cated, hence he could not very well have been man's first teacher. The Pooh-Pooh theory is a shallow one. It assumes the existence of interjections, but does not account for their origin. Darwin, in "The Expression of the Emotions,” has shown physiologically how men blow out of the mouth or nostril, producing sounds like pooh or pish," when giving expression to the feeling of contempt.

I propose the following method for the discovery of the primitive language. Let us take the modern languages and follow them backwards in time as far as the historical material allows. Let us follow Danish backwards to Old Norse, English to Old English, and both to Germanic and back to Sanscrit, and let us find their fundamental laws, and thus we shall come upon lines leading back of and beyond the historical data now in our possession. We can understand transformations of words and we can comprehend how these may change words so radically that we find no similarity between their modern forms and their originals, but we cannot comprehend the creation of words. Hence the rationale of my theory.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

THE DISCOVERY OF ALCOHOL AND DISTILLATION. MARCELIN-BERTHELOT, OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.

THE

Revue des Deux Mondes, Paris, November 15.

HE name alcohol, so far as it is employed to designate solely the products of the distillation of wine, is modern. Up to the end of the eighteenth century, this word, of Arabic origin, signified any principle whatever, attenuated by extreme pulverization, or by sublimation. For example, it was applied to the powder of sulphuret of antimony (koheul), used to blacken the eye-brows, and to various other substances, as well as to the spirit of wine.

In the thirteenth century, and even in the fourteenth and still later, no author can be found who applies the word alcohol to the product of the distillation of wine.

The name spirit of wine or ardent spirit, although older, was no longer known in the thirteenth century. At that epoch the name spirit was confined to volatile agents alone, such as mercury, sulphur, the sulphurets of arsenic, and ammoniacal salt, which had the power of acting on metals by modifying their color and properties.

As to the appellation eau-de-vie (water of life), that name was given during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the elixir of long life; it was Arnaud de Villeneuve who employed it, for the first time, to designate the product of the distillation of wine. Still he employed eau-de-vie, not as a specific name, but in order to point out its resemblance to the product extracted from wine. The elixir of long life of the old alchemists had nothing in common with our alcohol. This confusion has been the occasion of more than one error among the historians of science.

In fact, it was under the denomination of burning—that is, inflammable-water that our alcohol first appeared, and that name was likewise given to the essence of turpentine. I will try to state precisely, after ancient authors and those of the Middle Ages, the origin of the discovery of alcohol, by showing the successive steps which led to the knowledge of that substance.

The ancients knew that wine was inflammable, as we learn from Aristotle and Pliny. Still, they were entirely ignorant of alcohol. To get acquaintance with that, there was need of a new discovery, the process of distillation, in order to separate from wine its inflammable/principle. The Greeks and Romans had nothing which can properly be called a still. That apparatus was first invented in Egypt in the course of the first centuries of the Christian era. Stills are described with precision in the works of Zosimus, an author of the third century, after the technical treatises of two women alchemists, named Cleopatra and Mary. All the essential parts of a distilling apparatus are there defined. The vessel which holds the liquid has a cover that condenses the vapor, and lateral

tubes, through which the vapor passes into receptacles, forming what is still called an alembic. This name was formed by prefixing the Arabic al to the Greek word ambix, beforeemployed by Dioscorides to designate the cover which acted as condenser.

The old alembics, doubtless, were equal to producing distilled liquids, but on condition of working very slowly and with a very moderate heat. The vapor, in fact, condensed badly in the tubes of the apparatus. The moment they tried to hasten the distillation, it became nearly impossible. Something was yet lacking to perfect the process, and that something was found by the invention of the worm. Yet the use of the worm made its way but slowly, and the invention was regarded as recent by the authors of the eighteenth century.

Let me observe here that I have so far used the word distillation, in its modern sense of evaporation, followed by a condensation of a liquid. In fact, however, the word signifies the issuing of a fluid from a vessel drop by drop, and is equally applied to filtration, and even to all refining and purification. The verb to distil, is, even in our modern language, sometimes employed in that sense.

That is not all. Distillation formerly, from the Greco-Egyptian epoch, comprised two applications altogether distinct. One of these was the condensation of moist vapors, like those of water, alcohol, the essences. The other was the condensation of dry vapors under a solid form, like the metallic oxides,. sulphur, the metallic sulphurets, arsenious acid, and metallic arsenic, which was the second mercury of the Greek alchemists. Nowadays we call this condensation of dry vapors sublimation. It demands special apparatus, which was used by the ancients and gave birth to the Arabic name aludel.

