4i8 



NATURE 



{April 2, 1874 



it must be admitted that it is precisely through this ex- 

 ceptional character of her attainments that her case may 

 be adduced in proof of the rule that women are not by 

 nature adapted for studies which involve the higher pro- 

 cesses of induction and analysis. If such powers as hers 

 had been more generally granted to women, why is she 

 the only woman on record amongst us who has exhibited 

 them? 



There was nothing exceptional in her bringing 

 up, or her opportunities. In fact, no woman of her time 

 and station could have had a more typical experience of 

 life than she had. She was born nearly a century ago, 

 in 1780, and spent her childhood and youth in Scotland, 

 within an ordinary circle of the upper middle-class 

 society of her age and country, and therefore very closely 

 circumscribed by Hnes of defence against innovations 

 and social changes of any kind. Her father, Captain 

 Fairfax (a brave officer who commanded the Repulse 

 during the war), received the news of her having taught 

 herself the first six books of Euclid with the remark— 

 " We must put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in 

 a strait-jacket one of these days. There was ' X.,' who 

 went raving mad about the longitude!" This gallant 

 captain was, moreover, a genuine good Tory, who took 

 decided views in regard to all questions involving a de- 

 parture from established precedents, and when his young 

 daughter ventured to express her admiration for the 

 short-cut hair, which was then the badge of a Liberal 

 in politics, he exclaimed, " By G — , when a man cuts off 

 his queue the head should go with it." Her mother, who 

 found all her intellectual cravings amply satisfied with the 

 reading of her Bible, a volume of sermons, and a stray 

 copy of a newspaper, fully concurred in her husband's 

 views of the education suited to young women, and was 

 at great pains to thwart her daughter's unladylike taste 

 for pursuits regarded at the time as the exclusive privi- 

 leges of men, and to keep her mind and hands closely 

 fettered by the bonds of a household possessed of very 

 limited pecuniary means. The parents of the future 

 authoress of the "Connection of the Physical Sciences" 

 did not, therefore, afford her special facilities for mas- 

 tering any of those higher branches of knowledge for 

 which she seems to have had an instinctive yearning 

 almost before she knew their names. Indeed, at the age 

 of 10, Mary Fairfax was still a little ignorant savage, 

 running wild over the hills and braes of Burntisland, and 

 scarcely knowing her letters ; yet before she was 13 she 

 had surreptitiously possessed herself of some of her 

 brother's books and taught herself Latin enough to con- 

 . strue " Caesar's Commentaries." At that time she scarcely 

 knew the simplest processes of arithmetic, but at the age 

 of 17 the possession of a copy of " Bonnycastle's Al- 

 gebra," procured for her by her uncle and future father-in- 

 law. Dr. Sutherland— the only one of her relations who 

 did not absolutely oppose her efforts to acquire know- 

 ledge—enabled her to solve the mystery of the X's and 

 Y's ; and from that hour till the day of her death, ma- 

 thematics, in one shape or other, may be said to have 

 formed part of her daily existence. For more than half 

 a century they were the staple occupation of her morning 

 hours when the duties of her house and family had been 

 disposed of ; at a very advanced age she began and 

 mastered the study of Quaternions, and other forms of 



modern mathematics, and at 89 she " still retained faci- 

 lity in the calculus." 



The restless activity of her intellect had indeed never 

 slumbered. When she received her first lessons in paint- 

 ing and music, she had begun at once to try and trace 

 out the scientific principles on which these arts are based, 

 and never rested till she had gained some knowledge of 

 the laws of perspective and of the theory of colour, and 

 had learnt to tune her own instruments. In later years 

 she may be said to have been always in the van of dis- 

 covery — not indeed as an originator but as the readiest 

 and aptest of students — and from the time when Young 

 showed her how he conducted the experiments by which 

 he claimed to have discovered the undulatory theory of 

 light, and Wollaston made her one of the very first wit- 

 nesses of the seven dark lines crossing the solar spectrum, 

 whose detection laid the basis of some of the most won 

 derful cosmical discoveries of this or any age, Mary 

 Somerville, to the last day of her long life of nearly 92 years, 

 followed with quick and appreciative understanding every 

 step in the advance of modern research. Age could not 

 quench the fire of her intellect, and even in her 92nd year, 

 when the Blue Peter,as she quaintly remarks, had long been 

 flying at her foremast, and she had soon to expect the 

 signal for sailing, she could interest herself in the pheno- 

 mena of volcanic eruption, speculate on their effects, and 

 follow with lively sympathy the progress of scientific in- 

 quiry, and the issues of passing events. 



In reading the personal recollections of this wonderful 

 woman nothing strikes one more than the ordinary and 

 even commonplace conditions under which her great in- 

 tellect advanced to maturity. In her case the only excep- 

 tional features were her natural gifts and her perseverance 

 in cultivating them ; and this is precisely the point that 

 should not be lost sight of. Mary Somerville will always 

 present a noble instance of what a woman has been 

 capable of achieving, but it would be straining the argu- 

 ment too far to say that we are justified from her special 

 case to draw general conclusions in regard to women's 

 aptitude for the study of the higher forms of physical 

 science. 



EXTINCT VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE 

 UNITED STATES 



Contributions to the Extinct Vertebrate Fauna of the 

 Western Territories of the United States. By Prof 

 Joseph Leidy. (Government Printing Office, Wash- 

 ington.) 

 THIS important volume is the first of five which are to 

 form the " Report of the United States Geological 

 Survey," and it will be supplemented by a memoir, em- 

 bracing the same subjects, by Prof. Cope. 



The large field for paUeontological work recently opened 

 up m the Western Territory of the United States has been 

 as fruitful in the introduction of new and unexpected forms 

 of extinct vertebrate life, as that so ably worked out by 

 Cuvier, the Paris basin. By the establishment of a 

 military station at Fort Bridger, opportunities have been 

 afforded to geologists, which the offensive attitude of the 

 Indian tribes had previously deferred, rendering inacces- 

 sible a district, the richness of whose past fauna must 

 have been as remarkable as is its present desolation. 



