Tiddler's Ground" and an interview with "Mr. Mopes," the leading character in Mr. Dickens's story. The lady gave a very graphic sketch of the "Hermit," and closed with these sentences:

"Charles Dickens offended him terribly. He pretended he was a Highlander, and Mr. Lucas at once began to question him about the country, and then spoke to him in Gaelic, which he could not reply to. Mr. Lucas said to him, Sir, you are an impostor; you are no gentleman."

This Mr. Dickens declares to be "a sheer invention of the wildest kind" (letter of March 27, 1862); and he proceeds to state the names of those who were present when he had with the

"Hermit" the now famous interview.

FRANK FINLAY.

The EDITOR will be glad if the Secretaries of Institutions, and other persons concerned, will lend their aid in making this Calendar as complete as possible.

APPOINTMENTS FOR NEXT WEEK. SATURDAY, Jan. 30, 3 p.m. Physical: Dr. A. Schusher on Electrical Theories; " Mr. C. Baker on "An Optical Bench." Royal Institution: Mr. J. T. Wood on "The Discovery of the Temple of Diana, &c., at Ephesus."

MONDAY, Feb. 1,

Crystal Palace Concert (Beethoven's Mass in C).

Saturday Popular Concert, St. James's Hall (Bülow). 2 p.m. Royal Institution: General Monthly Meeting.

erected by public subscription. It happened that the writer of these lines not long since revisited Cambridge, where, as he walked admiringly among the many new improvements, his eyes fell upon a recently erected bronze statue. It was the only out-of-door statue in the whole town; it occupied a commanding position in the market-place, hard by the University Church, and only a few steps from being in full sight of the Senate House. He walked reverently up to it, pondering as he went as to the manner of the man whose memory it so proudly perpetuated, and lo! it was Mr. Jonas Webb of Babraham, the famous breeder of Southdown sheep. The erection of this statue by the agriculturists of a county in whose capital a great university happens to be located, is worthy of note. It expresses their genuine appreciation of the practical application of the laws of heredity to all descriptions of farm produce, and it may be accepted as an omen that the time is near when the study of those laws and of their logical consequences shall permeate the philosophy of the university. It must do so, because there is no branch of science which refers to bodily structure or to mental aptitudes, neither is there any theological doctrine in which the

4.30 p.m. Musical Association: Mr. C. E. theory of heredity, either directly or as one

5 p.m. London

Stephens on "The Fallacies of
Dr. Day's Theory of Harmony."
Institution: Professor
Ferrier on "Functions of the
Brain," I.
Entomological.

8 p.m. British Architects. Medical.

Society of Arts: Cantor Lecture VI.

Monday Popular Concert. St. James's Hall (Bülow, NormanNéruda).

Royal Institution: Mr. E. Ray Lankester.

Civil Engineers: Professor Prestwich on "The Origin of the Chesil Bank."

Society of Arts. Pathological. Royal Albert Hall: Orchestral Concert (Wilhelmj).

8.30 p.m. Zoological.

Biblical Archaeology: the Rev.

of the principal agents in evolution, can hereafter be left out of consideration.

In the course of formation of every science there has always been an embryonic or prescientific period. Nothing then existed but detached pieces of evidence, of an unsatisfactory kind, laxly discussed and explained by wild hypotheses. But, at length, the methods of science succeeded in catching with a firm grip some of the loose materials, then more was seized, and so, with an everincreasing rapidity of conquest, the whole of them became gathered together within the pale of law. Heredity has at the present time developed into a science; much is definitely established, and many questions seem to require for their solution little more than direct experiment or the simple but careful collection of statistical facts. There is consequently some need of a work that shall dall on Subjects connected concisely and clearly set forth what is already known, and what are the undecided questions which most urgently call for solution and might at the same time be solved by any person, who chose to devote a fair amount of intelligent and steady work to the purpose.

A. H. Sayce on "Human Sacrifice among the Babylonians; "

Herr F. J. Länth on "The Date

of the Nativity."

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 3, 8 p.m. Microscopical: Anniversary.

Pharmaceutical. Obstetrical.
Society of Arts.

Mr. H. Holmes's Fifth Musical
Evening, St. George's Hall.

THURSDAY, Feb. 4, 3 p.m. Royal Institution: Professor Tyn-
with Electricity."
Royal Society Club.
London Institution: Dr. Zerffi
on "The Grotesque in Indian
Art."
Linnean.
Royal. Antiquaries.

6.30 p.m. 7 p.m.

8 p.m.

8.30 p.m.

FRIDAY, Feb. 5,

7.30 p.m.

4 p.m. Archacological Institute. Geologists' Association. Sacred Harmonic Society, Exeter Hall (Mendelssohn's Athalie, &c.).

8 p.m. Royal Institution: Weekly Even

ing Meeting. 9 p.m. Mr. James Dewar on The Physiological

Action of Light." Philological: Professor J. B. Mayor on Rhythm." II.

SCIENCE.

RIBOT ON HEREDITY.