The first savant known by name, who spoke of alcohol, was Arnaud de Villeneuve. Ordinarily he is mentioned as having discovered alcohol, something to which he never made the slightest pretension. He confined himself to speaking of alcohol as a preparation known in his time and which astonished him in a high degree. Arnaud de Villeneuve mentioned it in his book entitled 66 de Conservanda juventute" (About Preserving Youth), a work written about 1309. He says: "By distillation there can be extracted from wine or from its dregs, the vin ardent, which is also called eau-de-vie. This is the most subtle part of wine." Then he exalts its virtues: "Certain modern authors say that it is golden water, by reason of the sublime character of its preparation. It prolongs life, and that is why it deserves to be called the water of life. It should be kept in a vase of gold; all other vases, those of glass excepted, give reason for suspecting an alteration in the substance." The pseudo Raymond Lulle, a more modern author than de Villeneuve, speaks of alcohol with the same enthusiasm.

The alchemists, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, had such an admiration for the discovery of alcohol, that they likened it to the elixir of life and the mercury of the philosophers. The elixir of long life is due to the imagination of ancient Egypt. Diodorus of Sicily gives it the name of "the remedy producing immortality." The invention was attributed to Isis and its composition is described in the works of Galen. In the Middle Ages, its formulas varied much. The elixir of long life was also thought capable of changing silver into gold, that is, it enjoyed the reputation of having the same chimerical properties as the philosopher's stone.

If the discovery of alcohol has not realized these illusions, it has none the less had very important consequences in the history of the world. It is eminently an active agent, and thereby at the same time useful and hurtful. It may prolong life or shorten its term, according to the use made of it. It is likewise a source of inexhaustible wealth for individuals and for States, a source more fertile than would have ever been the pretended elixir of the alchemists. Their long and patient labors have not been lost. Their dream has been realized beyond their hopes by the discoveries of modern chemistry.

TH

THE ORIGIN OF LUNGS-A CHAPTER IN

EVOLUTION.

CHARLES MORRIS.

American Naturalist, Philadelphia, December.

HE air-bladder of fishes is an organ whose true purpose has long been classed among the mysteries of animal organization. That the bladder was evolved as a swimming organ, or is of any essential utility for that purpose, there is the strongest reason to question. As it at present exists, it is often too small to be of use in changing the gravity of the fish, and in many cases it is entirely absent. In others, its compressing muscles seem incapable of being used to expand it. Yet in all these cases the fish seems at no disadvantage in swimming as compared with those that possess large and efficient bladders. As an instance we may cite the mackerel, which has no swimming bladder, and the great shark tribe, which is also bladderless.

The bladder varies greatly in size in closely allied species. A like singular variation occurs in the case of related genera.

Its variations in form are equally marked. Ordinarily it is a simple sac with smooth interior. In some instances it has a cellular interior, and in others it is divided by transverse partitions into from two to four sections. In other cases, it is divided by a longitudinal partition into two lateral halves. In some families there is a remarkable development of lateral appendages, of varying character. In others, the internal sacculation becomes so great that the bladder resembles the batrachian lung, and evidently does duty in the breathing of air.

The contents of the bladder differ in different fishes. In fresh water fishes it is nearly pure nitrogen. In marine fishes on the contrary oxygen is in excess. This is particularly the case in the deep swimmers, in some of which the bladder has been found to contain as much as eighty-seven per cent. of oxygen.

These gaseous contents if obtained through secretion by the blood vessels are not always so obtained, for in many fishes an arrangement exists by which air may enter the bladder from without. This is what is known as the pneumatic duct, a tubular connection between the oesophagus and the air-bladder, not unlike that which supplies the lungs of air-breathers. This duct presents the same remarkable variability observed in other characteristics of the air-bladder. Its point of connection with the alimentary tract varies, being usually in the oesophagus, but in some fishes as far back as the stomach. In the Ganoid order of fishes the duct is a short one, and always open. In the Physostome order it is longer, and in many instances closed, being occasionally reduced to a fine filament. In the other orders of Teleostean fishes, which embrace the great majority of species, the pneumatic duct does not exist. Whatever function this duct may have once performed, therefore, it seems as a rule to have lost its utility. That its function was an essential one in the early stages of fish life is rendered evident by the fact that all fishes which have a bladder at all, possess a pneumatic duct in the larval stage of growth.

