PREFACE. 



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O write a Preface year after year for a volume 

 like Science-Gossip, to mean the same thing, 

 and yet to say something new, would be a tax 

 upon the ingenuity of the most skilful writer. 

 Nevertheless, the Editor feels it both a duty 

 and a pleasure to take such an opportunity of 

 expressing his gratitude towards so many 

 cheerful helpers, his sympathies with diligent students 

 and inquirers with whom he has been in silent monthly 

 communication, and his hopeful anticipations that the time to 

 come may find him surrounded by as many friends as at the close 

 of the eventful year 1878. 



The last four years have been fruitful beyond measure in Scientific 

 discoveries. In Physical Science, the numerous revelations have 

 been almost startling in their novelty, and these have culminated 

 in that simple and yet wonderful instrument, the Microphone. To 

 listen to the tramping of insects is like hearing the " footfalls on the 

 boundary of another world." Is it possible that the Microphone will 

 be to organic sound what the Microscope has been to vision ? Shall 

 we listen to the love-narratives of insects as we do unaided to those 

 of birds, or be possible hearers of their domestic squabbles ? 



Unhappily, it would seem as if Science, like some land of 

 Goshen, were the only arena where Peace may find a perpetual 

 home! For, although scientific men, as inheritors of a long ancestry 

 of the spirit of partisanship, cannot avoid taking sides in debating 

 the great questions which are continually raised in their unfettered 

 investigations of natural phenomena; they do not condemn each 