M. Ribot's book does not do this; it is not a work on a level with the present knowledge, but it takes us back to the prescientific stage of heredity. It again brings to the light old anecdotes of questionable value, and again treats with seriousness, hypotheses that have become obsolete. become obsolete. Speaking generally, the work is that of a partially informed and very speculative

Heredity; a Psychological Study of its Phe-writer, and by no means that of a man of

nomena, Lows, Causes, and Consequences. From the French of Th. Ribot, Author of "Contemporary English Psychology." (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875.) may be affirmed with much truth that if we wish to learn what pursuit ranks highest in public opinion, we shall find it in the career of those men to whom statues are

IT

science. It is written in a somewhat pretentious style, which has the effect of making the reader believe that some great discovery is about to be announced, and of fixing his attention until he reaches the end, when the deferred hope proves never to be realised. As examples of the kind of information which he freely accepts as evidence-among the illustrations of longevity, we are told

that "a collier in Scotland prolonged his hard and dreary existence over one hundred and thirty-three years." We next have, as an example of exceedingly acute sense, a story extracted from Prosper Lucas, who was much too credulous of wonderful stories, of "Hirsch Daenemarck, a Polish Jew, who about the year 1840 travelled over Europe, showing by decisive experiments that he could read in a closed book any page or line that might be desired ;" and of his son, aged ten, who "possessed this same faculty in perhaps a more remarkable degree." Cu riously enough, I happen to know something about this very case, which was mentioned to me two years ago as an avowed instance of extraordinary memory. The subject of hereditary memory was and is of interest to me, and I therefore wrote to a very eminent and learned Jew, to whom I was referred for information. His reply lies before me: I do not repeat the names in his letter, as I did not ask permission to do so. This is an extract from it: "The feat to which vo allude was performed by a Jewish rabbi, whose name, I think, was Hirsch Norwegen, who was popularly called the 'Sihas-Pole' -i.e., the Talmud Pole (Sihas' being composed of the initial letters of the Hebrew words meaning 'the six sections' of the Talmud), and who, travelling through the principal parts of Europe about the year 1848, astonished even such men as Berlin, — in Prague, and in Padua. He was not only able to tell the words which a pin thrust through one leaf in any part of the Talmud would pass on the next, but on any number of subsequent leaves." In fact, he had learnt the enormous work (thirtysix volumes) more or less by heart, through the aid of a local as well as verbal memory of wonderful power, devoted to that end only. My correspondent gave me particulars of another instance of extraordinary memory of the same kind that existed in his own family. His father, "when he was seven years old, could say by heart the whole of the Pentateuch in Hebrew, verse by verse, together with the remarks of the principal commentators, Farihi, Ebn Ezra, and Rashbam; and throughout life-he died aged seventy-seven--his knowledge of the vast Talmudical and Rabbinical literature was such that he was constantly appealed to for pointing out the sources of obscure references or allusions; and, in fact, he never seemed to forget anything whether places, persons, facts, or ideas-with which he had once become acquainted." I have reason to believe that a powerful memory, exact in all matters of detail, is a characteristic of the Jewish race.

M. Ribot says there is a lack of evidence to prove the heredity of strong memory; on the contrary, I find it abun dant. It existed, as we have just been informed, in the family of Hirsch Daenemarck, and it exists in the family of my correspon

dent. But to proceed with M. Ribot's book. He quotes Le Vailliant on the half-breed children of the Europeans and Hottentots, that the moral nature is always determined by the father. When the father is a Hottentot," the child has always the good nature and gentle and kindly affection of the father;" but, in the converse case, they have "the germs of all vices and unruly passions." (!) Again,

he quotes, apparently with perfect approval, the opinion" that there is an invariable connexion between the heredity of physical resemblance and the heredity of moral resemblance." I can only say that I have been so struck by the number of cases in which the child who had the features of either parent had not the character, that I should hardly be surprised if they proved to be the more numerous; but I have never as yet gone statistically into this question. Then he indulges in some absurd views about likeness descending through opposite sexes, and quotes approvingly a belief that the son is more like to his mother, and, through her, to his grandfather, than he is to his father.

The inaccuracy and feebleness of his deductions is, in many instances, very striking. Here is one which is perfectly inexcusable in a writer on heredity; he is speaking of the transmission of acquired habits, and uses an often published anecdote to prove his case. He says::

"Habit is defined to be an acquired disposition. We ask if any purely individual habits are transmitted? Instances of this are cited. Girou de Buzareingues observes that he had known a man who had the habit, when in bed, of lying on his back and crossing the right leg over the left. One of his daughters had the same habit from birth.” The only meaning to be attached to this is, that the man had no special instinct to cross his legs, that from some cause or other he did so, that he acquired the habit of doing so, and that he transmitted this acquired habit by inheritance to his daughter. But what possible right has anyone to infer from the story, as it is told, that the man's habit was not just as instinctive as that of his daughter? Everybody who knows anything of heredity is well aware that one of the most interesting questions at the present time concerns the possibility of transmitting acquired habits. There are some few, very few, well-known instances of it in animals, but hardly any in man, while there are a vast number of other instances in which acquired habits are most assuredly not transmitted in any recognisable degree. The question is of extreme interest in its bearing upon the rate and direction of evolution, and therefore every bit of evidence about it deserves the closest scrutiny; but M. Ribot passes complacently on, careless and unconscious.

