Mr. Simon says, in his note appended to the analysis, that "swill is a highly nutritious form of food, and that he sees nothing in its composition that could possibly work injury to cattle feeding on it."

The results obtained by Mr. Collier are very similar to those furnished by Professor Simon, but are even a little stronger in statement. He compares swill with corn and rye and other products, and shows that it is richer in food-elements, and decidedly richer than ensilage, which is so highly prized by certain cattle-feeders. In reply to interrogatories, Mr. Collier expresses the belief that swill is a wholesome and highly nutritious form of food, and can be given to cows with great advantage. He, however, adds that much will depend upon the amount given, the circumstances and surroundings, and the proper combination with other aliments.

The truth is, the whole matter in discussion hinges upon this last point, and Mr. Collier has not made it any clearer by his statements, however honestly made. It is to the physiologist, in my judgment, and not to the analytical chemist, that we must look for a scientific solution of the problem. Analytical chemistry serves but a feeble purpose in solving many important questions. By it butter and oleomargarine appear equally wholesome and nutritious; and it can detect but little difference in impurity between water-closet matter, and sewage from which excrement is excluded.

'Milk for Babes.' By E. M. NELSON, M.D. (St. Louis Courier of Medicine, May, 1883.)

In regard to the feeding of the cows, there is almost as much variation between different dairies as there is in regard to cleanliness. Nearly all the city dairies make use of the products of the breweries and distilleries as a considerable part of the feed of their cows. So far as the malted grain is concerned, perhaps nothing can be said in objection to its use as a part of the food. It is recommended by the best writers as a valuable and economical constituent of the food of milch-cows. The same cannot be said of the hot distillery swill. The effect of this food has been found by the best and most careful observers to be prejudicial to the health of cows, and to produce a milk that is lacking in nutritive quality as well as being specially liable to speedy change and fermentation. Mr. Lake, who was for many years the largest feeder of distillery swill in the city, asserted that cows fed on this article invariably become diseased within a period of six months, and the lungs show constantly the evidences of tubercular infiltration. Mr. Cabanne states, that, when he formerly fed swill in his own dairy, he butchered over one hundred and fifty cows, and never found one in which there was not tuberculous disease of the lungs.

'Our Milk-Supply.' By W. K. NEWTON, M.D. (Fourth Annual Report of New Jersey State Board of Health.) Swill-milk is rarely heard of now, but not many years ago it was a fruitful cause of disease and death in children. Fearing that the lessons of the past may be forgotten, we are constrained to mention it as a possible cause of disease. Distillery swill, "if properly fed in limited quantities, in combination with other and more bulky food, may be a valuable article for the dairyman; but if given, as it too often is, without the addition of other kinds of food, it soon affects the health and constitution of the animals fed on it. Where this forms the principal food of milch-cows, the milk is of a poor quality it contains often less than one per cent of butter, and seldom over one and three-tenths or one and one-half per cent. tIs

effect on the system of young children is therefore very destructive, causing diseases of various kinds, and, if long continued, certain death. The adulteration of pure milk from the healthy cow by water, though dishonest and objectionable in the highest degree, is far less iniquitous in its consequences than the nefarious traffic in swill-milk, or milk produced from cows fed entirely on still-slops, from which they so become diseased, after which the milk contains a subtle poison, which is as difficult of detection, by any known process of chemistry, as the miasma of an atmosphere tainted with yellow-fever or cholera. The fact is sufficiently palpable, that no pure and healthy milk can be produced by an unhealthy and diseased animal, and that no animal can long remain healthy that is fed an unnatural food, and treated in the manner too common around the distilleries of many large cities." (C. L. Flint, pp. 144, 208, 216.)

on

Where swill-milk was sold in New York a few years ago, "it was found different in alimentary character from that produced by cows that were fed on grass, hay, or grain. It was not so well digested in the stomach, nor had it the nutritive power to create flesh and sustain strength. The children lost flesh, and failed to gain it. Their skins were pallid, sometimes discolored and corrugated. Their countenances had the appearance of old age, rather than the bright and lively bloom of childhood. They suffered from diarrhoea and dysentery and great debility, and many died." (Jarvis.)

Fortunately, no swill-milk is sold in this State at the present time, but it is well for health officers to be on the lookout for it. The sale of it is, in this State, considered a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of fifty dollars and imprisonment for thirty days. The laws of Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, and other States also forbid its sale.

