1866. | British Voleanie Rocks. 851 
placing implicit faith in the judgment of all scientific investi- 
gators or of recommending a hasty verdict upon such evidence alone. 
When careful scientific research is supported by what is known 
as “circumstantial evidence,” that is, where the circumstances 
under which a crime has been perpetrated are such as to render the 
scientific revelations credible ; or, vice versa, where the results of 
scientific observation confirm the conclusions drawn from circum- 
stantial evidence such as is usually deemed valid in courts of law, 
there science comes in as a witness to be respected and believed ; and 
it will be found that every day the researches of chemists, physiolo- 
gists, and microscopists are adding to the store of unquestionable 
facts which may be employed with increasing safety and confidence 
in the decision of criminal cases, and more especially in those most 
inhuman and detestable crimes, poisoning and assassination. 
And, finally, let us on these grounds recommend barristers 
engaged in criminal cases, and members of the press employed in 
reporting such cases, to devote a little of their leisure time to the 
study of those branches of science without some acquaintance with 
which they will ere long find it impossible to pursue their respective 
avocations ; and which will at once relieve their remarks and reports 
from those imperfections which raise a smile in the countenance of 
the scientific man, as he hears or reads the reports of cases involving 
the employment of technical information, or expressions in daily use 
in the scientific world. 
V. BRITISH VOLCANIC ROCKS.— HINTS TO HOME 
TOURISTS. 
By Anrcurpatp Getxts, F.R.S. 
Summer, with its holidays, has come round upon us again, and 
now that the uneasy state of the Continent has well-nich closed 
many of the channels through which our tide of tourists dispersed 
itself over Europe, the question, “ Where shall we go?” becomes a 
somewhat momentous one to those who had proposed to themselves 
something more than a mere round of sight-seeing. Perhaps, if 
geological tastes were in the ascendant, it had been intended to 
ramble for a while among the traces of old glaciers on the Italian 
Alps, to take a few weeks amidst the extinct volcanos of the Rhine, 
or to peep into the geology of some pleasant upland in Central 
Germany. But it is hardly within the power of the lover of science 
to imitate Sydney’s muse, who 
“Tempered her words to trampling horses’ feet.” 
He had better in the meanwhile content himself with keeping out 
