STUDIES OF VORTEX-RINGS. i 75 



it is impossible that the multitudinous species of animals and plants 

 may have been produced one separately from the other by spontaneous 

 generation, nor that it is impossible that they should have been inde- 

 pendently originated by an endless succession of miraculous creative 

 acts. But I must confess that both these hypotheses strike me as so 

 astoundingly improbable, so devoid of a shred of either scientific or 

 traditional support, that even if there were no other evidence than 

 that of paleontology in its favor, I should feel compelled to adopt the 

 hypothesis of evolution. Happily, the future of paleontology is inde- 

 pendent of all hypothetical considerations. Fifty years hence, who- 

 ever undertakes to record the progress of paleontology will note the 

 present time as the epoch in which the law of succession of the forms 

 of the higher animals was determined by the observation of paleon- 

 tological facts. He will point out that, just as Steno and as Cuvier 

 were enabled from their knowledge of the empirical laws of coexist- 

 ence of the parts of animals to conclude from a part to the whole, 

 so the knowledge of the law of succession of forms empowered their 

 successors to conclude, from one or two terms of such a succession, to 

 the whole series, and thus to divine the existence of forms of life, of 

 which, perhaps, no trace remains, at epochs of inconceivable remote- 

 ness in the past. 



-+++- 



STUDIES OF VOETEX-EINGS. 



By ADEIEN GUEBHAKD. 



A FAKING skip-rings in the water, and gazing at the vapors in the 

 -1A-L air, furnish common expressions for complete inactivity and 

 vacuity. Yet, in these occupations may be found subjects of profound 

 and worthy studies. Nothing is vulgar to one who knows how to see, 

 nothing indifferent to one who knows how to observe ; and the fall of 

 a drop of water, insignificant as we may regard it, may bring us into 

 the neighborhood of the ultimate mysteries of those regions to which 

 the fall of an aj)ple once transported the immortal genius of Newton. 

 As profitable subjects for study may be found in those common rings, 

 simple wrinkles on the surface of the water, in which the physicist 

 sees many things and the clown few ; or, in those turbid clouds of 

 smoke which every day float toward the sky from our fires here below. 

 Everybody has seen some adroit smoker throw from his mouth 

 or his pipe pretty, white wreaths, whose whirling vapors it was a 

 pleasure to follow in the air.* It is a fact of daily observation that 



* Fig. 1 has been designed after the celebrated picture of Brauwer in the Lacaze 

 Gallery of the Louvre. In the original, the picture only represents a spiral of smoke. 

 But the form of the mouth and the convergence of the eyes sufficiently indicate the help- 

 less effort of the drunken man. The subject seems to have been a favorite one with the 



