jOO 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tional advertisements, and the custom- 

 ary arts and tricks by which notori- 

 ety is manufactured and "success " se- 

 cured. It is to the credit of New York 

 intelligence, and evinces a growing ap- 

 preciation of the intrinsic claims of 

 science, that the customary clap-trap of 

 agents, whose maxim is, "The public 

 must have a certain amount of humbug, 

 you know," was entirely dispensed 

 with in the present instance. 



Prof. Tyndall's course of lectures 

 was any thing but child's-play for his 

 audience. Boston, indeed, has com- 

 plained that they were elementary , \i 'not 

 rudimentary ; but Boston is in many 

 things exceptional there has been no 

 such complaint in other cities. In New 

 York the prevailing criticism has been 

 rather of an opposite kind not, per- 

 haps, that the lecturer's presentations 

 had been too abstruse for ordinary in- 

 telligent apprehension, but that they 

 have been too incomplete to be satis- 

 factory. The phenomena shown have 

 been out of proportion with their ex- 

 planations, a defect which could only 

 be remedied by giving thirty-six lec- 

 tures in the place of six. But this was 

 impossible, as Prof. Tyndall's time to 

 tarry with us was short. The method 

 that he has followed, we think, has 

 *been very skilfully adapted to the cir- 

 cumstances. There has been a great 

 amount of general reading in books 

 and magazines, and of study in our 

 schools and colleges, upon the subjects 

 he has selected, but the ideas acquired 

 have been vague and unsatisfactory, 

 from lack of observing the actual phe- 

 nomena that have been read about. 

 The lecturer assumed this state of 

 mind in his hearers, and that the liter- 

 ature of the subject is everywhere ac- 

 cessible for further reference, and he* 

 accordingly constructed his course so 

 as to bring under direct observation a 

 wide range of the actual phenomena he 

 had chosen to deal with. These were 

 presented in their beauty and variety, 

 with consummate skill and impressive- 



ness, and as much of elucidation as 

 time allowed. The ideas of many upon 

 the subject of Light, the theory of its 

 nature, and its various complex affec- 

 tions, were clarified and rendered 

 more precise, while many others for 

 the first time witnessed a series of 

 marvellous effects, which gave them a 

 new conception of the exquisite and 

 wonderful play of natural forces, and 

 which will incite them to further study 

 and prepare them for it. 



The triumph of Prof. Tyndall, so 

 far from being his first lecture with all 

 its advantages of novelty, was really 

 his last lecture, and what is more, the 

 concluding part of it, which was with- 

 out experiments. He closed his course 

 by an estimate of the work, and a state- 

 ment of the claims of original investi- 

 gators, and this was listened to by his 

 vast audience with a close and almost 

 breathless attention, which attested 

 both the intellectual quality of the as- 

 semblage and their interest in the 

 highest scientific objects and themes. 



MRS SOMERYILLE. 



To the question " "Who is the most 

 intellectual woman that has yet ap- 

 peared?" a variety of answers will 

 probably be returned ; but to the ques- 

 tion " "Who is the most scientific woman 

 that has yet appeared? " but one answer 

 will be given ; it is " Mary Somer- 

 ville." Not only was she a woman of 

 eminent capacity, but, what is very 

 remarkable, her mental vigor was_pro- 

 longed to a period surpassing by many 

 years the allotted life of man. The first 

 work that made her name known to 

 the world was in 1826, and her last 

 book, an able treatise in two volumes, 

 was published forty-three years later, 

 in 1869, and that long interval was 

 fruitful in works of ability in different 

 departments of science. 



Mrs. Somerville died at Naples No- 

 vember 29th, within rather less than a 

 month of the ninety-second anniversary 



