ocean.

The manatee, being much hunted for its delicious flesh by the natives, is continually decreasing in numbers, and wiil, in all probability, soon be quite extirpated. Of reptiles, there are two crocodiles, a leather-backed turtle, many serpents, among these the python, of which one was shot just 18 feet in length.

The Rain-tree.—Some travellers in South America, in traversing an arid and desolate tract of country, were struck (says Land and Water) with a strange contrast. On one side there was a barren desert, on the other a rich and luxuriant vegetation. The French consul at Loreto, Mexico, says that this remarkable contrast is due to the presence of the Tamai caspi, or the rain-tree. This tree grows to the height of sixty feet, with a diameter of three feet at its base, and possesses the power of strongly attracting, absorbing, and condensing the humidity of the atmosphere. Water is always to be seen dripping from its trunk in such quantity as to convert the surrounding soil into a veritable marsh. It is 'in summer especially, when the rivers are nearly dried up, that the tree is most active. If this admirable quality of the rain-tree were utilized in the arid regions near the equator, the people there, living in misery on account of the unproductive soil, would derive great advantages from its introduction, as well as the people of more favored countries where the climate is dry and droughts frequent.

GROWTH AND WEight of CHILDREN.-Some interesting studies with reference to the health and growth of children have been made by Dr. Boulton, of the Samaritan Hospital, London; and, instead of taking the average of a large number of children measured once, he adopted the plan of measuring a number of children of normal growth, brought up under average circumstances, many times, thus ascertaining their rate of increase. By this means, the annual rate of growth was found to vary between two and three inches for each child per year. Dr. Boulton believes that when a child varies more than a quarter of an inch annually, or when his weight does not correspond with his weight within a margin of safety-put at seven pounds then it is safe to conclude the child's diet is not good, or possibly some disease is lurking in his system. The curious fact appears that loss of weight always precedes the development of consumption.

STEEL ARMOR FOR SHIPS OF WAR.-Important progress has lately been made in the matter of armor for ships of war. The iron plates used for this purpose have hitherto been of such enormous thickness, in order to withstand the impact of shot of high velocity and immense weight, that ships had to be con

structed of an unwieldy size, in order to bear the weight put upon them. Some experiments carried out with steel-faced armor-plates justify the hope that the old plating of iron will now become a thing of the past, and will be replaced by the newer and far tougher material. Hitherto, the armor has invariably cracked and split in all directions under the impact of the projectile, even if it succeeded in stopping its progress. The new plates not only shatter the projectile itself, but exhibit no wound beyond the dent caused by the collision. The steelfaced plates are made by a process not yet divulged, by Messrs. Cammell & Co. of Sheffield. The experiments on behalf of our own government have been followed by similar trials in France, with the result that the French ships of war now in process of completion will be protected by the new armor. The long-continued battle between big guns and armorplates may therefore, for the present at any rate, be considered over, the victory being in favor of the latter.—Chambers's Journal.

INTERSTITIAL AIR IN PLASTIC SOLIDS.-It is known that gutta-percha in water of 60° to 70° C. becomes plastic; but, according to Professor Kick, of Prague, this soft gutta-percha is elastic to shocks, strokes of a hammer, or the like; while, under constant pressure, it will. take the finest impression. This property, shared with other plastic masses, is due, he says, to inclosed air. Make two equally heavy balls of plastic gutta-percha, by simply working in the hand in water at 70°, and place one of them on pasteboard, under the receiver of an air-pump. While both balls, by reason of their weight, take a bun shape, that under the receiver swells up as the air is exhausted (sometimes to double the original volume), and gets wrinkled. If allowed to harden, then broken, the cross-section resembles bread in texture, while the fracture of the other piece presents only minute cavities. Very dense gutta-percha does not swell under the air-pump; but if brought into mineral oil and evacuated, it gives off air abundantly a long time, and after air is admitted into the receiver the gutta-percha will be found to have lost the property of hardening. A considerable development of air was also had from modelling clay, putty, and kneaded bread under oil in vacuum.

CAUSES OF SHORTSIGHTEDNESS.-From the inquiries conducted by Professor Hermann Cohn, of Breslau, for some sixteen years past, he ventures the assertion that shortsightedness is rarely or never born with those subject to it and almost always is the result of strains sustained by the eye during study in early youth. Myopia, as this ailment is called, is said to be of rare occurrence among pupils of rural or village schools, its frequency increasing in pro

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portion to the demand made upon the eye, as in higher schools and colleges. A better construction of school-desks, an improved typography of text-books, and a sufficient lighting

of class-rooms are among the remedies proposed for abating this malady.