'Report of Committee on City Milk.' By S. R. PERCY, M.D. (Transactions New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. II. Part IV., 1859.)

This report, which occupies fifty-three pages of the transactions, is the fullest statement of facts in connection with distillery swill and milk which we have seen. In June, 1858, the New York board of health adopted a resolution that the Academy of Medicine be requested to lay before the board such facts and evidence as they may have in relation to the milk furnished to the citizens of New York. The academy appointed a committee of five of its members, including Drs. B. Fordyce Barker and S. Ratton Percy, and in March of the following year presented its report. The greater part of the labors of the committee was performed by Dr. Percy, and his report is the most valuable. It includes chemical analyses, which we have already given under that head, microscopic examinations and drawings, and cases of disease resulting from the use of distillery milk. Associated with Dr. Percy in his investigations was Mr. Solon Robinson, who had been long conversant with the raising and fattening of cattle, and Mr. Thomas Devoe, who had been long and extensively engaged in the slaughtering of cattle, and in supplying the markets with wholesome beef. Mr. Robinson accompanied the committee to the distillery stables, and, as the result of his observations, said, "From my personal experience in feeding cows with various agricultural products, and in producing milk and butter, I am well satisfied that cows fed as described, and kept in such an atmosphere as I could not remain in ten minutes without feeling severe sickness, must produce poisoned milk. And I do not consider the beef any more fit for human food than the milk; not so much on account of the bad food, as the poisonous atmosphere in which the poor brutes are confined. I would no sooner touch this swill-milk than I would use milk from the most 'milk-sick' region of Illinois." Mr. Devoe, in speaking of the quality of beef furnished by animals fed on distillery swill, says, "I have slaughtered, and seen slaughtered, the various kinds of animals that have been fed, wholly or partially, on this swill, which appears to have produced almost as many varieties of beef, and I think I may be better understood by placing them under three general heads; viz., first-class, second-class, and third-class. The first-class beef, no doubt, is produced from thrifty steers, fed in some of the distilleries in the northern counties of New York, where only a small portion, or the liquid portion, of the food, is swill; the rest being of meal, roots, hay, and grass: and, when brought to our markets in a fat,

healthy condition, their flesh proves to be tender, juicy beef, but not so firm or so sweet and well flavored as if wholly fed on grain, or even grass. The second-class beef is from animals wholly confined in these large distilleries, fed the greater portion on swill, with plenty of hay, and occasionally a little grain. I might add, that the Northern distillery swill is of a superior quality to that which is run into troughs at the various distilleries where it is sold by the hogshead or other particular quantities. These Northern distilleries own both the swill and the cattle, and the quantity of swill made by them is fed up clean. This second class of animals, although they may be fat, produce a softer quality of beef, not so well flavored, but juicy and tender. When they are slaughtered, the flesh will show or produce the peculiar smell attached to this beef. The third class is to be found in some of your neighboring distilleries, where the visitor could almost swear (unless he could see the hay given to the animals) that they had little else to eat than the thin, poor, and sometimes spoiled swill. The beef from the general run of the third class has a very peculiar, unpleasant smell, especially when slaughtered. I have known it so disagreeable as to create nausea, especially on opening the animal to take away the paunch or belly: this and some other parts I have sometimes opened to discover some signs of hay, and in some instances found none. This class of beef retains that smell, especially when cutting it up fresh into pieces, and also when cooking it. It is usually flabby or soft, and often appears adhesive or sticky, like very young veal that had not yet lost nature's first flesh. My conclusions and convictions were made up long before this subject was so strongly agitated, both as to the meat and milk of the distillery-fed cow, which I have considered under the third class; and these conclusions are that neither the milk nor the flesh of these animals can furnish healthy human food." The committee, in summarizing its labors, says that the beef produced from the animals fed in the distillery stables is unsavory, and easily recognized by its offensive odor; that the odor is not dissipated even by the process of cooking; and that the fibre is flaccid, and its cellular tissue is infiltrated with watery fluids instead of solid fat. The milk of these cows does not exhibit the characteristics of wholesome milk: it presents almost invariably an acid re-action. The cases collected by Dr. Percy demonstrate the fact, independent of any chemical examination or any a priori reasoning, that the milk procured from these swill-fed animals is injurious to those who use it. In view of the disclosures made, the committee states that it is evident that the traffic in the milk of swill-fed cows is one which is detrimental to the health of the community, and should be discontinued.