I

It is necessary to draw serious attention to the large amount of unacknowledged plagiarism which characterises this book. M. Ribot has been immensely indebted for its general design, and for very many facts, to the well-known work of Dr. Prosper Lucas, Hérédité Naturelle, as the reader will sufficiently recognise by comparing the two tables of contents, but I my self am aggrieved yet more directly. find the tables and genealogies that I had compiled, after very considerable research and sifting, and which I published in Hereditary Genius, appropriated without a word of acknowledgment. They are clipped and condensed, and a trifling number of names are varied, but that is all, and M. Ribot thinks fit to give this plagiarised version of the families of the principal poets, painters, musicians, men of science and of literature, statesmen, and commanders, ex

actly as if they were the fruits of his own discrimination and research. Nay worse, he mentions in three separate cases out of the whole number of them, that the genealogy of those cases was given after me, thereby implying that I had nothing to do with the rest. It is the more vexatious because he shows himself incapable of making the most of the materials he has thus conveyed to his own use, as, for example, in his tables of maternal and paternal influence, where he quotes a few cases on either side merely as anecdotes, and does not attempt to work the subject quantitatively.

The book improves towards its close, because the topics with which that portion of it deals, are more in accordance with the bent of the author's mind. He develops with effect the views that have of late become familiar to English readers, of the large part played by unconscious cerebration in intellectual acts, and in one of his best passages he ascribes genius (as I myself have lately done, in ignorance that M. Ribot had anticipated me) to a large development of that portion of the mind. He says:

"The highest creations of the imagination spring from the unconscious. Every great inventor, artist, man of science, artificer, feels within him an inspiration, an involuntary invasion, as it were, coming out of the depths of his being, but which is, as has been said, impersonal. All that comes under consciousness is results and not processes. The difference between talent and genius is the difference between the conscious and un

conscious. Artists, prophets, martyrs, mystics, all those who in any degree have felt the furor poe ticus, have ever acknowledged their subjection to a higher power than their own ego, and this power is the unconscious overlapping the submerged consciousness."

The word "talent" in the above is open to objection, because it is usually understood to mean an "instinctive gift," and instinctive motives are not necessarily "conscious." The phrase ought to run "between steady brain-work and genius." I may add, that a woman's intelligence appears to have a larger proportion of the unconscious element in it than the man's, for it is notorious that she frequently arrives at just conclusions, though the only reasons she is able to assign may be eminently illogical.

Much is said in the book about free will, but nothing worthy of note is advanced. There is also an eloquent passage about the decay of the Greek genius, which is ascribed to the effects of "nature," but unhappily, the author does not even profess to understand the meaning of that phrase. He stand the meaning of that phrase. He

says:

"Clearly heredity has nothing to do with this decay; but then if it is transmitted to the next generation, and if, further, the same causes go on acting in the same direction, it is equally clear that heredity in turn becomes a cause of decay." These "ifs" and the uncertain conclusion, and the general haze that overspreads the passage, are characteristic of the author's style of reasoning.

In conclusion, I would remark, that it is usually as profitless as it is an ungracious task to pick out the defects in a man's work. Both the critic who studies it for his own information, and the reader of his criticism want, or ought to want, nothing else than to learn all of sterling worth that it contains.

But in the present instance, no choice seemed open to me but to find fault, for I laid down M. Ribot's volume after honestly reading every line of it, with a weary sense of many wasted hours. FRANCIS GALTON.

SCIENCE NOTES.

PHYSICS.

The Theory of Mouth Organ Pipes.-The process by which the air in an ordinary mouth organ pipe is set in motion is usually represented plausibly as follows:-The current of air which issues from a narrow slit comes in contact with a sharp edge on which it breaks, producing a hissing sound which is supposed to be made up of an unlimited number of notes each with an independent pitch of its own. The air-column of the pipe selects and strengthens that particular note of the confused sound with which it can vibrate synchronously, and renders it musical. According to another view of the matter, a portion of the air which issues from the slit and strikes against the lip of the pipe is urged into the pipe, there producing a compression which

reacts on the air-current and deflects it. This

phenomenon is repeated periodically, the length of the air column in the pipe determining the time of a vibration. M. Sneebeli, in Pogg. Ann. cliii. p. 301, describes experiments which induce him to regard the production of a note in a mouth organ pipe in a different light. He considers that the air current which issues from the slit builds there a sort of air-reed, whose action in the excitement of vibrations in the mass of air in the pipe is analogous to that of the tongue of a metal reed in an ordinary reed pipe. If the slit be adjustable and be so placed that the stream of air falls entirely on the outside of the lip, the pipe gives no sound until by pressure from without the airformed reed is bent inwards. A similar application of external pressure is required to deflect the air-reed when the slit is so arranged that the current of air passes entirely inside the lip. In a series of letters recently published in Nature, Mr. Herman Smith has expressed views which appear to be in close agreement with those of M. Sneebeli. Frigorific Effects produced by Capillarity combined with Evaporation. Professor Decharme (Annales de Chim. et de Phys., sér. v. tom. iii. p. 236) states that when a roll of bibulous paper is placed vertically with its lower extremity dipping capillary attraction, and after a few minutes the into bisulphide of carbon, the liquid rises by upper portion of the paper is covered with a layer of a white semi-crystalline substance which gradually extends downwards to within two centimètres of the surface of the liquid. The formation of this solid substance arrests the further

capillary ascent of the bisulphide. The deposit being due to the condensation of the aqueous was found on examination to be ice, its formation vapour in the atmosphere, brought about by the cold resulting from the evaporation of the bisulphide of carbon over an extended porous surface. The temperature of the air at the time was 20°C., but the phenomenon was equally striking at higher temperatures, and even when the bisulphide of carbon was in a state of ebullition. When the bibulous paper enveloped the bulb of a thermometer, the temperature fell from 20° to -15°. The author proposes to employ an arrangement of this kind as a hygroscope. Water in a thin test-tube may be readily solidified in this way, the test-tube being enveloped in a roll of blottingpaper the extremity of which is dipped for a moment in bisulphide of carbon; according to the size of the test-tube and the quantity of water in it (less than five centimètres in height) will the time required for the solidification vary from two minutes to half an hour. If the bisulphide contains substances in solution (e.g., sulphur, phosphorus, etc.), the same phenomenon takes place, with this exception, however, that the deposit

now contains a certain quantity of the matter dissolved. Effects similar, though not so striking, are produced when liquids with low boiling-points other than bisulphide of carbon, and when other porous solid bodies are employed.