What, then, was its primitive function? In attempting to answer this question, we must first consider the air-bladder in relation to the fish tribe as a whole. In one principal order of fishes-the Elasmobranchs-the air-bladder does not exist. No shark or ray possesses this organ. The conditions of its occurrence in the Teleosteans, we have already considered. But in the most ancient existing order of fishes—the Ganoids-of which but a few representatives remain-it exists in an interesting condition. In every modern Ganoid the air-bladder has an effective pneumatic duct, which usually opens into the dorsal side of the oesophagus, but in the sub-order Polypterus it opens, like the wind-pipe of living breathers, into the ventral side. Finally, in the small sub-order of Dipnoi, also a survivor from the remote past, the duct not only opens ventrally into

the œsophagus, but the air-bladder does duty as a lung. Externally, it differs in no particular from an air-bladder, but internally it presents a cellular structure which nearly approaches that of the lung of the batrachians.

In opposition to the current view, I oppose the natural presumption that the duty which it subserved in the most ancient fishes was its primitive function. The facts of embryology lend strong support to this hypothesis. For the air-bladder is found to arise in a manner very similar to the development of the lung. The fact that the pneumatic duct is always present in the larval form, in fishes that possess a bladder, is equally significant. All the facts go to show that the introduction of air into the body was a former function of the airbladder, and that the atrophy of the duct in many cases, and the disappearance of the bladder in others, are results of the loss of this function.

'The root of the thumb affords an indication of the intelligent will, a will whose strength may be measured by the length and thickness of the root. It gives more or less indication of the tendency to love, hence the name of Venus's Mount,' ascribed to it by the old chiromancers. As a matter of fact, love is will and will is love, but I beg to remark, with all due deference to these learned doctors, that the passion displays itself most violently in those whose thumbs are smallrooted, in consequence of the smaller will-power, intelligence, and moral force with which it is associated. The second joint indicates the force of the judgment and decision."

So far d'Arpentigny, and in so far we agree with him entirely, as the result of many years personal investigation.

A small, thin, ill-defined thumb we have always found characteristic of an undecided and timorous character, and more indicative of instinct than of spirit and intelligence. Such thumbs are common enough among gentle, patient, loving wives and maidens, but never among women who rule the

roost.

Persons with large thumbs, on the contrary, are forcible, self-reliant natures, knowing what they want, and acting deliberately. A thumb with the first joint small, thin, and short, indicates an undecided, irresolute character, while a large, thick thumb indicates self-consciousness, suggestive of pride, and an undue estimate of self.

The union of these two thumb-types with the distinctive types of finger and trunk in the innumerable combinations in which we meet them in nature, afford indication of every con ceivable character and disposition, and ample scope for all the skill of the most talented chirognomist.

As regards the whole hand, d'Arpentigny says that large hands go along with a capacity for individualization and grasp of detail, medium-sized hands with a capacity for both generalization and individualization, while small hands, if they are broad, and the fingers knotty, indicate dogmatism, shrewdness, and quarrelsomeness.

The science of chirognomy cannot, however, rest on such broad generalities; we want a basis for bringing the results of our observations to a test. Such a test was designed by d'Arpentigny in the seven hand-types already given, and which we will now examine more closely.

Taking first the elementary hand, we find it broad and thick, the palm hard, the fingers thick and stiff, the thumb blunt and

frequently bent backwards. Such a hand pertains to rude, coarse, unreflective natures, at a low stage of development. `People with a disposition to labor, and with only moderate desires; dependent people submitting readily to oppression. The type of hand is rare in Europe, but is common to some Asiatic and Slavish types, Laplanders, and the Pariahs of India.

Turning to the second type, the spatula-shaped hand: The fingers of this type are broadened at the points, and the thumb is ordinarily large. The type indicates decision, self-consciousness, energy, industry, with a taste for the mechanical arts. People with spatula-shaped hands are faithful in love and reliable in business, but are not idealists or enthusiasts. The type in common among all the Germanic nations, and more common in mountains than in lowlands.

