JOO 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



crimson stone wall of Fredericksburg, the 

 deadly swamps of the Chickahominy, the 

 thickets of .the Wilderness, the purple waters 

 of Antietam, and the bloody angle at Gettys- 

 burg. I appeal to the hundred fields now 

 billowed with Irish graves to prove that never 

 man fought more devotedly or more heroic- 

 ally for the inviolability of the Stars and 

 Stripes and the indissolubility of the Union 

 than did the men who cherished in their 

 hearts the memories and love of their native 

 land. 



Their fame will live as long as the Great 

 Republic herself — yea, while mountains raise 

 their summits to the sky and rivers journey 

 onward to the sea — 



"While Fame her record keeps, 

 Or Honor points the hallowed spot 

 Where Valor proudly sleeps." 



Dr. J. C. O'Connell. 



Washington, D. C, February 1, 1898. 



A CORRECTION. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



Dear Sir : In the Sketch of Carl Vogt 

 in the last November number of the Popular 

 Science Monthly, Prof. Charles Follen, of 

 Harvard University (1825-1835), was re- 

 ferred to as " implicated in the assassination 

 of Kotzebue." This statement, unexplained, 

 is misleading and unjust. Two months after 

 the assassination Carl Follenius, at the time 

 teaching in Jena, was brought to trial by a 

 hostile government as an accomplice, but 

 was fully acquitted. In those disturbed 

 times — 1819 — this vague charge was easily 

 made, but should not now be allowed to pur- 

 sue unchallenged the memory of so estimable 

 a man as Dr. Follen, with whose entire life it 

 was inconsistent. 



Will you be so kind as to insert this 



statement in an early number of your maga- 

 zine ? Very truly yours, 



Charles W. Eliot. 



Harvard University, Cambridge, 

 January 6, 1S08. 



Had space permitted, the writer of the 

 sketch of Carl Vogt would have more fully set 

 forth the real nature of the incident referred 

 to, which the Vogt family evidently consid- 

 ered anything but a discredit. He did not 

 regard it as derogatory to Professor Follen's 

 character, and mentioned it simply as tend- 

 ing to establish a bond between Carl Vogt 

 and the United States, and as showing 

 that Vogt's revolutionary sympathies were 

 an affair of the blood. We are glad to 

 publish President Eliot's letter, and the 

 fact that Follenius was acquitted on his 

 trial, which is not mentioned in William 

 Vogt's life of his father, La Vie oVun Homme 

 — Carl Vogt, whence the material for the 

 sketch was derived. That work opens with 

 a pen picture of two young students — Carl 

 Sand and Carl Follenius — casting dice, at an 

 inn between Erfurt and Jena, as to which 

 should slay Kotzebue. The lot fell to Sand. 

 William Vogt further records that Follenius, 

 " they say," when Sand confided his purpose 

 to him, abhorring murder, tried to dissuade 

 him from carrying it out, as he did, too, after 

 the casting; but, finding Sand was immov- 

 able, he " demanded for himself, Follenius, 

 the perilous honor of striking down the mon- 

 ster" (reclama pour lui, Follenius, le perilleux 

 honneur oVabattre le monstre) ; also that Fol- 

 lenius attended the execution of Sand, and 

 embraced him on the scaffold. He was after- 

 ward banished from Germany and took refuge 

 in Switzerland, where he was professor of 

 civil law at Basle, till the monarchs of the Holy 

 Alliance demanded his extradition. He then 

 went to Paris on the invitation of Lafayette, 

 and thence came to America. — Editor. 



l&itox's gaM#. 



THE CLAIMS OF SCIENCE. 



A PROFESSOR of biology in one 

 of our leading universities has 

 lately been discussing the question 

 how far an acceptance of the doctrine 

 of evolution is compatible with reli- 

 gious orthodoxy of the evangelical 

 type. The answer he gives is on the 

 whole comforting to those who desire 

 to recognize new truth without break- 

 ing entirely away from old and cher- 

 ished opinions. He acknowledges 



that science has rectified our under- 

 standing of the word " create," and 

 so far thrown new light upon the 

 interpretation of a Hebrew term. 

 We are ready to admit that a term 

 in present use in our own language 

 may undergo a change of meaning, 

 for this is a process which we see in 

 constant operation ; but it seems a 

 little arbitrary to say that a word in 

 a virtually extinct language must be 

 taken in a new sense simply because 