The Freezing of Alcoholic Liquids and Wines.The object of the experiments of M. Melsens (of which an abstract is given in the Annales de Ch. et de Ph. sér. v. tom. iii. p. 527) was to settle the question, about which different opinions have been expressed by observers, whether, when wine containing 10 or 12 per cent. of alcohol is frozen, the ice produced gives, on liquefaction, pure water or an alcoholic solution. According to the decisive statement of Boussingault, the ice gives, on being liquefied, an alcoholic liquid. M. Melsens, however, regards his experiments as having conclusively proved the contrary so far as the matter is of interest for practical or industrial purposes. The wine was placed in a freezing mixture, in which it became, as a whole, semi-solid. This mass consisted of a network of ice particles of pure water imprisoned in the liquid wine, like snow impregnated with coloured water. The solid particles were separated from the liquid wine by à centrifugal force turbine. In this way a large quantity of ice particles was obtained almost colourless, even when the wine operated on was red. The liquid obtained from the fusion of this ice was without taste, contained no appreciable quantity of alcohol, and only a small amount of organic matter soluble in water. The author is of opinion that the method of congelation may be efficaciously employed to improve poor wines by separating from them pure water.

Several points connected with the freezing of alcoholic solutions, incidentally noticed by M. Melsens, are very interesting, and some of them rather startling. We are somewhat startled, for instance, at learning that not only may brandy or rum be drunk (out of a wooden cup) at a temperature of thirty or thirty-five degrees below zero Centigrade without any disagreeable sensation of cold, but that even the mellowness of the beverage improves as its temperature is reduced. A paste of brandy or rum may be made at a temperature -50° C., and is no colder on the tongue than an ordinary ice. If the temperature be pushed as low as -71° C., the effect produced is similar to that of a spoonful of soup a little too hot.

a

Spectra of Metallic Solutions.-In the last published number of the Annales de Ch. et de Ph., Messrs. Delachanal and Mermet describe a form of apparatus (spectro-electric tube or fulgurator) for the observation of the spectra of metallic solutions. It consists of a capillary tube traversed by a platinum wire, which moves in it with sufficient freedom to allow the liquid to flow through drop by drop. The capillary tube, surmounted by reservoir containing the solution for examination, passes through the cork of a second larger tube placed immediately below it. Through the bottom of this latter passes the second platinum wire, the extremity of which is brought within a short distance of the extremity of the upper one, while the liquid drops between the two. The advantages claimed for this arrangement are that the spark has a fixed direction, and permits the longed observation of constant spectra; and secondly, that the electrodes are enclosed in a tube, and the spectroscope thus secured from chance of damage. Finally, by a special arrangement, the liquid employed is collected as it drops.

pro

The Behaviour of Iron and Steel Bars in a

Galvanic Circuit.-M. Hermann Herwig's experiments on the changes in the electric conductivity of iron and steel bars brought about by the passage of voltaic currents round and through them, and on the induction currents developed, described in Pogg. Ann. cliii. p. 115, are instructive and suggestive. The author first quotes and discusses the experiments of Villari (Pogg. Ann. cxxvi. p. 120, and cxxxvii. p. 569), who found that no change in the electric conductivity of iron

rods took place in consequence of the magnetising effect of the current in the surrounding helix. Villari also observed that when a rod of iron through which a strong current had been passed was connected in a circuit with a galvanometer, and smartly struck, the galvanometer gave evidence of an induction current in the circuit, and Wiedemann showed that a similar effect is produced when the wire is twisted instead of struck. To determine the influence on the conductivity of the bar of the transversal (magnetising) currents, M. Herwig employed a modified KirchhoffWheatstone Bridge. A bar of iron 170 centimètres long and 1 centimètre thick, was balanced against a copper bar 350 centimètres long, so that no current passed through the galvanometer. When now the battery circuit was suddenly broken, a strong momentary current passed through the galvanometer, the deflection of the needle being in the direction which would have been produced by a sudden diminution of the resistance of the iron. When the battery circuit was closed again, an equal momentary current in the opposite direction was produced. These were induction currents (extra-currents). With iron bars of various thicknesses balanced against the same copper bar, it was found that the thicker the bar the stronger was the extra-current. The extra-currents in the case of steel bars were much more feeble than in the case of iron, as Villari also found in his experiments cited above, the amount of difference varying with the hardness of the steel experimented on. In general with iron and steel rods, a small continuous increase of electric resistance with the continued passage of the current -more pronounced with iron than with steel-was observed. If the bars were allowed a long rest after a current had been passed through them for some time, they returned to their original state. This increase of electric resistance was observed in a great variety of cases, care being taken to eliminate changes of resistance due to changes of temperature.

