Mav 5, 1882.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



571 



Asbestos is a substance which receives a daily-increasing 

 rtttention, and was exhibited in a great number o£ applica- 

 tions. It is expected — and it is to be hoped the expecta- 

 tion will not prove an unfounded one — that asbestos will 

 vf-ry shortly be practically demonstrated to be one of the, 

 f not thf, best of electric insulators. Specimens were 

 iMiwn in which it took the place of ebonite, at something 

 ike one-tenth the cost As was known very many cen- 

 turies ago, it is a mineral which is tire-proof, and it is not 

 to be wondered at that great efforts are being made to 

 ik-monstrate its non-intlammability when used as a paint. 



Another series of exhibits of very great interest were 

 the materials devised for speedily, very efficiently, and 

 iconomically removing paint Altogether, the Exhibition 

 may certainly be described as one of the greatest successes 

 of the daj-. 



CHARLES DARWIN. 



1"'HE death of Charles Damiu, which, even at the age of seventy- 

 three, appears i>rematnre, -will send a thrill of grief through 

 r whole civilised world. Ko man during the present century has 

 •n better known, more quoted and misquoted, appreciated and 

 -. ffedat. than the author of that " epoch-making " work, "The 

 ( irigin of Species ; " and yet the man wlio thus set the world ablaze 

 bus been content to lead the life of a true philosopher — allowing 

 1 riends and foes to say their say, and leaving it to his works thcm- 

 - Ives to justify praise and to refute calumny. Unambitious and 

 .rrissnming, be has never thrust himself before the public, nor 

 light for honours and emoluments. He worked for the love of 

 lUce and of truth, careless of his own reputation if only he could 

 :il>art to others that which his own mind had grasped so lirmly 

 iid analysed so accurately. As a naturalist, not even his greatest 

 t nemies will deny him the meed of praise. No other man conld 

 have drawn so much knowledge from a single scientific voyage, and 

 the works conseciuent upon his connection with the expedition of 

 the Beagle would Imve stood out as monuments of vast genius and 

 miparallelcd indnstry, even had he never ^vritton those better- 

 known and much-criticised books which have made his name the 

 war-cry of opposing factions. 



The sprcat thinkers of the day have long ago made up their minds 

 :■! to the truth of Darwinism, although Darwin himself would have 

 I en the first to admit that the theory he advanced was still im- 

 •i-fect. Having given the bold, broad outline, ho has left it to 

 other workers to fill in the details; and even if, in so doing, it 

 should be found necessar}* to efface a line here and there, he would 

 have been the last to object to such effacement if it should prove 

 desirable in the cause of truth. And meanwhile, the great and 

 childlike philosopher, who thought not the lowly worm and clinging 

 plant beneath his notice, has passed away quietly and unosten- 

 tatiously as he has lived, few even knowing of his death till a full 

 day after it had taken place. Keveitheless, his loss will be deeply 

 and widely mourned, and the gap left by it in the ranks of science 

 will long remain vacant, for in the present generation who could be 

 found to fill the place so long occupied by Charles Darwin ? As a 

 stranger, I can testify to his great courtesy in replj-ing to queries 

 which must often have seemed frivolous ; but the truly great man 

 is always tolerant, and willing to give freely to others knowledge 

 acquired with much pains and labour, and in this respect Dar\vin 

 wag truly great, and never despised or rejected anything placed 

 before him which had the slightest scientific value. 



It is not necessary here to give a list of his works ; they mnst bo 

 wcll-kno\vn, at least by name, to all readers of Knowlbdge, and 

 those who know- them by name only would do well to make them- 

 selves familiar with their content.s before they condemn the greatest 

 philosopher and most profound thinker of the age, who, in his quiet 

 country home, has worked out problems in zoology, botany, and 

 Keology, which otherwise would have remained, as the riddle of the 

 Sphynz, fatal to all who attempted their solution. 



