812 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



slight indulgence in alcoholic drinks dispelled instantly his best 

 ideas. Prof. Gaule once told the writer, as an experiment during 

 the strain of his " Staatsexamen," that he suddenly stopped his 

 wine and beer, and was surprised to find how much better he 

 could work. An eminent professor in Leipsic once said that the 

 German students could do " twice the amount of work " (" konnten 

 zweimal so viel leisten") if they would let their beer alone. Dr. 

 August Smith * has found that moderate nonintoxicant doses of 

 alcohol (forty to eighty cubic centimetres daily) lowered psychic 

 ability to memorize as much as seventy per cent. Leixner f ob- 

 serves " class der Alcohol den Menschen geistig so herunterhringt, 

 dass er scldiesslich nichts meJir kann, ivie ijolitisieren." Possibly 

 the trouble with a good deal of our politics in this country. 



But we must be careful about drawing too sweeping conclu- 

 sions. A man "in the habit" may be unable to do anything 

 without his usual stimulant. This fact must be recognized. 

 And if, according to the theories of some, acquired characters may 

 descend to the offspring, " inherited" habit may also require con- 

 sideration. At any rate, we must cease to expect that problems 

 which have baffled human solution for generations can be settled 

 in a day or a year. They can be sanely solved only by the accu- 

 mulation of wholly impartial evidence, sufficient in amount to 



determine conviction. 



Truly to me 



There seems to be 



A kinship close 



Wherever flows 



Life's activity. 



LIFE ON THE PLANETS. 



Br M. J. JANSSEN. t 



/~| TAVING shown how all astronomical discovery, concluding 

 ^ J L -with spectrum analysis, points to a similarity of constitu- 

 tion in the earth and the heavenly bodies, M. Janssen continues :) 

 All this whole forms a single family, the members of which 

 have a common genesis and have been formed with the destiny of 

 becoming worlds like ours. Their movements around the central 

 star which enchains them by its powerful attraction are subject 

 to the same laws, and that star, by virtue of its high temperature 

 and the immense reserves of force it contains, sheds upon them 



* August Smith. Die Alcoholfrage. Tiibingen, 1895. 

 f Leixner. Laien-Predigten fiir das deutsche Haus. Berlin, 1894. 

 X From his remarks at the annual meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, October 

 24, 1896. 