'Sanitary Control of the Food-Supply.' By W. K. NEWTON, M.D., health officer of Paterson, N.J. (Third Annual Report of the State Board of Health of New Hampshire.) Distillery waste, and sometimes beer-grains, produce a quality of milk of low nutritive powers, and dangerous to infants.

References are also made to the following authorities: MilchCows and Dairy-Farming,' by C. L. Flint (Boston, 1874 and 1887); 'Infant Mortality,' by E. Jarvis (Fourth Annual Report of State Board of Health of Massachusetts); and ‘Milk,' by C. F. Chandler (Johnson's Cyclopædia).

Preliminary Report of the Commission appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to investigate Modern Spiritualism in accordance with the Request of the late Henry Seybert. Philadelphia, Lippincott. 120.

THAT peculiar medley of alleged fact and fanciful theory, of Occidental pseudo-science and Oriental mysticism, which goes by the name of Modern Spiritualism,' has been examined more or less frequently, publicly and ably. The advocates of the tenets which this belief imposes have given little attention to the adverse opinions, explaining them away by a piece of logic which would be admirable did it not need such frequent modification, and were it not so evidently manufactured for the purpose, and have vaunted and gloried over all their successful efforts, large and small, in securing proselytes. The commission, whose long-expected report

is now before the public, is most favorably constituted for receiving a hearing destined to be called authoritative, and for registering an important turning-point in the rather sad history of the modern movement. The commission takes its name and its resources from the fund intrusted to the University of Pennsylvania by the will of Henry Seybert, a strong believer in Spiritualism and its physical manifestations. The personnelle of the commission leaves nothing to be desired. Its members originally appointed were Dr. William Pepper, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, Profs. Joseph Leidy, George A. Koenig, Robert Ellis Thompson, and George S. Fullerton, all of the same university, and the eminent Shakspearian Dr. Horace Howard Furness. To these were afterward added Mr. Coleman Sellers, Drs. J. W. White, C. B. Knerr, and S. Weir Mitchell. The members individually expressed entire freedom from all prejudices against the subject, and readiness to accept any conclusion warranted by facts; Dr. Furness, moreover, confessed to a leaning in favor of the doctrine.

The method of work of the commission was to take a definite subject for investigation, invite both professional and non-professional mediums (had they been able to procure them) claiming the power of presenting the desired manifestations, and to meet them under fair conditions. The mediums were often exorbitant in their charges (asking a hundred dollars from the commission for what they would do for five for a private citizen), and arbitrary in their conditions. Nevertheless the commission has seen enough to tell a very important and a very interesting story.

They first looked about for a professional independent slatewriting medium.' This medium was to take a double slate firmly fastened together, with a bit of slate-pencil placed between, and produce writing on the previously blank slate, professedly the work of spirits in answer to questions addressed to them. Their first medium (a Mrs. Patterson) kept them waiting one hour and a half, and on another occasion one hour and twenty minutes; but the slates remained as clean as at first. Their next medium was the famous Dr. Henry Slade, with whom they had several sessions, all with the object of obtaining the slate-writing under conditions varying in detail, but not in principle, from that above described. Dr. Slade has two methods: for the long, clearly written messages, he substitutes at a favorable moment a prepared slate for the one given him; for the short, hardly legible messages, he in one way or another writes on the slate while hidden from view of the two or three observers (he allows no more) seated with him. Every particular of the process has at one time or another been seen by the committee. In fact, on the day when Dr. Slade received three hundred dolllars in payment for his services, he was so excited that he could hardly sign the receipt; and the cause of this excitement was simply that shortly before, Dr. Furness had kicked over a slate placed at the foot of the table, and thus exposed the prepared writing upon it. In short, their verdict with regard to the doings of this their most famous medium is, "that the character of those which passed under our observation was fraudulent throughout. There was really no need of any elaborate method of investigation: close observation was all that was required."

Next with regard to rappings. Their preliminary conclusion reads that "the theory of the purely physiological origin of the sounds has been sustained by the fact that the mediums were invariably and confessedly cognizant of the rappings whenever they occurred, and could at once detect any spurious rappings, however exact and indistinguishable to all other ears might be the imitation."

