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from an artistic point of view they are frequently more desirable. It is one of the unexplained wonders of the picturemarket, that an admittedly genuine work by a master is, if unsigned, worth about one-half only the sum commanded by a signed picture. This arises possibly from the buyers of such expensive pictures feeling more confidence in a work which the artist has himself approved by signature, than in one which, however beautiful, is but a sketch, To connoisseurs the argument is worth very little, but it is a convenient arrangement, for, by this means a lover of good pictures, of comparatively small fortune, may occasionally possess himself of fine works by the best masters.

Enormous sums have been paid for the pictures of Troyon since his death. In 1891 a pretty composition by him was sold at auction in London for £4,930. Previously, in 1884, another famous Troyon was sold in London for £3,045. In the spring of 1892, one of the best-known canvases of Troyon—“ Le Gué,” a morning effect of splendid color and interesting composition -passed from the possession of a merchant in London, for a great price, to a private collection in the United States.

In Holland and in Belgium, Troyon's pictures are well known, and all the older collections would show one or two examples. The attraction, however, of the larger markets of London, Paris, and New York, has much reduced the number in these countries.

JOE

THE NATURE OF MUSIC.

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OHANN BARTHOLDY, in the December number of Naturen og Mennesket, Copenhagen, concludes his essay on the Nature of Music. In the former number he treated of the origin of music, and now he deals with its historical development, to prove that "music" (vocal rather than instrumental) "according to its nature is a spontaneous expression of feeling." He observes that 'An examination of the bibliography of music shows, that the most famous physiologists, musicians, composers, and æsthetic critics have glorified instrumental music, and in it found the purest form for the description of music," and quotes Prof. H. Helmholz as physiologist, Anton Rubinstein as composer, and Ed. Hanslick as æsthetic critic, but objects to their dicta as misleading in many cases. The author thinks we can come to a correct understanding of music, only by remembering that “the origin of music lies in the human voice; this fact is the soul of music, the inner factor, which sets the feelings in motion." To show that "this fact is not simply of historical value," he quotes from Herbert Spencer, Darwin, and others, to prove that "all music is essentially vocal." He goes further back and examines the relation of language and music, and declares,

"That a strong argument is found for the inner connection of speech and tone in the fact that Indians (East-Indians) regarded Saravasti as goddess of both language and music, and that to the classical world, music (μovбiиý) was a collective name for song, poetry, and eloquence.

"In antiquity all public life' was conducted by means of song, such as the promulgation of laws, divine worship, and poetical contests, and such names as Rhapsody, Comedy, and Tragedy, are founded upon the word ode (oồn), which clearly shows, that in these words there can be no idea of declamation in the modern sense, but only of song.

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There is nothing to disprove our assertion that music in the main is song; but now confusion is caused by the introduction of a new form for the expression of tone, namely, instrumental music. Hitherto instruments had had no independent place, they were simply assistance to rhythm' (opyavov, instrumentum).

"The Middle Ages began a new era by dissociating song from poetry, and by forcing the poetical rhythm to conform to the laws of music. As soon as the voice was liberated from the bonds of poetry, it was used simply as a tool. The Dutch and northItalian schools showed how the voice as the interpreter of poetry and feeling was pushed aside for the scientific contra-point. Music is henceforth produced mechanically, and is formal and artificial. It is from this time on that such ideas of music become prevalent as are expressed in Hanslick's famous sentence, Was die Instrumentalkunst nicht kann, von dem darf es nie gesagt werden, die Musik könne es, denn nur sie ist eine absolute Tonkunst.'

The conception is false. Instrumental music is derived from song, and is its phonetic parallel.

"The Florentine Renaissance Reformation endeavored to liberate the song from the contra-point under which it was enslaved, and it succeeded to some extent. But another enemy soon laid hold of the song. The singers 'elaborated' the voice, and once more the song was lost, this time destroyed by its natural friends and supporters. Gluck came to the rescue, and showed that the nobility of music is not allied to the sensual pleasures of the ear. Beethoven was the master of instrumental music, and his greatness consists in transmitting instrumental tones to singing voices, and when he in the 9th Symphony closes with tones from real human voices, he acknowledges that song is the culmination of the expression of feeling. The blind master saw prophetically into the future and beheld the rise of the star of vocal music.

