512 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Dec. 19, 1884. 



of their ideas as their guide, and they will find that the best thinR 

 to do is to eat and drink what they like, without taking too much 

 of anything. Corn.Tro, who is the model of moderate people, con- 

 sumed as much as be felt he wanted of soup, bread, eggs, &c., and 

 fourteen ounces of wine daily. We can't do better than follow his 

 example, especially with regard to the &c. A friend of mine not 

 long since entertained for a day or two a couple of gentlemen of 

 the total abstinence persuasion. They were lecturing in an ad- 

 jacent town. At dinner my friend, who was not a teetotaller, con- 

 sumed one glass of claret with water ; the total abstainers put 

 within them during that meal — one, six large cups of strong coffee, 

 the other, seven of tea ! ! ! Let me ask Mr. Mattieu Williams 

 which of these would {caterU paribus) be considered the healthiest 

 lives it they applied at a life assurance office, my friend of the glass 

 of claret or the abstainers with the tea and coffee ? Mr. M. 

 Williams deserves our thanks for instructing us in the art of 

 detecting adulterations, but in the matter of cutting off one by one 

 every article of food or drink that is pleasant to the palate, I do — 

 and I am sure also will many of vour readers — implore him to 

 " draw it mild." " B. M., F.R.C.S. 



YEGETABLE.S v. MEAT. 



[1539] — In the September number of Knowledge, Mr. W. 

 Mattieu Williams alludes to a retired colonel, aged eighty-two, who 

 dwelt fifty-two years consecutively in India, and was a vegetarian. 

 Now, I want to know where — oh, where did the aforesaid gentle- 

 man live, that he was able to procure vegetables all the year round r 

 Not in Naapur, surely ! unless he was content to subsist on Irish 

 peasant diet, and partake of potatoes and milk. 



And such potatoes ! Why one would be ashamed to offer them 

 to pigs in Ireland. 



During the six hottest months of (his year our pretty wooded 

 station here, so far os them ome'er readings went, kept ahead of 

 the rest of India, except on a few occasions when Jacobabad in 

 Sind shot in front of us with a rash spurt, and wildly registered 

 (if I remember rightly) from 113° to 117° in the shade. Now 

 while this hot weather lasted, tie mtmbers of our lousthold ale 

 meat three times a day, had ravenous appetites and enjoyed 

 glorious health. We had no vegetables, barring the afore-men- 

 tioned apology for the potalo, and, honestly, we were none the 

 worse for the vaLt, though occasionally, I must admit, we had 

 hungry longings ior something green, and moist, and cooling, such 

 as a fresh salad from Covent Garden Maiket, or a dish of mtirrow- 

 fat peas — nay, even a cabbage from a coster's barrow in the New 

 Cut would not have been despised ; but it was Hobson's choice 

 with us, and we had to go without. 



Granting, as we all must, the wholesome and refreshing quali- 

 ties of vegetables as part of our daily dietary, might I suggest to 

 Mr. Williams the possibility of there being persons, even in a 

 tropical clime, who are all the better for partaking of a fair share 

 of meat at their meals ? 



Short as has been my stay in this country — a little over nine 

 months — I could not help noticing how much the Hindoos — a pulse, 

 grain, and vegetable-eating race — seem wanting in backbone in 

 comparison with the flesh-eating Mohammedans. 



When Mr. Williams spoke so slightingly of "condiments," 

 surely he must have had his memory or his palate full of the 

 delicious nutty flavour of a roast shoulder of Southdown mutton, 

 or of the succulent juices of a prime piece of Scotch beef — 

 luxuries, alas ! quite unknown to us benighted Nagpnrites. What 

 would he say to mutton tasting like the flesh of a sick goat, and 

 beef with no more sap in it than mahogany chips ! 



I, for one, though no craver after spices or condiments, am 

 grateful to our clever Indian cooks, who by their aid (in modera- 

 tion, be it said) can make palatable and inviting dishes out of 

 food that would be otherwise all but uneatable. 



L. O'Sbe.4 Dillon. 



Nagpnr, Central Provinces, India, Nov. 19, 1884. 



NOAH'S RAINBOW. 



[15-10] — The negroes whom I remembered as ignorant of this 

 meteor were in or near Spanish-town, the tenth year from emanci- 

 pation, and all were ex-slaves, and some (perhaps all) of African 

 birth. Soon after writing, I foimd that Sir Hans Sloane, in his 

 account of Jamaica, considered it a conntry rather more favourable 

 than others to rainbow production. Of course, they are common in 

 that latitude at sea (not, indeed, at hours like 2.15, wherein most 

 rain-squalls break, but with any exceptionally early or late daylight 

 ones), and Port Royal may practically be called a sea islet, being 

 never approached along the eight or ten miles of narrow sandspit 

 that alone connects it with land. 