NEW PRODUCT OF THE Gas Retort.-The

ever-increasing importance of the by products of the gas retort-from ammonia to the beautiful aniline dyes-forms a remarkable instance of the value of applied chemistry. A new discovery in connection with these has recently been made by a Mr. Sanders of St. Petersburg. By a mixture of coal-tar, hemp-oil, linseed-oil, spermaceti, sulphur, and some other ingredients, he has been able to produce a material having all the properties of india-rubber without its disadvantages. It will bear extremes of heat and cold without injury, is very elastic and tenacious, and unaltered by long exposure to climatic influences. This last property would point to its application as an insulator for telegraphic purposes; and we shall doubtless soon hear of some trials of its capability

for this work.

A GIGANTIC MAGNET.-An electro-magnet of enormous dimensions has lately been made by Herren von Feilitzsch and Holtz for the University of Greifswald. The case is formed of twenty-eight iron plates bent into horseshoe shape, and connected by iron rings so as to form a cylinder 195 mm. in diameter. The height is 125 ctm.; the total weight 628 kilogr. The magnetizing helix consists of insulated copper plates and wires having a total weight of 275 kilogr. With fifty small Grove elements the magnet will fuse in two minutes 40 grammes of Wood's metal in the Foucault experiment. The plane of polarization is rotated in flint glass after a single passage, etc. The core of the largest magnet hitherto known, that of Plücker, weighed 84 kilogr. and the wire 35 kilogr.

A NOVEL TAPER.-M. Friedel has introduced a new liquid hydrocarbon, which, according to recent experiments, seems to be possessed of extraordinary qualities. It boils at one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, gives a brilliant white light, unaccompanied by heat; and the slightest puff of wind will extinguish it in case of accidental ignition. The corner of a pockethandkerchief, or even the finger, can be dipped into it, lighted, and used as a temporary torch without any injury to the novel wick. Owing to the cold produced by the rapid evaporation of the liquid, it would thus seem possible, by means of this new agent, to make one finger serve as a taper while stealing a letter with the others.

MISCELLANY.

How RUSSIA IS GOVERNED.-In directing assisted by our great councils, who superintend the affairs of this vast Empire the Czar is the various departments, but whose power emanates solely from the head of the State, and can be exercised solely through him. The GovRussia, but Finland enjoys a separate and ernment of Poland is now merged in that of more liberal organization, under a Governor and a Senate partly nominated and partly elected by the people at large. Since the days of Nicholas, when everything in the shape of reform stagnated, the Empire has greatly advanced. Law-courts have been established in all parts of the Empire, and if the officials are notoriously corrupt and lax, this is mainly owing to the people themselves being wanting in foresight, firmness, energy, or that apprecispeedily force the inefficient officials into a betation of the gifts vouchsafed them, which would

ter train of work. Altogether, European Russia is divided into sixty governments or viceroyalties, each of which is a kind of autonomy administered by an elaborate machinery of selfgovernment, and enjoying, in the case of the nobles and the peasants, an amount of freedom and independence strangely in contrast with the autocratic system under which the Empire at large is ruled.—Countries of the World.

How WE POISON OURSELVES. Bernard, the great French toxicologist, made a series of experiments to illustrate, or rather to demonstrate, what bad air will do for us and what we can do with it. His object was not to prove that bad air was poison, but that it was a poison which we are able to take to a great and deleterious extent by gradual and continued doses. He proved it thus: He introduced a sparrow into a glass globe, all the apertures of which were hermetically sealed. The sparrow seemed lively enough for an hour, but then evidently suffered from the ill effects of breathing air that had already passed through its lungs. When a second hour had elapsed Bernard introduced a second sparrow into the same globe. It seemed stunned, and in the lapse of a few minutes died. The original bird was left in for an hour longer, when it dropped and fell. It was taken out apparently dead, but under the influence of fresh air and sunshine recovered. M. Bernard, in the interests rather of science than of the sparrow, cruelly restored it to the globe, when almost instantly it tottered and died. The application of this to the human subject is obvious enough. We are, at must English meetings and places of amusement, in the position of that first sparrow. We start with a fair field, and no favor. only lit just before the public are admitted; in

The gas is

the dining-room the windows have been open till the guests arrive. In both something like hermetical sealing takes place, and there is gradual asphyxiation. If it were sudden, people would die, as the second sparrow died; but being gradual, they get indurated like the first sparrow. They pant and gasp, and say the heat is intolerable, but they are able to stand it. It is not till the next morning that the headache asserts itself.-Fireside.