The commission attempted to procure some spirit photographs,' but were asked three hundred dollars for this luxury, and were to be excluded from the room at the critical moment. They very properly refused any such terms.

The brother of the would-be photographer (Keeler is the family name) is also a medium. His specialty is to materialize' a right hand when apparently holding his neighbor's wrist with both his hands, and have this hand perform the usual simple tricks with the musical instruments, etc. The trick was afterwards repeated by one of the commission, and consists in really holding the wrist with one hand only, but producing the feeling in the owner of the wrist of its being clasped by both. The right hand is then free to do all the hocus-pocus.

Another medium did about the same thing with his hands apparently tied. That his hands were loose enough for all that was done, was glaringly evident.

Thus far the commission as a whole. Their verdict is everywhere the same: "No new facts and many old frauds." Individually the members have seen much, in fact, more than the mediums intended. The experiences of Dr. Furness, the acting chairman, are especially interesting, and recorded with a humor that does much to relieve the monotony of this record of constant fraud and deceit. Dr. Furness was repeatedly assured by several Spiritualists that there was in him the making of a magnificent medium; and so he sacrificed himself for the cause, and sat for development.' Every day for six months Dr. Furness sat with a slate for half or threequarters of an hour, and, in addition, constantly wore a bit of magnetized (1) blotting-paper on the top of his head, until he was allowed, by the dispensation of the medium under whose direction he was studying, to wear it around his neck. The paper had to be changed every twelve hours, and the medium received a dollar for each sheet. Although he was promised writing, or at least some zigzag lines, in three weeks at the utmost, at the end of six months 'not a zig nor a zag.'"Let spiritualistic reproaches of investigators, for lack of zeal and patience, be heaped up hereafter until 'ossa becomes a wart.' I care not: my withers are unwrung."

Dr. Furness next experimented with sealed letters. A question carefully sealed was sent to the medium, and the answer to the unopened letter returned. Many mediums were written to. They gave contradictory answers when asked the same question, and in every case the letter had been opened, and mucilage and skill been used to cover up the deception.

Dr. Furness's description of the materializing seances can only be appreciated when read in full. Everywhere he found fraud where he looked for honesty. The fraud is so gross, so easily made to leave its hiding-place and snatch the bait offered by an ingenious question, that it becomes ridiculous.

Professor Fullerton's account of the famous Zoellner investigations with Dr. Slade is a highly valuable contribution. He has personally examined Zoellner's confrères in the investigation, and finds that Zoellner was of unsound mind at the time; that Fechner was partially blind, and relied on Zoellner; that Scheibner was too myopic to see any thing, and was not quite satisfied with the seances; that Weber was old, and did not recognize the disabilities of his associates. On the evidence of these men, -deservedly honored in their own specialties, as they are,—without knowledge of the arts of a conjuror, has rested one of the most famous proofs of the truth of Spiritualism and its connection with the fourth dimension of space.

A device by which Dr. Knerr detected a fraud is too ingenious to be left unnoticed. He arranged a mirror about his person so that it reflected the hands of the medium at work on a slate under the table. He plainly saw the hand open the slate, read the question, and noiselessly write the answer, which the fair medium had the impudence to present to him the next minute as the work of departed spirits.

The mysteries and miracles that shape people's beliefs upon that which is most sacred to the human heart, thus resolve themselves, under the scrutiny of careful scientific observers, into a mass of vulgar frauds and low deceptions. The mystic theories and spiritual messages are disgusting cant;' the medium, a criminal.

The psychological process by which believers are convinced is the key to the secret of the success of Spiritualism: this is the problem that lies closest to the securing of that mental health with which such practices and beliefs are incompatible. If any one will recall the feelings of utter bewilderment on leaving for the first time a good performance of a professional trickster, and will imagine in addition that the things he holds dearest were at stake in the explanation of what he saw, he will easily understand the excited state of mind of a susceptible person on leaving a spiritualistic seance at which he has seen but not understood. If your friend is a believer, and urges your ignorance on to belief, you are apt to yield, and assume that credulous state of mind which accepts all and examines nothing. It is this state of mind that is to be prevented; it is this state of mind that is dangerous to mental sanity, that becomes morbidly hungry for something unusual, something mystic, something

occult. There can be no better check to the spread of this mental temperament (except, of course, a sound training in scientific reasoning) than such a report as this, of sincere, able, scholarly men, anxious to learn, and meeting only with practices for which the law provides the jail.