"Much is yet to be done. A contribution in the right direction is the book of the Swedish singing-master, Fritz Arlberg: ' Forsök til en naturlig och förnuftig grundlaggning af Tonbildungslären." Stockholm, 1891. (An Attempt upon a Natural and Reasonable Foundation for the Doctrine of Tone-Formation.) Another book published in Copenhagen at the same time by Julius Steenberg: 'Muses and Sirens,' runs in the same direction.'

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

RECENT SCIENCE.

ACOUSTICS.

The Microphone in Medicine.-The microphone of Professor Hughes for detecting sounds too feeble for the unaided ear has been applied to the stethoscope by more than one physician, but generally with indifferent success. Persistent efforts are nevertheless being made to turn the instrument to practical account in this direction; and lately a Russian lady was saved from premature burial by means of a microphone placed over the region of her heart, which could be then heard beating, although she had been considered quite dead. More recently Dr. Blydell, of New York, has invented a microstethoscope, by which he can distinguish sounds of the heart, lungs, blood-vessels, and other organs, which are wholly inaudible to the ear alone.-Hardwicke's Science Gossip, January.

ANIMAL PATHOLOGY.

Pleuro-Pneumonia has been entirely stamped out in this country, at an expenditure less by $100,000 than the sum paid out by Great Britain during seven years, as indemnity for slaughtered cattle alone. This is the only country in the world where the disease, having once gained a footing, has been entirely eradicated.-Report of the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1892.

ANTHROPOLOGY.

Comparative Growth of Boys and Girls.-Observations made in the primary, high, and normal schools, and in two of the private schools, in the city of Worcester, covering a total of 3,250 students, ranging from five to twenty-one years, show: (1) the boys starting out at five years of age apparently taller than the girls, and the girls catching them in the seventh year, and continuing at an equal stature to the close of the ninth year, after which the boys again rise above the girls for two years. About the twelfth year the girls suddenly become taller than the boys, and maintain the advantage until the fifteenth year, when the boys regain and retain their superiority in stature. After the age of seventeen there appears to be little if any increase in the height of the girls, while the boys are still growing vigorously at eighteen, and probably continue to grow for several years after that age. (2) In the matter of weight, the boys are heavier than the girls at all ages from five to eleven inclusive; from the twelfth to the fourteenth the girls are the heavier. From fourteen the boys again take the lead.-Gerald M. West in Science, New York, January 6.

The Mentone Men.-At the Anthropological Institute (London) Dec. 13, Mr. Arthur J. Evans read a paper on the prehistoric interment of the Bahi Rossi caves near Mentone, and

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their relation to the Neolithic cave-burials of the Finalese. He described the recent discovery of three skeletons in the cave of Banna Grande, and showed that the character of the sepulchural rites practised, the relics found, and the racial type of the human remains, agreed with the earlier discoveries made by M. Rivière and others in the same caves. Mr. Evans, however, opposed the theories as to the Paleolithic date of 'Mentone Man." The bones of extinct animals found above the interments proved nothing, for they were interments. No remains of extinct animals had been found in actual juta position with the skeletons. On the other hand, the complete absence of pottery, of polished implements, and of bones of domesticated animals in this whole group of interments, and the great depth at which they occurred, proved that the remains belonged to a very early period. Evidence was here supplied of an earlier Neolithic stage than any yet authenticated. Still the remains belonged to the Later Stone Age, and to the days of a recent fauna. Mr. Evans compared some bone ornaments found with the so-called hammer-heads of the chambered barrows of Scandinavia, and the decorative system with that found on Neolithic pottery in northern Europe. He further showed that interments of the same tall dolichocephalic race in a more advanced stage of Neolithic culture were to be found in the cave-burials of the Finale district further up the Legascour coast. The physical form and character of the sepulchural rices were still the same. Only, the skeletons were here associated with polished axes, pottery, and bones of domesticated animals. The direction from which the new civilizing influences had come was indicated by imported shell ornaments from the southern and eastern Mediterranean, In conclusion Mr. Evans showed that the latter Finale interments exhibited forms of pottery and implements identical with those of the Italian Terremare of the other side of the Appenines, and included ceramic shapes which appeared to be the prototypes of vessels found in the early Sikel tombs of Mycenæan age. The Italic culture here revealed fitted on not only to that of the early pile-settlements of the Po Valley and the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, but might be traced to the Danube Valley, to Thrace and the Troad. Among other parallel forms, owl-like idols, bearing a strong resemblance to those described by Dr. Schliemann from the site of Troy, had been found by Padre Morelle of Genoa in one of the Finale caves.-Nature, London, January 5.

