dérived a peculiar pleasure from the compositions that he made from songs printed in Chaos. One of these has become a popular folk-song, and it always moves me deeply when I hear it. During its second year there appeared in our journal three letters from Mendelsohn to Goethe. Naturally it was an event of great importance to us when Goethe himself sent in material. The letters from his friends, which he handed to Ottilie for publication, were not permitted to leave his hands until they had been subjected to careful revision; he erased unnecessary parts, shortened the sentences, and frequently changed the expression. Poems that came into his hands received similar treatment. Often he destroyed more than half the stanzas; and if the verses were altogether too bad, he would shake his head, growl, and lay them aside. Of such products of our dilettante muse as passed muster with him, Ottilie would laughingly say: We have snatched them from purgatory."

When, at last, our sojourning musikant announced that his departure, several times delayed, must be delayed no longer, the sorrow was great. He was required to promise that he would come again, that he would write, that he would send songs which would restore him to us. Ulrike von Pogwisch consumed a whole evening in cutting out silhouettes of Mendelsohn's features, which she distributed among us. It was a clear, beaming day when he went away. His carriage was filled with roses, which we had thrown to him. Ottilie and Ulrike were his escort. And so he departed from Weimar, a child of the sun. He left behind him a city of regretful friends -not one enemy.

When I met him again, many years afterward, in Berlin, the smiling vision of spring no longer shone from his countenance. But neither autumnal storms nor wintry tempests had beaten away the essential features; and they never arrested his sunny destiny. His playing was more sedate, more quiet, and the passionate fantasies of the Weimar days were heard no more. In recalling the past his eyes lightened and he said to me in tones of profoundest conviction: Without Weimar, without Goethe, who knows what would have come out of me!"

СОВ

WILLIAM COBBETT.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

Macmillan's Magazine, London, December. YOBBETT in his lifetime was known in both the Old World and the New. Born in 1762, at Farnham, England, in a humble rank of life-his father being a small farmer, quite uneducated, and not much in means or position above a laborer -he led a varied career until 1792, when he determined to go to the United States. There, at Philadelphia and elsewhere, he passed the next seven years. These years were of a very lively character, for Cobbett was bound to quarrel with some, body wherever he lived. He must have always been fighting about something. At last he fell into a non-political quarrel with a certain quack doctor named Rush, who got Cobbett cast in heavy damages for libel. These damages were paid by subscription, but the affair disgusted Cobbett so much that in 1800 he sailed for England.

There he remained for seventeen years, continuing his polemics, until, in a criminal prosecution for libel, he was condemned to pass two years in Newgate, and pay a fine of a thousand pounds. After this he thought better of the United States, and in 1817 returned thither, establishing himself on a farm on Long Island. Two years residence there was enough for Cobbett, and, in 1819, when not far short of sixty, he went back to his native land to spend the sixteen years of life which remained to him. His pugnacity did not diminish. Nevertheless, by being prosecuted for his utterances during the agitation about the Reform Bill-the jury having disagreed-he gained sufficient popularity, after the Bill was passed, to get elected to Parliament, where he sat until his death in 1835.

For many years before his election he had indulged in countless gibes and sneers at Parliament under the name of Collective Wisdom. If medical opinion is right, however, Collective Wisdom had the last laugh; for its late hours and confinement seemed to have more to do with his death than disease.

To acquaint oneself properly with the works of Cobbett is no child's play. It requires some money, a great deal of time, still more patience, and a certain freedom from superfineness. The total of the works is huge; for Cobbett's industry and facility of work were both appalling, and while his good work is constantly disfigured by rubbish, there is hardly a single parcel of his rubbish in which there is not good work. His bibliography comprises seventy-four articles. Of these, after discarding the: State Trials, the Parliamentary Debates, and the thirty years; of the Register, there is still left a formidable number.

Let it be added that this vast mass is devoted almost impartially to as vast a number of subjects, that it displays throughout the queerest and (till you are well acquainted with it) the most incredible mixture of sense and nonsense, folly and wit, ignorance and knowledge, good temper and bad temper, sheer egotism and sincere desire to benefit the country. Cobbett has written upon politics and upon economics, upon history, ecclesiastical and civil, upon grammar, cookery, gardening, woodcraft, standing armies, population, ice-houses, and almost every other conceivable subject, with the same undoubting confidence that he is, and must be, right. In what plain men still call inconsistency there never was his equal.

