Vol. XXV. No. 4.] 
POPULAR SCIENCE NEWS. 
49 
the development of the old and full hieroglyphic 
writing is unknown. It was perfectly understood 
and freely used in the times of the third and fourth 
dynasties, which renders it probable that the date 
(if its discovery must be placed much earlier than 
3000 B. C. Ttere were thirty-one dynasties which 
reigned successively in Egypt, numl)ering more 
than three hundred kings. The sura of the years 
from the reign of Menes to Xectanbo II. (about 
350 B. C.) — the last king of the thirtieth dynasty, 
who was succeeded by a Persian — was 3,.555 j'ears. 
"The succession of time," says Bunsen, "the 
vastest hitherto established anywhere in the 
world, is now also the best authenticated. It is 
based upon the lists of kings and their reigning 
years, and these lists are corroborated and eluci- 
dated by contemporary monuments up to the 
fourth dynasty, with slight breaks. The era of 
Menes, according to Buusen, was 3&43 B. C. ; Lep- 
sius makes it 3893 ; Brugsch estimates it 4455, and 
Jlariette places it at 5004. It is still a matter of 
dispute among Egyptologists whether the first 
seventeen dynasties which succeeded Menes were 
consecutive or not. It is maintained, however, by 
late writers that the dynasties, with considerable 
exceptions, were consecutive, and th.at the kings 
enumerated reigned over the whole of Egypt. 
The use of hieroglyphic writing was not con- 
fined to the sacerdotal class, as was formerly be- 
lieved on the authority of the Greeks, but it was 
employed l)y all and for all purposes— although 
shorter methods of writing were afterwards de- 
vised. The liieroglyphie, or pictorial ivpresenta- 
tions of the laugu<age, continued in use for im- 
portant state documents, inscriptions, and religious 
compositions, and acbompanied by transcriptions 
in demotic- and Greek, down to the Roman em- 
peror Decius ; and, if Lenormanfs reading is cor- 
rect, so late as the usui-pation of the government 
of Egypt by Achilles, who was put to death by 
Diocletian, A. D. 296. The spread of Christianity 
in Egypt caused a proscription of the hieroglypliic, 
because the characters were full of mythological 
allusions and sensual figures. The wants of a 
reading and writing nation led at an early period 
to the use of linear hieroglyphics in long docu- 
ments, which subsequently developed into a cur- 
sive hand called hieratic. The great body of the 
Kgyptiau literature has reached us through this 
character, the reading of which can only be de- 
termined l)y resolving it first into its prototype— 
liieroglyphic. It is not possible to fix the time of 
the first use of hieratic writing; but from the 
actual preservation of several hieratic papyri of 
the eleventh dynasty, presenting it as a perfectly 
distinct and well-developed mode of writing, it is 
safe to conclude that it must have come in use 
before 2000 B. C. 
The demotic writing denotes the rise of the vul- 
gar tongue into literary use, which took place 
about the seventh century B. C, when it was 
brought into fashion by the great social revolu- 
tion in the reign of Psammetik. The oldest papy- 
rus found— which is now in the Turin Museum — 
dates from the forty-fifth year of his reign, or 620 
B. ('. The demotic was used to transcribe the 
hieroglyphic and hieratic papyri and inscriptions 
into the vulgar idiom till the second century of 
our era, and the gradual transition from the ob- 
scure and ditticult demotic to the more intelligible 
Coptic alphabet. Demotic words were occasion- 
ally transcribed in Greek letters, with the sounds 
not found in Greek, preserving their original 
signs, which was in reality the Coptic alphabet. 
Coptic is the exclusive character of the Christian 
Egyptian literature, and marks the last develop- 
ment or final decay of the Egyptian language, 
which became almost extinct during the last cent- 
ury and made way for Arabic. 
'ITie history of the recovery of the Egyptian 
language, of which not only the vocabulary but 
also the characters were totally unknown, pre- 
sents a wonderful process of induction. TTie 
early Greeks and Romans were so little interested 
in the speech of other nations, and being at the 
same time such imperfect linguists, that they left 
no other information concerning the language 
than that the Egyptians h.ad two or three diifer- 
ent kinds of writing for different purposes, and 
that two of them were confined to sacred use — an 
assertion now known to be erroneous. Other 
accounts from the same sources regarding the 
Egyptians and their language have also been 
found erroneous. They picked up stories here 
and there from communicative priests, and these, 
by being mixed up without discrimination, passed 
current among the people, no one caring to criti- 
cize, compare, or methodize them. 
