vexed or amused, not only by certain things alone, but also by a certain manner, determined, regulated, fixed by the usage of the great world. The eighteenth century continued the work of the seventeenth, and lyric poetry seemed to have died of suffocation.

Matters were in this state when about the middle of the eighteenth century appeared the first work of a genius who breathed the breath of life into lyric poetry. That genius was Rousseau. He refused to be trammeled by the literary critics who undertook to pass judgment and do execution upon those who presumed to differ from them. Rousseau was a man endowed with a rare sensibility. The lightest impressions, those which are unperceived by most men, or if perceived are regarded with indifference or forgotten as soon as experienced, penetrated deeply into him. The sport of fortune during his life, he felt profoundly the vexation of the misfortunes he underwent, and everything in him and about him was a cause of suffering or irritation. This suffering and irritation he gave vent to in his own way, paying no attention to the comments of those who decried the form of his works. He wrote as he pleased, displaying always his own individuality, and ended by conquering his audience, for whom this display of individuality had at first only the charm of novelty. He awoke the sleeping spirit of individuality, which took possession of the body of lyric poetry, and made it thenceforth alive.

Some may be astonished that, in applying the doctrine of evolution to a department of literature, I attach so much importance to one man, to one personality, to one individuality, to liberty. Some will object that the claim I make is inconsistent with the doctrine of evolution. A little reflection will show that this objection is without force.

The principle of change or transformation, the immediate cause of the variability of species, was declared, before the appearance of Darwin, to be external causes-such as, for example, the nature of the climate or of the soil, the controlling force of the environment. Darwin's stroke of genius, what belongs to him individually, is that he placed this principle in the species itself, in the appearance of some variation profitable or useful. Without accepting in its totality his theory of natural selection, it is undeniably true that, despite the influence of external causes, five times out of ten, or even oftener, things would have remained in the condition they were had not some particular variation intervened to change the regular course. It is just the same in the history of literature or art. In these also it is the individual whose appearance or intervention modifies the effect of the environment, and transforms the species into something different from what it was before.

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ARCHITECTURE.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (33 pp.) in
The Quarterly Review, London, January.

LL architecture is, or ought to be, a work dependent on the needs and circumstances of the population; it results from public habitude. In Greece, where outdoor life was general, and athletic games were universal, architecture was essentially a public work, and was a shrine on which to manifest the grace and glory of the human form. In mediæval France, where building-stone was plentiful and well distributed, a public life less absolute was recognized in her magnificent cathedrals and large parish churches. In England, however, where the harsher climate gives the home peculiar influence on the people's character, the houses were the school of building art. The parish churches were comparatively numerous and small; half homish places that led public architectural interest up to the grander churches of the abbeys and cathedrals. In those times the public were themselves artificers and builders. Village workmen knew all kinds of work, and built their cottages and other structures in unconscious, simple picturesqueness. They were undirected, yet unfailingly direct in

method; and they used their fancy as an elevating interact, an emphasis and a relief from what would otherwise become but painful drudgery, such as is experienced by our modern workingmen.

Most people seem to think that building is a recondite, mysterious art, requiring much instruction, special talent. and peculiar experience; whereas no work is simpler or more practicable by any man of sense. Of course, it must be so. By nature men were meant to live in houses; and, for this reason, Providence has given to almost all men aptitude for building handicraft, and for the rational arrangement of a plan. Nothing but joyful carefulness is further needed.

The primal and essential element of art is touch; by touch all art is gained, and by ideas art develops. The true artisan has learned the manual alphabet of art; and thus can write his own artistic language, with abundant suitable expression, homely or poetic, in his work. At the Renaissance, building work became theatrical, not homely or vernacular; the designs were imitative, not spontaneous; ornamental, not expressive; they were all imputed and affixed, and never emanated from the work. To despair of a revived vernacular in architecture is absurd; since no true building-art is other than vernacular. An imitation may be perfect in its way, which proves its error; it has limits. True art is never perfect; it is always in development, and incomplete. Our modern imitators when they do their best can but despair; their end has come, their last attempt has failed, and they have not developed art.

art.

