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properly classed as foods or not. In this regard the much larger series of stimulants denominated alcoholic is that alone which is generally alluded to. As yet, the food value of alcoholic fluids is by no means exhaustively determined, and although we incline to the opinion that the important part played by alcoholic fluids in the process of nutrition must be sooner or later generally admitted, still the food value attributed to the so-called non-alcoholic stimulants, tea, coffee, and cocoa, has been frequently overrated. With out attributing to each of these articles the power of injury which the ignorant and excessive use of the first two indubitably entails, if from no other point of view than that a larger attention has been devoted to the subject of cocoa in these chapters, it must be recorded in favor of that article, that no evidence at present exists of its having caused nervous irritability, and deterioration of tissue consequent upon that state, which have followed as certainly upon the misuse of tea as upon that of opium or ardent spirits.-Votes on Food and its Effects, by G. Overend Drewry, M.D.

FLOWER COLORS.-The London and Provincial Illustrated Newspaper says: One would hardly think that the fragrant violet and the bright-colored iris would ever be utilised in commerce, but it seems that an Italian chemist has just found out that they may be put to some other purpose than that of gladdening the eye and refreshing the nose. They yield, it appears, a very fine blue color, and this is so sensitive to exterior influences, as to render it of considerable value to the analytical chemist. Most people know that one of the best and most delicate tests employed by chemists to ascertain whether a solution is acid or not is to dip into it a piece of blue litmus paper, which at once reddens if the least trace of acidity exists. In like manner the reddened litmus paper may be employed in searching for alkalies, for the paper returns to a blue tint on coming in contact with these. The coloring principle of the violet

and iris is found to be more delicate still than litmus, and for this reason we may expect soon to see phyllocyanin-for so the new color is called-introduced into all our laboratories.

RADIOMETERS.-Mr. Crookes and his radiometers with their remarkable movements continue to engage the attention of scientific men throughout Europe. Professor Wartmann of Geneva, in a series of experiments, has discovered that the motion of the vanes of the little mill can be made to spin direct or inverse at pleasure, or can be entirely neutralised. In the latter case, the rays of two lamps

at unequal distances are concentrated on the vanes, and it is by the difference of distance that the effect is produced. From the general result of his experiments, Professor Wartmann is led to agree with Professor Osborne Reynolds of Owens College, Manchester, that the movement of the whirligig is occasioned by the dilatation of gas (or air) under very low pressure, and that radiation has nothing to do with it. It is impossible to produce a perfect vacuum. There is always a small quantity of air left in the glass apparatus in which the whirligig spins; and the warmth from the light placed near the glass affects this residual air, and occasions the rotation. Professor Challis of Cambridge, in accounting for the phenomenon, says there is "a decrement of ethereal density from the dark towards the bright surface (of the vane), and the atoms, being immersed in this variation of density, will be urged as if the vane were pushed on the black surface." With these explanations in mind, Mr. Crookes and other experimentalists will now be able to proceed on new lines of discovery.

CINCHONA CULTIVATION.-The progress of the cinchona plantations in India has been such that, as we learn from a paper read to the Society of Arts by Mr. Markham, they now yield one hundred and forty thousand pounds of bark year, with a tendency to increase. The advantage of cultivation over the crop of wild bark formerly collected on the slopes of the Andes, is therefore most strikingly demonstrated; and Mr. Markham now advocates a similar experiment with the caoutchouc or india-rubber tree. The demand

for india-rubber increases every year, and the supply--a wild one-diminishes. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the measures already taken to establish plantations of caoutchouc in the hot and moist hill-districts of India, will be persevered with until a sufficient quantity shall be grown, and the quality improved. The best kind of caoutchouc grows in SouthAmerica.

VARIETIES.