That these men have not yet exhausted the art of detecting deception is shown by the fact that they are confessedly unable to discover the methods by which a prestidigitateur performed slatewriting tricks in their presence: this needed more training than they as yet possess. But the magician contided his methods to one of the commission, and showed that they were simply tricks. This suggests the final point to be here noticed: this is, that the Spiritualists will have a roundabout way of explaining these frauds. They will say, "That does not prove that real manifestations do not exist." This the commission admit, but it makes it improbable in more ways than one. They claim that their explanations of how the things are done are rational from their point of view. They need the dark because darkness is negative; if the spirit takes on the peculiarities of the medium, that is a habit of the spirits; if the writing does not occur when the slate is looked at, it is because the magnetism of the eye is unfavorable; and so on, and so on. This is perfectly true. There is no proposition so absurd, no fancy so insane, as not to be capable of some kind of support, on the basis of some kind of a theory. But the logic upon which civilization is built is a marvellous network of mutually corroborating laws and observations, multiplying the probabilities of the truth of its conceptions in a geometrical ratio, and similarly dwindling into insignificance the possibility of theories opposed to its fundamental tenets. Of such a character are the explanations offered by the Spiritualists. They are not impossible in an extremely exact, ultiFrom a practical point of view, they are utterly impossible. But, after all, it is not the logic that convinces. It is because this system goes deeper, and appeals to the feelings, that it blinds its adherents to sense and reasoning.

mate sense.

The commission has done its work well, has set an excellent example in recording what they saw accurately (for all turns here, as in jugglers' tricks, upon the apparently most insignificant detail), in subjecting mediums to ingenious tests, in treating them courteously and sympathetically, as well as in exposing them plainly and mercilessly. The present report, though only a preliminary one, should do much to hasten that day which Dr. Furness thinks not far distant, "when the more elevated class of Spiritualists will cast loose from all these physical manifestations, which, even if they be proved genuine, are but little removed from materialism; and eventually materializing seances, held on recurrent days and at fixed hours, will become unknown. JOSEPH JASTROW,

NOTES AND NEWS.

THE New York Electrical Society has decided to give an electrical exhibition in this city during the coming fall in the large exhibition-building of the American Institute. The exhibition will open Sept. 28, and continue to Dec. 3, 1887, and is intended to include all that relates to the science and application of electricity in its broadest sense. No electrical exhibition has ever been held in New York, and it is confidently believed that the one now to be given will attract a large number of visitors, both residents and from other cities. The American Institute has provided ample means to carry out the designs of the society, which is also assured of the co-operation of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

The Political Science Quarterly for June is a splendid number, the articles covering important topics in economics, history, and administrative science. Dr. Seligman's masterly article on the interstate commerce law, an abstract of which was read before the American Economic Association, is the leading article in the number. It is sufficient to say that the paper amply sustains Dr. Seligman's reputation as a master of the railway question in all its phases. Prof. Woodrow Wilson writes on the study of administration; and William M. Sims, chamberlain of New York City, discusses municipal government, making generous use of his knowledge of the details of the municipal machinery of the metropolis. Professor Burgess's paper on the Culturconflict in

Prussia — by the way, why is not the perfectly familiar Culturkampf used in the title, instead of a word which is partly foreign in form, and wholly so in sound?—is the first clear and adequate description in English of that very significant and important movement in Prussia's political history. The book-reviews are as numerous and as well done as usual. We observe that a very severe criticism is passed on the volume on New York in the American Commonwealth' series. Prof. Richmond Smith reviews Prof. H. C. Adams's Public Debts' in a very appreciative manner, describing the book as "careful, scholarly, and extremely suggestive." We observe this sentence, which Professor Smith uses in speaking of the industrial effects of public debts: "Professor Adams's discussion is acute and logical, and, in my opinion, a distinct advance upon the treatment of the same question by Leroy-Beaulieu, the distinguished French financier."