Most Renaissance buildings are but feats, in various modes of composition-scenic architectural arrangements, not true Works like these are wholly destitute of that ideal workmanship which gains immediate sympathy, and so expands and elevates the soul of the intelligent and sensible beholder. Thus we are told that when the celebrated statesman, Daniel! Webster, on first entering, beheld the Abbey Church at Westminster, he burst into tears. By many this would be attributed to the religious sentiment, to the weakness of ecclesiasticism; or, on the other hand, to the apparent age and venerable aspect of the building. There are, however, religious buildings far beyond the age of our inspired mason's presbyterium that do not similarly touch the heart. St. Peter's great basilica at Rome is some two-thirds as old, and with St. Paul's in London and St. Isaac's at St. Petersburg, is dedicated to religious uses; yet these buildings would be quite incapable of causing such emotion in the strong-nerved statesman's soul. The mistake is reasonable, since the English public, finding little in architectural surroundings, the productions of the Royal Institute of British Architects, to excite spontaneous reverence, when they see the wondrous art of old, the creation of illiterate master-masons, in a church, imagine, without due consideration, that their admiration is ecclesiastical, religious feeling. Yet, what influenced Webster was neither sanctity nor antiquity, but sympathy, although perhaps unrecognized, with the great workmen who, wholly uncertificated, built the church, and, as they built, designed it. Their great work was a direct expression of their own poetic aptitude and artisan delight, and Webster felt its overpowering influence.

All architecture is but the combined results of workmanship and light. The workman builds, and moulds, and carves, in trust that sunbeams will, of course. illuminate his work. Every projection, buttress, column, arch, and cornice, is designed to catch or interpret the light, and only by the contrast and gradation of bright sunshine and deep shade can architectural effects be gained. The ampler, therefore, the potentiality of light, the more effective and more charming can the work be made. The light itself, however, must be employed, just as the stone is used, artistically, and with appropriate volume and variety. A moulding is cut deep to get contrasted light and shade; it is made round or open to obtain a delicate gradation of these local tones. And the old workman, ever present at the building, thus invented, rather than designed, the Early English mouldings that we all admire.

“THE SPECTRES" OF IBSEN AND PSYCHIATRY.

CESARE LOMBROSO.

Translated and Condensed for The Literary DIGEST from a Paper in

"THE

La Vita Moderna, Milan, January 15. THE SPECTRES" of Ibsen, received at its first representations with repugnance and distrust, triumphed ultimately, as well in countries more averse to such plays than Italy as in Turin and Rome, over the doubts and aversion with which new things are always received.

Some journals too benevolently inclined towards me, like La Riforma, pretend that one factor in the success of the play has been the new psychiatric school which, admitting the organic influence and atavism of vice and crime and their relations to genius, prepared the way for the phenomena set forth in the drama, phenomena so unexpected and so difficult to be digested by the popular mind. Whether I have or have not a right to be considered the father of this school, I do not dare to claim so great a share for it in the triumph of Ibsen, and I do not believe that in Italy psychiatry is by any means so generally known.

Yet, it is an old observation, which does much honor to artists and a little honor to journalists, that truths that are for a long time rejected in the academical world, which in fact is composed, as a general thing, of short-sighted mediocrity in more or less brilliant uniforms, find acceptance, if not immediately, still much more easily, in the journalistic and artistic worlds. This has been demonstrated recently by the painter Lefort, who in a great masterpiece has depicted a torture or flagellation, in which the executioners all have the type which l'assign to the born criniinal. No one doubts the truth of the Jacques of Zola or the Fille Elisa of De Goncourt, epileptics, who are led to crime by the disease, while alienists of some reputation wholly deny the analogies that I, after laborious researches, have pointed out between the epileptic and the born criminal.

