152 Chronicles of Science. [Jan., 



A piece of iron plate in the form of a tube, was suspended in a clay- 

 tube placed vertically in a furnace traversed l)y a very rapid cm-rent 

 of air, and heated to bright redness for the time necessary for the 

 complete oxidation of the iron. Tubes of oxide were thus obtained 

 possessed of magnetic polarity, and strongly repelling the poles of 

 the magnetic needle. The ]X)larity is always dependent upon the 

 position of the iron plate. The magnet produced in this way was 

 replaced in the furnace, reversed, and heated in the same conditions 

 of temperature as before for one hour; after cooling, the poles 

 were found to be reversed ; that pole which is formed at the upper 

 extremity is always similar to the north pole of the earth. 



12. ZOOLOGY— ANIMAL MOEPHOLOGY ' 

 AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



{Notices of WorTxS recently published and Transactions of 

 Societies.) 



The alleged Failure of Natural Selection in the case of Man. — A 

 writer in a recent number of 'Fraser's Magazine' endeavours to 

 point out that although there is a struggle for existence of a more 

 or less intense kind, between different races and nations of men, 

 yet that between man and man in a civilized condition there is no 

 such struggle — the weak being protected, and the feeble inheriting 

 wealth wliich they have not won. Thus, the fittest do not survive 

 contends this writer, and the law of selection is so far interfered 

 with as to fail, and indeed we may expect degeneracy rather than 

 improvement in civilized men. The * Spectator,' in one of its clever 

 articles — written, however, in this case with a hasty and mistaken 

 idea of the question at issue — accepts the view propounded by the 

 writer in 'Eraser' in part, but, making use of the mysterious term 

 "supernatural selection," asserts that a new source of benefit is opened 

 up to man by the cultivation of his moral nature, which counter- 

 balances any attendant evils. The error in tliis view of the case 

 arises from a neglect of the fact that civilized man is a social animal, 

 in a truly zoological sense. There is no struggle for existence be- 

 tween the various bees of a hive, nor among polyps of a polypidom : 

 the struggle is between hive and hive, and polypidom and polypidom. 

 So with the communities of civilized men — the struggle is between 

 one society and another, .whatever may be the bond uniting such 

 society : and in the far distant future we can see no end to the possi- 

 ble combinations or societies which may arise amongst men. and by 

 their emulation tend to his development. ]\Ioral qualities, amongst 



