7«/k27, 1876] 



NATURE 



275 



feet from the floor. The action of this organ is electrical, 

 that is, there is no mechanical communication between 

 the performer at the key-board 100 feet distant and the 

 organ pallets which admit the wind to the pipes, save 

 a small rope of 61 insulated copf>er wires — one wire 

 for each note of the five octaves. The various stops of 

 this distant organ are likewise controlled without mecha- 

 nism — a series of vacuum tubes alone extending from the 

 registers at the great organ to the sliders of the echo 

 organ — which are thus brought on or off at the will of the 

 performer by a silent action — at once accurate and instan- 

 taneous in its manipulation. The effect of this echo organ, 

 is that of a large organ heard at a great distance. Without 

 the aid of the electric action, and vacuum pressure, such 

 an organ could not have been designed. Mechanical 

 action would never have successfully developed such 

 efff cts at such an extended distance. 



The same vacuum system is also applied to the various 

 pneumatic lever arrangements interposed between the 

 keys at the consol and the wind-valves at the sound- 

 boards to relieve the performer from any undue mecha- 

 nical pressure that might detract from the promptness of 

 repetition and delicacy of touch of the key action, the 

 keyboards being thus rendered as light as that of a grand 

 pianoforte. Such results cannot be obtained so efficiently 

 by the employment of compressed air for a pneumatic 

 power action ; compressed air will always prove to be 

 more or less sluggish, a " creeping on " and " creeping 

 off" movement being the result, besides a limit to the 

 aggregate of the instantaneous power that is at com- 

 mand. 



The pneumatic drawstop action of the St. George's 

 Hall organ, Liverpool, is a fair illustration of the defects 

 of the compressed air system. In the Primrose Hill 

 organ upwards of forty registers can be simultaneously 

 drawn on or shut off as easily and with the same precision 

 as though only a single stop were drawn. The consol or 

 keyboards of this organ, as will be seen by the engraving, 

 are reversed, that is, the performer faces the audience, the 

 organ being behind, and the echo organ opposite him. 

 The lowest keyboard manual is the " great organ ;" the 

 next, or second from the bottom, the "choir organ ;" the 

 third in :he series the " swell organ ;" and the fourth, or 

 upper row of keys, the " solo organ." By a simple me- 

 chanical arrangement this fourth keyboard is also used 

 for the electric '' echo organ," and also for the carillon, or 

 " bell" organ, otherwise it v/ould have been necessary to 

 have introduced a fifth set of keys, an arrangement at all 

 times objectionable from the increased compHcations im- 

 posed upon the performer. The touch of the carillon 

 organ on the fourth row of keys is expressive like that 

 of the pianoforte key, and gradations of tone and dis- 

 tance are therefore capable of being expressed upon the 

 bells. 



In this organ the French ventil system of shutting off 

 or bringing on the wind to a complete family or group of 

 stops by the depression of a pedal has not been adopted, 

 such a system being found inadequate to effect rapidly 

 the almost endless combinations that such a large instru- 

 ment has at command, the pneumatic combination foot 

 pedals and finger buttons at the keyboards being intro- 

 duced as a more convenient form of manipulatmg the 

 registers. 



The wind supply of this gigantic organ is furnished 

 from four large reservoirs in the basement, which again 

 supply seventeen reservoirs in connection with the various 

 sound-boards of the organ ; the vertical feeders for pro- 

 ducing the wind to these reservoirs, as well as for creating 

 the vacuum pressure, are set in motion by an eleven horse- 

 power steam-engine. The wind supply is so ample, that 

 with the power of the full organ it is impossible to exhaust 

 or create unsteadiness in the wind ; few organs are projierly 

 constructed in this important respect. An ingenious 

 automatic lever engine for regulating the motion and the 



supply of wind from the vertical feeders into the reser- 

 voirs according to the demand of the organ, is placed 

 between the steam-engine and the wind reservoirs, so 

 that the regulation of the wind supply is independent of 

 the speed of the engine, which remains constant. This 

 instrument, which occupied three years in its construc- 

 tion, and was opened in January, 1876, has been erected 

 under the personal supervision of Mr. W. T, Best, of 

 Liverpool, by the eminent organ builders Messrs. Bryceson 

 Brothers, and Morten, of London, for Mr. Nath. J. Holmes, 

 and is erected in the large music-room at the Hall, Prim- 

 rose Hill Road, built expressly to receive it. The instru- 

 ment, which stands 50 feet high, 30 feet broad, and 30 

 feet deep, suffered severe injury from the effects of con- 

 cussion, in common with the building in which it is 

 erected, at the time of the disastrous explosion of gun- 

 powder on the Regent's Park Canal, near Primrose HilL 



PALEONTOLOGY AND THE DOCTRINE OF 

 DESCENT 



" 'T'HE great biological question of the day is the 

 •*- problem of evolution ; but geologists, as Kant 

 says, are the archaeologists of nature, and the sole direct 

 and irrefragable evidence of the method whereby living 

 things have become what they are is to be sought amone 

 fossil remains." Such were the words spoken by Prot 

 Huxley on a recent occasion, when receiving from the 

 hands of the president of the Geological Society the 

 WoUaston, medal ; and the assembled geologists, calling 

 to mind his masterly review of the whole question in his 

 address to them in 1870, rejoiced to hear their former 

 president expressing the hope that much of his future 

 labour would be concentrated on this aU-important palae- 

 ontological problem. 



The discoveries of such abundant mammalian remains 

 in the Tertiary deposits of the Western territories of 

 America have added much valuable material to that 

 already obtained from the Paris basin, the Sivalik Hills, 

 Pikermi, and many other districts ; and we may look 

 forward with confidence to the labours of vertebrate 

 palaeontologists for bringing to light many interesting 

 relations between the members of the existing fauna 

 and their ancestral representatives in the later geological 

 periods. 



In the meanwhile it may not be uninteresting to point 

 out that among the invertebrata similar evidences of the 

 transitions between life-forms which at first sight appear 

 to constitute perfectly distinct groups, are constantly 

 being detected by palaeontologists. No opportunity for 

 doing this more effectively could possibly be desired 

 than that which is afforded by the publication of a most 

 suggestive and valuable monograph by the distinguished 

 palaeontologist of Vienna, Dr. Neumayr, in conjunction 

 with M. Paul of the Austrian Geological Survey, a work 

 which has just apppeared in the seventh volume of 

 the Abhandlun^en der k. k. geolos^ischen Reichsanstclt. 

 The title of this memoir is " Die Congerien- und Palu- 

 dinen-schichten Slavoniens und deren Faunen ; ein Bei- 

 trag zur Descendenz-Theorie ; " and its authors have 

 earned the thanks alike of geologists and biologists, for 

 the important evidence on the great question of evolution 

 which has been the fruit of their patient researches. 



The geological formation which has afforded the evi- 

 dence in question is the grand series of lacustrine beds 

 forming the highest portion of the magnificently developed 

 Tertiaries of Eastern Europe, and which constitute the 

 approximate equivalent, in all probability, of our Pliocene ; 

 and it is a district on the southern limits of the Austrian 

 Empire, the border-land of that area to which the atten- 

 tion of all Europe has been so painfully drawn for many 

 months past, that has furnished the vahiable sections 

 of this formation and the abundant fossil remains, the 



