THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY. 355 



whom, by the hypothesis, the primitive Aryan language was gen- 

 erated, may have formed a separate race as far back as the Pleis- 

 tocene epoch, when the first unquestionable records of man make 

 their appearance, I do not see that he goes beyond possibility 

 though, of course, that is a very different thing from proving his 

 case. But, if the blond long-heads are thus ancient, the problem 

 of their primitive seat puts on an altogether new aspect. Specu- 

 lation must take into account climatal and geographical condi- 

 tions widely different from those which obtain in northern Eura- 

 sia at the present day. During much of the vast length of the 

 Pleistocene period, it would seem that men could no more have 

 lived either in Britain north of the Thames, or in Scandinavia, or 

 in northern Germany, or in northern Russia, than they can live 

 now in the interior of Greenland, seeing that the land was covered 

 by a great ice sheet like that which at present shrouds the latter 

 country. At that epoch, the blond long-heads can not reasonably 

 be supposed to have occupied the regions in which we meet with 

 them in the oldest times of which history has kept a record. 



But even if we are content to assume a vastly less antiquity for 

 the Aryan race ; if we only make the assumption, for which there 

 is considerable positive warranty, that it has existed in Europe 

 ever since the end of the Pleistocene period when the fauna and 

 flora assumed approximately their present condition and the state 

 of things called Recent by geologists set in we have to reckon 

 with a distribution of land and water, not only very different from 

 that which at present obtains in northern Eurasia, but of such a 

 nature that it can hardly fail to have exerted a great influence on 

 the development and the distribution of the races of mankind. 

 Nineteenth Century. 



[To be continued. ] 



THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY. 



By SAMUEL SHELDON, Ph. D., 



PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN THE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE OF BROOKLYN. 



THE problem how to save and store up the enormous amount 

 of natural energy which is daily dissipated in producing 

 natural phenomena has long occupied the attention of scientists. 

 During the last fifteen years this attention has been especially 

 directed toward electricity as an agent. This is, perhaps, because 

 the majority of the really active investigators have been occupied 

 in this department of science, or perhaps the popular superstitious 

 credulity that electricity can be made to do anything, has, to a 

 certain extent, taken possession of the scientific mind. At any 

 rate, the result of experiments has been the development of the 