- Some remarkable facts as to the change in the population of Alsace-Lorraine are brought out by the recent publication of the results of the census taken in those provinces in December, 1885. The statistics are published in the Landes Zeitung, the official journal in the provinces. It appears that in December, 1885, the total population was only 1,564,355 as compared with 1,566,670 five years before, a decrease of 2,315 in five years. Classified according to nationality, there were in December, 1885, 1,368,711 natives of Alsace-Lorraine, 151,755 Germans from other parts of the empire, and 43,829 foreigners; whereas in December, 1880, the natives of Alsace-Lorraine numbered 1,418,025, and the immigrants from Germany only 114,797. So in five years the native population has decreased by 49,254, while the immigrants have increased by 36,958. The increasing emigration of the native population explains their falling-off; and the Landes Zeitung estimates, that, if the present rate of diminution continues, the native population will have disappeared entirely in less than thirty years.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

The attention of scientific men is called to the advantages of the correspondence columns of SCIENCE for placing promptly on record brief preliminary notices of their investigations. Twenty copies of the number containing his communication will be furnished free to any correspondent on request.

the journal.

The editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character of Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The writer's name is in all cases required as proof of good faith.

The Total Solar Eclipse of 1886.

THE following brief account is penned in order that it may be published in time to be of service to the observers of the eclipse of 1887.

It was found that by using rapid gelatine plates an exposure of one or two seconds was sufficient to show the details of the inner corona satisfactorily with an ordinary telescope-lens. With a portrait-lens the ratio of whose aperture to its focus was as one to five, one or two seconds' exposure showed the outer corona satisfactorily, as far as a distinct falling-off place in the light. This was at a distance of from 15' to 30' from the limb of the moon. Beyond that the light was very decidedly fainter, and was shown best by exposures with lenses of the same ratio, of from eight to forty seconds. This light extended to from one to two degrees from the moon's limb, was very faint, and seemed analogous in character to the zodiacal light. It was clearly not a mere reflection of the corona in the camera-lenses, as it did not extend over the moon's image, where it would, in that case, have been brightest. Measurements of the actinic brightness of different portions of the corona were made, which will appear in a subsequent paper.

The corona showed the usual short rays of light proceeding from the sun's poles, and from the south-western quadrant a very conspicuous ray, appearing like a hollow cone projected to a distance of some twenty minutes of arc. On one of the long-exposure plates it was noticed that this was crowned by a curious fountain-like structure, - three fine jets, about a minute in diameter, shooting up 35 to 40' from the moon's limb, curving round, and falling back towards the sun. On closer inspection, seven other jets were counted, all more or less well marked, and all proceeding from the summits of bright rays of the corona. Some of these returned towards the sun, but the majority faded away at about 30' distance from the limb. Unfortunately, only one of the plates was taken on

a sufficiently large scale, and with sufficient exposure, to show this phenomenon, and the whole appearance may therefore be due to defects in the gelatine film of that plate. But, as the markings are certainly on the plate, I have ventured to describe them; the more readily, as a somewhat analogous appearance, though on a smaller scale, is represented in Mr. Ranyard's 'Observations made during Total Solar Eclipses' (Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, xli., Plate x.)

Passing from the corona to the prominences, a number of them were seen near the equator, on both sides of the moon; but the most conspicuous one of all was situated in the north-western quadrant. It extended to a height of about one hundred thousand miles, and had apparently a somewhat spiral structure. The spectra of the various prominences were shown very clearly by the prismatic camera. In the equatorial ones the hydrogen and H and K lines were prominent, superposed on a background of continuous spectrum; but in the large prominence the hydrogen lines were all absent, confirming Professor Tacchini's observation of its invisibility both before and after totality.

The H and K lines, however, were strongly marked; and it seems quite probable that numbers of prominences may escape ordinary observation by the spectroscopic method, merely because they shine only by the actinic radiations, and are hence invisible to the eye. The remedy for this difficulty would be, either to use a fluorescent eyepiece, or, better, to photograph them, instead of trusting merely to eye-observations. The position of the maximum density in the continuous spectrum of the prominences was found to be quite different from that of the corona. In the prominences and in the sun it is found to be not far from the G line, while in the corona it lies between G and F. This may indicate, that, besides the gaseous constituent, the corona is composed also of incandescent solid or liquid matter, which, while cooler than the sun, still shines by its own light. In this case, the position of the maximum might give us a hint as to the temperature of the corona.