A very shrewd man naturally, and by no means an ill-informed man in some ways, there was no assertion too wildly contradictory of facts, no assumption too flagrantly opposed to common sense, for him to make, when he had an argument to further or a craze to support. Only mention Jews, Scotchmen, the National Debt, the standing army, pensions, poetry, tea, potatoes, larch trees, or a great many other things, and Cobbett becomes a mere, though a very amusing, maniac. Let him meet in one of his peregrinations or merely remember in the course of a book or article, some magistrate who had given a decision unfavorable to him some twenty years before, some lawyer who took a side against him, some journalist who opposed his pamphlets, and a torrent of half humorous, but wholly vindictive Billingsgate follows; while if the luckless one has lost his estate, or in any way come to misfortune meanwhile, Cobbett will cheer, and whoop, and triumph over him like an Indian squaw over a hostile brave at the stake.

Mixed with all this you shall find such plain, shrewd common sense, such an incomparable power of clear exposition of any subject that the writer himself understands, such homely but genuine humor, such untiring energy, and such a hearty desire for the comfort of everybody who is not a Jew, or a jobber, or a tax-eater, as few public writers have ever displayed. And (which is the most important thing for us) you shall also find sense and nonsense alike, rancorous and mischievous diatribes, as well as sober discourses, politics, as well as trade-puffery (for Cobbett puffed his own wares unblushingly), all set forth in such a style as not more than two other Englishmen, whose names are Defoe and Bunyan, can equal.

Like theirs, it is a style wholly natural and unstudied. It is often said, and he himself confesses, that, as a young man, he gave his days and nights to the reading of Swift. Except, however, in the absence of adornment, and the uncompromising plainness of speech, there is really very little resemblance between them, and what there is is due chiefly to Cobbett's following of the Drapier's Letters, where Swift, admirable as he is, clearly uses a falsetto. For one thing, the main characteristic of Swift-the perpetual, unforced, unflagging irony which is the blood and life of his style-is utterly absent from Cobbett. On the other hand, if Cobbett imitated little, he was imitated much. As a whole he is not imitable; the very reasons which gave him his style forbade another to borrow it. In most respects Cobbett is only a lesson, a memory, and an example, which are all rather dead things. In respect of his own native literary genius, he is still a thing alive and delectable.

HAMLET ONCE MORE.

CHARLES H. BURR, JR.

Poet-Lore, Philadelphia, December.

'HY is it that the criticism of three centuries has been unable to agree as to the character of Hamlet? No such difficulty has been found in the case of Lear or Othello or Macbeth. Surely the suspicion is engendered that the trouble may lie, not in the critics' work, but in their method of work. And this is the very condition of things. Two facts, seemingly indisputable, have been ignored in the study of Hamlet," and the conclusions thus reached are, therefore, of but little value. This is a bold statement, but my purpose here is to establish these facts as worthy principles of criticism, and to illustrate the value of their use in this regard.

First. Shakespeare wrote his plays not for the nineteenth century critic to study in his library, but for the seventeenth century play-goer to listen to in his theatre. Shakespeare conceived the character of Hamlet for representation on the stage, and, great in his simplicity, he must have intended the seventeenth century play-goer to grasp his conception, perhaps not in details, but certainly in its large relations. I cannot believe that Shakespeare did not intend his hearers to know whether Hamlet's madness was real or feigned, whether his will was strong or weak. In view of these considerations we must, if we would arrive at Shakespeare's conception, first discover what would be the natural conception of the seventeenth century play-goer.

In the old Greek drama, the audience was already acquainted with the story of the tragedy before them. The condition of affairs is, to a great extent similar in the case of "Hamlet," although the story was by no means held so sacred as Greek tradition. Still the English knew of the murder of Hamlet's father, they knew of his mother's indecent marriage, and they had read that the Prince Hamlet, perceiving himself to be in danger of his life counterfeiting the madman.

man,

I perchance, hereafter, shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on.