To return to "The Spectres," I cannot deny that, with some exaggeration, as is the case in the Bête Humaine, the author, as he himself admits, has reproduced in "The Spectres," my born criminal.

There are certainly such things as atavism, and the inheritance of disease and of crimes. Nevertheless, these things never work so exactly as to take in the son the same turn precisely that they take in the father under analogous circumstances. So there is not any probability that the very same gun, which in the hands of one of the Rongons kills a parent, would be used to kill a descendant of the murderer in the very same fashion.

Still, these are but blemishes. symbolical extravagances, useful for fixing in the mind of the spectator and the reader a true and very just idea, that the defects and the maiadies of the fathers are inherited, doubled and tripled, by the sons, until the race is extinguished.

In "The Spectres," this law stands out conspicuously, and :science can accept unhesitatingly the position, that from a father made more or less imbecile and, as it were, putrefied by venereal excesses, by alcohol, and the maladies which result therefrom, vicious until he has become a criminal, there will spring a girl who, whenever occasion offers, will take to bad courses, and a boy who, although separated when an infant from his father, and, therefore, in no wise under his influence, will yet fall ill of cerebral congestion and afterwards of paralytic dementia and die prematurely, though not without having given some flashes of artistic genius which prove the relatious of genius with neurotic persons.

All this is both perfectly true and sublimely terrible in scenic effects. Still it cannot be denied that in order to reach this point Ibsen has heaped together within a few days, which on the stage are but a few minutes, phenomena of disease which in a young person could succeed each other during some years

only and even then rarely with the intensity shown by the hero of Ibsen. Save this defect, which appears also in the Assommoir and the Jacques of Zola, the character of the Swedish dramatist is truly exact.

Zaccone, the actor, is wonderful in his representation of the part, especially in his delineation of that excessive passion for alcohol in the hero, with its complete and immediate forgetfulness of everything, its stammerings and all the true lines of the wretched creature who has inherited a passion for drink. Yet, great as Zaccone is in the part, he combines in one subject the disjointed talk, the uncertain walk, the violence, the apathy, the restlessness, not of one, but of ten persons whose brains have been diseased by alcohol, so as to produce an extract terribly concentrated, even more so than that of the author.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

RECENT SCIENCE.

ARCHEOLOGY.

The Cassiterides.-The fact that a number of authors place these islands in geographical dependence to Spain only proves what we know that Phoenician Spain held commercial relations with the islands. The Cassiterides are always described as in the far west, and the British Islands are the only, islands in the west of Europe which fulfill the conditions. The texts make it clear, too, that tin was exported via Marseilles to the east. The Greek name for tin (xa66irɛpos) is met with in Sanscrit (Kastîra) and in Arabic (Kas-dir). Some linguists have believed the Sanscrit form to be the more ancient, but this hypothesis must be abandoned in the face of the direct evidence, furnished

by Diodorous and confirmed by Pliny that tin went from Alexandria to India in exchange for precious stones. It is certain that the Arabic and Sanscrit terms come from the Greek. But whence the Greek κασσίτερος?

Now, tin is described as a Celtic product by the ancients, but the modern Celtic tongues have no term for tin which at all resembles, even remotely xadóirepos. But is it not an error to assume that the metal gave its name to the country? Is it not more probable that the country gave its name to the metal.

Now, the first part of the word Cassi is common enough in Celtic words. We have the Breton people of the Cassi, a king Cassivelaunos and a host of proper and geographical names besides those in which Cassi is the second term, and the term appears to signify superlative-extreme. The Greek name Hesperides given to the islands signifies also “extreme,” and it may be assumed that the term Cassiterides was given not by the residents of the British Isles themselves, but by the Celts of the Mediterranean coast. But as the word occurs in Homer, if this view is correct, the Phoenician must have found Celtic-speaking people in Western Europe from the eighth or ninth century B.C., a conclusion opposed to the generally received ideas.