OVERWORK AND NERVOUS EXHAUSTION.

as

This

There is no disease so insidious, nor when fully developed so difficult to cure, as that species of nervous degeneration or exhaustion produced by nightwork or long hours. It is easy to understand how such a state of prostration may be induced. The brain and the nervous system have been very aptly compared to a galvanic battery in constant use to provide a supply of electric fluid for consumption within a given time. As long," says a recent writer, supply and demand are fairly balanced, the functions which owe their regular and correct working to the fluid are carried on with precision; but when, by fitful and excessive demands carried far beyond the means of supply, the balance is not only lost, but the machine itself is overstrained and injured-disorder at first and disease afterward are the result. illustrates pretty clearly the condition of a wellbalanced brain and nervous system, supplying without an effort all the nervous force required in the operations of the mind and body, so long as its work is in proportion to its powers, but if embarrassed by excessive demands feebly and fitfully endeavoring to carry on these mental and physical operations over which it formerly presided without an effort.' The symptoms of nervous prostration are exceedingly painful; we can afford to pity even the man of pleasure, who has by his own foolish conduct induced them, but much more so the brain-worker, who has been burning the midnight oil in the honest endeavor to support himself, and probably a wife and family, with respectability in life He has made a mistake for which we can readily forgive him. In the pleasurable excitement of honest toil he has forgotten that the supply of work cannot be regulated by the demand or need for it, but by the power to produce it. He has been living on his capital as well as the interest thereof, and when he finds the former failing-when he finds he has no longer the strength to work as he used to do, and starvation itself probably staring him in the face if he ceases to toil, why the very thought of coming collapse tends only to hasten the catastrophe, and reason itself may totter and fall before the continued mental strain.

Probably the first sign of failing nervous energy is given by some of the large organs of the body; it may be functional derangement of the heart, with fluttering or palpitation, or intermittent pulse, and shortness of breath in ascending stairs or walking quickly. The stomach may give timely warning, and a distaste for food, or loss of appetite, with acidity, flatulence, and irregularity of the bowels, may point to loss of vitality from waste unrepaired. Or brain symptoms may point out to the patient that things are going wrong. He may not find himself able to work with his usual life

and activity; he may have fits of drowsiness, heaviness, or loss of sleep itself. This latter or transient attacks of giddiness, or pain, or would be a very serious symptom indeed, for in sleep not only are the muscular and nervous for the time being a cessation of waste itself; tissues restored and strengthened, but there is thy man, it is much more so to him whose and if sleep be essential to the ordinary heal

Long

mental faculties have been overtasked. hours and night-work lead to loss of sleep, and loss of sleep may lead to insanity and death. Loss of memory, whether transient or general, is a sure sign that the brain has lost its power of healthy action, and needs rest and nutrition to restore it. Irritability of temper, and fits of melancholy, both point in the same direction, to an exhausted nervous system. Now I may safely say that there are very many thousands of brain-workers in these islands who are suffering, sadly and it may be silently suffering, from the effects of excessive toil and over mental strain. To warn such that they are positively shortening their lives, and that they cannot have even the faintest hopes of reaching anything like an old age, is only to perform part of my duty as medical adviser. I should try to point out some remedy for the evil. To bid them cease to work would, in a great many cases, be equivalent to telling them to cease to live. They must work, or they Well, but there is one thing that all can do, they can review, remodel, and regulate their mode and system of living.-Cassell's Magazine.

cannot eat.

DESOLATION.

IN fiercest heat of Indian June, I rode
Across an arid waste of burning sand,
At mid-day; all around the lonely land
Seemed desert, and in shrunken channel flowed
The river; overhead, a sky that glowed,

Not deeply blue, but wan with lurid glare.
The tyrant Sun, with fixed, unwinking stare,
Veiled by no cloudlet, in mid-heaven abode,
And crushed all Nature with his blinding ray;
No living thing was to be seen, but one
Huge alligator; on a sandbank prone
The loathly saurian, basking and serene,
Grim master of that grim, unlovely scene,
Fit type of utter desolation, lay.
H. C. I.

