have not in others, a fact which has brought about different solutions, here broader, there more restrained.

In Germany, the flexibility of the programmes of higher instruction, together with the organization of examinations which are put at the end of the time of university instruction, and in which the candidate enjoys a large choice of option, allows, in general, the placing of political and social studies among the faculties of philosophy.

In Austria-Hungary, in France, Italy, and Spain, instruction in political and social sciences belongs to the faculties of law. In the United States the system generally prevailing in Germany has been adopted.

Mr. Boutmy, in the report to which I have alluded, comes to the conclusion that where economic, political, and social studies are taught in the law-schools, the instruction has not the same breadth as in countries where they are taught as part of the general instruction in philosophy and arts.

Yet in the latter case there are, it seems to me, grave defects in some cases in the system of instruction. The first institu

tion to start a special school of the social sciences, open to students of the different faculties, after the International Congress of 1889, was the University of Brussels.

The programme of studies comprised the philosophy of law, the natural sciences studied in their relations with the social sciences, the methodology of the social sciences, the history of law, comparative public law, the history of treaties, and parliamentary history. This programme is much too large. It takes several years to go through with it, and even then not much more would be accomplished than to develop the intelligence of students and incite them to push their studies in various directions. It is not the type of regular teaching destined to produce solid instruction.

After a careful study of the various systems of instruction adopted in Europe and the United States, the system which to me seems most likely to produce solid and valuable results is that adopted in the University of Louvain in Belgium, in a school presided over by the eminent Professor Van den Heuvel.

The instruction in this school comprises ten courses spread over two years. In its programme, the parliamentary history of Belgium, the neutrality of Belgium and Switzerland, the colonial régime, and the legislation about the Congo, naturally find a place. Besides these special questions more general questions are studied: comparative public law (the institutions of France, Germany, England, and the United States), and one course is devoted to the diplomatic history of Europe since the Congress of Vienna. Other courses cover economic evolution in the Nineteenth Century, comparative legislation in regard to workmen, and the comparative position of commercial societies in the view of the law.

In the programme of this school comparative legislation fills a large place. M. Van den Heuvel well understands the precautions which should be used in handling this new instrument, in order to obtain from it good results. At the Educational Congress, held at Mechlin, in 1891, he thus pointed out the shoal on which there is danger of being wrecked. Those who attach much weight to the study of the comparative legislation of the great peoples of modern times have sometimes forgotten that you must not draw an analogy between peoples at different planes of social civilization, at different degrees of political development. Sometimes, also, led astray by partial and hasty conclusions, the students of comparative legislation have made very false generalizations. It is so easy to confine yourself to putting in relief certain details of foreign laws and institutions, without troubling yourself about the frame in which history and custom have placed them. Yet, in reality, legislative dispositions do not exist detached, isolated one from the others. They are explained by each other, and have a mutual origin. A little comparative knowledge inspires presumption and leads to presumptuous reforms. An ample measure of comparative knowledge leads to distrust in hasty ́movements, and teaches prudence in progress."

G

LEONARDO DA VINCI IN A NEW LIGHT.

RICHARD KAUFMANN.

Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in Finsk Tidskrift, Helsingfors, February. ABRIEL SÉAILLES, of the Paris University, has recently published “Léonard de Vinci, l'artiste et le savant, Essai de biographie psychologique" (Paris, 1892). It is full of new data and facts. It is a phenomenal work, and has justly acquired its renown as a most remarkable literary production. We know that Leonardo da Vinci was much more than a painter, and that he left many manuscripts, though these were almost useless because of his peculiar handwriting. Venturi deciphered a few fragments last century, and JeanPaul Richter published others in 1883. These only sharpened the appetite for more, and were followed by the publication of the manuscripts, of which twelve folio volumes have now appeared. Séailles was asked to write a review of the volumes, and his studies of Gioconda's painter resulted in the work mentioned above.