Further, on this hypothesis the argument that the Celts could not have erected the megalithic monuments would fall to the ground. And then the question will be asked if the very origin of the metallurgy in bronze in the Mediterranean countries, ought not to be sought for in Western Europe.M. Salomon Reinach, in Babylonian and Oriental Record, London, December.

ASTRONOMY.

Planet Notes for March.-Mercury will be an "evening star during March, and will be visible to the naked eye, an hour after sunset, during the two niddle weeks of the month. The planet will be at greatest elongation east from the Sun, 18° 27′, March 14th. After this date the planet will move rapidly westward, reaching inferior conjunction on the evening of the last day of the month.

Venus will be "morning star," but very close to the Sun. Mars will be visible in the west in the early evening. Having

passed by Jupiter this planet will have proceeded so far to the eastward that the Moon will overtake it two days later than Jupiter. The conjunction of Mars and the Moon will occur March 21st, at Ioh. 50m. P.M., central time.

A

Jupiter may be observed best in the twilight during March. After dark he will be too low in the west to be well seen. conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon will occur March 20th, at 2h. 37m. A.M., central time. In northern latitudes on the other side of the Earth an occultation of Jupiter will be seen.

Saturn comes to opposition March 29th, and so is in excellent position for observation during the greater part of the night. The rings may be well seen since they make an angle of 8° with the line of sight. There will be two conjunctions of Saturn with the Moon during this month, the first occurring March 4th, at 5h. 36m. P.M., central time, with Saturn 1° 12' north of the Moon; the second March 31st, at 9h. 24m., Saturn 1° 5' north of Moon.

Uranus is approaching opposition, and is in good position for observation after midnight. Uranus will be in conjunction with the Moon, 1° 35' north, March 7th, at 3h. 28m. A.M., central time.

Neptune will be in good position for observation during the first half of the night.

PHASES AND ASPECTS OF THE MOON.

Measuring Stellar Photographs.-The measuring of the photographic plates of the International Stellar Survey now in progress, aims at the production of a catalogue of high precision, giving the positions of, say, one-and-a-half or two millions of stars by their right ascensions and declinations-that is, by coördinates analogous to those which on earth are called latitude and longitude. Two essentially different methods of attaining this result are advocated, namely: 1. The method of measuring rectangular coördinates, which afterwards are to be transformed by computation into the desired spherical coördinates. 2. The parallactic method by which the latter are measured at once.

This latter method has been recommended by Professor Kapteyn of Groningen, who has already had a very extensive -experience in its application by means of the parallactic machine employed by him for measuring the plates of the photographic survey of the southern sky made at the Cape -Observatory under the direction of Her Majesty's Astronomer, Dr. Gill.

The possibility of direct measurement of spherical coördinates on the photographic plates may be made evident by a very simple consideration, which will at once suggest the form of the instrument to be used for the purpose. It may be explained as follows:

Consider the photographic telescope at the moment that it is pointed to any determined portion of the sky. If we imagine straight lines drawn from the stars of this region, and intersecting in the optical centre of the photographic objective, then these lines prolonged will meet the plate exactly at the points where the pictures of the stars under observation will be formed. If now we could place the eye exactly at the . optical centre of the objective, and if from that point we could see the images of the stars on the plate, then it must be evident from what has been said that we should see these star images at exactly the same angular distances from each other at which we see the stars themselves in the sky. Therefore, we see that by placing a photographic piate at a distance from the eye equal to the focal distance of the photographic teles- cope with which it was obtained, it must be always possible to

cover the stars in the sky by their corresponding images on the plate.

Now replace the eye by an instrument such as that by which in the sky we measure differences of right ascension and of declination. It must be evident that with such an instrument these coördinates must be as well measurable on the plate as they are in the sky itself, but the instrument will have to fulfill a certain condition dependent upon the fact that the distance from the plate under observation is not (like that of the stars) practically infinite. Neglecting for a moment the consideration of this condition, we see that the measuring apparatus must have, in the main, the arrangement of the ordinary equatorial telescope.-Engineering, London, January 27.