The artistic hand, with its long, conical fingers, is the third type. If the hand be thick and the thumb large, it indicates thirst for fame and gold, inventive genius, and cunning. If such a hand be flexible, the trunk of medium size only, and the thumb small, one may ascribe to its possessor enthusiasm and an eye for beauty and form. If the hand is distinctly broad and firm, it indicates thought. The chief characteristic of conical fingers are inspiration, tendency to deep thought, a dislike of mechanical labor, and talent for form, color, and poetry. Such fingers do not indicate constancy in love, or regulation of conduct by recognized standards of morality. To the possessor of such hands we may ascribe selfishness, laziness, extravagance, ostentation, and little regard for truth. Let it be remembered, however, that these fundamental characteristics are subject to important shading, and to qualification by corrective influences which it is the function of the chirognomist to study carefully.

The angular or practical hand presents a distinct contrast to the artistic hand. It is more generally large than small, the fingers knotty, the wrist strongly developed, the finger joints square, the root joint of the thumb powerfully developed, the palm hollow and tolerably firm. A person with a hand of this type will have a sense of order, talent for organization and business, and all his labors will be guided by intelligence. People with such hands are realistic, with little appreciation for art, and with no lofty ideals, but they are punctual and methodical, make good officials and clerks, and have a high respect for authority.

In the philosophic hand the trunk is large and flexible. Its distinguishing feature is the terminal joints of the fingers which, being a mixture of the angular and the conical, assume the form of an egg-shaped spatula. The thumb is tolerably broad, and both joints of nearly equal size. People with this type of hand go to the root of things, and have more regard for the true than for the beautiful, for the essence than for the form. The finger joints of this hand indicate calculating capacity, while the terminal joints indicate artistic tastes. The result of this combination of two distinct types is a taste for metaphysical and philosophic abstractions. People with such hands are critically disposed toward religious creeds, analytic and logical. Hands of this type are of much more common occurrence in the old world than the new.

The sixth type is the spiritual, the psychic hand, and is of rare occurrence. It is small and delicate, in which respect it is generally in harmony with the whole body; the trunk of the psychic hand is of medium size, the fingers tapering, smooth, soft, and arched, the terminal joints fine and pointed, the thumb slender and shapely. The old chiromantics regarded this hand as indicative of noble birth, but it is found in all ranks of society. It is characteristic of ideal natures, free from ambition and from everything mean and selfish, their chief aim the realization of their ideals. They are not usually physically strong, but their spiritual force renders them capable of great achievements. Such hands indicate the apostles of a great idea, enthusiasts for a holy cause.

The close of this system is the mixed type, a type embracing combinations of two or more of the other types. Naturally it is the type most frequently met with, as it includes innumerable sub-types, distinguished by the preponderance or proportion of the several distinctive types. Under this type we find the most antagonistic forms, indicating most remarkable character-combinations. If the mixed hand be thick and coarse, the thumb large, and the fingers knotty, we may safely ascribe to the possessor very unenviable qualities-greed, envy, lust, avarice, and hypocrisy.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR.
CANON TRIstram.

་

Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, London,

MAD

November.

ADAGASCAR has an extraordinary natural history. This, one would suppose from the position of the island, should be African; but it, like its people, is thoroughly un-African; and whence the peculiar types of Madagascar came is one of the curiosities of geographical distribution. The monkeys and lemurs of Madagascar are not to be found in Africa, while all the great African animals of prey are absent. Among the lemurs is one known as the ayeaye, of which the formation of the digits is unique. The botany is almost as peculiar.

At the last meeting of the Zoological Society was shown a specimen of the egg of an extinct bird of Madagascar, which is fifteen times the bulk of an ostrich egg, and yet the bird itself appears to have been hardly as large as its egg, not larger, as far as one can judge from remains, than the New Zealand moa, an extinct bird, to which the Madagascar bird had an affinity. This same peculiarity runs through all the birds of Madagascar. Of course the water-birds and sea-fowl are the same as those of Africa; but there are one or two extraordinary exceptions. There is the snake-bird, a long-necked bird of very great beauty and grace, allied to the cormorant, which it resembles in its habits, and of which there are four species in the world. The Madagascar species is certainly Indian. Then, again, another bird which is a puzzle to naturalists is the Mesites, a water-hen peculiar to Madagascar. These birds are usually distinguished by a small tail and short tarsus, whereas the Madagascar species, which is related to others, has a long tail and tarsus, and no one until M. Audubert thought the bird was allied to the rails. There is a group of cuckoos entirely peculiar to Madagascar-the coua-of which there are nine or ten species, which have no relations at all in Africa or India. Then in another group we have a bird allied to the thrushes-but not African, although allied to a species in the Mauritius and all the Moscarene Islands—the Hypsipetes.