ARCHEOLOGY.

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Among the fragments obtained by Prof. Flinders Petrie from Tel-el-Amarna, are some valuable portions of syllabuses, evidently forming part of a lexicon which was used by the scribe who wrote the despatches from Egypt to Babylonia, and who translated the letters received from the different correspondents in Mesopotamia. Although these pieces are very much mutilated, it is evident that they formed part of a dictionary of Accadian, Semitic, Babylonian, and Egyptian. The portions of the Egyptian column, are, unfortunately, very much mutilated; but two words are preserved; the sign for "God" is explained by Kakabu, a star," and is equated with the word sibu, which is evidently the Egyptian seb, a star. In another line we find dadu explained by the word mu-ur, which is evidently the Egyptian meri, "beloved." Dadu is given in one of the syllabuses as a synonym of navam, beloved. The nature of the writing of these fragments leads me to think that the tablet was compiled in Babylonia, as it is stated to be the eighth tablet of a series of which the name is lost, and to have been made by order of the King. In the Berlin collection there is a Hymn to Ninib, which was found at Tel-el-Amarna, and which is said to be, like its old copy, from the library at Borsippa, and "written by Bel-ikisa, son of Nibusemi, and placed by him in Ezidu, the temple of his god." This is an important statement, showing the antiquity of the library at Borsippa, and its connection with Tel-el-Amarna.—Babylonian and Oriental Record, London, December.

ASTRONOMY.

How the Days Follow Each Other Around the World. -The Maritime Powers of the world have agreed to make London the time-centre and the 180th degree of longitude from London (or Greenwich) as the point where the day changes. This meridian, therefore, leads the day. Its passage under the 180th, or midnight, celestial meridian marks the beginning of a new day for the earth; here to-day becomes to-morrow. We have a new date for the month, and a new day for the week in the transition.

It is here, then, that Sunday was born just to the west of Honololu, but bear in mind that the day travels westward, therefore this new-born day does not visit Honololu until it has made the circuit of the globe. Honololu and New Zealand are only about 30° apart in longitude, but they are a whole day apart as regards any particular day, because the point at which the day changes lies between them. Sunday born on the 18oth meridian is a long way off from Honololu. It is morning there, too, but it is Saturday morning, while in New Zealand it is not yet day, but the Sunday dawn is breaking. It is clear, then, that if it is Friday (near midnight) at Honololu to the east of the line, and Sunday (near I A.M.) to the west of it, a ship which sails from Honololu to New Zealand, or from east to west, must sail out of Friday into Sunday and thereby skip the intervening Saturday, and gains a day; and vice versa, a ship which sails from New Zealand, where Sunday has begun, to Honololu, where Friday has just ended and Saturday begun, or, from west to east, must lose a day.— Goldthwaite's Geographical Magazine, December.

The Canals of Mars.-Professor Tebour, of Newcastle-onTyne, suggests that the Schiaparellian canals of the planet Mars may be due to cracks and fissures on the surface of a cooling, but heated, globe, resulting from the strain or torsion of cooling only; and that possibly in the remote past, before life began on earth, our own little planet was probably seamed with canals similar to those represented by the present pregeological state of the planet Mars.-Hardwicke's Science Gossip, January.