It is remarkable how versatile all the men of the Renaissance were. They did not limit themselves to a specialty; they studied and were interested in everything, even the most sacred subjects. Leonardo da Vinci, according to the new knowledge we have of him, stands foremost among these versatile spirits. He seems to have been gifted in every direction and reached higher than most men, at the same time that he fully filled the place in which he is set. He was not only painter, musician, and poet, but also a man of society and a cavalier. He was even more. He was a savant. He was a bold thinker, and his thoughts found expressions in many and the most varied ways. All the world knows him as a painter, but now he is brought before us more as a scholar and a scientist. Séailles calls him the father of modern science. This title has been claimed for Bacon and Descartes, but Leonardo applied the modern methods and was far ahead of both in every way. He never advances a theory, except upon bases of facts. He knew of the laws of mechanics a hundred years before Galileo. Painting led him to study perspective, optics, anatomy, and botany. By digging canals he discovered the stratification of the earth and some petrifications. He was quite an astronomer. In physiology he advanced the theory of the circulation of the blood. Everywhere he breaks through old superstitions and errors

"

It was no vain boasting for him to require twelve paragraphis to enumerate all he could do, when, at thirty years of age, he sought employment at Ludovico Sforza's Court at Milan. In the sixteen years he served the Milan Court he proved the man he represented himself to be. By hundreds of applications of his discoveries he showed that he was the foremost inventor of the Renaissance. But he also became the centre of all art, the ladies' favorite, the chief of ceremonies and festivities. All his "dreams' are revived or realized to-day. In his manuscripts he "dreams" of "walking upon water," and of "flying like birds." He discovered machines for boring canals and for pumping out swamps. The important canal-system of Lombardy is his work. He guesses at steam-power. He divines the nature of the future artillery, and his manuscripts contain the drawings of a large breech-loading gun. He discourses upon the theory of the parachute, and the application of power at a distance. He constructs an instrument to measure the sailing speed of a vessel; he builds weavinglooms on new principles. Everywhere he is a pioneer.

Tennyson's Play of "Becket." Mr. Irving's Becket was a noble and poetic creation which will be remembered among the four or five incontestable achievements of Mr. Irving's career. It satisfied the eye, delighted the ear, stimulated the imagination, and enriched the memory. And why? Simply because Mr. Irving did his best to give faithful and articulate -expression to the poet's thought, instead of translating it into an unarticulate half-pantomimic dialect of his own, and using the text merely as a sort of foundation for an embroidery of starts, and pauses, and moans, and growlings, and contortions. He treated Tennyson's poetry, in short, as poetry, not converting it into a strange, spasmodic, ill-punctuated prose. If only the drama, as a whole, had been worthy of this stately and pathetic protagonist! I am not one of those who wholly reject Tennyson's claims to rank as a dramatist. On the contrary, I am convinced that if ever we have a worthy national theatre, "Queen Mary" and "Harold" will take an honored place in its repertory. But "Becket" will not stand by their side. It is ruined by the poet's almost pathetically helpless attempt to interweave a female interest" with his political action. The legend of "Fair Rosamund" is not without its charm as a fairy-tale, but it cannot for a moment be made to wear the appearance of serious history. Vague as is the timescheme of the play, we are compelled to assume a considerable interval between the prologue and the first act; yet Rosamund is all that time on her way from France to Woodstock. Perhaps the poet felt that a bower and labyrinth are not made in a day, and that he must give the trees time to grow. Then, again, Rosamund's ignorance of the fact of the King's marriage is an astounding postulate. It might be conceivable if she had dwelt all the time, like the Sleeping Beauty, in the wood; but, as we have seen, she has just been spending several months or years on the journey from France to England. As for Becket's opportune intervention in the famous daggerand-bowl scene, it is probably the most childish coup de théâtre ever devised by an adult playwright. And the worst of it is that the Rosamund scenes are inseparable from the rest. To suppress them would be to leave Miss Terry out in the cold; and even if there were no Miss Terry in the case, the withdrawal of Rosamund would mean the total dissolution of the dramatic fabric. She is like an arrow in a vital part-hæret lethalis Rosamunda-she kills the play whether you leave her in or draw her out.—William Archer, in New Review, London, March.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

RECENT SCIENCE.

ACOUSTICS.

Horological Phonograph.-The newest horological invention is a speaking watch; that is, a repeater which literally "speaks" the hours and quarters instead of striking them. It has been invented and is patented by a watchmaker of Geneva, Switzerland, and furnishes another use for the phonograph. It is the size of an ordinary watch, but in the cavity of the case is a phonographic plate, prepared before the watch is made, and on which the hours and quarters have been marked by grooves. The disk has forty-eight concentric figures, of which twelve correspond with the phonographic indication of the full number of hours, and the remaining thirty-six with each twelve to respective quarter, half-hour, and three-quarter hour

of every full hour. Thus, if the dial points to 12:15 on the disk, a steel point drops into the corresponding groove on the simultaneously rotating plate, by which "12:15" is then spoken, just as by the phonograph.-Age of Steel, St. Louis, March 18.

