430 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sembling those which might come from a 

 church in some town hidden in its recesses ; 

 but there was no such town in the neigh- 

 borhood. On the occasion which he espe- 

 cially describes, he took his place as one 

 of the hunters in a wood of large beech-trees 

 lying against the slope of the mountain, and 

 was treated all the time he stood there to a 

 succession of peals as of bells, coming one 

 upon another, swelling up and dying away, 

 and sounding together in many varieties of 

 modulation, and in all the different stages 

 of progress. At times the impression of the 

 music was so strong as to hold him almost 

 breathless ; then a new wave would sweep 

 up, beginning like the soft breathing of an 

 organ-pipe, rising to the swell of a harp, 

 and closing with the overtone of the octave, 

 as if it were drawn out by some master of 

 the violin. V/hen the hunter returned to 

 the same place toward evening, he heard the 

 same sounds. One other of the hunters re- 

 marked them, but the rest were absorbed in 

 their sport. A forester blew the tone of C 

 on his horn, and it was repeated in the bell- 

 peals. The tones evidently originated in the 

 mouth of the valley and died away in its 

 uj^per part. They were produced by the 

 passage of the wind through the valley, and 

 modified by its configuration, the character 

 of the rocks, and, probably, by the wood. 



Animals or Plants ? In the course of a 

 lecture on " Plants that prey upon Animals, 

 and Animals that fertilize Plants," delivered 

 at Leeds recently, by the Rev. W. H. Dallin- 

 ger, the lecturer explained that there were 

 animals definitely proved to be such, and 

 with which every zoologist was familiar 

 that were so lowly in their being that they 

 possessed no definite form. They revealed 

 to the most refined scrutiny no organization. 

 They moved, but without muscle ; they crept, 

 but without limbs; they felt, but without 

 discoverable nerves ; they devoured without 

 mouths; they digested without stomachs; 

 and they had all the properties of life, but 

 were without trace of organized structure. 

 It was their habit to associate with even 

 these lowly creatures, because they were ani- 

 mals, a measure, at least, of consciousness 

 and volition. But, on the other hand, there 

 were plants of the highest and most com- 

 pact structure in which delicacy of organiza- 



tion, refinement of mechanical contrivances, 

 and adaptation of means to ends, were com- 

 bined ; and yet, because they were vegeta- 

 bles, they were accustomed to assume that 

 they were without consciousness, and devoid 

 of will. But what were the facts ? Zoology 

 at the present day was in the highest sense 

 a science. Its facts had a precision and 

 value unrivaled, and from these they were 

 bound to say that the old landmarks were 

 utterly incompetent. The animal and vege- 

 table kingdoms could not be separated, and 

 the two marched on in one organic whole. 

 To the popular mind he had no doubt this 

 would appear arrogant. To common ob- 

 servation the distinction between the plant 

 and the animal was believed to be sufiiciently 

 clear. Between an ox and an oak-tree there 

 was an unmistakable difference. A cabbage 

 and a swallow were not very easily confound- 

 ed. This was quite true ; but if the entire of 

 what was known as the animal world were 

 laid against the whole of what was known as 

 the vegetable kingdom, it would be seen that 

 there were no features belonging to the one 

 which were ijot in some sense shared by the 

 other. There were vegetables controlled by 

 movements which in animals would be called 

 instincts. They could intoxicate a plant as 

 they could intoxicate a man or beast ; they 

 could paralyze it with pain or chloroform, 

 and could kill it with an electric spark. 

 There were some plants which depended for 

 existence on the animals they entrapped, and 

 to this end they were endowed with a suscep- 

 tibility more delicate than that of the human 

 body, while they could distinguish between 

 food which would nourish them and sub- 

 stances which would not. It was not too 

 much to say that the extinction of insects 

 would lead to the extermination of the most 

 beautiful plants existing on the globe ; while 

 the extinction of these beautiful plants 

 would, in like manner, be the ruin of the 

 majority of insects. English Mechanic. 



Efficacy of Sanitary Improvement. 



Two reports have recently been published 

 in Great Britain which illustrate what has 

 been accomplished in lessening the prev- 

 alence of disease and prolonging human 

 life by measures of sanitary improvement. 

 The improvement trustees of Glasgow have 

 given out a statement showing that the 