The Star of Bethlehem.*-Taking into consideration that the Bible makes mention of only three kinds of heavenly bodies, viz., Sun, Moon, and stars, and that every unusual light, celestial or mundane, was called a star, I feel justified in emphatically asserting that what the Wise Men saw was not a star at all, but a supernatural light which quite likely appeared in their own dwellings or, at least, at their dwelling-places, and was not again visible until their arrival near Bethlehem when it reappeared, and "went before them till it came and stood over where the young Child was."

If the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, was what they saw in the east, and as Venus was then approaching superior conjunction with the Sun, it is plain that there could not have been another conjunction of Venus and Jupiter on their arrival in Bethlehem, after a journey of several days or weeks. At that time Venus must have been from ten to twenty degrees east of Jupiter.

A star cannot by any possibility go before and guide a person to any particular house.

Taking into consideration all the circumstances connected with this much-discussed question, I am strongly of opinion that, though of Divine origin, the phenomenon seen of the Wise Men was wholly terrestrial and local.-Louis Swift, in Astronomy and Astro-Physics, February.

BACTERIOLOGY.

Bacilli in Butter. It is generally known that milk affords a dangerous vehicle for the dissemination of disease, but that this undesirable property is shared by butter is information at once of a novel and startling kind. Yet, according to recent researches, there were contained in one gramme of butter (as much as would go on the point of a knife) 2,465,555 microorganisms from the centre of the pat and as many as 47,250,000 on the outside. In fact, in some cases it is tolerably certain, it is stated, that the number of organisms swallowed with a moderately large piece of bread and butter may exceed that of the whole population of Europe. Butter kept in a refrigerator showed a marked reduction in the number of bacteriaa result which is also obtained by the addition of common salt. Samples of artificial butter, curiously enough, were invariably found to be much poorer in bacteria than ordinary butter; thus while the smallest number found in one gramme was 747.059, in real butter considerably over two million microbes was the minimum. Two varieties of bacilli have been isolated and described, and inasmuch as they were found to be constantly present in butter they were probably specific micro-organisms of a non-pathogenic character. But, at any rate, it seems clear that butter as well as milk is capable of carrying and fostering organisms, and on this account it behooves us, under certain circumstances, to melt our butter to boiling point in addition to boiling the milk.-Lancet, London, Fanuary 28.

Cholera Bacilli and Liquor.-Recent experiments, according to the Pharmaceutische Zeitung, have demonstrated that the cholera bacillus does not live beyond three hours in Pilsener, Patzenhofer, or Munich beer, two hours in Berlin white beer, See also THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. VI., Nos. II and 13.

five minutes in white wine, fifteen minutes in red wine, and twenty minutes in cider. In boiled milk it succumbed on the tenth day. Coffee and tea infusions proved fatal in from two to four hours. The bacillus flourished in chocolate.

BIOLOGY.

Falcons as Letter Carriers. A Russian lieutenant, M. Smoiloff, has succeeded in training falcons for carrying dispatches. They have many advantages over pigeons; they can. carry more, fly faster, and are exposed to fewer dangers. In his interesting volume, "La Fauconnerie au moyen âge, et dans les temps modernes," M. D'Aubusson cites numerous instances of their employment for this purpose. Among others that of a falcon which traveled from the Canaries to the Duc de Lermes in Spain, returning from Andalusia to Teneriffe, a distance of 250 leagues in sixteen hours.-La Nature, Paris, January 27.