Photometric measurements of the general light during totality were made, which, roughly stated, indicate a brightness equal to one candle at about 29 inches or 73.5 centimetres distance. Previous observations by Mr. W. O. Ross in 1870 had given 18.5 inches; and by Dr. J. C. Smith in 1878, 51.25 inches. It had been intended to make some observations on the actinic power of the sky during the eclipse, but unfortunately the plates reserved for this purpose were found to have been spoiled by the excessive moisture of the Grenada climate; so that no result was obtained. In some of the longer exposures, however, where a large field was used, portions of the landscape appeared upon the plates, showing that considerable actinic radiation was given out even during the total phase.

A large number of persons observed the shadow-bands, which appeared before and after totality. The general result of their observations indicated that the bands were about five inches wide and eight inches apart, that they were colored like the spectrum, and that they moved with a velocity comparable with that of an express-train; at all events, much faster than a man could run. Before totality the bands lay N. 12° W. and S. 12° E., and travelled west after totality they lay N. 60° E. and S. 60o W., and travelled north-west. The wind during totality blew from the point S. 35° E.: during the partial phases it was blowing from six to nine miles an hour, but fell during the three minutes of totality to between two and four miles. The thermometer ceased rising as totality approached, but afterwards rose more rapidly. The extent of the effect produced on it amounted to .4° C. This figure may seem small, but it must be remembered that the fluctuation between sunrise and noon in these tropical islands in the summer season seldom exceeds two or three degrees.

In general results, the expedition may be said to have proved successful, although one of the most important instruments, the forty-foot photo-heliograph, failed to work, through lack of sunlight previous to totality, which prevented the application of the necessary adjustments to the mirror. It is hoped, however, that this omission will be in part rectified at the present eclipse, as a similar instrument, even better equipped, has been sent in charge of Professor Todd to Japan; and, if the weather favors, some excellent pictures should be the result. W. H. PICKERING.

Harvard Observatory, Cambridge, June 23.

Women.

A LATE correspondent of yours is guilty of a species of bad taste, which happily is rapidly becoming extinct. It was once considered both clever and gentlemanly to speak of women as if they belonged to one of the lower orders of animals, but that period has now quite passed by. Remarks of such a kind are hardly ever met with in English publications, and seldom in those of this country within a certain range of longitude. I happened to see it stated lately in a book on etiquette that it was no longer considered good form to make insulting remarks about women, and, when a principle has reached that organ of distribution, it may be considered that it has already become pretty widely disseminated. The change is an agreeable one, not only to women, but also to the rather numerous class of chivalrous-minded men.

If women are not capable of a very high degree of intelligence, it can at least be maintained that they are capable of a higher degree than Americans. An English woman has written greater novels, and a Russian woman has made more important contributions to pure mathematics, than any American man. Neither women nor Americans have had very great incentives to intellectual work hitherto, but it is quite possible to hope that they will both play a more important rôle in the future than they have done in the past.

If women are more easily frightened than men, it is as easy to attribute it to a more sensitive organization as to any other cause. Poets and musicians are not as cool and collected in the presence of danger as firemen, nor white men as the American Indians. Many people consider that the delicately balanced nervous organization of the horse indicates as high a degree of development as is to be found in more phlegmatic and thick-skinned varieties of animals.

It is not surprising to find that your correspondent's bad taste is equalled by his bad logic. It is seldom that one finds in so short a space so many pretty specimens of unreason:

1. The cockroach, when caught between two hot portions of metal, chose to jump down instead of walking over them. If it had broken its neck, and if the metal had not been so hot as to injure it, this conduct would have turned out to be very foolish; but, in fact, the cockroach ran away unhurt. The highest wisdom could not have dictated a more prudent course of conduct, and there is hence no analogy to a case of jumping from a window in unreasoned terror when there are other and better modes of escape.

2. Because an organized being has reached a stage of development where reasonable conduct may be looked for, it does not follow that none of its actions will be instinctive. Both men and women perform many instinctive actions, a drowning man will instinctively catch at straws, but that does not prove that they are not endowed with reason in addition to instinct.