The direction in which the current

passes through the iron or steel bars is of importance in considering the change of resistance. The resistance is greater in the direction in which the current has been passed for a considerable time than in the opposite direction. If the above experiments be tried with copper or brass instead of iron or steel, no such phenomena as those described are exhibited.

the English party for observing the Transit of Venus THE news just received of the complete success of at Rodrigues is important, as southern stations are necessarily few, the islands being thinly scattered in a wide expanse of ocean. Both ingress and egress have been well observed at this island, which is more favourably situated than Mauritius or Bourbon; and Janssen's revolver apparatus for securing photographs at the instants of contact external and internal has worked well, nine plates, each containing sixty small photographs taken at intervals of a second, having been exposed at various phases of ingress and egress, besides fifty-eight ordinary plates. The success of the British enterprise is thus secured, independently of what has been done by other nations, even though the observations at Kerguelen Island should be lost. Ingress has been observed at the Sandwich Islands and at Rodrigues, and egress in Australia (which is practically equal to New Zealand, where the observations were unfortunately lost), and in Egypt, making two pairs of stations for comparison by Delisle's method; observations have been supplemented by a large and, what is of very great importance, the eye number of measures, near the times of contact, with Airy's double-image micrometer, the success of which has been perfect. As all nations have co-operated in the great work, it is satisfactory to find that this country has done its part well, and will be able to contribute to the general result sets of observations which are complete in themselves.

MEETINGS OF SOCIETIES. PHYSICAL SOCIETY (Saturday, January 16). DR. J. H. GLADSTONE, F.R.S., President, in the Chair. Mr. W. H. Perkin, F.R.S., Mr. Lemann, and Mr. W. Bottomley, were elected Members of the Society. Dr. Gladstone read a paper on "The Electrolysis of Solutions of Metallic Chlorides," by himself and Mr. Tribe. The phenomena chiefly dis cussed were those which take place when a voltaic circuit is formed by means of platinum, a second metal, and a solution of the chloride of the second metal. With platinum, copper, and solution of cupric chloride, the result of the action was to cause a deposition of cuprous chloride upon both the platinum and the copper. With platinum, iron, and solution of ferric chloride, there was formation of ferrous chloride in contact with both metals. When mercury and solution of corrosive sublimate were used, there was similarly deposition of calomel on the mercury as well as on the platinum. With gold in place of platinum in conjunction with mercury and solution of corrosive sublimate, mercury was reduced to the metallic state in contact with the gold, and amalgam of gold was formed.-Professor Guthrie communicated the results of further experiments on crystalline hydrates formed at temperatures below 0° C., a class of substances termed by him Cryohydrates. The experiments, of which those now communicated are a continuation, were briefly reported in the ACADEMY (see report of Physical Society's meeting on November 7, 1874). Among other results, Professor Guthrie finds that in freezingmixtures, formed by mixing pounded ice with various soluble salts, the temperature of the mixture is, within very wide limits, independent of the proportions in which the ingredients are employed, or of the conditions under which they are mixed together. He also finds that, with very few exceptions (among about thirty salts examined), the temperature of a freezing mixture formed with a given salt is identical with the temperature of solidification of the corresponding cryohydrate; and that the lower the temperature at which a cryohydrate is formed, the smaller is the number of molecules of water contained in it in combination with ue molecule of salt. Experiments on the fezing of mixtures of water and alcohol in various proportions (from 5 per cent. to 30 per cent. of alcohol by weight) showed that, for low percentages of alcohol, the depression of the temperature at which congelation begins below the freezing point of pure water is nearly proportional to the quantity of alcohol present. When dilute spirit is partially frozen, the crys tals first deposited are almost pure ice, so that & concentration of spirit takes place in the portion remaining liquid; but with a mixture of four molecules of water with one molecule of alcohol (corresponding nearly to 59 per cent. water and 41 per cent. alcohol), the solidified portion and what remains liquid are identical in composition. When stronger spirit is cooled sufficiently to cause freezing to take place, the frozen part contains water and alcohol in the above proportions, and the liquid part is pure alcohol. In fact, Professor Guthrie's experiments seem to show that a definite compound is formed by water and alcohol in the proportion of four molecules of water to one molecule of alcohol, and that spirit containing more alcohol than this is a solution of this compound in absolute alcohol, while that containing less alcohol is a solution of the same substance in water. The freezing point of the hydrate of alcohol Dr. Dupré, in the discussion which followed in question is -34 C. It was pointed out by Professor Guthrie's paper, that four molecules of water to one of alcohol is the proportion in which the mixture of these substances is accompanied by the greatest evolution of heat.

ASIATIC SOCIETY (Monday, January 18). THE Right Hon. Sir H. Bartle E. Frere, Presi dent, in the Chair. Mr. W. R. Cooper and Mr.