Phylloxera in Antiquity.—In April last M. de Mély drew the attention of the Academy of Science to several passages of Strato, relative to the treatment applied in his days to the maladies of the vine, and to-day he communicates to the Society the results of his experiments with phylloxera on the method recommended, viz., the application of petroleum. The remedy was effectual, and the vigor of the plants after treatment is conclusive evidence that petroleum may be used without prejudice. M. de Mély recommended the adoption of experiments at various points with a view to obtain decided evidence of its utility, and also to determine the extreme quantity which may be applied without prejudice to the vine.-La Nature, -Paris, January 27.

CHEMISTRY.

Chemical Nomenclature.—In the American Chemical Journal for January, Mr. Henry E. Armstrong contributes a very full report of the discussion at Geneva, by the International Commission, of the recommendations of the French Committee appointed to draw up a scheme for the unification of chemical nomenclature.

The resolutions passed are perhaps not final, but will serve to prepare the way and indicate the lines on which the work is to be carried out. The one resolution which covers all others, and which defines the nature of the task to be undertaken, is the first, which prescribes, in addition to the usual methods of nomenclature, an official name, permitting of distinguishing each body under a distinctive title. Mr. Armstrong is satisfied that a solid foundation for a future system of nomenclature has been adopted, but he remarks that much remains to be done before a mature design, perfect in all its details, can be presented for adoption. Hence he deprecates the adoption of the system in its present incomplete state. Familiar and cherished terms will probably continue to be used locally, but the sentiment of the majority appears to be in favor of making the official nomenclature, without exception, logical and systematic.

ELECTRICITY.

Electric-Power Transmission.-The most important plant yet undertaken in this country is that now in course of construction for the San Antonio Electric Light and Power Co., in Southern California. The power-plant is located in San Antonio cañon, where there is a minimum flow of 1,300 cubic feet of water per minute under a head of about 400 feet. The water is brought to the power-station through 1,900 feet of 30-inch double-riveted sheet-iron pipe and 600 feet of 24-inch. This length of pipe involves a loss of head by friction of 12 feet, leaving 390 feet effective head or running pressure. The laying of the pipe-line involved a rock tunnel 1,300 feet in length, as well as several heavy open cuts. The power-station is provided with four double-nozzle Pelton wheels, 344 inches in diameter, coupled direct to the armature shafts of as many alternat

ing-current generators of 200 horse-power each. Two exciters are provided, which are run by Pelton wheels coupled to the shafts in the same manner-requiring 20 horse-power each. By means of transformers the potential will be raised to 10,000 volts, and the current at this pressure will be conveyed over bare hard-drawn copper wires to Pomona, a distance of thirteen miles, and to San Bernardino, a distance of twenty-three miles, and is to be used for both light and power purposes. This work is attracting much attention on account of the length of the circuit-it being a longer distance than heretofore attempted in this country. There is, however, no reason to doubt its entire success.-Engineering Magazine, New York, February.

METALLURGY.

Manganese Steel.- Henry M. Howe has a paper on manganese steel in The Journal of the Franklin Institute, for February, in which he describes this alloy as having the hardness of carbon steel along with a very much greater ductility. The alloy here described contains 13 per cent. of manganese, and its ductility is secured by plunging it while red hot into cold water.

The way in which the tensile strength and ductility of manganese steel fluctuates is very striking. The addition of 1.5 per cent. of manganese to carbon steel renders the latter very brittle. With further increase of manganese, the steel becomes more and more brittle, until at from 4 to 6.5 per cent. it may be pulverized under a hammer, but as the manganese rises above 7 per cent. the ductility of the water-toughened metal increases in a most striking way, until the manganese reaches about 13 per cent., beyond which the ductility again diminishes.

1

PHYSICS.

Earthquakes Favorable to Vegetation.—Of the influence of the recent earthquakes in northern Italy, M. Goiran has observed that they were apparently followed by a speedier germination of seeds, a more rapid growth of the young plants, a more luxuriant vegetation in the pastures, tillable lands, vineyards, and copses, and a more distinct greenness of foliage. He ascribes these results, not to the earthquakes directly, but to the augmented production of carbonic acid, a more complete distribution of fertilizing matters in the soil which suffered a sort of trituration from them, and to an increased electrical development. Under some conditions earthquakes seemed to have an unfavorable influence on vegetation, but this, M. Goiran believes, was the result of long droughts that accompanied them.-Popular Science Monthly, New York, February.

