142 CHAPTER OF CRITICISM. 



Nature, do but confirm its laws. Acephalous monsters of the kind above men- 

 tioned occasionally occur in the human species. 



Errata in a Paper on New Zealand, by T. K. Short, Esq. 



In Mr. Short's interesting paper on New Zealand, in the last number of your 

 Journal, there are a few errors with regard to the names of plants which I beg 

 to point out. At page 3, " Damara" ought to be Bammara ; " Melicylis" 

 Melicytus; " Adeantum," Adiantum ; " Agara" Agavia ; " Arracaria" Arau- 

 caria ; " Psedium," Pselium. 



[The proof of the paper alluded to was corrected by its author. — Ed.] 



Mr. Crosse's Experiments. ' 



Perhaps you will allow me to make a remark or two on your review of 

 Mr. Murray's Considerations on the Vital Principle. I have not seen Mr. M.'s 

 pamphlet, but I should think, from what lately transpired at the Meeting of the 

 British Association, with regard to Mr. Crosse's celebrated experiments, that any 

 further refutation was hardly needed, especially when combined with an attempt 

 to stigmatise with the name of " atheist " those who hold, probably, the ex- 

 istence of a Deity with as much if not more regard than their defamers. But 

 you state that the periodical press has been universally apathetic, and that 

 scientific men, on account of their aversion to new theories, have been inert with 

 regard to it. I think, when these experiments were first promulgated, that the 

 periodical press gave them the widest circulation, for there are few persons who 

 read at all but what have heard of them. With regard to the inertness of 

 scientific men, I think this is hardly a fair charge, when we recollect that it was 

 through the too ready credence that two or three scientific men gave to Mr. 

 Crosse's experiments at Bristol, that he was ever induced to publish them. Mr. 

 Crosse undoubtedly suspected that he might have overlooked some source from 

 which the insects came which he had observed at the poles of his galvanic bat- 

 tery, and therefore had wisely concluded not to lay his experiments before the 

 public; and it was the too ready admission of the facts, by some who ought to 

 have examined them thoroughly, before they ventured on giving their opinion of 

 the possibility of creating insects, which has been the cause of so much unneces- 

 sary alarm in certain circles, as also of exposing British science to the charge of 

 empiricism. In your report of the Proceedings of the British Association will be 

 found some experiments instituted by Messrs. Children, Gray, and Bird (Vol. 

 II., p. 425), which I think satisfactorily prove that Mr. Crosse's insects were 

 obtained from some external source, and not brought into existence by Galvanism. 

 Some have supposed that the ova of the insects might have been fossilised, and 





