Alg 
sembles that which exists in the German Universities. This 
arrangement not only allows opportunity for carrying on original 
research, but also enables the professors to impart a most bene- 
ficial impulse to younger men. 
In this country it has hitherto succeeded best, and appears to 
be most in consistence with our national constitution, to place 
the pecuniary assistance afforded to scientific men under the 
control of learned bodies as the Universities and the Royal 
Society. It is to be hoped, however, that our Government will, 
ere long, recognise the duty of advancing physiologists by aiding 
them with grants of money. Every medical school in Britain ought 
to have a physiological laboratory, well furnished with instru- 
ments—electrical, chemical, and physical ; and with the view of 
instituting and supporting these it will be necessary to supply 
certain sums of money annually from the public exchequer. In 
addition to money given to Medical Schools for the purpose of 
buying instruments, two or more grants might be set aside as 
prizes to be bestowed annually on the schools furnishing the best 
physiological work, and to be distributed by the governing 
bodies of the said schools among the workers. The awarding 
of such prizes might very well be entrusted to the Royal 
Society. : 
I trust that this plea on behalf of physiology will not pass un- 
noticed by you. 
Birkenhead P. M. Brarpwoop 
Mirage 
MIRAGE is not, in my experience, an uncommon phenomenon. 
I saw it this summer on the flats at the mouth of the Dee 
(Wirral side). It may often be seen, with a bright sun and still 
air, after heavy rain, on Hartford Bridge Flats, and other level 
and gravelly heaths in the Bagshot Sand district, where the fir 
trees may be seen floating in water, or forming promontories 
jutting out into a lake—a phenomenon similar to, though far 
less striking than, what I have seen on the Plain of Aan, in 
Provence. 
The most curious mirage-effects I ever saw were on the Wash 
during hot summer weather. The mirage is there known as the 
“looming of the land,” and when it is about it is impossible at 
moments to distinguish the sand and weed-banks from the sea, 
while the distortion, both perpendicular and horizontal, of ship’s 
masts, &c., is ludicrous. In one case I saw a herd of seals on a 
sand-bank transformed into a row of long-legged monsters, 
wading in water, or rather rooted by their long legs to the legs 
of a similar row of monsters below them, which was their dis- 
torted reflection in wet mud. I had some difficulty, at first, in 
making out what they were. 
Eversley Vicarage, Sept. 16 C, KINGSLEY 
Astronomical Science 
In your number for August 5th, a letter referring to Astrology, 
signed “C. J. Robinson” ends as follows :—“‘ Astronomical 
Science is hardly likely for the sake of sentiment to treasure up the 
discarded swaddling clothes which for so many centuries impeded 
its onward progress.” Surely such language indicates a sad con- 
fusion of ideas on the subject, since it is most unquestionable that 
the belief of antiquity in Astrology—far from retarding—greatly 
promoted the study of Astronomy. In fact, the names of Ptolemy 
and Kepler show that the greatest of ancient and the greatest of 
modern astrologers were at the same time the greatest Astro- 
nomers of their era, and the brilliant discoveries of the latter in 
both sciences suffice to dispose of the ‘‘swaddling clothes” 
theory without citing the instance of Napier, who, it is well known, 
invented that most admirable scientific expedient and indispensable 
handmaid to Astronomy, Logarithms, to shorten and facilitate his 
astrological calculations. 