P. N. Narasimmiyengar, of Mysore, were elected members. Five distinguished foreign Oriental scholars, viz., Professor T. Benfey, of Göttingen, Professor R. Lepsius, of Berlin, M. E. Renan, of Paris, Professor W. Grigoryeff, of St. Petersburg, and Professor R. G. Bhandarkar, of Bombay, were elected honorary members. Mr. A. Grote presented two photographs of a beautiful Graecoand obtained by him from Lord Napier of MagBactrian head, belonging to General Sir W. Baker, dala (then Colonel Napier), who found it at Peshawur. The Secretary exhibited a number of impressions taken from Sanskrit inscriptions in Kotah, and recently brought home by Captain W. S. W. Muir, of the Rajpootana Agency. A brief examination showed that several of these documents were of considerable interest, supplying as they did some fresh dates and names, chiefly of Kings of Malavâ. The Secretary expressed a hope that Captain Muir would supply the Society with photographs also of these inscriptions, and thereby enable them to publish them in their Journal. Professor J. Dowson read a paper on a Bactrian Pali inscription, brought home from Takht-i-Bahi by Dr. Leitner, and now in the Lahore Museum. The document consists of six lines of writing, of which the first two, containing the name of the king and the date, are alone intelligible. The king's name and title are "Maharayasa Gunu. pharasa" (genitive), which in Trübner's Record in 1871, both Professor Dowson and General Cunningham, independently from each other, referred to Gondophares. They disagreed, however, as to the date, Professor Dowson reading it as the twenty-sixth year of the king, on the seventh day of the month Vaisakha, while General Cunningham read it as the year Samvat 103 (A.D. 43), the fourth day of Vesakh, in the twenty-sixth year of the king's reign. Professor Dowson has now taken the inscription up again, and adopts General Cunningham's interpretation of the word samvatsara as the Samvat era. His revised reading of the date is, "in the twenty-sixth year of the king, the year 100 of the Samvat, the third day of Vaisakha.' If this is really the correct interpretation of the word samvatsara, the inscription would be of considerable importance, since it would show that era to have been in actual use at a much earlier period than most scholars are hitherto inclined to admit. The Report of Dr. G. Bühler on his recent examination, for the Bombay Government, of the libraries in Cambay, Limdi and Ahmedabad was then read. This brief memoir is of considerable interest to Sanskrit scholars, the examination of those collections having brought to light a number of very ancient Jaina palm-leaf manuscripts and several hitherto unknown highly important Sanskrit and Prakrit works.

NUMISMATIC SOCIETY (Thursday, January 21). A MEETING of the Numismatic Society was held at the new rooms of the Society at 4 St. Martin's Place, Trafalgar Square, which contrast most favourably with the dingy apartments at Gate Street, and where accommodation for the library, &c., has been secured. Papers were read-(1) Written by M. J. P. Six, of Amsterdam, on a Coin of Lykkenis, King of Paeonia, on which the king's name appears written thus, AYKгEIO. M. Six further illustrated the coinage of the kings of Paeonia, especially in the light of an inscription published in the Ephemeris Archaeologike, recording an alliance of Ketriporis of Thrace, Grabos of Illyria, and Lyppeios of Paeonia, against Philip II. of Macedon. (2) By Mr. Henfrey, giving some particulars with regard to the Culloden medals.

ROYAL SOCIETY (Thursday, January 21). THE following papers were read :-"On the Origin and Mechanism of Production of the Prismatic (or Columnar) Structure of Basalt," by R. Mallet; "On the Anatomy of the Connective Tissues," by

Dr. Thim.

LINNEAN SOCIETY (Thursday, January 21). DR. G. J. ALLMAN, President, in the Chair. Dr. Hollis read a paper on the Pathology of Oakgalls. He divided oak-galls, the species of which are very numerous, and made by a variety of insects, into two classes, the unilocular and the To the former class belong the

multilocular.

times they come to maturity at different times ; sometimes they are so arranged that the pollen from the stamens could only reach the pistil with greater or less difficulty. In those plants in which the stamens and pistil are not mature simultaneously, the pistil in some cases ripens first, as in the aristolochia and arum; but in the insects exercise over plants, the lecturer then In illustration of the great influence which great majority the stamens ripen before the pistil. called attention to those cases in which within a single genus we meet with species having large, and others with small flowers, as, for instance, in epilobium and geranium; and pointed out that the large flowers were those most dependent upon insects.

Réaumur, and the currant-galls; to the latter the woody marbled oak-galls, the ligneous galls of spongy "oak-apple" and the "oak-spangles" of the leaves. The author described the structure and mode of development of the different kinds, entering into some detail in the case of several instances. He expressed his belief that all the different kinds, with the exception of the " spangles," are formed during the growth of the leaf, Of course these conclusions implied that insects the egg being laid in the bud. The pathological were capable of distinguishing colours, and the differs from the healthy development in the more lecturer then proceeded to mention some experirapid growth of the cells and the larger size they ments which he had made, and which seemed to attain, combined with a smaller amount of difFor inprove directly that this was the case. ferentiation. The origin of the different layers of stance, he placed some honey on a slip of glass, tissue in the gall itself the author believed could and put the glass on coloured paper. He then be traced to the different layers of the leaf which put some honey in this manner on a piece of blue produces it. The paper was illustrated by a splenMuseum, lent by Mr. A. Murray. In the discus- colour, he placed some honey in the same manner did series of specimens from the Bethnal Green Paper, and when the bee had made several journeys, and thus become accustomed to the blue sion which followed some difference of opinion on orange paper. Then during one of the absences was expressed as to whether it was universal for of the bee he transposed the two colours, leaving a gall to be developed from a bud; and the Presi- the honey itself in the same place as before. The dent called attention to the remarkable simulation bee returned as usual to the place where she had by certain galls of the fruit or other organ of the been accustomed to find the honey; but though it plant on which they are produced. This is a phe-was still there she did not alight, but paused for a nomenon which appears at present to admit of no explanation.

moment, and then dashed straight to the blue paper. No one, he said, who saw this bee at that moment could have had the slightest doubt of her power of distinguishing blue from orange. He mentioned one other experiment. Having accustomed a bee to come to honey on blue paper, he ranged other supplies of honey on paper of other colours, yellow, orange, red, green, black and white. Then he continually transposed the coloured paper, leaving the honey on the same spots, but the bee always flew to the blue paper wherever it might be.

