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bound by his burning eloquence. Philosophers, poets, painters, 
generals, and actors we have by the hundred, all excéllent, all 
celebrated, but not the intellectual giants of a by-gone day. 
The same monotony has now reigned for some years in the 
scientific world. Past are the days when mankind was awakened 
and regenerated by such startling inventions as the steam engine 
and the electric telegraph. Not long ago we had quite a crop of 
new inventions, such as the telephone, the microphone, and the 
phonograph ; but these were rather novel applications of well- 
known principles, than really new discoveries, and had been fostered 
into rapid growth by the warm breath of popular encouragement, 
and the munificent favour now extended to practical science. 
The world has at last awakened to the commercial value of 
scientific attamments, and scientists can no longer complain 
of any lack of appreciation or reward. But although during the 
past year science has taken none of the gigantic leaps or bounds 
which from time to time startle the world, there has been no dearth 
of the intellectual work now so universally carried on, at the highest 
pressure, by numberless workers. Experiments, observations, and 
calculations are being incessantly made, re-made and verified ; one 
day, doubtless, to be worked up by some master mind into inven- 
tions which will again electrify mankind. 
Scientific photography especially has made great advances, for, 
wonderful as it sounds, photographic plates are now rendered so 
sensitive as to record impressions imperceptible to the human eye ; 
and experts are enabled to perform the apparently impossible feat 
of photographing the invisible. A curious instance of this has 
been recorded in which a child, with an apparently clear com- 
plexion, was photographed, and the negative showed plainly a 
number of spots on the face. In ten days afterwards these spots 
were visible on the child’s face as an eruption of small-pox. The 
same thing was also observed in the case of a child with measles. 
Messrs. Henry, of the Paris Observatory, have been doing good work 
there with the large new photographic apparatus, and have suc- 
ceeded in photographing the group of stars called the Pleiades, show- 
ing no less than 1421 distinct stars, as well as a spiral nebula never 
before seen. Absolutely correct photographic maps of the heavens 
can now be produced showing hundreds of thousands of stars only 
perceptible with the most powerful instruments, and many others 
literally invisible to the human eye. Admiral Monchez says in his 
report: ‘‘ Astronomers will now be able to leave to their successors 
not merely fanciful drawings, but the absolute position in the sky 
of between 20 and 30 millions of stars.” The observations taken 
during the total eclipse of the 29th August last, which was care- 
fully watched from the West Indies, have not apparently done 