T have not seen Moore’s Almanac referred to by Mr. Robinson, 
but any one by consulting an Ephemeris may verify the following 
curious facts. War against Prussia was declared by the French 
Emperor on the 15th July. The preceding lunar change was a total 
eclipse of the Moon on the 12th, in 20° 15’ of Capricorn, when the 
Sun and Moon had (substantially) the same declination as Herschel, 
Saturn, and Jupiter. Between noon on the 14th and noon on the 
15th, Mars came to the opposition of Saturn retrogade. On the 
15th, Herschel was in conjunction with the Sun, the planet having 
at the same time the exact parallel of declination of Saturn and 
Jupiter. So exceptional and extraordinary did these planetary 
positions and relationships appear to me that more than two years 
NATURE 
(Sept. 22, 1870 
ago I made two crosses at the middle of July in my Ephemeris, and 
outlined a hand in the margin that I might not omit to note when 
the time came whether anything unusual occurred. Now the 
eclipse on the 12th took place on the Ascendant in the Reyolu- 
tionary Figure of the Emperor Napoleon in square to Mars and 
opposition to Herschel, and according to the old astrologers ‘‘an 
eclipse of the Moon in Capricorn in evil aspect to Mars causes 
military disasters,” whilst modern astrologers credit aspects of 
Herschel with producing events of a strange and unexpected 
character. Again the same figure presents the Moon in con- 
junction with Saturn retrograde on the place arrived at by 
Herschel by direction, whilst the Ascendant falls on the place 
attained by Saturn, the whole presenting, according to the canons 
of Astrology,'!a rare combination of evil portents. Probably it is 
the preceding data taken in conjunction with the primary directions 
(also of evil import) which have furnished the ground for the pre- 
dictions of misfortune to the French Emperor to which Mr. 
Robinson alludes. T. S. PrRIiDELUX 
7, Eardley Crescent, West Brompton 
[We insert this as a specimen of a kind of letter which it 
should be impossible to write in the nineteenth century.—ED. ] 
Insects upon a Swallow 
DuRING the month of August, at Meran, in the Tyrol, a swal- 
low sitting upon a stone at the side of a public thoroughfare let 
me take it up without showing the least fear, or even moving. 
The cause of its indifference was immediately apparent ; two 
large insects of a dark slate colour were running about the bird 
upon the outside of its feathers, their power of adhesion being 
considerable. While trying to remove them, one got upon my 
hand and was lost, being thrown some distance by the second of 
two hasty but vigorous shakes. The other fell to the ground 
after hanging by a thread, similar to, but much stronger than, a 
spider's single thread. ‘The form of the insects was quadilateral, 
the head being at one of the angles, the measurement between 
the opposite angles being about } inch ; the strength of the skin 
was so great that the insect required three crushing rubs by a 
lady’s foot against the road before its activity was destroyed. 
The bird seemed conscious of release from its parasites, and 
struggled to get away, and then was only just able to flutter 
languidly to a tree about forty yards distant. The toughness of 
the insect, its activity and power of clinging, fully account for 
the inability of the bird to free itself. 
I have seen an account somewhere of a bird, whether a swallow 
or lark I forget, similarly troubled, and showing the same fear- 
lessness of capture. GASH: 
Birkenhead, Sept. 8 
er 
NOTES 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY’s presidential address is not his only out- 
come at Liverpool which it is our duty to chronicle—a duty 
which we perform with gratitude to him for his plain speaking. 
At the unveiling of Mr. Gladstone’s statue on the 14th inst., 
Mr. Huxley, after referring to the Compulsory Education measure, 
which promises in time to rid us of our worse than Eastern 
degradation, as one of Mr. Gladstone’s greatest achievements, 
added that if he might presume to give advice to a man so 
eminent as Mr, Gladstone—if he might ask him to raise to a still 
higher point the lustre which would hereafter surround his name 
in the annals of the country, it was that he should recollect there 
was more than one sort of learning, and that the one sort which 
was more particularly competent to cause the development of the 
great interests of the country, was that learning which we were 
in the habit of calling Science. That Mr. Gladstone was pro- 
foundly acquainted with literature, that he was an acute and 
elegant scholar, they all knew, but he suspected that the full im- 
portance for the practical interests of the country of developing 
what was known as Science was not quite so clear to the Prime 
Minister as it might be But, seeing the great faculty of de- 
velopment which his past career had shown, he had no doubt 
that such a man would by-and-by see that if this great coun- 
try was to become what it should be, he must not only put the 
ee 