A. W. BUCKLAKD. 



M. PASTEUR. 



FOR thirty years M . Pasteur has carried on the most minute and 

 elaborate researches into the lowest forms of life, and hia 

 discoveries, in the opinion of many, have established beyond all 

 reasonable donbt the great fact that there is no such thing as 

 spontaneous generation. He is the foremost representative of 

 the " germ theory " of disease, and has absolutely proved in certain 



departments, and left it a matter of sure inference in others, 

 that animal maladies may positively bo traced to the presence 

 of minute organisms in the body. There has been fierce con- 

 troversy on these matters. There still are some rigorous oppo- 

 nents who refuse to be converted, such as Dr. Charlton Bastian, 

 who held debate with M. Pasteur at the Congress last year ; but 

 there is no question as to which way the balance of opinion now 

 lies, if, indeed, it is 'not incorrect to speak of tho germ theory as 

 being anv longer within the sphere of opinion. Tho great advance 

 that it has made towards certainty during the last few years is 

 primarily due to the work of M. Pasteur. He did not, of course, 

 invent the theory. It is in its outlines as old as tho beginnings 

 of scientific medicine ; and in a somewhat advanced form 

 it is as old as the last century. But M. Pasteur has given 

 it at once a width and a universality that it lacked before, 

 by bis researches into the nature of fermentation and his 

 microscopic studies of disease. It might be thought that beer 

 was too evervday a subject for tho investigations of one of the 

 profoundest observers of our time; but M. Pasteur's work on 

 beer has not onlv made the fortune of the brewers who wore wise 

 enough to read him, but has revealed the most important truths as 

 to the mysterious process of fermentation. Wine and silkworms 

 have also" attracted his attention ; so have chickens and sheep. It 

 was, indeed, with the diseases of these two last that he was con- 

 cerned in the memorable address last August. Chicken-cholera and 

 splenic fever are mysterious and, it ha 1 been thought, incurable 

 diseases. To M. Pasteur they have proved neither mysterious nor 

 incurable, for he has found out tho two facts, so important in 

 themselves, so immeasurably important in their bearings on all 

 similar diseases, that these forms of sickness arc both caused by 

 tho presence of minute alien organisms in the body of the animal, 

 and that thev can be cured or prevented by a process analogous to 

 vaccination.' Vaccination, indeed, which has heretofore been re- 

 garded as a certain but inexplicable safeguard in one disease alone, 

 is now in a fair way of being scientifically explained, and, as a con- 

 sequence.of being proved useful in innumerable caseshitberto thought 

 to be beyond its reach. Some of our readers will remember the 

 statistics which M. Pasteur gave last year of the effects of the vac- 

 cination of sheep according to his method. May we not suppose 

 that a similar cure is about to be discovered for the other plagues, 

 whether of human or of lower forms of life, which are one by one 

 being brought within tho scope of the gei-m theory ? The researches 

 of Dr. Koch with regard to tubercular consumption, which Professor 

 Tyndall explained in our columns a few days ago, are a case in 

 point. Who can say whether in a few years, or in the next genera- 

 tion, at all events, it may not be the practico to vaccinal* for con- 

 sumption, as we now vaccinate for small-pox ? — Times. 



DEVELOPMENT IN FOOT-RACING. 



THE winner of the six-day -'go-as-you-please" contest, whick 

 began in Xew York, Feb. 27, made the unparalleled record of 000 



miles. "The second in the race covered 577 miles, beating every 



previous score save his own of 582 miles made in this city a year 



ago. Tho winner, Hazael, was on the track a few minutes short of 



106 hours. 



The scores made by the vrinners of the various six-day contests 



that have taken place since 1878 stand as follows : — 



"^ Milea. 



O'Leary... Astlev Belt, London, March, 1878 520^ 



Howell ... Astley Belt, New York, March, 1879 500 



Weston ... Astley Belt, London, June, ls79 ^..... 550 



Corkey ... First race, Championship of England, 1878... 521t 

 Brown ... Second race. Championship of England, 1879 542 

 Brown ... Third race, Championship of England, 1880.. 553 



Hart Rose Belt, New York, September, 1870 540 



Murphy... O'Lean- Belt, New York, October. 1879 505i 



Hart .".... O'Learv Belt, New York, .^^pril, 18S0 5G5 



Kowell ... Astley 'Belt, London, November, 1880 506 



Panchot.. O'Leary Belt, New York, March, ISM 541i 



HuLThes... O'Leary Belt, New York, January, 1S81 568t 



Fitzgerald Ennis Race, New York, December, 1881 582 



Hazael ... Contest at Madison Square Garden, March, 



1882 COO 



In the last race, KowcU, who broke down, ran on the fii-st day 



150 miles in 22i hours, the first 100 miles being covered in 12t 



hotu-s. — Scientific American. 



Poiro's EiTBiCT is s certain rare for Khemnitwin and Gout. 

 Pond's Extract is a certain cure for Haemorrhoids. 

 Pond's Ertract is a certain cnre for Neuralffic pains. 

 Pond's Extract will heal Bums and Wounds. 

 Pond's Ertract will cnre Sprains and Bmisee. 



Sold by all Chemists. Get the genumo. ADTI. 