Sir John then proceeded to describe a number of common flowers, and to show how beautifully they are adapted to secure and profit by the visits of insects, taking as illustrations the berberry, heath, deadnettle, salvia, sweet pea, daisy, cypripedium, &c.

He then passed on to those cases in which cross-fertilisation is secured by the relative position of the stamens and pistil; especially in the cases of primula and lythrum. He then referred very briefly to the modifications undergone by bees in order to adapt them to flowers, and after mentioning the well-known cases of the sleep of flowers, as being possibly connected with their relations to insects, and recording some observations on this part of the subject, he ended by saying that the observations commenced by Sprengel, and carried on recently by various botanists, but especially by Darwin and Müller, have shown that insects, and especially bees, have an importance in relation to flowers which had been previously unsuspected.

To them we owe the beauties of our gardens, the sweetness of our fields. To them flowers are indebted for their scent and colour, nay, their very existence in its present form. Not only have the brilliant colours, the sweet scent, and the honey of flowers been gradually developed by the unconscious agency of insects, but the very arradiating lines, the form, size, and position of the rangement of the colours-the circular bands and petals, the arrangement of the stamens and pistilall have reference to the visits of insects, and are disposed in such a manner as to ensure the great object which these visits are destined to effect. For it is obvious that any blossom differing from transference of the pollen would be less likely to the form and size best adapted to secure the due be fertilised than others; while, on the other hand, those which were rich in honey, which

were the sweetest and the most conspicuous, would most attract the attention and secure the visits of insects; and thus, just as our gardeners, by selecting seed from the most beautiful varieties, have done so much to adorn our gardens, so have insects, by fertilising the largest and most brilliant flowers, unconsciously, but not less effectually, contributed to the beauty of our woods and fields.

FINE ART.

SIXTH WINTER EXHIBITION OF OLD MASTERS AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

(Fourth Notice.)

WE Come to-day to an order of subjects which occupied the ancient masters little, but which occupies the modern, and especially the modern English, more than any other-that is, subjects of history and imagination not religious. To tell a story, and tell it in a moving and expressive way, has always been one of the objects of painting, and sometimes its first object. With the painters who first gave life to their art in Italy at the end of the thirteenth century, to tell the unlearned the great stories of the Old and New Testaments, and of miracles nearer their own day, was the first object. And it was the glory of that school -but above all others the glory of Giotto its sovereign-to find out what was the right way of telling a story in painting. Giotto and the early Florentine school felt that what makes a story moving and expressive in painting is not the same thing as what makes it moving and expressive in reading or recital. They felt, and acted upon the feeling, that painting dictates its own laws of composition. They saw that the actors of a painted story must before all things be so disposed as to please the eye, while at the same time they make it clear what they are about; in other words, that the painted space has to be filled with figures and groups of figures which, while they severally and all together conduct the action in a clear and noble manner, at the same time form noble and agreeable arrangements of lines and masses in various relations of balance and rhythm. Thoughts and significations the most ingenious and profound, or the most simple, may equally well lie beneath a composition so conceived; but so conceived the composition must be, or else the result will not be a picture.

To feel this, I say, and act upon it, was the glory of the Florentine school. But for a long while it was only sacred stories that painting concerned itself to tell. The demand for profane stories dates from soon after the spread of ancient learning at the beginning of the fifteenth century. By the middle of that century, ก merchant of the city must needs have his daughter's marriage-chest painted with scenes from Ovid or Virgil by Pesellino or Benozzo Gozzoli. Small mythologies in tempera or oil for marriage chests, large mythologies in fresco for palace galleries and ceilings, these are the staple commissions of art other than sacred. But even by the time Savonarola rose against such things, they bore a very small proportion to the sacred art produced in Florence. In Venice, in the next century, during that sudden and mighty and prolonged climax of Venetian art, the secular and mythological phases of painting did hold a somewhat larger proportion beside the sacred and devotional phases. With the splendour of the Venetian mythologies we are familiar. There are three slight examples here. Among these, No. 126, The Triumph of Love, holds the first place. It is not a case of story-telling; only a baby-Cupid on a toy-lion in a landscape. It was bought, I believe, for a small sum in a sale-room last year. No hand but the master's own could have put such a quality into the landscape; the part to the right, where the lion's tail comes against the distance, has a singular resemblance to

a passage in the Bacchus and Ariadne of the National Gallery. The child, too, with his rosy knees and elbows, is a consummate piece of the Venetian richness in slightness; and the toy-lion is turned into something quite splendid by the style of his design, and the magic touches which bespeak the master in his eyes and the fur of his legs. No. 117 is a small copy, though a very glowing and pleasing copy, after one of the two great mythologies of the Bridgewater Gallery. The sight of it renews one's grudge against that view of an inheritor's obligations which keeps the original from public view. No. 135 is a singularly pure and lovely little romance of Tintoret's, in silvery tones. And lastly among the Italians, a Ferrarese under Venetian influence shows us an example of foolish composition and splendid colour in the scene from Ariosto (162). The fantastical, or as I repeat foolish, landscape and composition is Ferrarese, and belongs to Dosso Dossi as a member of that school; the Venetian part of him is his colour; and scutcheon and pennon and armour and marble in this interesting piece are luckily as perfectly preserved and fresh as when they were painted.