ANTHROPOLOGY.

Points in Chinese Ethnology.—Dr. Gustave Schlegel, who is Professor of Chinese Literature in the University of Leyden, has undertaken to resolve a series of problems relating to the identification of various mysterious peoples mentioned by the early Chinese historians. They have more than special interest, because they bear on the question of the peopling of America from Asiatic sources. As early as 500 A.D., there is a description of a tattooed people, Wen-chin, living 700 li northeast of Japan. Dr. Schlegel identifies them with the inhabitants of Ouroup, one of the Kurile Islands; but adds that, in historic times, every tribe from the island of Yezo to Greenland had the habit of tattooing, except the Ghiliaks and Itulmens of Kamschatka. He would also place the Land of Women," Niu-kouo, said to be 1,000 li east of Fusang, somewhere in the southern portion of the Kurile Archipelago. In an article on "The Land of Little Men," he maintains the important thesis that the Tungusic stock at one time occupied the whole of the Japanese Archipelago.-Science, New York, March 24.

ARCHEOLOGY.

Ancient Gem-Engraving.-The art of gem-engraving is a very ancient one, and it is a curious fact that the tools used in this work have changed less than any others known, except, perhaps, the potter's wheel. In a lecture, recently delivered at the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, Professor Rood, in tracing the history of the art from the early Egyptians, through the Assyrians, to the later Greeks and Romans, stated that the bowstring drill and the disk, as used in very early times, did not differ materially from the tools in use at the present day, while the corundum point was generally used for hand work. The ancient engravers, however, did not use the lathe, though in other respects they were almost as well equipped as their modern brethren. They certainly succeeded in doing very fine work, some of it having never been surpassed. Engineering and Mining Journal, New York,

March 18.

Cast of Khuenaten's Face.-M. Petrie, who has recently been engaged in making excavations at Tel el Amarna, writes as follows to the Academy concerning his interesting find: The character of the man and the real objects of his revolution in religion and art are greatly cleared by our now being able to see him as in the flesh. By an inexplicable chance there was lying on the ground among some stones, a plaster cast taken from his face immediately after his death, for the use of the sculptors of his funeral furniture. The cast is in almost perfect condition, and we can now really study his face, which is full of character. There is no trace of passion in it, but a philosophical calm with great obstinacy and impracticability. He was no vigorous fanatic, but rather a high-bred theorist and reformer: not a Cromwell, but a Mill. An interesting historical study awaits us here from his physiognomy and his reforms. No such cast remains of any other person in ancient history.-American Journal of Archæology, January-March.

ASTRONOMY.

Universal Time.-On February 6, last, the Bill declaring the legal time for Germany to be that of the 15th Meridian east of Greenwich time, passed the third reading. This law will be brought into force on April 1. A similar Bill has been laid before the Austrian Government, and it is hoped that the change will be made simultaneously. The draft of the latter Bill provides: (1) That the legal time in Austria is the mean solar time of the meridian 15° east of Greenwich. The same to replace on April 1, 1893, the present local times for legal,

civil, and all other purposes. (2) The Government is authorized to make the changes in the school and industrial hours, which will become necessary in consequence of the adoption of the Bill.-Nature, London, March 9.

CHEMISTRY.

A Substitute for Sugar.—At a meeting at Hanover, the other day, of the Society of Beet-Sugar Makers, a Berlin doctor made an interesting communication relative to a new substance, called valzin, which would appear to be about to supplant saccharin, and perhaps become a serious competitor to sugar. Valzin was discovered so long ago as 1883 by a Berlin chemist, but it is only recently that its production has assumed commercial proportions. It is said to be about two hundred times sweeter than sugar, and does not contain some of the disagreeable properties of saccharin.-Colonies and India, London, March 18.

ELECTRICITY.