Planes and Knife-Edges in Pendulums for Gravity-Measurements.-In The American Journal of Science for February T. C. Mendenhall describes what is believed to be an important departure from the universal practice in regard to the arrangement of parts. It consists in an exchange in place, of the knife-edge and the plane, the latter being attached to the pendulum and the former to the fixed support. The new system has been experimentally investigated and with very satisfactory results.

Reconversion of Heat into Chemical Energy in the Production of Gas.-As is well known, the production of water gas from steam and ignited coke results in the absorption of a great deal of heat, estimated at 30.4 per cent. of the total heat of combustion of the coke. But while the reaction in this case is endothermic, the reaction of C+O is exothermic, and, in order to avoid this loss of energy, Naumann has suggested combining an exothermic with an endothermic reaction, and thus storing up the heat-energy in the gas itself in the form of chemical energy. This may be done by mixing air and water-vapor together in such proportion that by their neutral action upon ignited coke neither absorption nor evolution of

heat will take place. Or (2), by mixing the air with carbon dioxid before passing it over the ignited coke.-American Journal of Science, February.

PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY.

The Physiology and Psychology of Tears.-Terror, grief, and joy, to say nothing of other emotions, bring tears to the eyes. Tears are the natural product of emotional excitement, the result of a storm in the central nervous system, inducing changes in the lachrymal glands, and a discharge of water from them. To a certain extent such a discharge is continuous; it serves to remove foreign substances from the eye, and, being slightly saline, it performs an indispensable function by keeping the eye constantly bathed. The lachrymal glands lie between the nervous centre and the slimy surface of the "apple of the eye." Tears afford us an insight into the manner by which excited nerves promote a discharge from a secreting organ by pressure on both sides of it. Inner nervous vibrations, and external stimuli or reflex responses, produce a flow of tears. In both cases the impulse proceeds from vibrations. Both the sentimental Niobe and the poor fellow tormented with a steel-filing in his eye, are involuntarily subjected to the same influences. They both shed salt tears, although from widely diverse causes. Sometimes imagination alone stimulates the nervous system to the production of tears, without external cause or reflex action-as, for example, when one weeps over visions of harrowing scenes, conjured up by reading or hearing of them.

It is the emotions-sympathy, sorrow, anxiety, etc.-and not pain or hatred, which provoke tears. The pains of maternity are tearless, except as a consequence of the dreamy condition induced by anæsthetics, and this is quite intelligible, for tears are purely springs of emotion which by their flow lighten the heart, but which contribute nothing to the relief of physical pain. A person who cries for pain does so probably in compassion for himself-sympathy, in fact.

For persons addicted to weeping, change of scene, distraction, and open-air exercises are the best remedies. Indulgence in alcoholic drinks is especially prejudicial, as it disturbs the balance of the nervous system, and promotes a maudlin sentimentality; opium, on the other hand, if taken before retiring, really stills the rebellious nervous system.

Tears have their value, also, from the humanitarian point of view, not for themselves, but as indications that mental anguish is bereft of its sting under the influence of their flow.-Stein der Weisen, January 15.

SURGERY.

Bloodless Amputation of the Hip-Joint by a New Method.Prevention of unnecessary loss of blood during the performance of an operation is one of the modern requirements of successful surgery. Efficient prophylactic hæmostasis has not only greatly reduced the mortality of capital operations by preventing the loss of an amount of blood incompatible with life, but it has proved equally useful in favorably influencing the subsequent reparative processes. Experimental research and clinical observations have demonstrated conclusively that diminution of intravascular tension caused by hemorrhage is one of the potent factors which favor the origin and spread of infection, and besides retard the healing of the wound.