BLACKWOOD ON MACAULAY. - Blackwood, contrary to our expectation, reviews Macaulay's life with a feeling thoroughly appreciative and generous. The review concludes thus:He liked the pretty house he was at last persuaded to bestow upon himself, and he liked his title, and he was happy in the family love which had been his highest object through all his life. His latter years, however, were full of suffering, and his last days were clouded by unnecessary alarms about losing his sister, to whom it had become necessary to join her

husband in India. "The fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear;" had Macaulay but known it, he might have been spared that last heaviness. It was he who left her, not she who left him, after all. He died in his library characteristically, with a book before him, in the favorite attitude most familiar to him all his life, having won almost everything a man could wish to win in this world. The end is sad, as almost all ends are. What it would be to have the power of cutting off that last chapter, and setting somehow, as the sun does, in full light, without the appendix of those waning days and this period of death in life! Macaulay's life, however, had been mildly happy during these almost sixty years of his-and wonderfully prosperous, as it was laborious, and honest, and straightforward. We should not feel ourselves justified in giving to his extraordinary talents the rare title of genius. But few have equalled those brilliant and splendid gifts of nature; and none ever cultivated them more assiduously, or used them with more effect. He was not great as a man, though his character has gained, by all the revelations of family affection contained in this book, a new and deeper interest for the million of his readers who knew nothing of this best part of him; but he was a great writer, justly deserving of the highest place in

that literature which comes next after the inspired rank. At variance with almost all his opinions, disliking where he adored, cpposing where he supported, his political adversary, out of reach of all those special influences which form friendship, Maga is not beyond the reach of a generous pleasure in dropping such flowers as are to be gathered on her northern heights, upon Macaulay's grave.

A LADY ON LADIES.-Women have their own place both in nature and society; a place beautiful, important, ennobling, and delightful, if they would but think so, if they would but care to make it so. But with the curse of discontent resting on them from the beginning, they prefer to spoil the work of men rather than to try and perfect their own. Say, of their own special work, what is perfected to such a high degree of excellence as warrants their leaving it to take care of itself while they go to manipulate something else? The servant question in all its branches annoys and harasses every one; but this, essentially a woman's question, a circumstance of that part of life which is organized, administered, and for the larger proportion fulfilled by women, is confessedly in a state of chaos and disorder, paralleled by none other of our social arrangements. The extravagance of living, of dress, of appointments, which is one part of the servant disorder-because maids,

being women, will trick themselves out in finery to attract as much admiration as their mistresses; and men, being animals, will gorge where their masters feast-whence do these come save from women, rulers of society, regulators of modes and fashions as they are? Do the husbands order the dinners or decide on the length of the train, and the fashion of the dress? If the ladies of England chose that the rule of life should be one of noble simplicity, beautiful, artistic, full of meaning and delight, the false ornament and meretricious excess with which we are overweighted now would fall from us, and the servant question among others would get itself put straight. It is a matter of fashion, not necessity, and the mot d'ordre comes from above. But where is the spirit of organization, the resolution to meet difficulties, the courage of self-control, through which alone great movements are made and great reforms led? The women who want to influence the councils of the empire, to have a voice in the making of laws which are to touch and reconcile contending interests, to help in the elucidation of difficult points, the administration of doubtful cases, see the servants standing in a disorganized mob at the gates of the social temple, and are unable to suggest anything whereby they may be reduced to order

and content. But at the same time the women who complain of their own stunted lives, and who demand leave to share the lives and privileges of men, deny the right of their maids to live up to a higher standard so far as they themselves are concerned, and hold the faith that service should mean practically servitude.—Mrs. Lynn Linton in the Belgravia Magazine.

WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE WE ARE SEVEN.-When Wordsworth and Coleridge were at work on the "Lyrical Ballads," Wordsworth one day, being at Nether Stowey, produced the poem known as “We are Seven," all but the first stanza, in a little wood near by. It was based on actual talk with a child met when he had visited Goodrich Castle some years before, the dialogue yielding fit matter for à poem, since it involved suggestion of the natural instinct of immortality. When Wordsworth repeated what he had murmured out to himself in the open air (the manner of producing nine tenths of his poems), and it was written down, he said that it wanted an opening verse, and he should sit down to tea more comfortably if that were supplied. I'll give it you," said Coleridge, and gave at once the first stanza, which-as addressed to a friend, James Tobin, with whom they were on terms of playful friendship—he began “A little child, dear brother Jim."—Cassell's Library of English Literature.

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