i8 93 . NOTES AND COMMENTS. 83 



chosen on Mr. Stead's plan will be a mixture of confiding simplicity 

 and designing impudence. For the serious treatment of the obscurer 

 questions of the mind there are in abundance laboratories of physio- 

 logical psychology, trained specialists in the laboratories, and 

 technical journals for the publication of their researches. The idea 

 that science " has contemptuously relegated to superstition " such 

 problems exists only in the minds of busybodies who have been 

 snubbed. There are competent experts at work, and were the 

 geologist to lay down his fossil and the anatomist his scalpel to follow 

 Mr. Stead into the wilderness, they would aid only the wind to shake 

 the reeds until such time as they turned to the stoning of the prophet 

 who led them out. As for the "dangers" surrounding the study of 

 occult science, let no fluttered neophyte be deceived. The dangers 

 are real ; though he will not be thrilled by any devil of his own 

 raising, if the germs of imbecility lie in him they may well be scared 

 into activity by the fraud of his associates. 



Sierra Leone. 



The Botany and Geology of Sierra Leone are the subject of a 

 recently-issued Colonial report compiled by Mr. G. F. Scott Elliot, 

 and embodying the results of his observations as botanist to the late 

 Anglo-French Boundary Commission. Mr. Elliot has already laid 

 before the Linnean Society the purely botanical results of the 

 expedition, and in the present report, dealing with the economic 

 aspect, has brought together a good deal of interesting and valuable 

 information on the native or cultivated plants of the colony. A 

 number of geological specimens have been named and described 

 by Miss C. A. Raisin, of University College. The only mineral of 

 importance is iron, of which the country apparently contains a very 

 large amount. A specimen of titaniferous ore from a rich belt in the 

 hills behind Sierra Leone, proved on analysis to contain 52 per cent, 

 of the metal. 



In speaking of the fertile alluvial soil along the coast and rivers, 

 the effect of the mangroves in reclaiming land from the sea is 

 described: " the trees seem, in fact, to have been designed by nature 

 to change any bay or indentation of the coast-line into fertile soil." 

 They require brackish water, and wherever a mudbank is in process 

 of formation, there they grow, gradually advancing seawards as the 

 silt accumulates. The trunk divides at the base into six or seven 

 curved buttress-like roots, each of which by repeated sub-division 

 covers a wide area with grasping supports. Moreover, from every 

 branch long hanging roots descend vertically, dividing about the level 

 of high tide into grasping fingers, which grow down into the water 

 and take root so firmly in the silt that they cannot be torn up by 

 any ordinary force of current. This meshwork of roots and rootlets 

 catches and holds the fallen leaves of the mangroves, and all the 



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