The Star of Bethlehem.-The latest study of the Christian astronomers leads to the belief that the wonderful star-like appearance at the birth of Christ was a phenomenon wholly miraculous. With this conclusion I heartily agree, and the subject might well have been allowed to slumber were it not that no less an authority than Prof. John N. Stockwell, in a recent number of the Astronomical Journal* revives the planetary conjunction-theory of Kepler, and attempts to show that the Bible narrative concerning the Star in the East is better satisfied by a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter than by any of the conjunctions computed by Kepler.

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It seems almost a pity to criticise a theory which accords so well with the desires of the devout mind, but I cannot bring myself to regard this explanation of the phenomenon as at all satisfying the plain requirements of the Scripture history. In the first place, the Wise Men came from the East to Jerusalem, guided by the Star which must therefore have been in the Western sky. The Star which they saw in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. At the time of the conjunction in question Venus had passed her Western elongation, and was approaching the Sun. During the time occupied by the journey of the Wise Men, not only would the planets have separated in the sky, but Venus would be farther east, and would be visible only for a short time before sunrise, and hence could not possibly have appeared to go before them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, a direction nearly south. Besides, the Magi were perfectly familiar with the effects of diurnal motion, and even though the Star might happen to stand over Bethlehem at the time of * Vide THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. VI., No. 11, page 291.

their arrival, they would know as well as we that it was purely accidental, and that a little earlier or later it would occupy a different position in the heavens. Here, then, seems to be an instance where we cannot eliminate the miraculous from the Bible account, but must conclude that the Star of Bethlehem, like the Herald Angel, was a messenger directly from the realm of the supernatural.-J. G. Porter in Astronomy and Astro-Physics, January.

BACTERIOLOGY.

The Vitality of Micro-Organisms.-The extraordinary diversity in the temperature at which different micro-organisms flourish and multiply has been made the subject of investigation by Fischer, Globig, and others. Thus Fischer isolated fourteen different species of bacteria from the sea-water in Kiel harbor and from soil in the town itself which he was able to cultivate successfully at from o° C. to 15°-20° C. Globig, on the other hand, studied the behavior of micro-organisms at high temperatures, and separated out no less than thirty varieties from garden-soil which would grow at 60° C. Some of these were even able to develop at 70° C., but the majority refused to grow at all below 50° C. Some still more fastidious individuals objected to any temperature below 60° C.; others, again, required a temperature between 54° and 68°. One bacillus was, however, discovered more catholic in its taste, for it flourished at any temperature between 15° C. and 68° C. To preserve meat and other articles of food it is necessary to employ a temperature much below the freezing point.Nature, London, Fanuary 5.

CHEMISTRY.

Poison in Aniline Dyes.-We must bear in mind that new coal-tar colors are being constantly invented and introduced into commerce, and that the confectioner and the wine-merchant will employ such colors before chemists and physicians have had sufficient opportunity to decide on their composition and their physiological action. Our opinion is, therefore, in substantial agreement with the Austrian Law that the use of all the artificial colors ought to be prohibited in the preparations of food and beverages. For such purposes surely the natural colors are amply sufficient. Some, at least, of the coal-tar colors are distinctly poisonous, and others doubtful.-Chemical News, London, January 6.

ELECTRICITY.

Some Practical Phases of Electricity.-Recent statistics show that the aggregate output capacity of all the establishments now in operation thronghout the world for refining copper by electrical processes amounts to nearly 100 tons of metal per day of twenty-four hours. Nearly all the aluminium produced in the world is now reduced from the ores of the metal in electric furnaces, presenting in many cases the curious anomaly of the employment of falling water for the production of the most intense heat known to modern science. Franklin Leonard Pope, in Chatauquan, February.

OPTICS.