Treatment of Sewage.-An interesting process for treating sewage by electricity so as to deprive it of its baneful properties and render it innocuous to the public health, was recently set forth by Dr. Burghardt, of London, before one of the English engineering societies. The active agent of the process, iron, is derived from iron plates placed in cells, through which the sewage constantly flows. One set of cells is positive and the other negative. Only the positive plate is acted upon and dissolved upon its surface, hydrated ferrous oxid being produced by the action of the nascent oxygen-liberated by the decomposition of the water at this pole-acting upon the metallic iron. This hydrated ferrous oxid, which is a solution, then acts upon the organic matter, becoming, first, hydrated ferric acid by absorption of oxygen from the air, giving up this oxygen again to the organic matter and becoming the lower oxid-the operation being repeated for a considerable time until the carbonaceous matters which are oxidizable have been oxidized, when no further reduction of the ferric hydrates can take place, and it remains insoluble and suspended in the effluent as a yellowish precipitate. In order to cause the plates to wear off or dissolve equally, the poles are reversed on alternate days, a plate being positive on one day and negative on another day. Age of Steel, St. Louis, Mo., March 25.

PALEONTOLOGY.

Burmese Amber.-Dr. Noething, of the Geological Survey of India, has lately written an interesting report on Burmese amber, which he proposes to call burmite, because chemical examination has shown it to be totally different from all other fossil resins, and especially from that commonly known as amber, says the London Mining Journal. The amber is found in the Hukong Valley, access to which is difficult on account of impassable mountain ranges and on account of the jealousy of the natives. It is obtained in a very primitive way. After the harvest the diggers go to the hills, and, selecting a place where there are no pits dug by previous prospectors, shape with their swords a small pointed hoe, a wooden shovel, and a basket of split bamboo. They then make a hole in the blue clay, removing the refuse by means of the basket, and gradually deepening the shaft. Three men work in company, one below (the shaft not being large enough for more than one at a time), while the others hand up the basket. The amber is found in "pockets," which are generally indicated by strings of coaly matter appearing in the clay.—Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, April 1.

PHARMACY.

Chloroform in Sticks is a rather startling suggestion, but not altogether improbable of accomplishment; for Anschütz, of Berlin, has discovered solid compounds of chloroform from which the chloroform can be extracted sufficiently easy to admit of its use for anæsthetic purposes.-Pharmaceutical Era, March 15.

PHILOLOGY.

Ancient Semitic Languages.-Prof. Fritz Hommel promises a comparative grammar of the older Semitic dialects. In this he will endeavor to show that the Assyrians were the first to leave the original settlements of the Semites, and that of those who remained behind, the speech of the Aramæans and Arabs makes a separate class, distinct from that of the Kainanites. He proposes also to include in the work a discussion of the relative position of Old Egyptian and Assyrian.-Journal Royal Asiatic Society, London, January.

PHYSICS.

A Novel Motor.-Mr. Frank Mitchell, of "Bouchon" Works, Redman's Road, E., has patented and perfected an ingenious form of heat-motor, which promises to be of great utility in those cases in which small motive-power at a trifling cost, involving but little care or attention, is required. This motor consists essentially of a wheel mounted on trunnions. The wheel is hollow and divided into a number of compartments, which are filled with water, or other vaporizable fluid, and sometimes charged with a volatile body. The opposite pairs of compartments are connected together and the whole is permanently sealed up. Since no chemical change takes place, one charge is sufficient to last for years of constant work, the wheel being, to all intents and purposes, a solid one.

To set the motor in action, it is sufficient to expose one side of the periphery of the wheel to the sun's rays, to a feeble gas jet, or even to the heat evolved by the human hand held near it. No condenser or any other device for concentrating the sun's rays is needed, and provided the heat be kept constant, no governor is required to insure regular speed. The application of heat on the one side causes a variation in the pressure of the fluid or vapor in the chambers, and this, by upsetting the equilibrium of the wheel, causes it to rotate with considerable force, which is proportionate to the difference between the heat applied and the normal temperature. One great advantage in this motor is the absence of all risk, and this, conjoined to the fact that it runs perfectly silently and without dirt, is a grand recommendation. A small motor, standing but a few inches in height and actuated by the heat from a common gas burner flame turned down to the size of a small pea, will work a small fan or fountain, etc. This is the first successful attempt to employ heat directly for mechanical power.-Scientific American, New York, March 25.

Liquefaction of Atmospheric Air.-One of the most important physical discoveries of our generation was demonstrated before a brilliant audience assembled in the Royal Institution. This was the liquefaction of atmospheric air. The air we breathe was the last to hold out. In addition to pressure a cold equal to -327° had to be employed. The liquefied atmosphere is of a faint blue tint.-Hardwicke's Science Gossip, London, March. Does the Ether Absorb Light ?-From theoretical considerations some have concluded that many more stars would probably be seen by us if in some way their light was not stopped by the ether, and that the midnight sky would or should be brighter than it really is.

