646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ness, and by which, horses are treated as mere machines, to "be 

 worked to their utmost capacity at the smallest expense, and neat 

 cattle as so much butcher's meat to be brought to market in the 

 quickest and cheapest manner. 



Erasmus Darwin, in his Phytologia, or the Philosophy of 

 Agriculture and Gardening (London, 1800), endeavors to vindi- 

 cate the goodness of God in permitting the destruction of the 

 lower by the higher animals on the ground that " more pleasur- 

 able sensation exists in the world, as the organic matter is taken 

 from a state of less irritability and less sensibility and converted 

 into a greater/' By this arrangement, he thinks, the supreme 

 sum of possible happiness is secured to sentient beings. Thus it 

 may be disagreeable for the mouse to be caught and converted 

 into the flesh of the cat, for the lamb to be devoured by the wolf, 

 for the toad to be swallowed by the serpent, and for sheep, swine, 

 and kine to be served up as roasts and ragouts for man ; but in 

 all such cases, he argues, the pain inflicted is far less than the 

 amount of pleasure ultimately procured. But how is it when a 

 finely organized human being, with infinite capabilities of happi- 

 ness in its highest forms, is suddenly transmuted into the bodily 

 substance of a boa constrictor or a tiger ? No one will seriously 

 assert that the drosera, Dionaza muscipula, and other insectivorous 

 and carnivorous plants are organisms superior in sensitiveness to 

 those which they devour, or that this transformation of animal 

 into vegetable structure increases the sum of pleasurable sensation 

 in the world. The doctrine of evolution, which regards these 

 antagonisms as mere episodes in the universal struggle for exist- 

 ence, has forever set aside this sort of theodicy and put an end to 

 all teleological attempts to infer from the nature and operations 

 of creation the moral character of the Creator. 



SEEKING for a higher meteorological station among the mountains of Peru 

 than that of Mount Ohanchani, Prof. Bailey, of the Harvard College Observatory, 

 has established a station upon the top of the volcano El Misti, at an elevation of 

 nineteen thousand two hundred feet. A path has been constructed by which 

 mules have been led to the summit, and beside the meteorological shelter a 

 wooden hut has been built there. A survey of the crater has been made, and a 

 stone hut has-been erected on the side of the mountain at a height of fifteen 

 thousand feet. The temperature, pressure, moisture, and velocity and direction 

 of the wind are recorded at the summit station by self-registering instruments. 

 The sheets are changed at intervals, thus giving a record of atmospheric condi- 

 tions at a height hitherto unattempted. The use of beasts of burden at these 

 heights offers an opportunity in the future of carrying instruments and conduct- 

 ing experiments at altitude:- heretofore regarded as inaccessible for these purposes. 

 The mountain, as seen from every direction, is an isolated sharp peak. It is, 

 therefore, especially suited for the study of the upper atmosphere. 