Altogether, we cannot explain the Madagascar fauna, but it shows that Madagascar must have been separated from Africa for an infinity of ages. Its natural history affinities are certainly rather with India than Africa, and yet they are entirely distinct and peculiar. No doubt, there is a great deal more to be found out than we have yet obtained. The most peculiar specimens seem to come from the northwest part, which, I believe, has been but very slightly explored. We know less of it than of any other part. That leads us to hope that we may have still further specimens, and get something that will throw light on the Madagascar fauna generally, which is also represented in the Seychelles Islands, in the Rodrigues, in Réunion, and also in the Mauritius. A most interesting book of travels was written over two hundred years ago by a Huguenot exile, M. Leguat, who was banished to Rodrigues. His volume is of special interest, because he describes a great number of birds, almost all of which are now entirely extinct. As the expedition fitted out to observe the transit of Venus happened to have one of its stations there, the Government attached to it one or two naturalists, who found in caves the bones and skeletons of something like eight or ten species, which are all described by M. Leguat. Madagascar, quite as much as New Zealand, can claim to be a zoological sub-region.

I

RELIGIOUS.

THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY.
WILLIAM M. SALTER.

New World, Boston, December.

DO not pretend to be in any special sense a student of history or a calculator of the future, and I shall not attempt to say what the next step in Christianity will be. I have rather in mind the step that needs, or ought to be, taken. In the first place, the Church should offer free room for the intellectual spirit of the time. The demand is sometimes made that the creeds should be simplified. I cannot see that a simple creed is more acceptable than an elaborate one. Creeds, Articles of Faith, or Confessions are ordinarily related to the moral and religious life somewhat as philosophies and scientific theories are to their respective data. It is not an advance, then, intellectually speaking, to make an elaborate statement give way to a simple one; it is only an advance to make the statement of one age give place to the statement of another, to allow freedom to new interpretations, to give room for fresh minds. The objection to the old creeds is simply to their being made obligatory on the present, and logical consistency demands that we object also to making any new creeds obligatory.

Instead of adopting a new theology and rejecting the old, the Church should give to both equal right and standing. Not to do this is to continue the intellectually vicious course of the Church in the past. The thought has yet apparently to arise if a Church in which all who wish to live the Christian life shall dwell together as brethren, tolerating each other in the varied results of their religious thinking. The ideal Church would be large enough to contain all varieties of opinion that are consistent with Christian living.

The true method of procedure for the Christian Church is not to abolish or revise the old creeds, but simply to grant complete liberty of belief with regard to them; to let them stand for those to whom they are still satisfactory, but to give others the right to amend or reject them; to take no position as a Church upon these matters; to have no standards of orthodoxy; to say that there is only one heresy, namely, wickedness, and only one essential requirement, namely, the doing of the will of God.

It is extremely unlikely that this method will be pursed; for there is not, perhaps, an instance in Christian history in which a Church, having once committed itself to a doctrinal position, has relaxed its obligation. But if none of the Churches will take the step I have indicated, then the next step in Christianity will be out of any of the existing Churches; the spirit of progress will secure a new organ for itself, and more and more what is earnest and forward-looking in the old organizations will disentangle itself and go to swell the new ranks. In religion, almost every forward movement has heen possible only by making a new beginning, and yet I can conceive of a Church in which an unbroken continuity of development would be possible, though, as Churches have been, progress has been often possible only by going out of them. Yes, I can even imagine the Churches of the present time undergoing a thorough inward regeneration, and evolving without a break into the greater Church of the future.