They heard from Horatio no aside of pity for his friend, they saw that he believed Hamlet to mean just what he said, and they found, in this respect, no departure by Shakespeare from old tradition. Beyond reasonable doubt they expected to listen while "Hamlet, in this sorte, counterfeiting the maddemade such, and so fitte answeres, that a wise man would soone have judged from what spirite so fine an invention might proceede." They found a little farther on, their expectations realized, as it seemed to them, when Hamlet satirized Polonius, and perplexed Rosencranz and Guildenstern. And they laughed at the old counselor when he muttered, "Tho' this be madness, yet there is method in 't."

I believe that this outline contains Shakespeare's idea regarding Hamlet's madness, for I believe that Shakespeare generally meant what he said, and this, as I see it, is what he said to the seventeenth century playgoers.

The second matter in dispute is whether Hamlet's will was strong or weak; whether he was naturally bold and quickwitted or irresolute and speculative, is briefly the matter in dispute. Often in a novel, a character is described to us by the author. We recognize that he is speaking in his own person, and we can, if we wish, compare his description with the character as it afterwards reveals itself to us, in the pages of the book. The novel is the offspring of the drama, and in the soliloquy we are often very near to the playwright himself: the veil is very thin, and it almost seems as if we were listening to him.

Our second principle therefore is wherever a character utters words in soliloquy, setting forth his own or another's nature, there is contained therein (in the absence of a contrary intimation) the playwright's conception of the nature revealed. I propose to consider the bearing of this principle on the much-disputed question of Hamlet's character. We wish first to know what sort of a man Shakespeare intended to make Hamlet. And so, following our second principle, we turn to his numerous soliloquies. In them, Hamlet again and again utters words which apparently lay bare his nature. He exclaims: Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I !

Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,-

A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,
And over three parts coward,—I do not know
Why yet I live to say, "This thing's to do,"

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength and means,
To do 't.

When Shakespeare's audience saw a character come forward alone upon the stage, and heard him speak such words, they must have considered him as a man speculative in temperament and weak in will.

I have tried to present two principles which I think should govern "Hamlet" criticism. I will not attempt to hide my confidence in their value, though I cannot hope that I have never drawn a wrong conclusion in the application of these principles to the play. So in all sincerity I make use of Professor Dowden's words: “ Let us not too readily assume that we 'know the stops' of Hamlet that we can pluck out the heart of his mystery.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

THE ANALYSIS OF WATER TO DETERMINE ITS WHOLESOMENESS.

W

GABRIEL Roux.

Revue Scientifique, Paris, November 7.

HEN bacteriological analysis of water took rank among scientific researches and could be considered as really trustworthy, some enthusiastic and too exclusive microbiologists, like certain other hygienists, too narrow pathogenists, cried victory in honor of the biologists, and thenceforward regarded with profound disdain the work of chemists, who alone up to that time had been consulted as to whether a certain drinking water was or was not wholesome.

The chemical analysis of water, said these microbiologists, has had its day; it will no longer be of any use save to mask the ignorance of chemists as to the true qualities of potable

water; it is absolutely incapable of instructing us as to the etiological rôle which water may play in the transmission of epidemic maladies.

To this declaration of war the chemists replied immediately by arguments equally exaggerated, often even with as little foundation, and the arms which they used were often supplied them by the relative incapacity of the new science, and also, it must be admitted, by the discoveries of the bacteriologists themselves.

How many pathogenous microbes, truly allied to any infectious malady whatever by incontestable etiological or pathogenical relations are you acquainted with, asked the chemists, and what importance can be attached to the presence of a number more or less considerable of hurtful bacteria in drinking water, when it appears from the labors of Wolffhügel, Meade-Bolton, and several others, that many micro-organisms, noxious or innocuous, can multiply themselves with almost incredible rapidity in all water, including the purest, and even in distilled water?

"

To these two decidedly embarrassing questions others can be added: Are you always quite sure of the microbes thought to be pathogenic that you have found in the water? Is this colony of microbes which you show me, some of the bacilli of Eberth, for example, or is the colony but a collection of pseudo-typic bacilli, without any pathogenic signification whatever? And if this last question be answered in the affirmative, is the bacillus of Eberth really the agent of dothienenteritis?"

It must be confessed that it is not without reason that the chemists put these questions to the bacteriologists, who have the misfortune to have among them too often people inflamed with an enthusiasm lacking in reflection, and too hasty in their conclusions.

