256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lenger came fresh from bathysmal bottoms. Again and again he 

 looked for it, but never could he discover it. It always hailed from 

 home. The bottles sent there were reported to yield it in abundance, 

 but somehow it seemed to be hatched in them. The laboratory in 

 Jermyn Street was its unfailing source, and the great observer there 

 was its only sponsor. The ocean never yielded it until it had been 

 bottled. At last, one day on board the Challenger an accident re- 

 vealed the mystery. One of Mr. Murray's assistants poured a large 

 quantity of spirits of wine into a bottle containing some pure sea- 

 water, when lo ! the wonderful protoplasm Bathybius appeared. It 

 was the chemical precipitate of sulphate of lime produced by the 

 mixture of alcohol and sea-water. This was bathos indeed ! On this 

 announcement "Bathybius" disappeared from science, reading us, in 

 more senses than one, a great lesson on " precipitation." * 



This is a case in which a ridiculous error and a ridiculous credulity 

 were the direct results of theoretical preconceptions. Bathybius was 

 accepted because of its supposed harmony Mnth Darwin's speculations. 

 It is needless to say that Darwin's own theory of the coral islands 

 has no special connection with his later hypotheses of evolution. 

 Both his theory and the theory of Mr. Murray equally involve the 

 development of changes through the action and interaction of the 

 old agencies of vital, chemical, and mechanical change. Neverthe- 

 less, the disproof of a theory which was so imposing, and had been 

 so long accepted, does read to us the most important lessons. It 

 teaches us that neither the beauty — nor the imposing character — nor 

 the apparent sufficiency of an explanation may be any proof whatever 

 of its truth. And if this be taught us even of explanations which 

 concern results purely physical, comparatively simple, and compara- 

 tively definite, how much more is this lesson impressed upon us when, 

 concerning far deeper and more complicated things, explanations are 

 offered which are in themselves obscure, full of metaphor, full of the pit- 

 falls and traps due to the ambiguities of language — explanations which 

 are incapable of being reduced to proof, and concern both agencies and 

 results of which we are profoundly ignorant ! — Nineteenth Century. 

 * " Narrative of the Challenger Expedition," vol. i, p. 939. 



President Woodward, of Washin^^ton Collcee, St. Louis, gave to the Ameri- 

 can Association an excellent account of the results of the manual training course 

 at that institution. After three years of it, the boys could go out and succeed 

 in any trade they entered ; and tlieir capacity and excellence were acknowledged 

 by master-workmen. Professor E. J. James regarded tlio introduction of this 

 branch as the next great step in the development of our educational system. It 

 would give symmetry to our now one-sided and defective system of public in- 

 struction ; would induce a better attendance at the schools; would remove all 

 traces of stigma from labor, and gradually elevate the social tone of our work- 

 men ; and would aid in developing intellectual and industrial ability now lying 

 dormant iu thousands of our children. 



