KEW PUBLICATIONS. 356 



LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. 



MECHANICS' INSTITUTION, BIRMINGHAM. 



At this Institution a course of four lectures was commenced on the fourteenth of 

 May, by Mr. Wallace, " On the mental faculties of man," exemplified by various 

 natural and experimental illustrations. The first lecture had a reference princi- 

 pally to sensations, as the primary source of intellectual power ; but as the inferior 

 animals possess this faculty in a degree equal, or superior to man himself, the use of 

 language was referred to as his distinguishing characteristic,— by which he was 

 enabled to reason, and thus have dominion over the inferior animals. An extract 

 was here read from a paper in the first volume of the " Edinburgh Philosophical 

 Journal," page 172, in which is contained an account of a boy born deaf and blind, 

 and who, being destitute both of a language of words and a language of signs, was 

 consequently incapable of exercising the reasoning faculty at all. The habits of 

 the inferior animals were exemplified by animal architecture, — as for instance, the 

 nests of birds, the abodes of ants and of bees, and the works of aquatic animals in 

 the formation of such substances as coral. These were stated to be always similar 

 in similar animals, and consequently always of one particular nature in the same 

 animals ; — while the architecture, and fabrications of man, were altogether arbitrary, 

 and even dissimilar at various times, arising out of the arbitrary nature of language 

 itself. 



In the second lecture, the construction of the human eye was explained, and the 

 commonly received opinion controverted, that the inverted pictures upon the retina 

 are the final causes of sensation within the eye. In place of this the lecturer con- 

 sidered the base of the optic nerve as the true seat of vision. The modifications of 

 structure in various eyes, and of conformation under various circumstances, were 

 illustrated by a hollow cube, and a hollow hemisphere of glass, filled with water, by 

 which it was shewn that the surfaces of all transparent media act in pairs, and that 

 they are acted upon by equal forces towards their centre, (in the transmission of 

 light), by which a central optical plane is produced, where the images of objects 

 are uniformly suspended, and from which they are transmitted to the eye. This 

 being thff case, the conflicting opinions of authors upon the subject of the varied re- 

 fraction of light, by the employment of denser or rarer mediums, were shewn to 

 result from fallacies originating in the modifications of the surfaces of hollow vessels, 

 when filled with them. This was explained to originate in the varied specific gra- 

 vities of these mediums, tending to curve the surfaces of the vessels, — as well as 

 the upper surface of the liquid or solid employed, — in greater or less degrees ; and 

 even in the formation of a foreign atmosphere, produced by the employment of such 

 light bodies as ether and phosphorus. Another cause of fallacy was said to arise 

 also from the nature of the eye itself, which, by rendering those parts of the vessel 

 employed, which are nearest the eye, greater (apparently) than those which are 

 more removed from it, — according to the well known principles of perspective,— 

 creates a difference in the measure of the central plane, when that is compared 

 with either of the surfaces producing it. 



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