EDITOR'S TABLE. 



75 1 



Druids always seemed to him quite as ab- 

 surd as if a discoverer of the mounds of the 

 Mississippi Valley should credit them to 

 the medicine-men of the Indian tribes who 

 alone were found in their vicinity. 



Neither Ciesar nor any other ancient au- 

 thor found in the Keltic population of Brit- 

 ain any indication of either the skill or the 

 numerical force commensurate for such un- 

 dertakings. 



The vast slabs composing the circles of 

 Stonehenge are now, it is true, as they were 

 no doubt in Bede's time, shapeless, with one 

 notable exception. 



Some of the slabs which have more re- 

 cently, say within a thousand years, lost 

 their lintels exhibit the unique feature of 

 a duplex tenon, while the lintels show the 



corresponding mortises. Now this dove- 

 tailing, so to speak, of masonry, shows 

 architectural skill and genius of a high 

 order immeasurably ahead of anything 

 the Kelts were capable of; nay, more, in 

 advance of even modern art in this depart- 

 ment. Further, the material of Stonehenge 

 must have been transported many scores 

 of miles. A people so advanced as to mor- 

 tise their masonry would scarcely have left 

 the exterior surfaces unchiseled. 



The tenons were protected in their in- 

 closing mortises, while the storms of, it may 

 be, two hundred centuries rasped off all 

 vestige of the pristine beauty of their exte- 

 riors. 



G. H. Knight. 



Cincinnati, August 23, 18T6. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



FURTHER CONCERNING TEE "SOUND" 

 CONTROVERSY. 



SOME months ago, as our readers 

 will remember, there appeared in 

 the ]$ation, by an anonymous writer, 

 a scandalous attack upon Prof. Tyndall. 

 He was accused of treating Prof. Henry 

 dishonorably; and the accusation was 

 60 garnished with insulting insinuations 

 as to convey the impression that Prof. 

 Tyndall is not above ignoring and sup- 

 pressing other people's valuable work 

 which he desires to profit by himself. It 

 was a matter of painful surprise to many 

 that any man could be found, in this 

 country, to make such charges on no 

 better grounds than were alleged against 

 an eminent and absent gentleman of 

 hitherto unsullied character ; or that any 

 respectable American newspaper would 

 lend itself to their publication. For 

 this was one of those palpable cases in 

 which some decisive weight should have 

 been allowed to character at the outset. 

 While on the one hand charges were 

 raised of which the proof was not fur- 

 nished, and a specious case was made out 

 by unscrupulous ingenuity which was 

 calculated to mystify and prejudice or- 

 dinary readers, on the other hand the 



imputations against Prof. Tyndall were 

 specially contradicted and discredited 

 by the quality of his whole life. He 

 was eminently not the man to do the 

 things alleged. The intimate friend 

 and successor of Faraday, and for the 

 last twenty -five years Professor of Nat- 

 ural Philosophy in the Eoyal Institu- 

 tion of Great Britain, his life and works 

 have been in an eminent degree public 

 and conspicuous. An assiduous investi- 

 gator in various branches of physics, he 

 has published freely in the Transactions 

 of the Royal Society ; a clear and vig- 

 orous writer, appreciating the necessi- 

 ty of improving popular scientific lit- 

 erature, he has also written copiously 

 for the public, on many of the most re- 

 cent and exciting questions of science. 

 Perhaps there is not another emi- 

 nent man of science, in any country, 

 whose intellectual life has been more 

 open to scrutiny than that of Prof. 

 Tyndall. Yet with this prolonged and 

 intense exposure of his mental work to 

 a world sufficiently censorious and 

 though often in sharp conflict with 

 other investigators his reputation as 

 a man of the strictest honor in rela- 

 tion to all the rights and claims of his 



