592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



said, was developed about a month ago in a young girl from Orne, AngeTique 

 Cottin, aged fourteen years. The Academy, in conformity with its usual custom, 

 appointed a committee to examine these alleged facts, and to give an account of 

 the result. We will discharge this duty in very few words: 



" It was affirmed that Mdlle. Cottin exercised a most intense action of repul- 

 sion upoD bodies of all kinds whenever a portion of her garments touched them. 

 Accounts were even given of heavy tables being overturned by the simple contact 

 of a silk thread. No effect of this kind was manifested before the committee. 



"In the narratives communicated to the Academy it was affirmed that a 

 magnetized needle, under the influence of the girl's arm, performed rapid oscil- 

 lations, and finally fixed itself quite far from the magnetic meridian. When tried 

 before the committee, a needle, delicately suspended in the same way and under 

 the same circumstances, experienced neither permanent nor momentary dis- 

 placement. 



" M. Sanchon thought that Mdlle. Cottin possessed the faculty of distinguish- 

 ing the north pole of a magnet from the south pole, by merely touching them 

 with her fingers. The committee was convinced, by varied and numerous ex- 

 periments, that the young girl does not possess the capacity attributed to her 

 of determining the poles. 



" The committee need not enumerate these useless attempts. It will simply 

 content itself with declaring that the only one of the alleged facts which was 

 realised before them was that concerning the sudden and violent movements of 

 chairs in which the young girl seated herself. Upon serious suspicions arising as 

 to the manner in which these movements occurred, the committee has decided 

 that they shall be submitted to an attentive examination. It frankly announces 

 that the investigations tended to discover the fact that certain habitual ma- 

 noeuvres hidden in the feet and hands could have produced the observed fact. 

 M. Chalet note declared that the young girl had lost her powers of attraction and 

 repulsion, and that we should be notified as soon as they were restored. Many 

 days have passed since, yet the committee has received no intelligence. We 

 have learned, how r ever, that Mdlle. Cottin is daily received in drawing-rooms 

 where she repeats her experiments. 



" After having fully weighed the circumstances, the committee is of the 

 opinion that the communications transmitted to the Academy on the subject of 

 Mdlle. Ang61ique Cottin should be considered as never having been sent in. 



(Signed) " Arago, Becquerel, Isidore Geoffroy Saint- Hieaire, 

 Babinet, Bayer, Pariset," 



++- 



DARWIN AND HAECKEL. 1 



By Pbof. T. H. HUXLEY, F. E. S. 



OCTOBER 1, 1859, the date of the publication of the " Origin of 

 Species," will hereafter be reckoned as the commencement of a 

 new era in the history of biology. It marks the hegira of Science from 

 the idolatries of special creation to the purer faith of evolution. That 



1 " Anthropogenie. Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschen " (History of the Evolu- 

 tion of Man). By Prof. Ernst Haeckel. Translation in press by D. Appleton & Co. 