It seems almost incredible that in science, as in all other things, two truths cannot be admitted at the same time, and that it is necessary for one of them to drive out the other. To appreciate the good or bad quality, innocuous or hurtful, of drinking water, a single method, a sole characteristic, is not sufficient, and it is wise to use all means of examination, even the smallest.

We ought not to neglect the study of the plants growing in water-a study in less favor than formerly, but still not without use. It has been long settled that watercress growing in water is some pledge of its potability, and that, on the contrary, duckweed is to be regarded as an indication of danger. If we pay attention to the plants which grow in water, how much the more should we respect the analysis of chemists? Of this, microbiology should be considered an indispensable auxiliary. It gives us the opportunity to add new knowledge to that which we possessed before. It cannot be substituted for chemistry, neither can chemistry be substituted for microbiology.

For my own part, microbiologist though I am, if I wanted to know, for the sake of my own health, about the qualities of water I would have to drink, I should begin by obtaining the services of a chemist to analyze the water, at the same time that I was proceeding with a bacteriological examination. I recall a case in point in my own experience.

One of the most famous restaurants of Lyons has a well, of which the water was so fresh and good, that some persons took their meals there in preference to another restaurant very near and equally famous, solely on account of this water. The neighbors on all sides asked leave to draw from this ideal well. It happened, less than two years ago, that a very great number of the waiters of this restaurant, who took their meals and slept there, had in succession typhoid fever. The physician who attended them advised that there be made an analysis of the water, from both a chemical and bacteriological point of view. The chemical analysis certified to the excellence of the liquid and confirmed its old reputation; but I found an enormous quantity of Bacilli coli communis, which furnished evidence

of communication between the well and the sink near by into which the water-closet emptied. I could not, it is true, detect the presence of the genuine bacillus of Eberth. I advised either that the well be closed or thoroughly cleaned. My advice to clean was followed, and there has not been since, to my knowledge, a case of dothienenteritis in the establishment.

This case, one of a thousand which might be mentioned, shows clearly the fundamental difference which exists between chemical and bacteriological analyses.

What has been, in my opinion, the cause of the difference and misunderstanding between the chemists and the microbiologists is this: Since the discovery of pathogenic microbes, and the proof that certain kinds of these are in water which is drunk, people have been dazed or dazzled in a measure by the importance and predominence of the part played in life by the living pathogenic agent. Some hygienists, more physicians than hygienists, have been carried along by their studies of microbes to class all water under one of two kinds: water capable of producing sickness, and water which, from this special point of view, is fortunately not capable of producing sickness. For some years there has been a strong tendency not to consider water from a physiological point of view, but solely from a pathogenic. This is a grave error, partly due to the fact that the great majority of bacteriologists are physicians, and hospital physicians, who, in spite of themselves, unconsciously sacrifice all considerations to that which is the constant object of their thoughts: sick people and sickness.

I know that the object of the hygienist in striving to make people drink pure water, is to save them from having the maladies which impure water may bring on. These maladies. however, are not all of microbian origin. Some of them result, not from the presence in the water of this or that microörganism, but from qualities which no one but a chemist can detect. It is well known that distilled water is digested with difficulty. It is a question of grave importance, what would soon be the condition of the stomach of a person who drank nothing but sterilized distilled water.

G

PHOTOGRAPHING IN COLORS.
GASTON TISSANDIER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.

La Nature, Paris, November 28.

OETHE, in his theory of colors, tells us how Professor Seebach, of Jena, discovered, in 1810, that chloride of silver exposed to the solar spectrum will take tints corresponding very nearly to those of the spectrum. In 1848, Mr. C. Becquerel announced that he had succeeded in photographing the colors of a prismatic spectrum falling on a plate of silver submitted previously to the action of chlorine. These colors, unfortunately, were fugitive, and disappeared in a few minutes. In 1850, Niepce de Saint-Victor produced some photographs of colors which lasted for several hours.

After Niepce, Poitevin in France, Zeneker in Germany, Simpson in England, took up the problem, without making great progress. Finally, Mr. Lippmann, quite recently, has exhibited to the Academy of Sciences a photograph of the spectrum, in which the different colors are reproduced in a manner quite stable. None of these experimenters, however, have reached, as yet, a practical solution of the question.

