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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ble of giving rise to various forms, seeing that 

 the effects of mere mechanism, uninfluenced by 

 volition, cannot be other than unique. How 

 comes it that chemical ingredients, controlled by 

 one and the same force, and unsolicited by any 

 extraneous or inherent will, should assume so 

 many kaleidoscopic forms as those which go to 

 make up the actual Cosmos ? Is there no hand 

 to move the instrument, no power to shake the 

 many-colored molecules into the varied patterns 

 they are seen to assume ? The theist, or even 

 the pantheist, has at least an intelligible reply to 

 offer ; but what is the position of the materialist, 

 who denies the existence of any other force than 

 that of a blind and invariable mechanism, oper- 

 ating upon matter alike in all modes of being, 

 uninfluenced by external intellect and without in- 

 ternal consciousness, a force which he can phys- 

 ically dissipate, a matter which he can chemical- 

 ly dissolve and evaporate ? Until some answer 

 is given to this question, we cannot accept the 

 idea presented to us under the term differentia- 

 tion as a definite and comprehensible one ; nor 

 can we hold that the atheistic school has ad- 

 vanced one step toward the elucidation of the 

 difficulty it has so boldly set itself to explain, 

 since Prof. Huxley wrote these words : " The 

 question of questions for mankind, the problem 



which underlies all others, and is more deeply in- 

 teresting than any other, is the ascertainment of 

 the place which man occupies in Nature, and of 

 his relations to the universe of things. Whence 

 our race has come, what are the limits of our 

 power over Nature and of Nature's power over 

 us, to what goal we are tending, are the prob- 

 lems which present themselves anew and with 

 undiminished interest to every man born into 

 the world." 



It is not, then, against the facts involved in 

 Mr. Darwin's theory that we contend, but against 

 the interpretation given to those facts by the 

 materialistic school. The hypothesis of evolu- 

 tion is favored by discovery, by inductive reason, 

 and by analogy ; the puzzle lies only in the meth- 

 od assigned to it by modern science. We think, 

 with Prof. Gray, that the belief in a gradual evo- 

 lution extending upward from the lowest forms 

 is, in the main, scientifically sound, and experi- 

 mentally probable, but that, in accepting the is- 

 sues of such a doctrine, we must carefully guard 

 ourselves against the common error of insufficient 

 thought, which leads certain evolutionists to ig- 

 nore the prime and moving principle of the the- 

 ory to which they give their adhesion, viz., that 

 secret of the potency of matter which alone 

 explains Prof. Tyndall's " mystery of causation." 



— Spectator. 



Meteorological Observations with Unattended 

 Balloons. — An original and ingenious mode of 

 making meteorological observations has lately 

 been put in practice in Paris, by M. Secretan, 

 who, since the beginning of February, has been 

 sending up every day at noon small exploring bal- 

 loons, for the purpose of ascertaining the direc- 

 tion of the air-currents and the height of the 

 clouds. The balloons, furnished gratuitously by 

 the Grand Magasin du Louvre, are made of India- 

 rubber, and filled with pure hydrogen, and are 

 about three feet in diameter. The average velo- 

 city of elevation, as obtained from numerous ex- 

 periments, is four metres (about thirteen feet) per 

 second. Counting the seconds from the moment 

 of starting, uutil the balloon disappears in the 



clouds, and multiplying the number of seconds 

 thus obtained by four, gives the height of the 

 clouds, which is found to vary from 400 metres 

 (about 1,300 feet) to 800 metres (about 2,600 

 feet). It is found that the higher the clouds, the 

 better the prospect of fair weather. The direc- 

 tion of the air-currents for the first 100 metres 

 of height is almost always found to be very un- 

 certain, varying according to unknown causes ; 

 above this height two different streams of air 

 are often observed, the lower one extending 

 upward to 200 or 300 metres. The clouds fol- 

 low the direction of the aerial stream, in which 

 they are wholly immersed, not being placed, as 

 has been often stated, at the plane of separa- 

 tion. 



