220 DR. ORD. 



organized animal bodies on j^hysical and not on vital 

 agencies." 



Like Professor Harting, Mr. Rainey made tlie globular 

 form of carbonate of lime the starting-jioint in his remarkable 

 series of demonstrations. But he did not venture to con- 

 struct a name for them, and it has been reserved for the 

 Professor to act as sponsor, and ask that they should be 

 christened " calcospherites." Whether more good or harm 

 be gained by this sort of scientific name-giving is no doubt a 

 debateable question. If the name be admitted, however, it 

 must be fully understood that insoluble calcium salts are not 

 the only substances capable of assuming the spherical form, but 

 that barium, magnesium, iron, copper, mercury, and, possibly, 

 other metals, can act as bases of '' spherites." Putting this 

 aside, the much more important fact remains that Professor 

 Harting and Mr. Rainey, as perfectly independent observers, 

 have started severally on a new path of investigation, and have 

 arrived at substantially the same results. As lovers of truth 

 they may be well envied the sensations with which, on the 

 one hand, Mr. Rainey will have seen the drawings in fig. 1 

 of the Professor's recent paper ; and, on the other hand, the 

 Professor will find the fourteen-year-old drawings on page 

 12 of Mr. Rainey's book. 



The " abridged report " of the Professor^s series of re- 

 searches is necessarily brief as to the details of experiments. 

 No invidious comparison, therefore, can be assumed if atten- 

 tion be drawn to the care and accuracy with which Mr. 

 Rainey carried on his questionings of nature, and to the 

 general results of these questionings. 



At pages 5, 6, and 7 of the book mentioned is found a 

 description of the method of obtaining the globular form of 

 carbonate of lime : 



" It consists in introducing into a two-ounce phial, about 

 three inches in height, with a mouth about one inch and a 

 quarter in width, half an ounce by measure of a solution of 

 gum arable saturated Avith carbonate of potash (the subcar- 

 bonate of the old pharmacopoeias). The specific gravity of 

 the compound solution should be 1'4068, when one ounce 

 Vf'iW weigh 672 grains. This solution must be perfectly 

 clear ; all the carbonate of lime which had been formed by 

 the decomposition of the malate of lime contained in the 

 gum, and also all the triple phosphate set free by the alkali, 

 must have been allowed comjaletely to subside. Next, two 

 clean microscopic slides of glass, of the ordinary dimensions, 

 are to be introduced with the upper end of one slide resting 

 against that of the other, and with their lower ends separated 



