way, but when the track 
_ follow and find the path. 
As I do not wish to fill the pages of this jocrnal with per- 
sonal explanations, my con‘r butions in NaTURE to this subject 
Must cease with this note. It is not my purpose at present to 
refute the imputations cast upoa Agassiz by the editors of 
Forbes’s Life and Letters; he can well afford to pass them 
over as he has done thus far, in silent con empt, the more so 
since, fortunately for Aguass'z, the editors have given us from 
Forbes’s own letters all that was necessary to show a course 
of duplicity, on Forbes’s part, towards the man with whom “he 
served his apprenticeship in glacier observation,” which is happily 
Tare among sc’entific men, ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 
is once blazed it is casy enough to 
Probosces capable of sucking the Nectar of Anagrecum 
sesquipedale 
Mr. W. A. Forses, in the number for June 12 started 
the question, whether moths are known to inhabit Madagascar 
with probosces capable of such an expansion, as to obtain the 
_ last drops of the nectar secreted in the lower part of the whip- 
like nectazies of Anagrecum Sesquipedale, 
_ _ As long as a direct answer to this question has not been given, 
_ it may be of some interest to state in general the existence of 
moths provided with probosces sufliciently long for the honey- 
spurs in question. 
Some days ago I received a letter from my brother, Fritz 
Miiller (Itajahy, Prov. St. Catharina, Brazil), in which he says : 
“T recently caught a Sphinx (not determinable by Burmeister’s 
“Brazilian Sphingide’’), the proboscis of which has a length of 
about 0:25 metres—a length not approached by any honey-tube 
of this country known to me. I enclose the proboscis.” Being 
unable to get the name of this species of Sphinx, I append the 
illustration of its proboscis, magnified in the proportion 7 : 1. 
This 
millimetres in diameter, and showing at least 20 elegant wind- 
ings, in its expanded condition attains a length of between 10 
and II inches, and would con-equently be adapted to the necta- 
proboscis, in its contorted condition forming a roll of 10-11 
ries of Anagrecum sesquipedale, which have been found by 
Derwin 11} inches long, with only the lower inch and a half 
filled with nectar. Darwin indeed says, with regard to the fer- 
tilisation of Anagrecum sesquifedale (p. 198 of his work on 
Orchids): ‘‘there must be moths with probosces capable of 
extension to a length of between 10 and 11 inches,” . 
Lippstadt, July 1 HERMANN MiLier 
An Order of Merit 
Your leading article in the last number of NATURE on the 
subject of a proposed “Order of Merit for Scientific Men,” re- 
calls the views (in exact correspondence with your own) enter- 
_ tained by my brother-in-law, the late J. Beete Jukes. These 
_ Were expressed by him in no uncertain terms on the occasion of 
NATURE | 
i ee See 
223 
publishing an address on 
Dublin in 1865. 
I take the liberty of sending 
to refer to note B, at p. 21. 
dealt with ia your article. 
5, West Hill, H:ghga'e 
“* Men of science haye of late years pandered too much to the 
utilitarian quackery of the age, and it is time that some one 
should stand up to protest against it. Government and the House 
of Commons shoul! be told that Science must be supported and 
encouraged for her own purely abstract purposes, independently 
of all utilitarian applications. The necessary preliminary, in- 
deed, to these utilitarian applications is the discovery and 
establishment of abstract scientific truth by men who look to 
that alone, and whose whole faculties and lives are devoted to it. 
The men who afterwards make the practical applications of it 
often attain, indeed, far wider reputations than the real men of 
science, and become to the p-pular gaze the representatives of 
Science itself. The higher clas; are rarely much known to the 
public during their lives, and are not usually men who would 
experience any satisfaction if they were nick-named Knights or 
labelled with C.B., or would feel inclined to accept any other 
crumbs that might fall from the table of the politically great and 
powerful. Nor would they commonly care much for pecuniary 
rewards, unless as a meins to enable them to do their work 
without drudging for the support of themselves or their families, 
They are the men, however, who in the end rule the world, and 
doubtl-ss they are often sustained in their labours by a con- 
sciousness of this fac‘, 
“It would manifestly conduce to the public good and the na- 
tional honour if such men, when they do arise amongst us, 
should be soight out, recognised as public benefactors, and 
allowed means to do that work which their faculties, and theirs 
only, enable them to perform” (‘Her Majesty’s Geolazical 
Surgey of the United Kingdom,” &c., by J. Beete Jukes, FR S, 
1867.) -—— 
the Geological Survey, delivered in 
you a print for your perusal, and 
I was glad to see the subject so well 
ALF, H. BRowNE 
Geological Sub: idence and Upheaval 
Sir J. HERSCHEL thought that the earth’s crust floats upon an 
ocean of molten matter, and that the washing of detritus from 
the land into the sza, by altering the relative weight of different 
portions of the shell, occasions a subsidence of the ocean’s bed 
and an upheaval of the land, which may he either gradual and 
insensible, like the process of denudation, or spasmodic and by 
fits and starts producing earthquakes and sometimes volcanic 
eruptions. 
This theory was at one time adopted, at least partially, by Sir 
C. Lyell, but is not mentionel in the latest edition of his 
“Principles,” and is generally rejected by geologists as at 
variance with th2 opinion held by Sir W. Thomson and others 
in regard to the internal solidity of the earth. But this objec- 
tion may be avoided by modifying Sir J. Herschel’s theory. We 
may repudiate his hypothesis that a great fiery ocean exists below 
the outer crust. We may arrive at many of the important con- 
clusions which he drew from this hypothesis, and which he de- 
scribed as all that a geologist could require, by admitting either 
that solid rocks are plastic, or that some of the lower and warmer 
strata of the earth are more pliable than the upper. 
As to the plasticity of solid bodies, it may be sufficient to 
refer to the experiments of M. Tresca (Comp. Rend. de l’Acad., 
1864-65, and Annalcs du Conservatoire, No. 21). Dr. Tyndall 
(Glaciers of the Alps, p. 9) suggests the possibility that the con- 
tortions of the strata in the valley of Lauterbrunnen may have 
been produced by pressure acting throughout long ages on the 
rocks in their present hard and solid condition. 
Again, the lower strata of our globe may be rendered more 
pliable than the superincumbent rocks by the great internal heat, 
although it may be insufficient to fuse them or even to maintain 
them ina yiscous condition, Many of the geological effects of 
a molten ocean may thus be produced. 
The theory that volcanic eruptions are caused by water perco- 
lating through superficial cracks may, perhaps, give a clue to the 
reason why volcanoes often occur in a great circle round the 
globe and in diametrically antipodal positions. When other 
causes concur to modify the form of the earth, the tidal strain 
occasioned by the sun and moon may often be required to over- 
come the vs ivertiz; this strain being greatest in the great circles 
of the globe perpendicular to the direction in which the sun and 
moon happen to be, cracks would probably occur most readily 
in these circles. ~ 
It seems at least a cuffous coincidence that some areas of recent 
J 