In all the treatments of the subject which I happen to have seen, there is one important element which has not been considered at all, and to me it seems as if that one would account for the limit to the number of stars we see, without assuming that the ether possesses the ability to transform energy within itself, which would be the case if the energy of waves like light-waves were changed into any other kind of energy not capable of affecting our eyes. The fact is, that, in order to see, some energy is needful, so that no matter what the intrinsic brightness of a given light may be, if it is far enough removed from an observer it will cease to be visible, simply because the energy of the waves is too small to excite the sensation. The enormous frequency of the waves gives them a degree of energy they could not otherwise have; but if there were no amplitude there would be no energy, and it is to be conceived

that, if space is illimitable and the number of stars infinite, still, with eyes constituted like ours, only the light of stars within a limited space would be visible, and such optical data would give no reason for holding that what could be seen was the whole, nor for the conclusion that the light from more distant stars was absorbed by the medium through which it was distributed.

The photographic work done in this field testifies to the same conclusion when we are presented with the image of a Istar which had never been seen. The photographic plate acts cumulatively and if one minute's exposure is not enough, takes ten minutes or ten hours, but the eye cannot so act; if one cannot see an object in a second, he can see it no better by continued looking. I conclude, therefore, that we have no evidence that the ether absorbs any of the energy of the lightwaves.-A. E. Dolbear, in Science, New York, March 17.

IT

THE PHYSICAL POWER OF MIND.
DR. KARL MÜLLER.

Translated and Condensed for THE Literary DigeST from a Paper in
Die Natur, Halle, March.

T was said by Kant that a man need not sneeze against his will. We have no evidence as to how far he verified the proposition in his own person, but the expression has its significance, showing us that Kant regarded the will as a sort of regulator, if not the absolute, controlling power in the individual Ego. Properly speaking he regarded body and spirit as interdependent-inseparable. Mind and matter were in his eyes a unity in which the action of the one called forth the reaction of the other.

We have no intention of reopening here the old strife between materialism and idealism. The object of our introductory remarks is simply to present the subject in its highest ́aspect, where it naturally suggests the question: By what means is this interdependence between the physical and spiritual brought about? Turn and twist as we may we can suggest no other medium than our nerves, those innumerable agents in equally innumerable labors. Every impression to which our body is subjected produces a local stimulus or excitation which is at once telegraphed to the central organ of our spiritual being, the brain, by one of these active agents. The sensation arises into consciousness, and in such wise that we are able to locate the seat of stimulation; the central organ reacts, and, in the case of a painful shock, for example, messages go to the heart, which is violently excited, thereby influencing the whole circulation, possibly making the knees tremble. Now, what is terror? Certainly nothing bodily, but a mere mental condition, and yet it may be sufficient to exercise the most powerful influence over any of our organs, even to paralyze them. How this occurs we know no more than we know how consciousness originates. It presents, however, a sufficient illustration of the fact that a disturbed mental condition can operate prejudicially to our physical constitution. That sudden joy, under certain circumstances, may equally prostrate the physical powers, proves only that extremes may produce like consequences.

What does this teach us? This only, that the mind is a power in our physical constitution, as great a power, perhaps, as even the heart or the lungs, if not a greater. Its special media are our senses, which, receiving impressions of stimuli, transmit them to the central organ, where they engender characteristic mental conditions. How must the eye be exercised in mastering all the impressions that fall upon it from the outer world! According as they are beautiful or ugly, they impress our mind pleasantly or painfully, and by its reaction our bodies are similarly affected. In the one case we may be disposed to dance, in the other we may be incapable of even eating or drinking. Similar effects may be produced through the organ of hearing. Word and tone are capable of generating the most powerful emotions. Music especially exercises an immeasurable influence on even the simplest minds. Lively

music impels people irresistibly to dance. The power is purely spiritual, but it reacts in the highest degree upon the body. So, too, with the spoken word. Is it not wonderful how we are moved to anger or sympathy, how we may be exhilarated or depressed, by the mere modulation of another's voice, or by the narration of tales of humor, of pathos, or of horror? Of course ideas are awakened, but what power is there in ideas to make the hair stand on end, or the sweat ooze from the pores of the skin, or how can a thought make us dizzy? It is no satisfactory explanation to say that the dizziness was caused by a flow of blood to the head. What is it which makes so many people giddy when they stand on the edge of a precipice? Simply the idea of falling over. Every one familiar with the sensation knows that it feels as if his brain were the seat of confused emotions, which entirely upset his equanimity. But what causes the sensation? I have seen a mountain maid stand on the outer edge of the witches' dancing-place in the Hartz, and let her eye wander calmly down the dark valley below, and I saw the same girl later, overcome with dizziness, while crossing a bridge, below which the waters seethed and whirled tumultuously. A strong will can do much, if not everything, to overcome this sensation of giddiness, which, if it arise, excludes all the more pleasurable ideas which the scene is equally capable of awakening.