The learned men of the last eeiitury turned 
much of their attention- to Egyptian writings, and 
naturally consulted the works of the ancients. 
This was the main cause of their failure. With 
the exception of one passage in Clemens Alexan- 
drimts, which is so obscure that It leads itself to 
many interpretations, all the ancients agreed in 
speaking of the hieroglyphic system as ideo- 
graphic, niey even gave the meaning of a few 
signs tliat are common in the inscriptions, and 
seemed well informed on their interpretation. A~ 
the hieratic and demotic characters appeared moir 
cursive and better suited to tlie transcription ol 
long documents, tliey maintained that by means 
of them the same language was written in letters 
representing sounds. 
Tlie writings of Kircher during the seventeenth 
century, De Guigness and Koch in the eighteenth, 
and later those of Zoega, were based on the opin- 
ions of the Greeks and Romans ; consequently 
they failed to throw light on tlie language. Fort- 
unately, in 1799, a French engineer otticer, M. 
Broussard, while throwing up earthworks at Ro- 
setta (Bashid), discovered a large black slab of 
stone, somewhat mutilated, with an inscription in 
hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. The victory of 
the English over the French, a few days later, 
brought the slab into the hands of the English 
ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, who had it 
transferred and deposited in the British Museum. 
By this accident a text was discovered, which the 
Greek version stated was an inscription of divine 
honors to one of the Ptolemys, and that the hiero- 
glyphic and demotic versions were transcriptions 
of the Greek text. Though the sense of the liiero- 
glyphic inscription was thus ascertained, the diffi- 
culty yet remained of determining the value and 
sound of each character. It was observed that 
about the place corresponding to the name Ptol- 
emy in the Greek version there was in the hiero- 
glyphic inscription an oval ring enclosing a group 
of characters ; and, as long series of sitting fig- 
ures on the temple of Karnak had also such rings 
placed over them, apparently indicating their 
names or titles, it was conjectured that this ring 
was the sign of the proper name. 
over, and, on the return of milder weather, small 
ice-gorges formed, much to the dismay of the 
Frenchmen, unaccustomed as they were to such 
formations, which in tills country are of almost 
annual occurrence. Xitro-glycerine and other 
powerful explosives were used to break up the 
ice, with fairly good success. Our illustration is 
copied from an instantaneous photograph of one 
of the preliminary experiments, where a cartridge 
of melinite was exploded under the sui'face of a 
PHOTOGRAPH OP A SUBAQUEOUS EXPLO- 
SION. 
The unusual severity of the past winter in 
Northern Europe has caused much loss and suf- 
fering, from the unaccustomed cold and snow to 
which the inhabitants were exposed — although to 
the natives of New England the European winter 
would have seemed an exceptionally mild one. 
The Seine and other French rivers were frozen 
stream of water, to judge of the efiect which it 
would have upon a mass of ice. The picture is 
interesting, both as showing the form of the 
water column and the markedly vertical action of 
the explosion, and also as a flue example of an in- 
stantaneous photograph which must have been 
obtained under peculiarly difiicult conditions. 
The photograph was taken by Mile. Villain, of 
Rueil, and was first published in La Nature, from 
which we reproduce it. 
[Original In Popdlab Science Nbws.J 
THE AQUARIUM. 
BY HERBERT S. ROBINSON. 
Can you imagine a section of a river, pond or 
lake with its water-reeds and rushes flourishing, 
water-snails creeping on the leaves, fishes gliding 
among the stems? Then suppose this interesting 
collection enclosed within glass walls and placed 
in your parlor and called a fresh water aquarium. 
It is not for amusement or ornament only that 
these parlor lakes are prepared and stocked, but 
for instruction also. The nature of living beings 
can never be known but by their habits, their 
habits can never be well understood but by close 
and continuous observations, and If we cannot go 
down to water to observe the fishes, molluscs, 
water-plants, etc., we must bring them up to us 
in a very similar condition. 
The principle on which aquaria are constructed 
and maintained consist mainly in balancing animal 
by vegetable life, thus : If a few fish were con- 
fined in a vessel and the water remain unchanged, 
they would soon droop and die. The water would 
not sustain life after the fish had deprived it of 
the oxygen by passing it through their gills in 
breathing. If, by means of any kind, the water 
can be raised and recharged with the vital element, 
oxygen, its power of sustaining animal existence 
is proportionately prolonged. This may be done 
by a fountain jet. Experiments show that water- 
