when the tension of the gas is increasing, and end by uniting so as to form a continuous spectrum. With regard to M. Wüllner's second spectrum of hydrogen, he points out that it is no other than the spectrum observed by M. Berthelot and ascribed by him to acetylene. Also, by a comparison of wave-lengths for sulphur and for M. Wüllner's third hydrogen-spectrum, he shows this to be in all probability the spectrum of sulphur. M. Angström also points out the close agreement between one of the oxygen spectra of M. Wüllner and the spectrum of oxide of carbon, and his tables show also a very close agreement between another of these oxygen spectra and the spectrum of chlorine, and concludes that neither oxygen nor hydrogen has more than one spectrum.

PROF. YOUNG has communicated to the Philosophical Magazine a catalogue of more than a hundred bright lines in the spectrum of the chromosphere, in which the observed lines are referred