Alongside of these labors of savants, should be put the researches of some practical persons, who tried to turn the problem by obtaining colored proofs indirectly. In 1865, Baron Ransonnet, in Austria, conceived the idea of producing photographs of colors. He proposed to take three negatives of the same colored object, one with a red light, another with a blue, a third with a yellow, and then to transfer all three to stone by photography. In that way were obtained three stones corre sponding, the first to the action of the red rays, the second to that of the blue rays, and the third to that of the yellow.

Where these colors suited a particular place on each stone, they were covered over and the rest of the stone rephotographed, after the fashion of chromo-lithographs. As a result the picture of the object photographed retained all the colors of the original.

The year 1869 is a memorable date in the history of photographing colors. Two eminent experimenters, Mr. Cros on the one hand, and Mr. Ducos du Hauron on the other, gave a new solution of the problem. Mr. Ducos du Hauron, thanks to rare perseverance, reached practical results, by taking three stereotype plates of the primitive colors, red, yellow, and blue, and interposing between the sensitive plates having orthochromatic qualities and the original, mediums which separated the colors. The separation of the three colors, red, yellow, blue, having been made—that is, their monochrome negatives hav-. ing been obtained, they were combined, and the three positive colors, red, yellow, and blue, being photographed one on the other gave the result desired. The method of Mr. Ducos du Hauron is a process of composite chromo-photography.

Later on, in 1875, Mr. Leon Vidal opened an establishment on the Quai Voltaire in Paris, for the purpose of furnishing proofs in colors by a process of simple chromo-photography. There were as many lithographic stones as there were colors to be reproduced; the tints were reproduced in succession on paper, and afterwards a positive photographic proof on a very thin plate was put over the local tints, whether on flat objects or curved. This proof gave all the half tints and shadows which were desired, and, altogether afforded a good result. Metallic objects, especially, were better reproduced than they had ever been by any other means. From one cause or another, quite apart from the nature of the process, the enterprise did not succeed. Afterwards, Mr. Albert of Munich, and Mr. Bierstadt of New York, each added a stone to the edifice. The house of Orell Fussli of Zurich, Eckstein at The Hague, and several other establishments, have undertaken to produce photographs in colors.

The results obtained by those experimenters who have endeavored to solve the problem by an indirect method have been the cause of experiments which are of great interest from a practical point of view. These experiments have been for the purpose of manifold production of proofs on paper, aided by the powerful support of photography.

Thanks to the discovery of sensitive orthochromatic plates, producing the gamut of true colors, photographing in color has made considerable progress. These photographic plates were at first prepared with collodion; afterwards, in 1885, Clayton and Attout-Tailfer prepared the first isochromatic plates with gelatine. Professor W. Vogel, Messrs. Lohse, Eder, and Leon Vidal have brought about a great advance in orthochromatism, and now the gamut of tints can be faithfully reproduced, thus opening up a vast field for experimenters.

Mr. Vidal has just taken up again and simplified, thanks to the new orthochromatic plates, the process of Mr. Ducos du Hauron, and he obtains beautiful proofs of composite chromophotography.

Following this order of ideas, a very skillful operator of Paris, Mr. Stebbing, employs a simpler process of reproducing colors, which, combined with a judicious employment of orthochromatic plates, seems to me likely to obtain deserved success. I have seen proofs on which the color of the flesh and that of the costume of the sitter were quite exactly rendered. This new process is thus spoken of by Mr. Leon Vidal in the Moniteur de la Photographie:

"We know that by this method (Mr. Stebbing's) the modeling and reproduction of the colors are due to light, and that is a strong guarantee of the exactness of the reproduction. Nevertheless, as to the photographic work properly so called, it is well understood that light alone will not reproduce the colors directly. There is a pigmentary process, which, artistically directed, produces charming results."

TRANSFER OF POWER BETWEEN LAUFFEN-ONTHE-NECKAR AND FRANKFORT-ON-THE-MAINE.

A

FRANZ BEndt.

Ueber Land und Meer, Stuttgart, December.

MONG the many significant achievements exhibited at the International Electrotechnic Exhibition at Frankfort, the now perfected experiment for the transmission of power between Frankfort and Lauffen takes the first place. It constitutes the brilliant feature of the Exhibition, and is of incaleulable importance in the development of electrotechnics. By transfer of power, as is generally known, is understood the methods by help of which one is able to transfer the energy of natural forces, whether locked up in coal, or exhibited in the force of flowing water, or in the rush of wind, or even in the waves of the ocean, to definite distant localities, by means of the electric current.

