P. L. SCLATER.

Secretary of the Zoological Society.

But in order to attain this desirable "royalty" thus levied would no doubt object our American friends will have increase the price of seal-skin jackets. to come to terms with other nations. But seal-skin jackets are not a necessary Without going into the diplomatic ques- luxury, and an additional pound added tion of what rights passed to the United to their cost would not be of material States by the cession of Alaska, I have consequence to the ladies who wear sufficient confidence in the common them. As a naturalist, therefore, I sense of the arbitrators now sitting at think that the fur-seal should be considParis to believe that they will never ered in the light of a domestic animal, give in to the argument that Behring's and that all "pelagic sealing" should Sea is a mare clausum, and that Amer- be stopped, while the owners of the ica, by the cession of Alaska, has ac- sealeries should at the same time pay to quired the right to keep all other nations the other nations interested a reasonout of it. This is a position that can able compensation for the valuable hardly be maintained in the face of the privileges thus obtained. British evidence to the contrary. The absolute prohibition of "pelagic" sealing which is demanded by the Americans, and which ought to be carried out P.S.Since this article was written in order to ensure the continued exist- I have been able to consult the "Apence of the fur-seals, can only be ob- pendix" to the "United States Case tained by mutual arrangement among on the Behring's Sea Arbitration Questhe parties interested. The fur-seal of tion, which for some reason has not Alaska (practically now the only re- been reprinted in the series of bluemaining member of the group of fur- books presented to Parliament, although seals) should be declared to be, to all it contains the documents and evidence intents and purposes, a domestic ani- on which the "Case" is based. I find, mal, and its capture absolutely prohib-with great satisfaction, that some of the ited except in its home on the Pribilof most distinguished zoologists of Europe Islands. Looking to the great value of who have been consulted on the subthe privilege thus obtained, America might well consent to pay to Great Britain and her colonists some compensation for the loss of the right of "pelagic" sealing; the amount of this compensation would be fairly based upon the number of fur-seals annually killed on the Pribilof Islands. The

ject (M. A. Milne-Edwards of Paris, Dr. G. Hartlaub of Bremen, Dr. R. Collett of Christiania, Professor Lilljeborg of Stockholm, Dr. A. T. von Middendorf of Dorpat, Count T. Salvadori of Turin, and Dr. Giglioli of Florence) agree nearly with me in the views put forward in this paper. - P. L. S.

THE COLORATION OF PRESERVED FOODS. - The time-honored method of imparting a beautiful green color to preserved foods consists in treating the articles to be colored with a solution of copper sulphate, which is quickly poured off and the last traces removed by repeatedly washing with water; the preserved articles are then boiled and the vessels containing them are soldered up. The coloration results from the formation of the copper salt of an acid derived from phyllocyanin. This body is very inert, is insoluble in water, hydrochloric acid, and acetic acid, soluble in alcohol, and indifferent to the action of light, As the quan

tity is quite small, only a few milligrammes in a hundred grammes, the author is disposed to tolerate the practice. The green coloring matter of leaves, etc., is extremely sensitive both to light and to acids of every kind. In order to hinder its decolorization, sodium carbonate is commonly added to green vegetables before cooking, by which treatment free acids are neutralized, and also such salts as potassium acid oxalate. Not only is the action of the acids upon the chlorophyl thus prevented, but a relatively stable sodium salt, green in color, is formed, enhancing the effect.

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To flush their tips, till, to the warmer And some day when we sleep, her root will

Her voice brought memories of tears and Knee deep in the strand the paddock-pipes

From The Fortnightly Review.
THE INTERSTELLAR ETHER.

BY PROFESSOR OLIVER LODGE, F.R.S.

We

in terms of the more known, but motion and force are postulated in physics as the completely known, and no atTHERE is, I believe, a general ten-tempt is made to press the terms of an dency to underrate the certainty of explanation further than that: a dynam, some of the convictions to which natu- ical theory is recognized as being at ral philosophers have gradually, in the once necessary and sufficient. course of their study of nature, been impelled; more especially when those convictions have reference to something intangible and occult. The existence of a continuous space-filling medium, for instance, is probably regarded by most educated people as a more or less fanciful hypothesis, a figment of the scientific imagination, a mode of collating and welding together a certain number of observed facts, but not as in any physical sense a reality, as water and air are realities.

I am speaking purely physically. There may be another point of view from which all material reality can be denied, but with these questions physics proper has nothing to do; it accepts the evidence of the senses, regarding them as the tools or instruments wherewith man may hope to understand one definite aspect of the universe, and it leaves to philosophers equipped from a different armory the other aspects which the material universe may-nay, must possess.

