652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tie, they began now to relax tlieir exertions. It was melancholy 

 to look at the registers of the little towns, neatly kept by native 

 scribes, and to observe the gradual decrease — if fewer deaths 

 sometimes, then also in proportion fewer births. One noticed, 

 too, the hopeless resignation of the sick, suffering from compara- 

 tively slight ailments, but apparently not caring to live. If some- 

 thing more could be done in the way of giving skilled attendance 

 to the sick, it would be well. An attempt is being made, by giv- 

 ing some little training in the hospitals, but the hamlets are so 

 numerous, and so small and scattered, that it would be difficult 

 for such trained attendants to reach them all. More might, as it 

 seemed to me, be done in the way of sanitary supervision. The 

 head-man or the district chief may be " responsible," but he 

 may not always understand what is needed. Where sites are un- 

 healthy they should be changed, and far greater cleanliness in the 

 surroundings insisted on. (The interiors of the houses, as I have 

 said, are almost faultless in this respect.) Direct encouragement 

 might be given in some form for the rearing of children. The 

 possession of an illegitimate child being now a proof of a crime 

 which is punishable by law, such children, naturally, seldom see 

 the light. But what I believe is needed, above all, is some addi- 

 tional stimulus to exertion, some interest in life which would 

 strengthen their hold on it. With our accumulated experience, 

 our great resources, and unlimited good intentions, is the problem 

 beyond us ? — Abridged from BlachwoodvS Magazine. 



THE FOUNDATION-STONES OF THE EARTH.* 



Bt Prof. T. G. BONNEY. 



DO we know anything about the earth in the beginning of its 

 history — anything of those rock-masses on which, as on 

 foundation-stones, the great superstructure of the fossiliferous 

 strata must rest ? Palaeontologists, by their patient industry, 

 have deciphered many of the inscriptions, blurred and battered 

 though they be, in which the story of life is engraved on the 

 great stone book of Nature. Of its beginnings, indeed, we can 

 not yet speak. The first lines of the record are at present want- 

 ing — perhaps never will be recovered. But, apart from this : be- 

 fore the grass and herb and tree, before the " moving creature in 

 the water," before the " beast of the earth after his kind," there 

 was a land and there was a sea. Do we know anything of that 

 globe, as yet void of life ? Will the rocks themselves give us any 



* An address delivered before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 at the Bath meeting, September 10, 1888. 



