HARD WICKE ' S S CIE NCE-GO SSI P. 



ii 



he was a Dissenter. However, the university of 

 Cambridge is not alone in not always acting in a 

 spirit of wisdom: for the university of Landshut falls 

 in for censure in that, while it spends 6000 florins on 

 its beer cellar, it allows its botanic garden to fall 

 into decay. Kew Gardens, in pre-Hookerian times, 

 did not impress our author favourably, but he was 

 highly delighted with those of the Horticultural 

 Society at Turnham Green, being apparently capti- 

 vated by the delicious flavour of the peaches and 

 pine-apples grown there. The British Museum of 

 those days, the present building being then only just 

 commenced, he considered a disgrace to an enlightened 

 people. He notes the fondness of the English for 

 flowers : ' ' The poor Londoner, who cannot afford to 

 buy what is beautiful, will still, if possible, obtain 

 something green to decorate the window with of his 

 dark little attic, and give his last farthing for a bit of 

 verdure." He is severe on the fiscal arrangements of 

 those days, especially the window-tax and the duty on 

 imported books. His herbarium being contained in 

 some musty old volumes on law and divinity, he was 

 charged thirty florins duty on them, to escape which 

 he had to take out his specimens one by one and 

 place them in papers bought for the purpose, and 

 abandon his old folios to the Custom House officials. 

 He visited Oxford, performing the journey in six 

 hours, though at the risk of breaking his neck. He 

 speaks with warm admiration of English botanists, 

 especially of Mr. Don, whose reputation does not 

 now stand so high as it then apparently did. 



A curious example of the change which men's ideas 

 have undergone in another department of human 

 interest is afforded by a description of a " Parabolic 

 Sounding Board" erected in Attercliffe Church by the 

 Rev. J. Blackburn, minister of Attercliffe cum Darnall. 

 The woodcut with which the paper is adorned shows 

 a lofty pulpit of the "three-decker" pattern, sur- 

 mounted by a huge erection like a dimidiated um- 

 brella. This sounding-board was constructed on 

 mathematical principles, and it was claimed that, if 

 the preacher's mouth was exactly in the focus of the 

 parabolic surface, an attentive hearer would perceive 

 an effect that might be compared to the gentle swell 

 of an organ. 



We find various things now familiar to us an- 

 nounced as novelties. We are told where ' ' those 

 curious substances bromine and bromide of potassium, 

 which we believe have not been hitherto prepared in 

 this country," may be obtained. Iodine has also the 

 interest of novelty. There is a paper, now historic, 

 by Dr. Robert Brown, " On the Movements of Active 

 Molecules" ; and we may read the speech of the Pre- 

 sident of the Royal Society on delivering a medal to 

 Mr. Charles Bell for his discoveries of the functions 

 of sensory and motor nerves, in which he says : " Of 

 all the branches of human knowledge, anatomy has 

 experienced the greatest difficulties in struggling 

 against passions, prejudices, and superstitions." We 



may congratulate ourselves that the difficulties alluded 

 to were in great measure removed a year or two later 

 by the passing of the Anatomy Act ; but the prejudice 

 against the study of anatomy is not even yet extinct ; 

 and has it not been left to our present parliament to 

 prohibit in effect physiological research in the land 

 of Harvey, Hunter, and Bell, at the instance of an 

 ignorant and sentimental clamour, based upon the 

 groundless statements of disingenuous agitators ? 



The perusal of these volumes shows us how great 

 the advance of science has been during half a cen- 

 tury, both as regards the number of ascertained facts 

 and the theories which connect them together and 

 give life to the dry bones. It is not, however, for us 

 to be puffed up with our knowledge ; if we know 

 more than our fathers, it is because we have inherited 

 the fruits of their labours ; and who can tell how much 

 that which passes current with us to-day may have to 

 be modified or set aside before another half-century 

 has passed ? We see how time tries scientific as all 

 other work : if a theory be false, neither the prestige 

 of a great name nor the sanction of authority can 

 prop it from falling ; if it be true, neither denunciation 

 nor even ridicule can prevent it from becoming ulti- 

 mately accepted. 



H. F. Parsons. 



THE GEOLOGY OF IRELAND.* 



A LTHOUGH less known to English geologists 

 A than any other part of the British Islands, 

 the geology of the "Sister Isle" is, perhaps, for 

 many reasons, the most interesting and instructive. 

 Representatives of the most important formations are 

 here found developed after a manner different to what 

 they are seen elsewhere. There is "eozoonal " struc- 

 ture in the pure marbles of Connemara ; characteristic 

 zoophytes (Oldhamia) in the Cambrian slates of 

 Bray Head and the Wexford Mountains ; peculiar 

 Silurian fossils, as well as rocks, in the iron-bound 

 coasts of the west ; a wealth of Devonian ferns and 

 cryptogamia in the fine sandstones of Kilkenny, such 

 as no other member of this ancient formation has yet 

 yielded ; carboniferous rocks which, in addition to 

 the characteristic forms found elsewhere, have a fauna 

 of their own — strange-looking fishes, amphibians, 

 and labyrinthodonts. The carboniferous limestone 

 stretches over the greater part of midland Ireland. 

 Then we have triassic, Rhaetic, and a little oolite, 

 succeeded by chalk, miocene shales, and relics of 

 volcanoes and volcanic lava flows ; drift beds even 

 more distracting in the numerous forms they assume 

 than their representatives in England or Scotland ; 



* " Manual of the Geology of Ireland." By G. Henry Kina- 

 han, M.R.I. A., &c., of H.M. Geological Survey. London, 

 C. Kegan Paul & Co. , 