The whole matter was shown, in your number of Jnne 27, to 

 have no bearing on Noah's story whatever ; as we see there are 

 readers to whom (as to U. Powntrec) Genesis never suggested the 



idea of the rainbow having been new to cither the world or Noah' 

 Our teachers in childhood made us think it so; but might, with just 

 as much, or as little, ground, have said thorns have only grown since 

 Cain's sentence, or donkeys have only had a cross on their back (as 

 some Catholics have been taught) since the crncifixion, or that the 

 ram Abraham found in the thicket was the first he ever saw. My 

 negroes, who knew not what a " bow in the cloud " meant, 

 supposed some sort of lightning ; and, of conrse, a " token of the 

 covenant" might have been made of that, or of anything accom- 

 panying storms, however familiar before. 



The point I argued was the entire naturalness and correspondenco 

 of Noah's story with extant facts; and should have proceeded to 

 another, if allowed — the manifold incompatibility of the Lyellian 

 pseudo-geology with them, both when hatched forty years ago anJ 

 ever increasingly since. E. L. Garbett. 



[What Mr. Garbett patronisingly calls "the Lyellian pseudo- 

 geology" will have to be attacked by much stronger and more 

 philosophical arguments than ever Mr. G. has himself employed, if 

 it is to be shaken in the least. — Ed.] 



RETINAL IMAGES— THE DUALITY OF THE BP.AIN. 



[1541] — Will you, or some of your correspondents, kindly furnish 

 me with an explanation of the following peculiar sensations, which 1 

 hare often experienced ? 



When 1 first awake in a morning it often happens that on opening 

 my eyes I see very vividly a network of black lines, something like 

 the branches of a river, or thus:— 



By shutting my eyes again, and re-opening them, I am enabled 

 to see the figure six or seven times. Undoubtedly it has something 

 to do with the fibres of the optic nerve, but why I am able to see it 

 at certain times I cannot imagine. 



I should mention that I sleep facing the windows, and with the 

 blinds usually drawn up. 



Anent your articles on "Our Two Brains," I may mention a 

 curious example of what I consider to be the separate workings of 

 the two brains. Sitting in an easy chair before the fire on Thursday 

 last, I fell asleep, and, as is my custom when asleep, I dreamed. 

 The scene of the dream lay near a wood, and I perfectly remember 

 a footbridge over a stream which I was about to cross. Awakening, 

 I gradually approached consciousness — and, indeed, was so far 

 conscious as to say to myself, " It is a dream," and still I saw the 

 footbridge before me, and at the very same time, and apparently for a 

 few seconds, I knew that I was sitting in my chair, and had the fire 

 before me. The two scenes were present together, my eyes were 

 still shut, the bridge was there, and yet I knew the fire was there 

 also. I struggled to awake, which I soon did, but could not forget 

 the curious sensation. It seemed as though the two brains for the 

 time being refused to coalesce. 



The "sentiment of pre-existence " I have often experienced from 

 my earliest days, and used in vain to strive to recollect where the 

 event had really happened to me before ; and I endorse what you 

 say, that the scenes are often those which could not have appeared 

 to us at any previous time. W. W. S. 



[What our correspondent sees is not the fibres of the optic nerve, 

 but the shadows of the blood-vessels of the retina (" Purkinje's 

 figures, ' as they are called), ride p. 1£9 of the current volume of 

 Knowledge. — Ed.] 



LETTERS RECEIVED AND SHORT ANSWERS. 

 Jasies Cram. Very many thanks; but, as far as an overwhelming 

 majority of our readers are corcerred, the interest of the subject is 

 exhausted. — Naturalist. An instant's reflection will show you 

 that if we compare the aspec of any celestial body viewed at 

 the Cape, it must appear inverted as seen from a British station. 

 At Greenwich, the "Metropolitan crater" of the moon, Tycho, 

 appears at the bottom of the moon ; at Cape Town, it is seen at the 

 lop. Hence your diffieulty.- J. Farrar. A girdle : the lelly-bantj 

 of a saddle. — R. McMillan. The "professor's" aslro-meteoro- 

 logical system is utter, hopeless rubbish, and any time spent in 

 reading his exposition of it merely wasted. The gentleman to* 

 whom you refer does cwn a place in Missouri. — R. A. Peacock. 

 " Saturated Electric Steam" a little beyond us. — Anonymous (H.J - 

 Browne ?). These columns are not a refuge for destitute essays ; 

 nor can Knowledge print papers which have been refused by learned 

 societies, either here or at the Antipodes. — T. J. Baenaedo. " Night 

 and Day " are only dealt with in their astronomical relations in these. 