To pick up secular story-painting again in the Exhibition, one needs to come down almost to our own time. The first great English painter indeed, Hogarth, launched upon art a new order of secular story-painting, the principles of which it is well worth pains to apprehend. But there is no room for enquiring into them here, even if his early little picture of Falstaff and Shallow (for his I believe it is), or his other picture of Calais Gate, were sufficient to give us the clue (28, 37). But we can merely pause at the Calais Gate, for its interest in the biography and psychology of this honest bull-dog spirit, and notice the strong direct painting of it as of all Hogarth's work, and what outrageous skinny caricatures these French sentries are. Another order of story-painting flourished in English art fifty years after Hogarth-the idyllic and domestic order which had its origin in the illustration of novels and tales, and which looked to Raphael and the antique, as Hogarth had by no means looked, for hints of grace and composition. This order is represented by a couple of charming little ovals by Stothard (24, 250) and by two or three scraps of Smirke. We cannot attend at length to it either.

way.

This was

But the present is the great century of activity and range in pictorial story-telling. English art has concentrated itself on nothing so much as on the painting of episodes from universal history and literature. Wilkie for one, an artist of the transition between the last century and this, introduced a new and very popular art way of treating history and literature in painting. neither the amiable way which succeeded so well, and had such a charm as far as it went, with Stothard and the idyllists, nor the ambitious way which led Fuseli and Barry beyond their strength. It was another, a more trivial and a less artistic Those who followed it made their chief points of two things, costume and the picturesque for one, facial expression of the momentary kind for another. Effectively to dress and point an historical anecdote, or 8 scene out of a novel or a play, became the most popular task of the painter, and has remained so to own day. A vast amount of talent has been spent, or misspent, upon the task: for the desire of dressing and pointing an anecdote or a scene, coming as it did simultaneously with that disappearance of the sense of colour of which I spoke last week, is apt to lead to a habit of mind the reverse of the artistic, and to appeal to perceptions the reverse of refined. I hold it to be indisputably true, that in the vast bulk of paintings of history or imagination which our school has yielded within the last fifty years, the proper appeal of painting by noble and agreeable arrangements of lines and colours and masses has been forgotten, and that the story has been conducted and made clear, if at all, not through these, but

our

through schemes of costume and gesture and facial expression sinning by a gross want of beauty and dignity, by a shallow coarseness of emphasis in humour or pathos, and by the endeavour to insist on points of the kind which it is not the business of painting to insist on. A few years ago the Royal Academy gave us the opportunity of studying the work of one of its members who was in the first half of the century the foremost master of pictorial humour, I mean Leslie. This year they give us the opportunity of studying the work of another late member, who put into the art of illustrating history and literature, as that age conceived it, the most of learning, of invention, the strongest native powers of mind, and the most determined thoroughness. The name of Maclise is justly honoured. If hard things have to be said of his art, they strike not at a memory which many still love and mourn, but at the mistaken tendencies to which he gave expression. And it is not possible to look at his fifteen paintings here assembled, and covering the interval from 1832 to 1868, without feeling that these tendencies can never come to good in art. From first to last there is the evidence of a mind which by another channel might have conveyed meanings interesting and admirable. But from first to last these are pictures, as pictures, repulsive, and (there is no good mincing it) vulgar. The series begins with the Bottom Disenchanted (47), of 1832. Maclise had lately come upon the town, well recommended, having cultivated in his boyhood at Cork a vigorous knack of portrait drawing; being well read, and of fine presence and manners. He made a brilliant Academy student, and was immediately successful both in society and in his art. The disenchantment of Bottom is a fair subject both for ugliness-or rather for the grotesque, the one form of ugliness which art admits and for a theatrical play and incidence of light. But this half-naked misshapen wretch, who yawns at you till you see his uvula far down his horrid throat, is merely revolting, not grotesque; and the lights that strike upon his body, and upon the sprites flying about him and the green of the thicket, are merely broken and cutting and unpleasant. Still worse is the illustration to Lalla Rookh of the next year. Lord Lytton's admiration for this picture in its day is on record. I think the present generation may fairly congratu late itself on an improvement of taste. This loathsome Mokanna with the lidless glassy eyes and lipless grinning teeth would scarcely be admired to-day; nor the shrill green of the veil, nor Zelica's foolish gesture, nor the absolute want of pictorial dignity and conduct. The next year, however, shows us something very much more promising. The Installation of Captain Rock

18

one of the best products of its unlucky time. There is indeed much ugliness, and not a little extravagance of action; but then the subject allows it; an oath of vengeance sworn among a crowd of shouting Irish allows plenty of vehemence and tumult; it is even allowable that the central figure with his upraised arm should be melodramatic. And among the tumult there are plenty of incidents that are very shrewdly observed and not overstrained at all. A boy lying in the right foreground while a sinister old villain teaches him pistol-practice; the rollicking yelling couple who flourish bottle and crutch and wooden leg as they dance, these are as good in their way as possible. And there are passages of real prettiness and tenderness in the head and shoulders of the girl lying down in the left foreground, and in the woman suckling her baby on the right. Again, there is some agreeable colour, particularly in the landscape we see through the abbey window. Maclise's manner is not yet formed, and there is much to hope from such exuberant vigour and invention. But the next picture belongs to 1840, and does show a formed manner. It is the Banquet Scene from Macbeth; and in it the artist has arrived at many things from which he never afterwards departs. First, there is that disagreeable uniform texture,