The most powerful influence on our lives is unquestionably love, but this, too, is based on stimulus-sensations precisely as the poet says. "Thy beautiful figure excites me" (Mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt). It originates in the pleasurable emotions which each inspires in the other; but what fateful revolutions, spiritual and physical, may it not work, whether in a joyous or tragical direction. It is the most spiritual of human sentiments, yet what devastation may an unfortunate love involve ! It is easy to say that it is the nervous system whose molecules vibrate at their highest ratio in tranquil love, but are arrested and confused in their vibrations when the sentiment is disturbed. But how is that brought about? Is there really a boundary between the physical and the spiritual in our being? In this realm we grope in darkness, incapable of recognizing anything but phenomena, but the more thoroughly we study the subject the clearer appear the evidences for the conclusion that body and soul are one.

If we pass from love to hate we have a new series of occurrences which operate powerfully on our physical nature. From jealousy to vengence the road is straight, and all that lies between is blind passion. Why do we say blind? Because, that is the actual condition which the mental life manifests. Not that the eye has lost the faculty of seeing, but that judgment, love, and humanity are overwhelmed by passion. As is well known to the medical profession, such mental excitations generate physical ailments, resulting, in some cases, even in madness. No one knows so well as the doctor for the insane how intimate is the relation between insanity and physical disease of the brain. To a doctor for the insane the idea of soul and body existing apart is simply ridiculous; but he would probably listen respectfully to the suggestion that the soul is not one with the brain only, but with the whole body.

Passing now to the realm of hypnotism we find one mind influencing another, and through it the associated organism, by purely physical agencies. This, perhaps, affords the key to the tendency to yawn, laugh, cry, etc., in sympathy with others.

We must conclude, then, that body and soul constitute a unity, in which the healthy activity of each is essential to the healthy activity of both. The moral is, that for a healthy enjoyment of life it is necessary to exercise the mental powers to a normal extent, and maintain a rigid control over the passions. Mental and physical health and vigor call for activity, apportionment of time, regularity of life, education of the will-power for the attainable and natural, and the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.

IT

THE GREAT DELUGE.

RUDOLF FALB.

Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in :
Der Stein der Weisen, Vienna. March.

T is now no longer a secret that the venerable Biblical tradition of a flood has also a kernel of scientific evidence to rest upon, and presents nothing discordant from the point of view of the modern meteorologist. In the first place, we have the broad diffusion of the myth, not only in Europe and Asia, but also in America; as well among the Greenlanders of the North as among the Aztecs and Peruvians. Add to this, that it is current among the Negroes of the Soudan, the Hottentots, and the people of Borneo, and it is no longer possible to regard it as wholly without foundation in fact.

Alexander v. Humboldt was impressed with this view. He says in his American diary: "I cannot leave this first spur of the mountain-chain of Encaramada, without thinking of a matter which was frequently brought to notice during our stay in the Orinoco missions. The natives of this country still preserve a tradition of the Great Water,' when their fathers had to take to their canoes to escape the universal overflow, when the waves of the sea washed the rocks of the Encaramada. This tradition is not confined to one people alone, but is widely distributed and attested by hieroglyphics high on the rocks. If one asks a native,' How was it possible to inscribe the hieroglyphs so high up the rock,' he answers as if he were narrating a fact which none but a white man could be ignorant of, that at the time of the Great Flood their fathers floated so high in canoes.'

.

.

And when Humboldt closes with the words "These ancient traditions of the race which we find distributed like fragments of a wreck over the whole surface of the earth, are of high significance "we supplement his remark by saying that they are of the highest significance, especially when, as in the present case, they so wonderfully support the conclusions of recent scientists.

As regards the scientific aspect of the problem, it has been fully demonstrated that in the gray dawn of antiquity, glaciers were much more extensive than now. We have the evidences first in grinding traces of the glacier in its flow, and, secondly, in the glacial drifts, the so-called “moraines." Such evidences of an ice-age are often found in localities whose present climatic conditions preclude all possibility of glacier formation.

