20 



much interested in the relic. From the iron trade of the 

 Sixteenth Century, he went on to say, many of the Sussex 

 County families whose names are so well known to-day took 

 their rise. Even the great Elizabethan nobles did not clisdain 

 to have large interests in the industry. So extensive did it 

 become in Elizabeth's reign that at one time it threatened the 

 existence of the timber in the Weald, and laws had to be 

 specially passed to save the trees of Sussex. In the Seventeenth 

 Century the growing scarcity of wood, the opening of the iron 

 industry in Wales, and other causes, gradually combined to kill 

 the Sussex iron workings, till in 1809 the last Wealden furnace 

 ceased to burn. Last century the iron trade kept 42 forges and 

 27 furnaces in full activity, but, as Mr. Lewis remarked, few 

 who know their Sussex of to-day will regret the transference of 

 the " black industry " to another region. 



WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11th, 1900. 



%ht Sncnnsrious Waxk oi tljt fflmh. 



Dr. R. J. RYLE. 



DEFINITIONS of the science of psychology, said Dr. Ryle, 

 generally tell us that the science has to do with " conscious- 

 ness as such," irrespective of what may be called the contents of 

 consciousness. Such an account, however, fails to do justice to 

 the fact that a large amount of work goes on which cannot be 

 fairly called anything else but mental work, and it goes on 

 unconsciously. Professor Lloyd Morgan introduces his discus- 

 sion of this branch of the subject by drawing an analogy between 

 the objects before our minds and the objects before our micro- 

 scopes. In each case there is only a certain limited area of the 

 field which is in focus (unless the object examined is destitute of 

 thickness). Many details besides those upon which we concen- 

 trate our attention may catch our eye, but only indistinctly ; and 

 it seems that this field, of which we are only dimly conscious, 

 forms a borderland between what is distinctly held in conscious- 

 ness and what is quite (to use a modern pyschologist's phrase) 

 below the threshold of consciousness. Another Professor of the 



