HARDWICKE'S SCIEN CE-G0SS1F. 



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chanical, wholly tentative, experimental, and defensive 

 — without which it is dangerous to proceed a single 

 stage into reasoning on the unknown, and futile to 

 imagine that we can advance in science ourselves, or 

 assist in its advancement in the world. It is that 

 tedious, costly, and fatiguing process of laying a good 

 foundation which no eye is ever to see, for a house to 

 be built thereon for safety and enjoyment, for public 

 uses, or for monumental beauty/' ..." And this fatal 

 laziness is fostered by a strange misunderstanding, a 

 fancy, sometimes a downright conviction, that the 

 dead-work of science can be done for us by some one 

 else, so as to save our time and strength for specula- 

 tion, for thought, for 'fine writing ; it can be done 

 by menials, employees, assistants, colleagues, special 

 experts, — by any one rather than by ourselves." 



Professor Lesley urges an habitual performance 

 of dead-work in the pursuit of science, and would 

 enforce it if he could in the case of teachers of science. 

 A crumb of comfort, since we are human, is afforded 

 to the conscientious performer of good dead-work in 

 the fact, that "although the most of it is necessarily 

 done in secret and silence, enough of it leaks out to 

 testify to his honest and diligent self-cultivation ; and 

 enough of it must show in the shape of scientific 

 wisdom, to make self-evident the fact that he is 

 neither a tyro nor a charlatan." And in original work 

 "reap your field so thoroughly that gleaners must 

 despair. Fortify your position, that your most 

 experienced rival can find no point of attack. Lay 

 your plans with a superfluity of patient carefulness 

 that fate itself can invent no serious emergency. 

 Demonstrate your theory so utterly and evidently 

 that it shall require no defender but itself." 



Among the papers in the biological section was 

 one by Mr. J. C. Arthur, going to prove that bacteria 

 ore the cause of pear blight. His experiments had 

 shown that the disease could be produced in a healthy 

 tree by inoculation with sap from a diseased tree, and 

 also by inoculation with cultures of the sixth genera- 

 tion ; and further that wherever there is a blight not 

 produced by freezing, bacteria of this species are 

 always present. 



The blue colour of the sky was said by Professor 

 Nichols to be due not to an excess of the more re- 

 frangible rays in the reflected light, but to be sub- 

 jective, he having previously pointed out that selective 

 reflection need not be adduced, but that the rapidly 

 increasing sensitiveness of the eye to violet, with 

 decrease of illumination, was sufficient to account for 

 the effect. 



Three sentences from the abstract of the address 

 by Dr. Burt G. Wilder of Cornell University to the 

 biological section, should commend themselves to 

 those who have charge of museums. He was speak- 

 ing especially of specimens of vertebrate animals, but 

 his remarks will bear extension. "Quality is more 

 important than quantity, and arrangement is usually 



more needed than acquisition. True economy consists 

 in paying liberally for what is wanted, rather than in 

 taking what is not wanted as a gift. The usefulness 

 of a specimen, and thus its real value is to be measured, 

 not by its rarity or cost, but by the degree in which it 

 exemplifies important facts or ideas." 



IN a recent number of " Science " an account is 

 given of the lately completed Lick Observatory, built 

 on Mount Hamilton, in the Pacific Coast Range, 

 about fifty miles south-east of San Francisco. Mr. 

 Lick, who had acquired a large fortune, left a bequest 

 of 700,000 dollars for the erection of a great observa- 

 tory at a mountain elevation, and the spot chosen is 

 about 4,500 feet high. The whole will be handed 

 over to the California University when the great tele- 

 scope and its accompaniments have been completed. 

 A flint glass disc thirty-eight inches in diameter has 

 been made, though not yet worked into shape, and a 

 disc of crown glass is now the desideratum. Popular 

 attention will assuredly be directed towards its 

 performances, if, as is here suggested, it may, under 

 favourable circumstances, make the moon appear as 

 if a hundred miles away, and render visible objects 

 there no larger than some of our larger buildings. 



A rapid perusal of a paper by Mr. W. J. Simmons, 

 which forms a recent number of the " Journal of the 

 Health Society for Calcutta and its Suburbs," 

 certainly leaves the impression of wonder that folk 

 can continue to live there at all, if there be anything 

 in the sanitary theories now so prominent. It 

 almost seems, as the writer says, as if dirt cannot be 

 so injurious as the doctors say. The conditions 

 under which clothing is washed in tanks of filthy 

 water, the dirty state of the native houses, the way in 

 which milk and bread are likely to be productive of 

 disease, are dwelt upon with details which make the 

 picture truly disgusting, and show what a great deal 

 of work there is to be done in cleansing away the 

 foulness, and so improving the public health o* 

 Calcutta, that, as the author says, it will no more be 

 dreaded as " the home of cholera." 



In the recently published Proceedings of the 

 Scientific Meetings of the Zoological Society, Mr. 

 H. H. Johnston gives a short account of some of the 

 fauna observed in the Kilima-njaro Expedition, 

 which is followed by more detailed papers. He 

 was obliged, by the difficulty of getting assistance, to 

 do most of his collecting and preservation of specimens 

 himself. Baboons he found rather abundant and 

 very bold, as they are but little molested by the 

 natives. The leopard is more feared by the natives 

 than the lion. The zebra (Eqiucs chapmani) is 

 said to be found in incredible numbers in the plains 

 round Kilima-njaro ; the ostrich is also abundant, 

 but it never produces fine plumes. 



From a recent report signed by Mr. Henry Trimen, 

 M.B., it appears that the area devoted to the 