Now, it must be admitted at once that of very few things have we at present such a dynamical explanation. have no such explanation of matter, for instance, or of gravitation, or of electricity, or ether, or light. It is always conceivable that of some things no purely dynamical explanation will ever be forthcoming, because something more than motion and force may perhaps be essentially involved. Still, physics is bound to push the search for such an explanation to its furthest limits; and so long as it does not hoodwink itself by vagueness and mere phrases a feebleness against which its leaders are mightily and sometimes cruelly on their guard, preferring to risk the rejection of worthy ideas rather than permit a semi-acceptance of any thing fanciful and obscure - so long as it vigorously probes all phenomena within its reach, seeking to reduce the physical aspect of them to terms of motion and force, so long it must be upon a safe track; and, by its failure to deal with certain phenomena, it will learn- it already begins to suspect, its leaders must have long surmised the...... existence of some third, as yet unknown, category, by incorporating which the physics of the future may rise to higher flights and an enlarged scope.

By a physical "explanation" is meant a clear statement of a fact or law in terms of something with which daily life has made us familiar. We are all chiefly familiar, from our youth up, with two apparently simple things, motion and force. We have a direct sense for both these things. We do not understand them in any deep way, prob- I have said that the things of which ably we do not understand them at all, we are permanently conscious are mobut we are accustomed to them. Mo-tion and force, but there is a third thing. tion and force are our primary objects of experience and consciousness, and in terms of them all other less familiar occurrences may conceivably be stated and grasped; and whenever a thing can be so clearly and definitely stated, it is said to be explained or understood; we are said to have "a dynamical theory" of it. Anything short of this may be a provisional or partial theory, an explanation of the less known

which we have likewise been all our lives in contact with, and which we know even more primarily, though perhaps we are so immersed in it that our knowledge realizes itself later, — viz., life and mind. I do not pretend to define these terms, or to speculate as to whether the things they connote are essentially one and not two. They exist, in the sense in which we permit ourselves to use that word, and they are

not yet incorporated into physics. Till | anything simpler than itself have hiththey are, they must remain more or less erto only resulted in confusion. By vague; but how or when they can be "force " is meant primarily muscular incorporated is not for me even to con- action not accompanied by motion. Our jecture. sense of this teaches us that space, though roomy, is not empty; it gives us our second scientific inference what we call "matter."

Still, it is open to a physicist to state how the universe appears to him, in its broad character and physical aspect. If I were to make the attempt I should Again we do not stop at this bare infind it necessary for the sake of clear-ference. By another sense, that of

ness to begin with the simplest and pain, or mere sensation, we discrimimost fundamental ideas, in order to nate between masses of matter in apparillustrate by facts and notions in uni-ently intimate relation with ourselves, versal knowledge the kind of process which essentially occurs in connection with the formation of higher and less familiar conceptions, in regions where the common information of the race is so slight as to be useless. Beginning with our most fundamental sense I should sketch the matter thus:

We have muscles and we can move. I cannot analyze motion, I doubt if the attempt is wise, it is a simple immediate act of perception, a direct sense of free unresisted motion. We may, indeed, move without feeling it, and that teaches us nothing, but we may move so as to feel it, and this teaches us much, and leads to our first scientific inference, viz., space; that is, simply, room to move about. We might have had a sense of being jammed into a full or tight-packed universe; but we have not; we feel it to be a spacious

and other or foreign lumps of matter;
and we use the first portion as a meas-
ure of the extent of the second. We
proceed also to subdivide our idea of
matter, according to the varieties of
resistance with which it appeals to our
muscular sense, into four different
states, or "elements" as the ancients
called them: viz., the solid, the liquid,
the gaseous, and the ethereal. The
resistance experienced when we en-
counter one or other of these forms of
material existence varies from some-
thing very impressive
the solid,
through something nearly impalpable
- the gaseous, up to something entirely
imaginative, fanciful, or inferential, viz.,
the ether. The ether does not in any
way affect our sense of touch (i.e., of
force); it does not resist motion in the
slightest degree. Not only can our
bodies move through it, but much larger
bodies, planets and comets, can rush
through it at what we are pleased to call
a prodigious speed (being far greater
than that of an athlete) without show.
ing the least sign of friction. I myself,
indeed, have lately been trying delicate
experiments to see whether a whirling
mass of iron could to the smallest ex-
tent grip the ether and carry it round,
with so much as a thousandth part of
its own velocity. The answer is, no;
I cannot find a trace of mechanical
connection between matter and ether,
of the kind known as viscosity or fric-

But our muscular sense is not limited | tion. to the perception of free motion; we constantly find it restricted or forcibly resisted. This muscular action impeded is another direct sense, that of 66 force," ," and attempts to analyze it into

Why, then, if it is so impalpable, should we assert its existence? May it not be a mere fanciful speculation, to be extruded from physics as soon as possible? If we were limited for our