If, for example, it is desired to render the force of a powerful waterfall available at a distance, the ordinary method is as follows: The force of the falling water sets in motion turbines which are connected with the queen of modern mechanism— the dynamo machine. This engenders electric currents which are conveyed to the place where power is required by means of wire conductors. Here they may be applied to the running of any number of motors, or to lighting and similar purposes. It is only recently that the recognized possibility of the transmission of power by means of dynamo machines and wire conductors suggested to electricians the idea of thus transfering the great forces of nature, and utilizing them for mechanical purposes. The idea originated in the conception of the possibility of transferring the water power of countries so richly endowed with it as Switzerland, for example, for utilization in distant places, and for whole provinces. A classical example of this sort, but certainly only for especial purposes, was the proposal for the transfer of energy from Niagara Falls to the City of Buffalo, a distance of thirty-two kilometers. The last difficulties in the way of giving effect to this conception are at length solved by the Frankfort exhibition. It has been shown possible to transfer a water force of 300 horse-power for a distance of 175 kilometers to Frankfort. The attempt proved indeed a brilliant success.

The realization of this idea stands in intimate connection. with a great number of important innovations which I will notice concisely.

The dynamo machines, to which we referred above, are capable, by modification in construction, of maintaining two sorts of Current—the continuous and the alternating. The continuous machine producing a current which flows steadily in a uniform direction, stands on a very high stage of technical achievement. It excels in many respects its sister, the alternating-current machine, the impulse of whose current varies its direction several hundred times in a minute. The continuous current when applied to the transfer of great power, requires a conductor of considerable cross-section. Alternating currents, on the other hand, although in this respect much more economic, could not until recently be applied to the operation of electric motors. To the continuous and alternating machines above described was at length added the revolving current (Drehstrom). Its discoverer was the Italian Professor Ferraris, of Turin; and of the contractors who first constructed and introduced the machine into practice, we may name the engineers Fesla, Hasselwander, and Von Dobrowolsky.

The revolving-current machine, as a system, varies from that having alternating currents of varying grades chained one above the other. The discovery of the revolving-current motor renders it possible to utilize the economical alternating current for driving motors.

On the Lauffen-Frankfort line, some 300 horse-power is practically transferred by means of alternating currents of very' high tension (30,000 volts), and the application of this energy

motors.

has been effected by means of the new revolving-current This experiment is so imposing as to be almost, if not actually unprecedented. The entire costs amount practically to $175,000. The three wire conductors through which the stream flowed to Frankfort have together a length of 500 kilometers, and 1,200 cwts.(1 32,276 lbs.) of copper were employed in their construction. For filling the insulators over which the wire passes a trifle of 750 kilogrammes of oil is consumed.

By means of these experiments it is now practically demonstrated that the technician is in a position to convey the most powerful currents over any required distance. It is, hence, now possible to utilize the forces of nature running to waste in countries remote from the great channels of world traffic, by diverting them to the service of man in the busy centres of human industry.

ARTIFICIAL DISTURBANCES OF THE ATMOSPHERE. B. B. MINOR.

TH

Belford's Democratic Review, New York, December. HE atmospheric disturbances to be considered in the present paper are not the natural ones, but only those of man's origination, with their probable influence upon climate.

The atmospheric ocean with which our globe is enveloped is far deeper than all the oceans of water, and is undivided, and of a material far more variable and fickle than water. Its height is not limited like that of mountains or ocean depths to six or seven miles, nor to forty or fifty miles, as some schoolbooks erroneously teach, but is indefinite. Astronomers with their delicate instruments and refined methods of observation tell us they find evidence of its existence four hundred miles and upwards above the surface of the earth.

If air were subject to the influence of natural causes only, there would be a prospect of giving effect to the suggestion of my late valued friend Commodore M. F. Maury, and giving meteorology the exactness necessary to admit of its being classed as a science. Would it not, then, be singular if the direction of the energies of civilized men should inaugurate such disturbances in the atmosphere as to prevent or at least impede, the reduction of meteorology to an exact science?