It lies in the nature of the case, that a subject so comprehensive as that which I have undertaken to bring before you, can only be dealt with, in the limits to which I must confine myself, somewhat superficially. My aim is not so much to discuss anything fully myself, as to suggest points which may be profitably discussed by you. I content myself this evening with the humble but useful functions of that stone which exsors ipsa secandi" may yet serve to give a keener edge the polished weapons of other intellects.

If I were to hazard a more ambitious comparison, I would venture to compare my task to that of Bacon, when, in his Advancement of Learning," he surveys in each

A paper read at a Conference of the Christian Evidence Society at Sion College, June 16th, 1881.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIV., No. 4

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region of knowledge what had been already achieved with greater or less success, and what was noted by him as still defective. The conflict of which I have to speak is no new one. It has been carried on in our own country under various forms and in various phases from the days of Hume and Gibbon, Butler and Paley, perhaps even, going back for another century, from those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury on the one side, and Grotius on the other. It may not be without profit to inquire what have been the results of the long campaign; what outposts have been lost or won; how far we may yet go round the walls of that Zion which we hold to be the city of God, and count its towers and bulwarks, with the feeling that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, that its defenders have been both wise 28

and brave, and that its sentinels have not been sleeping at their posts.

The character of the warfare has, indeed, in some respects, altered. It has become on both sides more civilized and more courteous. The combatants do not enter battle as in the war-paint and with the war-cries of barbaric tribes, but for the most part in the temper of those ancient knights who before and after they fought with lance or sword exchanged their salutations of mutual kindliness and respect. * We seldom now speak of those who are unable to accept the faith of Christendom as an Infidel party. We use the term Theist rather than Deist, because the latter carries with it an offensive connotation from which the former is free. Though many men of science hold premises which logically lead to Atheism, no one, I suppose, except the junior member for Northampton, is called "an Atheist. We do not assume that all unbelief must spring from immorality of life, or look on doubters or assailants as consciously enemies of truth and goodness. We do not back up our arguments with anathemas. There has been, I need scarcely add, a corresponding change on the other side also. The religion of Christ is no longer treated, as in the coarser unbelief of Voltaire and Paine, as the work of priestcraft, and its preachers as impostors. For the most part, though there are some exceptions, we find the character of Christ regarded with reverential admiration, and the Christian Church treated as an important factor in the history of European culture. Renan ("Vie de Jesus,' c. xxvii.) speaks of the former as the noblest personality that has appeared in the history of the world-Çakya Mouni, perhaps, excepted." Before such a demi-god as this we, in our feebleness, may well fall down and worship.'

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some

"Whatever may be the unlooked-for phenomena of the future, Jesus will not be surpassed." John Stuart Mill (Essays on Religion," pp. 253-4) is impressed with that character as thing unique in the history of the world, beyond the power of any such writers as the Evangelists to have imagined for themselves. The earnest author of the "Enigmas of Life," (Greg, "Enigmas,' p. 202) admires Him as "the best and noblest of all the sons of men whom God has raised up with special gifts and for a special work. Even Strauss ("Leben Jesu," ed. 1864, p. 625), in the midst of his sweeping attacks on the credibility of the Gospel history, speaks of the Jesus of whom they tell as the man" in whom the deeper consciousness of humanity, the Divine Wisdom, first developed itself, as a power determining his whole life and being. Matthew Arnold has made the phrases which speak of the "sweet reasonableness" of the Christ, of the "secret" of His power to bless, as household words among us, and looks on the Bible as the most precious of all books, the noblest of all literature." Tyndall (" Belfast Address," p. 7) records his belief that "it is not in hours of clearness and vigor that the doctrine of Material Atheism commends itself to his mind, that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears as offering no solution of the mystery in which we dwell."

1

It is, I think, a question worth discussing, whether the change of toue which I have noted, works for good or evil on the interests of Truth. Are the attacks more dangerous because they are more insidious? Are these fair words like the lip-homage of him who betrayed the Son of Man with a kiss? Are we tempted to a temper of indifference to the inheritance, the depositum, of Truth, of which we are the witnesses and the trustees. Shall we say