3. Your correspondent maintains that what would be instinct in women, and hence proof of a low grade of intelligence, is, in the cockroach, "singularly like the operation of reason." But it is no mark of reason having come into play, that conduct looks intelligent to the outsider. If it were, we should have to attribute reason to the Amoeba, which encloses food and not grains of sand, and to the Drosera, which shuts up on bits of meat and not on bits of chalk. The one sure objective test of the action of reason is that different individuals behave differently under the same circumstances, and that test is wanting here. We are expressly told that every one of more than a dozen cockroaches did exactly the same thing. Cockroaches make their constant home by the kitchen range, and there is hardly any source of danger which ancestral experience is more likely to have warned them of than hot metal.

Ancient Scrapers.

L.

A FACT has lately come to my knowledge which may be of interest to archæological students of the ancient stone age, who have frequently expressed surprise that so few of the ancient scrapers, blades, chipped axes, and other cutting implements, show signs of

use.

Lieutenant Stoney, Lieutenant Ray, Nelson, Turner, and others

have sent to the National Museum a large number of modern Eskimo scrapers, and also many specimens of the implements used in chipping and sharpening their scrapers. The latter are of two kinds : 1. A curved handle of walrus ivory, with short pieces of antler lashed in a groove cut in the front of the handle (this form has frequently been figured); 2. A single cylindrical handle of wood, into one end of which an incisor tooth of a beaver has been firmly fixed. Indeed, one or two specimens consist of a portion of the upper jaw with the teeth in place. This tool is called by all collectors a knife-sharpener. Lieutenant Stoney informs me that during his late exploration in Kotzchue Sound he saw the natives using these implements, and says that they keep them always at hand, and spend much time in touching up the edges of these scrapers and other stone cutting-tools, and that the beaver-tooth sharpener is also employed by the ivory-carvers to keep a fresh edge on their metal knives. The variation in the length of scraperblades is due partly to the fact that some of them, when new, are over two inches long, and become worn down by constant sharpening until they are reduced to a mere stub. It will be seen from Lieutenant Stoney's observation that it will be difficult to find in Alaska a scraper-blade showing signs of use, the interest of the artisan depending upon his keeping his edge constantly sharp. O. T. MASON. Washington, June 25.

Volapuk.

grammar

of

I COPY the titlepage of one and a part of another Volapük, before me. Hachette & Co. is a London house, as you will see. The Paris house is Le Soudier. Grammar of Volapük: The Language of the World. For all Speakers of the English Language. Translated and published with the consent of the inventor, Johann Martin Schleyer, by W. A. Seret. Glasgow, Thomas Murray & Sons; London, Whittaker & Co." "International Commercial Language. Abridged Grammar. . . . By Karl Dornbusch. London, Hachette & Co.; Paris, H. Le Soudier." E. A. HORsford. Cambridge, June 25.

Pineal Eye of Lizard.

THE pineal eye is so well developed in the common pine-tree lizard (Sceleporus undulatus) that it may probably seem to warn its owner of the advent of daylight. It is a lenticular, glassy area of the skin of the vertex (about a millimetre in sagittal diameter), surrounded by a yellow border, and having a dark spot in its centre. The dark spot is opaque, caused by a mass of pigment internal to the dermis, set on the extremity of a pineal outgrowth from the brain. The clear area around it is caused by the dermis, which is transparent and free from the pigment which covers it internally in other parts. The eye is covered by an escutcheon-shaped epidermal shield, more transparent in the centre and larger (3 × 3 millimetres) than the normal epidermal scales. The only sign of degeneracy is the central cloudy mass of pigment, like a big cataract. G. MACLOSKIE. Princeton, June 25.

The Charleston Earthquake.

I FEEL thankful to Professor Mendenhall for his forcible criticism of the paper relating to the Charleston earthquake, and fully concur with him in his remarks concerning the uncertainty of the data upon which the insoseismals were drawn. This was commented upon in similar vein in the paper under discussion. He cannot comThe features to which he plain of them more loudly than we did. calls attention (viz., that the curves of high intensity are less sinuous than those of low intensity) had not escaped our attention, and the results of our reflections were these: 1st, The data indicated that the amount of variation of intensity within any zone or annulus generally bears a smaller ratio to the mean intensity of that zone when the mean intensity is high than when it is low (I think this was to be expected, and is intelligible from the nature of the case), hence there ought to be less sinuosity in the inner than in the outer curves; 2d, In order that the amount of sinuosity may be in due proportion in all curves, the density of observation (i.e., number of observations per unit area) should be inversely pro