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some rudely chipped flints as infallible evidence of the fact. The 
wing of a fossil Cockroach (Blatta) has lately been found in the 
middle Silurian rocks in France, so our domestic friend, with whose 
presence we could so well dispense, proves to be the oldest of all 
known fossil insects. Another Frenchman, a M. Ramus, is able to 
assure us possitively that man has been in existence on the éarth 
exactly 223,108 years, and I think we must admit that the exacti- 
tude of the odd eight years renders this a fact not to be doubted. 
Mr. Galton’s ‘‘ Composite Photographs ” are exciting a good deal 
_ of scientific interest, giving, as they do, much valuable information 
as to the physiognomy of different classes and races of men. It has 
been recently discovered too that the aid of Photography can be 
dispensed with and composite portraits obtained on the principle of 
the Stereoscope. Thus a compound portrait of a girl of twenty and 
her grandmother was found to resemble neither of them so much as 
the face of the mother whose age was about forty. 
I dare say most of you know Galton’s method is to take negatives, 
of exactly the same size, of a number of different persons of the 
same class, say for example, naturalists, painters, or doctors, who 
must all have the eyes fixed on precisely the same spot. Each 
negative is then lightly printed on the same sensitized paper, one 
on the top of the other, In this way only the salient points of each 
face are transferred to the paper, and some very interesting results 
are obtained, Few people are aware what good service the 
Japanese are rendering to science, not only in their careful 
chemical experiments but by their exact observations of earth- 
quakes, earthtremors, and deep temperatures. They have devised 
a method by which movements of the earth are made, by means of 
suitable instruments called seismographs, to draw their own move- 
ments on paper, thus showing their direct extent ; not only have 
they done this. but by an invention eminently practical and useful 
in such an earthquake area as Japan, they have contrived a method 
of counteracting and preventing the disastrous consequences of 
‘earthquakes on buildings. This is done by resting the foundations 
of the houses on small cast-iron shot, of a quarter inch in diameter, 
placed between cast-iron plates in the piers on which the houses 
are built, all sudden movements, which is the great source of danger, 
is thus prevented, and the shock is‘expended in merely rolling the 
shot, while the building itselfis practically unmoved. 
I may here allude to the rather bold project of Mr. Starkie 
’ Gardner of utilising the intense heat of the interior of our earth, to 
supply warmth to the exterior. Of course-we all know that the 
deeper we go beneath the earth’s surface the higher is the tempera- 
ture; the increase of heat was formerly considered to be one degree 
Fahrenheit for every sixty feet we descend, but some recent 