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The Bruce Photographic Telescope.—This instrument which, if successful, will be in many respect, the most powerful in the world, is now rapidly approaching completion. The eight surfaces of its objective have been ground and polished so that it could be tested on a star. The results were satisfactory although, of course, no definite opinions can be formed until the final corrections are applied. The focal length proved to be that desired within half of one per cent. Plans have been made and the foundations laid for a one-story brick building with a sliding roof, which will be erected for its trial in Cambridge. After this it is proposed to send it to the Ariquipa station in Peru.-Annual Report of the Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, 1892.

The Heliochromoscope.—Mr. F. E. Ives recently read a paper before the Franklin Institute, explanatory of improvements in

his devices for producing colored photographs, for which he now claims such simplicity of operation that they may be placed in the hands of the press-the-button class of amateurs, and yet yield results that are no more defective in color-rendering, than the ordinary photograph is in the rendering of monochrome light and shade.- Journal of the Franklin Institute, Fanuary.

METALLURGY.

Aluminum Horse-Shoes.-Experiments on the suitabilty of aluminum for horse-shoes, made in a Russian regiment of Fin-` nish dragoons have resulted favorably. The horses were shod with three iron shoes and one aluminum shoe. When it was time to renew the shoeing, the shoes of aluminum were found to have worn as well as those of iron. None of them were broken, none showed any traces of rust. Among the advantages anticipated from the use of aluminum in horseshoes are greater facility in forging and a reduction of the load to be carried by the horse's feet.-Popular Science Monthly, February.

LOUIS PASTEUR AND HIS LIFE-WORK.

THE REVEREND J. A. ZAHNE, C.S.C.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (18 pp.) in
Catholic World, New York, January.

To even a résumé of

volume. The record of his achievements is the history of a great and important branch of science. He has opened up new avenues of knowledge, and given an explanation of many facts and phenomena that had before been involved in obscurity and mystery. He has enlarged the domains of chemistry and biology, and raised medicine from an empirical art to a veritable science. Columbus-like, he has discovered a new world, the world of the infinitely little, as Pouchet called it,— and demonstrated that it is this world that is the chief agent of all the changes that we witness in organized matter, and that is the chief, if not the sole, cause of all forms of disease. Pasteur's first honors were won in the domain of molecular physics. But scarcely was he fairly started in this line of work,. for which he had a special inclination, when an incident occurred which changed completely the nature of his investigations. This was his appointment as Dean of the Faculty of Science at Lille. Here he took up the study of the then obscure subject of fermentation. He had previously been led by his experiments to suspect that fermentation was due in some, if not in all, cases to the action of micro-organisms.

He was not long in proving the truth of his assumption, and in opening up that new world of the "infinitely little," whose discovery has made Pasteur so famous and rendered him such a benefactor of his race. One experiment suggested another, and a number of the most brilliant and far-reaching discoveries followed in rapid succession. He not only discovered that fermentation was due in all cases to fermentative organisms, but that different fermentable bodies are acted on by different ferments; and that these lowest forms of life vary among themselves as much as, perhaps more than, the higher forms do.

From the phenomena of fermentation to those of putrifaction and combustion was but a step. The clear vision of M. Pasteur showed him at a glance that those were only modifications of the process that takes place in fermentation. He now made the micro-organisms the subject of his study, and thereby opened up a new world for the investigation of the scientist. In these researches Pasteur found himself the possessor of a key to the mysteries of the various decompositions of animal and vegetable matter, as in the changes that take place in vinegar, wine, and beer, and having unraveled the cause, he passed easily to the conclusion that one has only to destroy the active organism to stop the deterioration. He found that a temperature of 140% sufficed. By this short and simple process wine and beer are now guarded against detorioration in any climate. Pasteur further devoted himself to the study of

the problem of spontaneous generation, and claims to have demonstrated that it is a chimera.

