April 3, 1SS5.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



287 



Festival, like Cbristmas, we must be grovelling very low 

 indeed before the Fetish of Ecclesiastical traditiou. 



The Weldon and Winslow scandal is happily bcgiDninj; 

 to bear fruit, as I am gratified to sec that a Bill to amend 

 the Lunacy Laws, introduced by the Lord Chancellor, has 

 been read for the first time in the House of Lords. There 

 is no doubt that Lord Selborne's Bill will throw great diffi- 

 culties in the way of those who have heretofore been 

 enabled to deprive merely eccentric people of their liberty 

 from motives of private interest ; but I cannot help feel- 

 iog that it is still tco ttnder towards the Jons el origo of 

 all the evils so perpetrated — I mran private asylums. 

 Sooner or later public opinion will demand their entire 

 abolition. 



The presentation of the Albert Medal to that most 

 gallant ornament to our police force, Sergeant Cole, on the 

 26th ult., must commend itself to the approbation of 

 every Englishman. No deed on record performed during 

 the heat and excitement of action has, or could have, exhi- 

 bited truer courage of the very highest order than the 

 picking up in cold blood of that mass of dynamite, with 

 its burning fuse, in Westminster Hall, and carrying it to 

 a spot where its deathly mission would be most likely to 

 fail, and its violence expend itself with the smallest 

 chance of mischief. 



When I read that the sale of horseflesh as beef has 

 become so extensive in Manchester as to necessitate an 

 inquiry by the Local Government Board, I am tempted to 

 thank my stars that my own lines have fallen in somewhat 

 pleasanter places. Not that there is any reason a priori 

 why the flesh of so eminently clean-feeding an animal as 

 the horse should not be as sapid and nourishing as that of 

 the ox : but then one would like it ticketed as what it 

 really is. For aught I know a steak off" the winner of the 

 Derby might not sufier by comparison with one cut from 

 the Christmas bullock immolated by Mr. Giblett for the 

 Royal table ; but I should like the vendor to be candid on 

 the subject of its origin. The impecunious Frenchman 

 who, praising our English fare, exclaimed : " Your 

 Angleesh meat, he so var fin an' sheap, a man he bring 

 von, too, tree piece on a leetle bit of stick for von penny, 

 to my door every mornin'," wag doubtless sincere, but we 

 may reasonably suppose that he was ignorant whence the 

 supply was derived. 



Dickens said of theatrical " stars " that "they come out 

 — and they go in again." Six or seven months ago we heard 

 a great deal of the solution of the problem of ai-rial navi- 

 gation by Captains Renard and Krebs, in France ; but 

 somehow they and their navigable balloon have gone from 

 our gaze like a beautiful dream, as a venerable song hath 

 it. Meanwhile I am delighted to see that that most Con- 

 servative of all conservative bodies, the War Office, has 

 actually despatched balloons to the Soudan, and that as I 

 write one is floating over the zarebah outside of Suakim. 

 A more effective method of saving our handful of most 

 gallant troops from an unseen and practically unassailable 

 enemy could hardly be devised. This is applied science of 

 a very commendable description indeed. 



Eebatum. — In the article on the Brighton Electric Railway, 

 page 25G, first colnmn, line 35, for " 20 lb. to the mile," read 

 "201b. to the yard." 



JxfbirtDEf* 



THE DESCENT OF MAMMALS.* 



PROFESSOR PARKER'S eminence as a comparative 

 anatomist, notably in craniology, led us to welcome 

 with unusual interest the appearance of this work, the more 

 so because the advertisements indicated that it was prepared 

 especially for the enlightenment of general readers. Tho 

 necessarily technical character of the Professor's contribu- 

 tions to the proceedings of learned societies renders them 

 unsuitable for republication, while there is an ever-increas- 

 ing class of inijuirers who desire to know the best and 

 latest concerning the momentous questions discussed in this 

 book, but to whom such knowledge must, to quote the sub- 

 title of this Journal, bo " exactly described " and "plainly 

 worded." Professor Parker may be relied upon to 8up))ly 

 the exact description, but in the matter of plain wording 

 his book is a bewildering disappointment. 



The story to bo told, namely, the changes which by 

 natural selection and more obscure causes have developed 

 the higher mammalia from the lower, is one so profoundly 

 interesting, so cajitivating to the imagination, as well as 

 bracing to the intellect, that it is with the bitterest regret 

 we have to speak adversely of the manner in which it is 

 told by so well-equipped an authority as the Hunterian 

 Professor. 



The plan of the book, which is due to Miss Buckley, the 

 accomplished authoress of "Life and Her Children," and 

 other works, is excellent, and the table of contents is 

 set forth in crisp, bright English, which can have flowed 

 only from her facile pen, and which makes us regret that 

 the Professor did not hand over the rough materials of the 

 chapters, excluding the puerile quotations from various 

 sources, for Miss Buckley to present in a tongue " under- 

 standed of the people." 



The confused and discursive paragraphs comprising the 

 Introduction are followed by a chapter treating of the 

 Prototheria or Monotremes, the lowest mammalian forms 

 extant. They are so calkd because they have only one 

 common sac into which the intestines and the ducts leading 

 from the kidneys and generative organs all open. Although 

 teatless, they have udders or milk-glands. Only two typical 

 forms are known, and both these — the ornithorhyuchus, or 

 duck-billed water -mole, and the echidna, or spiny ant- 

 eater — occur in the Australian continent, which, from its 

 early physical isolation, has most preserved the lower 

 mammalian forms. It will be remembered that, during 

 the meeting of the British Association, at Montreal, last 

 autumn, a telegram was received from Sydney announcing 

 that Mr. Caldwell had discovered the Monotremes to be 

 "oviparous with mesoblastic ovum," which, being inter- 

 preted, means that these intermediate creatures lay eggs, as 

 do reptiles and birds, and that their eggs contain not only 

 the pure protoplasm out of which the future offspring is 

 formed, but also a store of food-yelk, by the absorption of 

 which it is nourished during the early stages of develop- 

 ment. The Monotremes, therefore, stand between the 

 Sauropsida, or lizard like animals, and the Marsupials, or 

 pouched animals, as the kangaroo and opossum, the young 

 of which are brought forth in an imperfect condition, as 

 distinguished from the young of the placental mammals, 

 which are born fully developed. Mr. Caldwell's discovery, 

 therefore, points to the ancestry of man — the highest 



» "On Mammalian Descent: The Hunterian Lectures for 1884." 

 By W. Kitchen Parker, F.E.S. (London : Chas. Griffin & Co., 

 1885.) 