As I turn to speak of what is necessary on the moral side, I shall urge what is in one sense a backward step, and that step is to go back to Jesus. As I look out on the Christian Church at large, one of the things that strike me is the almost total lack of that idealism, that ardor, that faith, and that hope that lived in the breast of the Man of eighteen centuries ago after Whom Christendom is named, I dc not mean that the Christian Church does not value morality, that it is not humane,

charitable, full of good works. I mean that its morality is without wings; that there is no expectancy in it, no largeness of vision; that, so far as this world is concerned, the Christian seems to look for nothing better from it than anyone else does. The attitude of Jesus and the first Christians was that of looking for a great change. The Church at the outset was but a body of those who were consumed with a great expectation; whose eyes were fixed on a new heaven and a new earth in which justice should rule; who blessed the Name of Jesus. for the priceless gift of this faith, and looked to Him to come again to turn faith into sight, and bring in the new age. The Christian Church has to go back to the primitive Christian enthusiasm, to drink deep of those ancient springs, before it can take the step forward that is needed now.

To think now somewhat as Jesus thought would mean to look for a new order of things on earth, to give up the idea that existing political and social arrangements are anywise final. It would translate one into the attitude of a person looking for a better country. Literally speaking, it may be impossible for us to think as Jesus and His disciples did. The Kingdom of Heaven itself, His central idea, has associations that take it to no small extent out of the realm of what is credible to us. He declared in detail who they were who should have a place in the order about to be: they were those who suffered those whom society reviled and persecuted, those who were poor and oppressed; above all, those who were looking and hungering for a reign of righteousness, those who hated war and inclined to mercy, those who would stand any amount of wrong rather than do wrong, those who loved even such as injured them, those who tried to be perfect.

If the Churches should come into contact with the real Jesus, it would be their regeneration. They might worship Him less, they would follow Him more. They would extend a hand to the reform movements of the time. As the early Church struck blows at infanticide, gladiatorial shows, and other infamies of the Roman world, the Church now would begin to banish some of the barbarities of this nineteenth-century civilization.

The trouble is that the Churches do not understand their Master, they do not catch the real drift of the New Testament. They have acquired such a factitious reverence for both that they do not study either with a scientific, truth-loving spirit. Never would Jesus have been content with what most of His followers now offer to the suffering and the wronged,-the hope of recompense in another world; never would He have consented to let the earth be the Devil's and only heaven be God's ; He would have said justice is for here and now, and the will of God is to done on earth.

May the two-fold step I have described be taken! May liberation be given to the mind, and once more may the conscience be touched! Happily, then, the dividing wall between Christianity and much of what is earnest and good in the world outside it will be broken down.

A

THE EFFECT OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY UPON RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

H. S. WILLIAMS.

Century, New York, December.

DIFFICULTY, and I am often of the opinion that it is one of the greatest difficulties, the earnest scientific student meets in his religious life, is to believe in the accuracy of the Bible. The fact is, that statements are found in the Bible which, as scientific statements, cannot be explained as even apparently true. They can be explained, scientifically, in only one of two ways: either they are inaccurate statements of facts, or the facts recorded differ from those now known to science; as the account of Eve's creation, the Sun standing still for Joshua, the account of Jonah, and others. The part

do it as a scientific student seeking to get whatever truth there may be revealed in the Bible.

Until I get out of the Bible those truths with which its writers were inspired I get nothing; and apprehending them, I care nothing for the criticisms of the artist's methods, or of the materials with which he worked. His very disregard of details only emphasizes his meaning. What he leaves out, or what, with coarse brush he dashes in for color, are alike essential to the expression of those profound truths which holy men, as they were inspired of God, have ever been able to portray.

Too many generations of noble human folk have looked on those written pictures and caught new glimpses of God. The light coming from them is too brilliantly reflected in all that is good in Christendom to leave any doubt as to their reality. If the undevout astronomer is mad, what shall we say of the geologist who can despise that unique portrait of Elohim creating the universe, because it makes no place for the Canbrian fauna? What grander or more divine conception of the creation was ever framed than that which likens the original materialization of the universe to the vocal articulation of thought? In the beginning God spoke, and it was.

While I realize a growing appreciation of the Bible, it seems to me true that as a body of formulas it is essential to translate the original in other ways than into the English language. In the old attitude there is a definite belief that there is something fixed, and formulated, and perfected long ago in regard to beliefs. The fundamental difference which I notice between this and the attitude of the scientific student is that he con/siders no formulated expression of belief as permanently satisfactory.