While engaged in his researches on fermentation, Pasteur was urged to investigate the silkworm-epidemic then rife in the south of France. He soon found, as he suspected, that it was due to micro-organisms; but it was not until after countless experiments and the most arduous and protracted labor extending over five years, that he achieved success, and had the gratification of seeing his method of preventing the plague in successful operation in all the great centres of the silkindustry.

His next great achievement was the discovery of a remedy for splenic-fever which led up to his germ-theory of disease, and his discovery of remedies for hydrophobia and cholera.

Honors have been showered on him by his own and foreign countries, and throughout the civilized world he is reverently spoken of as one of the greatest benefactors of his race.

But extraordinary as is the work already accomplished, much yet remains for future observers and experimenters. Pasteur himself acknowledges that his discoveries are but the beginning of the grand triumphs which the future shall witness.

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It is difficult to appreciate the magnitude and importance of Pasteur's life-work or to overestimate the extent to which mankind is his debtor. A recent writer, in referring to Pasteur, speaks of him as one whose researches have yielded so much material profit that one thinks of him as the orangetree, standing in all the glory of blossom and fruit at the same time." With truth, therefore, has Professor Huxley declared, that "Pasteur's discoveries suffice of themselves to cover the war-indemnity of five milliards of francs paid by France to Germany." To Pasteur, suffering humanity is indebted for illuminating with the search-light of his genius a world-the world of microscopic parasites-that, prior to his time, had been shrouded in more than Cimmerian darkness. Chemists and biologists, physicians and surgeons, have to thank him for transporting them across a gulf seemingly more impassable than Serbonian Bog, and putting them in a position to cope with an enemy hitherto unassailable. Hence, so long as disease shall continue to claim its victims, and so long as suffering may be assuaged, so long as men shall esteem worth and merit, and so long as gratitude shall find a place in their hearts; so long also will the world applaud the achievements and be moved by the example of that illustrious votary of science and loyal son of the Church, Louis Pasteur.

Honors to M. Pasteur.-At a meeting of the Berlin Medical Society, Dec. 21st, M. Pasteur was, amid loud applause, elected an honorary member, by 139 votes out of 143. The Medical Faculty of the University of Berlin sent a Latin address, with the following inscription:

VIRO CELEBERRIMO
LUDOVICO PASTEUR
INSTITUTI FRANCOGALLICI SOCIO

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visible only under the microscope, to which he attributed an unquestionable organic origin. They were protozoans, whose highly ornamented siliceous shells sufficed to stamp them as radiolaria, a conclusion affirmed by Cayeux, the eminent specialist in this department.

The schists to which the problematic rocks with their radiolari belong, are classed by Barrois among the upper rocks of the Azoic period. The Azoic is then no longer Azoic! But just here is the weak spot in this certainly interesting discovery. The rocks are unquestionably very old, but that they are azoic is doubtful. The very fact of their exhibiting organic life is against the assumption. Moreover, it appears not improbable that the petrographic characteristics which have led to their being classed as azoic, may have been induced by eruptions of granite through them. Interesting, then, as is the discovery of life in these rocks, they can hardly be accepted as the point of departure for investigating the question of the first appearance of life on earth.

stone.