If a pebble thrown into a body of water causes such a prolonged and pervasive disturbance as natural philosophers tell us, what must be the effect of the heavy cannonading of great battles and grand sieges on the atmosphere? And although there have been intervals between the wars of the past few decades, were these wars not sufficiently near to one another and continued long enough, for the atmospheric derangements produced by one to run into the other?

What are the effects moreover produced by mining, by the action of the innumerable engines engaged in mechanic and manufacturing enterprises; by electricity in its numerous applications? What will meteorologists do with the vexed and vexing problems when they take into account the excitations of all the electric and magnetic influences which art and science are now harnessing to the car of modern progress? One special object of this paper, however, is to call attention to the disturbance of our atmosphere, produced by the railroad operations of the day. The veiws to be presented have some force to my mind, and I desire to know what others think of them.

Someone has already suggested that the continuous condensation of steam from the numerous locomotives that traverse the country, may have an effect on the rainfall along their routes. It has also been thought, as I was told by a distinguished railroad engineer, that railway trains have improved the healthfulness of extensive malarial districts. The present purpose is to go further than this, and inquire into the wider effects of such a number of trains rushing through the air in so many and such various directions, and for such long distances. There are in the United States nearly one million railroad

cars, dragged at different and varying rates of speed, but none very slowly through the mobile and elastic atmosphere, in every possible and changing direction, and through every description of territory, along 170,000 miles of tracks, by nearly thirty thousand locomotives. The tracks cross one another, empty into one another, and, to some extent, run parallel with one another. Will not these multiplied and continuous displacements, and commingling rapid replacements, materially disturb atmospheric equilibrium?

It would be a very good thing, indeed, if they were only to fan malarial regions into salubrity, or coax needed rains down upon the earth; but they may plant the germs of cyclones that throw locomotives off their tracks, and level churches and other buildings, as the sickle levels ripened corn. Moreover,

they are kept up on the same routes in opposite directions, day after day, by day and night, and with every variety of crosstunneling in many and extensive sections of the country. To what all these cars thus do must be added the effects of the thousands of locomotives whose power drags them through their ever-closing air-tunnels; and to the mere size and form of the iron-horse which opens the way into every tunnel, must be added all the operations of his steam, with its pulsations, condensations, and fannings, and his volumes and trails of heated smoke.

To all these cumulative and accumulating effects upon land must be added those from like causes upon the water.

Moreover, railroading, steam navigation, manufacturing, mining, developing and employing electricity, are not confined to the United States, nor to the Western Continent, but are engaged in on a scale already remarkable, and constantly extending, over nearly all the globe. Is not the sum total of all these disturbances worthy of the most thoughtful consideration of meteorologists?

What is the relation of these disturbances to the cyclones with which the Western country is so frequently visited. Illinois is about as much cut up by railroads as any of our States. Watch the effects of storms there in the future, and also take note of those which have already occurred. Kansas City is quite an important railroad centre, with trains arriving and departing in various directions. She has had a visitation from a destructive cyclone. But Marshfield, Mo., with only one railroad, has had a worse one. The fact is, however, that cyclones do not strike where they are generated. They generally go on gradually gathering their furious forces. Texas and Kansas will be very interesting States in which to study the effects of railroading upon climate and storm.

But if railroading and the other causes referred to have anything like the effect upon the atmosphere which this paper is intended to intimate, those disturbances are not likely to avenge themselves in the form of wind and electric storms only, but may lead to even greater destruction by excessive visitations from rains and floods.

THE

THE INFLUENCE OF FROST ON PLANTS. Der Stein der Weisen, Vienna, December. HE influence of warmth in the atmosphere is important in the development of the organism. It is a remarkable phenomenon that the condition of winter sleep in plants, during which the sap is congealed, is not equivalent to death. One would suppose that the freezing of the sap in plants, must necessarily destroy all its life functions. But, in the first place, congelation and freezing of the juices of living organisms, however subtle the distinction, are not the same. It is true that plants die under the influence of exceptionally low temperature, and are said literally to be frozen. But by no means all plants or even dry seeds are exposed to danger from this cause. It is further to be remembered that the operation of cold either affects the plant directly, or influences it indirectly by operating on the soil, thus producing changes in the plant which arrest or destroy