This, I think, is a direct result of the study of science; for my study of science has demonstrated to me that, although the laws of nature are permanent, the most precise formulas of science defining these laws are only imperfect expressions of the truth.

Formulated truth has become a body of evidence that requires constant adjustment to modern thought. We must constantly study such formulated truth as that in the Bible, so as to adjust it to our growing understanding. Formulas are not at fault, but scientific study begets a changed attitude toward formulas. The study of science begets a respect for truth itself. We cannot conceive honestly-framed formulas as untruthful, but when we get no truth from them the scientific attitude is that we do not understand the formulas.

The result of deep scientific study, it seems to me, is to develop precision in distinguishing true from false formulations of our conceptions, to such a degree that the personal elements of religious belief become more sharply distinguished, so that the devout scientist may be constantly growing in the fullness of his religious belief, and still be dropping out tenets which he held to-dropping them as he found them not elements of the truth which he grasped. But the study which brings development is study of the religious emotions, which must be experienced if we would get the truth. The man who would grow in knowledge of religious truth must exercise his religious faculties. This is the direct teaching of scientific study.

Science exercises and develops functions which are not essentially antagonistic to religion; but they are not the functions of religion, and if they be given first place in our interest, religious growth must deteriorate in proportion to its neglect. The functions of religion must be exercised, or they will become incapable of action; they must be educated, or they will become

weak and useless. Scientific study, though it fills us with exalted notions of the complexity of the universe and of the wonderful harmony if its correlations, leads us to no hope; we find in it only stern, relentless law; it has no feeling, and its end is certain death. And what does it profit unless we keep alive those religious functions which conduct us to the other world of religious belief?

MISCELLANEOUS.

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE SAHARA.
HILARION MICHEL.

New England Magazine, Boston, December.
HE general idea of the Sahara is that it is an immense

although this region is the wildest of that immense belt of deserts which, intersected only by a few water-courses, extends uninterruptedly from the Atlantic Ocean to the east of Siberia, it supports a population, settled or nomadic, of about 3,500,000, the settled population, being distributed over 125 oases. We understand by oases every town or city generally surrounded by a belt of vegetation. As to the domestic vegetation, it may be reckoned at 20,000,000 palms, and 10,000,000 fruit-bearing trees of other varieties. However, probably not more than one three-hundredth of its whole surface is inhabited or cultivated.

The most important of the trees growing wild are the Acacia Arabica, two species of Tamarisk (T. gallica and T. articulata), the pistacia, the lotus (Zizyphus, jujuba), and a few whose leaves furnish fodder for cattle.

row.

The luxuriance of many oases is generally contrasted with the barrenness of the desert. But, however barren be the rugged waste in summer, so rich is its soil that, the day following a rainfall, wild grass is observed growing, especially in the depressions, but that frail vegetation which springs up with the sunshine of to-day is scorched by the sunshine of to-morHowever, the general surface of the Sahara, so parched and fiery in summer, wears a mantle of green on all places uncovered by arid sand after the first autumnal rainfall. It preserves its green aspect during all the winter, and from that verdure the Bedouins, those traditional shepherds of the desert, derive their only means of life, the food for their numerous herds of cattle-the only thing which that immense waste affords to humanity.

In May, the burning sun scorches the wild grass; rain no longer enriches the soil; and as a result the Bedouins are compelled to drive northward and sell the greater part of their cattle with which they supply the markets of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, and many of Europe.

The strong saline quality of the water found underground, the presence of fossils and shells belonging to strictly marine families, the character of the tertiary strata, and the flatness and sandiness of the soil, are strong evidence for the theory that the Sahara was formerly the bottom of an inland sea.

Its conformation is convex in the centre, rising about four thousand feet above the sea and sloping northwardly and southwardly in a gentle gradient. All its confines are barred by mountains or prominent lands, and its level averages one thousand feet higher than the outlying seas; whence we conjecture that the waters closed on all sides, stagnated, until its midmost crust heaved up, when they flowed off southward through the Niger to Timbuctoo and northward through the gulf of Gabes. The now dried-up Wad Massaura, whose bed forms an uninterrupted channel through almost the entire Sahara from Twat to Timbuctoo, where once it probably joined the Niger, seems to give weight to this hypothesis, as it appears perfectly logical, that that river drained the last remaining water.

The physical configuration of the general surface exhibits