If we would investigate the region where there is no room for the smallest doubt, whether as to the age of the rocks or the character of its associated organic remains, we must go to Sweden, to the long-celebrated site of Lugnaas, in Westgothland, for traces of the most ancient organic life. In this region there are found great fragments of a gneiss, which, by long cxposure to weather, is softer than ordinary gneiss, and particularly suitable for millstones. These are imbedded in a mass of rounded quartz conglomerate under a layer of quartzose sandThe strata are separated by a thin deposit of a gray clay. In the lower strata of this rock are numerous traces of Eophytes, which have given the name “eophyte sandstone” to the whole system. That this belongs to the Cambrian system is admitted beyond all question. We stand here before a museum of the oldest remains of organic life, as to the character of which there is no dispute. They were described by Torrel in 1867, but he misapprehended their character, describing the eophytes as leaves of dicotyledons, and misinterpreting other forms. Finally, Nathorst, Sweden's greatest geologist and palæontologist, expounded their true significance. According to him, these most ancient organic vestiges are due to a brachiopod preserved with its shell, of medusæ, of which there remain only impressions, and the stuffings of their stomachs, and of trails of other creatures which we cannot pronounce on certainly, but which were probably crustaceans and worms. This aggregation of fauna is very significant, constituting as they presumably do four distinct coexistent types of the animal kingdom: Brachiopods as an independent type, although they had previously been grouped along with molluscs, mussels, and snails; medusa, or quallæ, belonging to the cœlenterata, which includes sponges and corals; and finally crabs and worms. The only creature that remains as a true fossil is the afore-mentioned brachiopod, obolus monilifer, belonging to a family of the group previously distinguished for its long persistence, viz., the Lingulidae of which the species Lingulæ which appears first in the Cambrian, has persisted through all the intervening ages to this day. The Lugnaas brachiopod has a round shell, about the size of a pfennig piece, with countless granulated radiations. There was nothing remarkable in the discovery of brachiopods in these ancient rocks, but it was otherwise with the medusæ. Everyone who has frequented the sea-shore is familiar with the bell-shaped transparent creatures containing more than ninety per cent. of water, and which, thrown upon the strand, disappear almost without leaving a trace. Of course, such a creature can leave nothing more than an impression, and in fact such impressions were known in the lithographic Jurassic rocks of Bavaria as rare occurrences. The Solenhofer medusæ were, in fact, the oldest known. And now, at one jump, their appearance is carried back over a period of millions of years. There has hardly been any discovery in palæontology so conducive to speculation on the subject of organic evolution as this discov

ery of medusæ in Cambrian rocks. All the evidences of their existence we have, are the sandstone pyramidal kernels from 'the hollows of their stomachs. It seems incredible that these should persist, but the fact has been placed beyond question. The kernels can be reproduced at all times by placing a medusa on the sand, stomach downward, and pressing until the sand enters the hollow.

The other remains which confront us in the Lugnaas sandstone are trails resembling the trails of modern crabs. If we do not know the animals themselves, we can at least say that they were produced by numerous distinct types, the greater portion of which must have belonged to the crustaceans.

We have, then, five orders of invertebrates represented in this deposit and in a corresponding deposit in Esthonia, no one of which can be supposed to have developed from any other. In the light of the Darwinian theory it is necessary to trace them back to a common ancestry distinguished by simplicity of form and flexibility of character, such as will admit of ready modification under the influences of environment. These oldest known types have persisted through all the changing ages, from beyond the period when, until recently, life was supposed to have first dawned on earth. So far, then, from this oldest known fauna constituting the primitive types of life, its members must have descended from inconceivably remote ancestry, merging at last, as we go backward, in the primitive type from which all life has been evolved. The page of the history of life on earth open to our investigation was preceded by, perhaps, countless pages and chapters, of which no trace remains.

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THE CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE.
ANATOLE FRANCE.

Translated for THE LITERARY Digest from a Paper in

Le Magasin Pittoresque, Paris, January 1.

T is difficult for us to get a clear idea of the mental state of a man of the fifteenth century, who firmly believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe, and that all the stars revolved about it. Under his feet, he was certain, were the damned tossed about in the flames, and, perhaps, he had seen with his eyes, and smelled with his nose the sulphurous smoke of Hell. If he looked upward, he beheld the twelve spheres. that of the elements which contained the air and fire, then the spheres of the Moon, of Mercury, of Venus, which Dante visited on Good Friday of the year 1300; then those of the Sun, of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn, then the incorruptible firmament in which the stars were suspended like lamps.

At that time God had no children but mankind, and His entire creation was directed in a manner at once naïve and ingenious, like an immense cathedral.