The importance of a recourse to prophylactic hæmostatic measures is proportionate to the size of the blood-vessels which must unavoidably be severed in an operation. Thus, in amputation of the extremities, without special precautions, the immediate risk to life from hemorrhage is greater the nearer the operation approaches the trunk. While a finger or a toe, or even a hand or foot, might be amputated without the use of a tourniquet or elastic constrictor without incurring any immediate risk to life from the loss of blood, such a procedure in amputation at the shoulder or hip-joint would jeopardize life on the operating-table, In all amputations below the

shoulder and hip-joints we have now in Esmarch's elastic constrictor a reliable measure with which we can absolutely control hemorrhage during the operation and thus minimize the loss of blood. Elastic constriction is the simplest and safest method of preventing hemorrhage wherever it can be applied.N. Senn, M.D., Ph.D., in Railway Age, February.

THIS

COLOR-BLINDNESS.

THIS term has been current for many years, and served generally to convey the impression that there were people with abnormal vision, who had no just appreciation of color. The instances were supposed to be extremely rare, and were regarded generally as of curious, rather than of serious, interest; of late years, however, investigation has shown that the percentage of the color-blind is so considerable that the matter assumes a very serious aspect in the light of the fact that, in railway travel and at sea, thousands of lives are daily staked on the belief that the lookout men are readily able to distinguish the signal colors. In the Edinburgh Review for January the subject is treated popularly from its presentation in the Report of the Commission appointed by the Council of the Royal Society, and in the work entitled Color-Blindness and Color-Perception, by F. W. Edridge Green, M.D., F.G.S. The reviewer's definition of color-blindness is as follows:

"There are some few people who fail to distinguish blue from green, and others, equally few, who see only in monochrome, but the color-blindness most common, and therefore most dangerous, is the so-called 'red-green blindness,' in which there is a total failure to distinguish between red and green-that is to say, a redgreen blind man will regard a certain hue of green as identical with some hue of red, another of green as identical with white, while a third class of sufferers will also fail to see red at all of another particular hue. As long as this failure is confined to the one individual sufferer, the matter is of no great import but to himself. But when it is remembered that these very three colors -white, red, and green-are used on our railways as safety and danger signals, to say nothing of the ten thousand ships of all nations that plow the broad sea, where the same colors are in use for a similar purpose, the subject suddenly expands into one of national importance."

The writer next discusses the labors of the Committee of the Royal Society, which present the matter in a very serious aspect:

"First, as to its prevalence, minute accuracy is not possible; but assuming that the percentage of congenital color-blindness among sailors is the same as among any other community of males, the disease is widely spread, if we are to judge by the fact that out of 50,000 men examined by three authorities of the highest eminence, the average number affected was nearly four per cent. Of 1,056 youths aboard five training ships, thirty-four were found to be color-blind, and numerous other evidences point to the conclusion that four per cent. is the general proportion of colorblindness among the male population of England."

The writer, after noticing that the Commission inclined to the view of the naval experts, that a very large proportion of collisions at sea are due to color-blindness, offers the following simple explanation of the phenomena :

"Experiment has shown that every color in nature as seen by a normal eye can be expressed as a mixture of three, so that normal vision is trichromatic; while in a similar sense the more pronounced types of ordinary color-blindness are dichromatic; and it is actually true that, to the red-blind and the green-blind, there is one green in the spectrum which they cannot distinguish from white."

The paper closes with a presentation of the recommendations of the Commissioners as to the tests to be used for the satisfactory determination of the color vision, and for the rigid exclusion of people of defective vision from posts in which such defect may endanger life.

Dr. W. Pole, F.R.S., discusses the same subject in the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine, confining himself to a critical elucidation of Helmholtz's treatment of the subject in his "Handbook of Physiological Optics." A very interesting phase of the subject is opened in this work in