54 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



poplars had grown so fast that at last, without his being aware, they had hid the 

 turret behind them. Kant, deprived of the material support which had steadied 

 his speculations, was completely thrown out. Fortunately, his neighbors were 

 generous the tops of the poplars were cut, and Kant could reflect at his ease 

 again. 



The manuscript of Mill's " Logic " was first sent to the publisher Murray, 



who, after keeping it so long as to occasion a year's delay in its publication, de- 

 clined it. It was next offered to Parker, who accepted it, and sent the opinion 

 of his referee, in the writer's own hand, withholding the name. ''He forgot," 

 said Mill, " that I had been an editor, and knew the handwriting of nearly every 

 literary man of the day." The referee was Dr. W. Cooke Taylor, who after- 

 ward was one of the reviewers of the book. 



Carriage- Fares in New YorTc and London. A writer in the " Tribune," 



describing the carriage system of large cities, says: "Briefly put, the legal rates 

 for cabs and carriages in New York are fifty cents a mile and fifty cents a half- 

 hour, with no fare less than one dollar. In London the cab rate is twenty -five- 

 cents for any distance under two miles, and thirteen cents for each additional 

 mile ; just one fourth the rate .in New York." Who would live under mo- 

 narchical extravagance, when they can have republican simplicity at four times 

 the price ? 



Infinitesimal Scale of Molecular Systems. Life is a stream of attri- 

 butes that flows along from generation to generation, each kind being, as it 

 were, a special channel for special characters. But the everlasting wonder is, 

 how all the characteristics of a species can be embodied in a germ so as to be 

 reproduced by growth ; and still more amazing is it how the nicer shades of 

 organic modification are also transmitted by the germ so as to become hereditary. 

 In some way the systems of organic molecules must be capable of taking and 

 retaining an infinite number of inconceivably delicate impressions ; for with 

 the myriad forms of life there must be formed myriads of molecular modifica- 

 tions of germ structure. Dr. Flint says that the head of a human spermatozoon 



is -j-oVo f an i ncn l n &i ToVo f an i ncn broad, and ^sloo f an i Qcn m thick- 

 ness; and Professor Du Bois-Reymond says if this head is assumed to be as large 

 as the Great Eastern, and packed throughout with machinery as fine as the finest 

 ladies' watch, even this would fail to represent the fineness of the system of 

 molecular machinery that actually fills the head of the real spermatozoon. 



According to Mr. Lockyer, the Egyptians are stated to have recorded 



373 solar and 832 lunar eclipses ; and he says this statement is probably true as 

 the proportions are exact, and there should be the above number of each in from 

 twelve hundred to thirteen hundred years. 



The " Saturday Review " notices, as an instance of the reduction to ab- 

 surdity of the conjectural method, the efforts ot M. de Gubernatis to interpret 

 the multiform stories of the cat and allusions to the cat in folk-lore, as parts of 

 the great system of solar myths. With M. ae Gubernatis, the cat with white 

 ears in a fairy tale is the "morning twilight, ' or ' the moon which chases the 

 mice of night." A chattering oat appears in a Russian fairy story, and is killed 

 in the territory of a hostile sultan. M. de Gubernatis explains that the sultan is 

 ''the wintry night," but leaves us in the dark as to what the chattering cat is. 

 A cat is metamorphosed in a tale by Madame d'Aulnay into a woman who wears 

 a dress of thin white gauze, set off with rose-colored taffeta, the gauze and rose- 

 colored taffeta being inventions of the author's fancy which she has added to the 