One of the most beautiful and magnificent of all glacier ruts was seen by the writer in South America. Close to Cuzco, the old chief city of Peru, towers a hill called Rodadero, whose summit is crowned with a three-fold zigzag wall of gigantic dimensions, the remains of an ancient fortress. Opposite this wall, and separated from it by a small valley, the trachytic rock of the mountain summit, stripped of all humus, is laid bare over a considerable area; and while its general surface has been ground down smooth as glass, numerous parallel furrows score its surface from the top downwards. These are so pronounced that the Cuzco Indians, and following them the Spaniards, explain that in the good old days of the Incas, the chiefs and their families and followers were in the habit of going to the summit and amusing themselves by coasting down the incline. The simple people have very little idea of how much friction would be necessary to the formation of the ruts, but a geologist of moderate proficiency would recognize here at the first glance that he saw before him the grandest specimen of glacial action in the world; and although the present writer was the first to draw attention to the fact, his conclusions have been amply confirmed by later competent authorities. He found, especially under the smooth surface of the rock, and conforming with all its furrows, a thin stratum of asbestos, which could have originated only by the metamorphic influence of ice or water.

It is evident, then, that Cuzco, at an elevation of 12,000 ft. and situated in Lat. 13° S., where the limit of perpetual snow

is above 16.000 ft. must have been subject to widely different. climatic conditions, at the period at which it was covered by massive glaciers. And as the glacial period corresponds with the geological diluvial period, in which the precipitation of rain and snow was excessive, there remains no doubt that the glacial formation was the product of this continuous precipitation. We know from observation of modern glaciers, that a cold summer with exceptional rainfall is always followed by an extension of the glacier into the valleys, while in warm, dry years it recedes. This advance and retrogression is now found to be periodical. We know, too, from inorganic as well as from organic nature, that the diluvial period was characterized by a very marked depression of temperature.

It is precisely this periodicity of glacial phenomena which guides us in our investigation of the subject under consideration. Biblical chronology places the creation at 4000 B.C. Now, regarding our sacred Scriptures from the point of view that they are Oriental compositions, and accepting the "Creation" as the overthrow of the old and the origination of new conditions, inaugurated, not by sudden catastrophe, but by gradually operating climatic causes, such as material increase and decrease of precipitation with all its attendant consequences, we should see the Old-World tradition of a deluge presenting itself in quite a new light.

When we reflect on the consequences, nowadays, of exceptionally heavy rain extending over only a few hours, there will be no difficulty in realizing that, if such rainfall were of frequent occurrence, the lowlands would soon be converted into swamps, and mankind gradually constrained to forsake the old seats of culture for higher, even although less fertile, regions.

Piercing the shadows of the prehistoric past, we find evidences not of man's new arrival on earth six thousand years ago, but of powerful civilized States with their kings, priests, astronomers, and scribes, with all the luxuries and appliances of modern life; and are constrained to reflect on the preparatory stages through which man must then already have passed, and to ask why do the traditions of all people break sharp off at this point?

A light is thrown on these questions by the reflection that all civilized people then came down out of the mountains, bringing their civilization along with them. The Aryans poured down on all sides from the Himalayas, the Van chain, and the Caucasus, and the Peruvians from the Andes, leaving traces of their labors behind them,

What, then, we ask, were the conditions which first drove these people to the mountains, and what prompted them to leave their mountain homes again and build cities in the valleys?

The question is solved by natural science with the aid of the Deluge tradition. The floods were of long duration, reaching their climax some six thousand years ago, overflowing the lowlands, breaking up all the great civilizations of the day, and driving the several races of man to the nearest accessible mountains. During the prevalence of the flood, which extended over, perhaps, two thousand years, much of the old culture was lost, but some, at least, was preserved under the less favorable conditions of mountain life; and when at length the floods subsided, and the sun warmed the fertile valleys into life, men came down from the mountains, and built cities and tilled the earth, and embarked on a new career of progress.

And the traditional flood is not an isolated but a periodical phenomenon. There were floods before the days of Noah, and the conditions which brought about the deluges of the past will recur in the future. In the year 6400 A.D. on March 21 the Earth will again be nearest the sun, evaporation at the equator will attain its maximum, and the moisture be precipitated in the temperate zones with consequences similar to those which inaugurated the last Glacial Age and the traditional deluge.