This notion of the universe was still held in the seventeenth century by every honest man devoid of curiosity. The ideas of Copernicus and of Galileo made their way with extreme slowness. I have before me a little book, the "Principales merveilles de la nature," published at Rouen in 1723, and here is what I find at page 8:

"Some philosophers, among others Copernicus, have asserted that the Earth is not in the middle of the universe. This opinion, however, is opposed by many learned astronomers, who maintain that the Earth is exactly in the middle of the universe, and surrounded by the Heavens everywhere equally distant, which could not be the case, if the Earth were not in the middle of the universe. Moreover, but one-half of sky is visible at once, and the other half is invisible; and if the Earth were not in the middle between the Rising and the Setting, morning and afternoon could never be equal.”

Through lack of being able to conceive the inconceivable

distance that separates us from the nearest stars, the physicists and astrologers, clinging to the old ideas, sustained by the authority of Aristotle, objected, with some appearance of reason, that, if the Earth turned about the Sun, the aspect of the sky would change in the course of the vast circuit. They

did not imagine that this immense orbit was but a point in the infinity of worlds.

Worlds die, since they are born. Some are born, some die, incessantly. The creation, infinite and never completed, goes. on with incessant metamorphoses. Stars are extinguished without our being able to say whether these daughters of light, dying this way, do not begin, like planets, a fertile existence, and whether the planets themselves are not dissolved in order to become stars.

We know only that there is no more repose in the celestial spaces than on the Earth, and that the law of work and of effort governs the infinity of worlds. The heavens, which were thought incorruptible, know of no eternity save the eternal passing away of things.

The unity of composition of the stars is now established by spectral analysis. For this reason we must believe that the causes which make life emerge from our nebula, engender life in every other nebula. It is philosophically certain that life has been produced, or will be produced, on the planets of our system, sisters of the Earth, and daughters, like it, of the Sun ;; and that life has been manifested or will some day be manifested on the planets, under conditions analogous to those under which it is manifested here, in animal and vegetable forms.

IN

RELIGIOUS.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

THE NEW NATURAL THEOLOGY.

N The Andover Review for December, the Reverend John W. Buckram makes a strong plea for the reconstruction of the science of Natural Theology, based upon the perplexity which exists as to what Nature really teaches concerning God,. and also upon the fact that Nature has revealed God to men. in all ages. One of the highest illustrations of this is to be found in the Book of Job, where "the stars and the earth, and the animal creation tell of God." To show that the distinctive truths concerning God, which Nature manifests, are not annulled by the discoveries of science, the writer presents an outline-study of the principal and elemental truths of Natural Theology.

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"1. The Transcendence of God. The Inconprehensibility of Nature is one of her chief disclosures of God. Is it not one of the great confessions of science that she cannot discoverthe origin of life? The border-land of mystery will never be crossed, however, for it is forced back upon the confines of the Infinite. There is a place where one must pause, at. length, before the Unknowable, blinded by the intensity of light. "It is not to wondered at that in consequence of the so-rapid discovery of knowable facts, the Unknowable has been forgotten, and that there survives so little reverence for Nature, or, ratherfor God in Nature. That the tendency of scientific research has been to kill out wonder by knowledge, to empty Heaven of its gods, and disenchant the universe,' is not the fault of Nature, but the result of an attitude of mind unsteadied, and confused in vision by the rapidity of scientific conquest.

"But science has only discovered the transcendence of God more clearly by confronting us more sharply with the territory where God works in His inscrutable absoluteness of power and wisdom. Nature is always testifying that God is above her. 'In the beginning, God,' is her unceasing strain; 'In .the beyond, God,' its antiphonal. Infinite Wisdom can alone account for the mysteries of Nature, Infinite Power for her forces.

"2. The Divine Immanence. Until its recent submergence, Natural Theology, following science, found the evidence of God in the mathematics of Nature, in design and adaptation. Now life has become the absorbing study of science. The

very existence of life is a witness of God. Paley's watch-like Nature is nothing in its power to reveal God in comparison with playing and perfecting. this wondrous thing we call life, which God is everywhere dis

"The revelation which Nature makes of God above her and God within her is not all,

"3. He is there revealed as a God of Love."

The beneficence of Nature is offered as the refutation of the

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