78 NATURAL SCIENCE [August 
of the Ossianic poems. Moreover, as to the question whether the 
English or Gaelic is the original, Sir Archibald says, “There can be 
no doubt that on the whole the Gaelic is more vivid and accurate in 
the description of landscape than the more vague and bombastic 
English of Macpherson.” 
In Ossian we are dealing with true nature-poetry; equally 
unsophisticated are the Border ballads, and it is in the essential 
character of such folk-poems rather than in the allusions, descrip- 
tions, and similes of more cultured and artificial poets, that search 
should first be made for the influence of scenery and topography 
upon literature. If scenery have any influence upon the subject- 
matter, the form, or the niceties of style, that influence will be dis- 
covered more readily by comparing groups of writers from different 
regions (such as the Lake School, the Attic Dramatists, the Norwegian 
Novelists) and estimating their common characters, rather than by 
contrasting individual writers. There are more important subjects 
that call for investigation, and yet we should not be sorry if Sir 
Archibald Geikie’s eloquent lecture led to further essays on these 
lines. Literature to-day has so largely become a matter of “ words, 
words, words,” that the mere suggestion of a possible connection 
with external nature cannot fail to do good. And if our stylists 
can be brought to look at the larger conception of nature resulting 
from modern science, or if our scientific students can be led to look 
on literary form with less contempt, then it is possible that the 
literature of the future may share in the remarkable progress that 
has already fallen to the lot of modern science. 
Mopets oF MULTIPOLAR CELLS 
Proressor A. L. HERRERA, to whose curious experiments on the pro- 
duction of artificial simulations of organic structures we referred in 
February last (vol. xii, p. 74), has sent to us from the National 
Museum at Mexico an account of a new result he has obtained. He 
noticed accidentally that when a greasy solid is lightly dabbed with 
a brush dipped in a viscous liquid, the liquid rapidly assumes the 
form of a network of multipolar ganglion cells. He sent us along 
with the letter a shallow tin box, the bottom of which, on its inner 
surface had been greased with butter and then had received an 
application of some coloured viscous fluid. This fluid had assumed 
the configuration of a group of multipolar cells, and when it reached 
us, still retained that appearance. Dr Herrera wishes to correlate 
this observation with the older experiments upon the artificial pro- 
duction of nervous simulacra out of myelin, as described in Robin’s 
treatise on the microscope (Paris, 1871, p. 569). We are not pre- 
pared to go so far as the Professor in believing that such experiments 
throw light upon histogenesis, but they are interesting and ingenious. 
