Feb. 12, 1880] 



NATURE 



349 



whether limited monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, in much 

 the same dissatisfied and despairing tone in which the Treacher 

 of old did. But he concludes his book with drawing comfort 

 from a source which his predecessor of old pronounced impos- 

 sible. He says : — 



" There is yet one branch of human progress which we may 

 contemplate with umixed satisfaction, and that is, the progress 

 of science, both in its dicoveries and its adaptations to the 

 convenience and civilisation of mankind. It may be hoped that 

 the acquisitions of science mav become an enduring benefit to 

 the world, not to be again obliterated and lost amid the political 

 convulsions to which society may be subjected. 



"To this progress the scientific men of every country may 

 contribute, whether they live under a despotism or under a 

 constitutional government. The pursuit of truth for its own 

 sake is the noblest occupation of the human mind, and from 

 this pursuit it seems probable that mankind will reap the richest 

 reward." 



A fairer comment fr m a more qualified and disinterested 

 writer was never made upon the motto of this journal — 



" To the solid ground 

 Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye 



>v. o. 



Scientific Jokes 



You can hardly expect all your readers to see through the 

 jokes at p. 337 of your last number. I instance only two out of 

 many. 



" The energy of heat is made up of heat and temperature " ! 

 This may set souie earnest but i norant students to find how 

 Joule's Equivalent depends on temperature : and it would be well 

 to warn them. 



"Profs. Ayrton and Perry have developed a theory of ter- 

 restrial magnetism . . . which coincide, well with facts." Here 

 the reader should have been told that Rowland has proved that, 

 according to this theory, the moon would have been repelled 

 into the profundity of space, and the greater part of the earth's 

 surface, including its atmosphere, torn off by the enormous 

 ■electric forces involved. G. II. 



Stags' Horns 



CONCERNING the disappearance of cast horns, the theory that 

 stags retire to secluded spots, ab >ut the time for shedding their 

 horns, mentioned by B. W. Barton in Nature, vol. xxi. p. 325, 

 may be perfectly correct where the animals have woods to go to, 

 but this opinion cannot hold good with the thousands of reindeer 

 that frequent the barren lands of the north-east part of America ; 

 yet it is rare to find on these " barrens " the shed horn of either 

 buck or doe, although the latter drop their horns in May or 

 June, when at or on their way to their far north summer 

 quarters. 



As far as I have observed, the new horns of the male rein- 

 deer (in the wild state) do not begin to grow until weeks after 

 the old ones have dropped off, and there is no danger of one 

 stag "disturbing" another, when all have their horns in the 

 tender velvety stage ; in fact, no animals can be less pugnacious 

 than these fine creatures are during eight months of the year. 



2, Addison Gardens, South Kensington, Feb. 7 J. Rae 



Apropos of the question of stags' horns, I have just come upon 

 the following in Miss Bird's " Life in the Rocky Mountains." 



Describing the so-called "Parks" of the Rocky Mountains as 

 "high-lyint; valleys large and small, at heights varying from 

 6,000 to 11,000 feet," she says, "Parks innumerable are 

 scattered throughout the mountains. . . . They always lie far 

 within the Foot Hills. . . . Hundreds can only be reached by 

 riding in the bed of a stream, or by scrambling up some narrow 

 canon till it debouches on the fairy-like stretch above. These 

 parks are the feedmg-grounds of innumerable wild animals, and 

 same, like one three miles off, seem chosen for th' process of antler- 

 casting, the grass being cover<djor at least a square mi'e with the 

 magnificent branching horns of the elk." P. 122. B. W. S. 



"Song of the Screw" 

 Frof. Tait has inadvertently attributed to the late lamented 

 Prof. Clerk Maxwell (Nature, vol. xxi. p. 321) an effusion of 

 mine consi-ting of a synopsis of Dr. Ball's Treatise on Screws, 

 which appeared in Nature, vol. xiv. p. 30, under the above 

 title. 



As a very humble p let, the occurrence of such a mistake has 

 satisfied my highest ambition ; and I feel like a second Chatterton. 



J. D. Everett 



The Post Office and the Telephone 

 Pray allow me to correct an important mi print which has 

 occurred in the last paragraph of the abstract of my address 

 which you w ere good enough to insert in your last number. I 

 said that the Po^t Office did not wish to restrict or in any way to 

 interfere with the use of the telephone; our only object was to 

 prevent the establishment of a particular branch of Post Office 

 telegraph bnsines- without, not with, its licence or consent. 

 General Post Office, February 9 W. H. Preece 



KARL VON SEE BACH 

 /"GEOLOGISTS will learn with universal regret of the 

 ^ death, after a painful illness, of the distinguished 

 Professor of Geology at Gottingen, Karl von Seebach. 

 Although Prof, von Seebach was still a young man at 

 the time of his death, he had already made his mark in 

 science, and his career promised a distinguished future. 

 Von Seebach's earliest studies were devoted to strati- 

 graphical geology and palaeontology, and he devoted 

 much time to the preparation of a geological map of the 

 kingdom of Hanover, and to his earnest labours much of 

 the excellence of this map is due. The result of Prof, 

 von Seebach's studies of the stratified rocks of Hanover 

 are embodied in a number of separate memoirs and in 

 his well known treatise " Die Hannoverischer Jura." 



During his later years Karl von Seebach's studies were 

 devoted to wider questions, and the investigation of 

 volcanic phenomena occupied his attention. He visited 

 the island of Santorin and wrote an important work on 

 the eruption of 1S66. He also published several interest- 

 ing memoirs on the volcanoes of Central America, a 

 district which he visited in 1S65. Geological science has 

 sustained a heavy loss by his early death. 



ARTHUR JULES MORIN 

 r THE serious illness of General Morin to which we 

 -*■ alluded in our last number, was followed by his 

 death at Paris on Saturday, February 7, in his eighty-fifth 

 year. Arthur Jules Morin was born at Paris, October 17, 

 1795. He entered at an early age the famous Ecole 

 Poh technique, but was summoned from his studies during 

 the fatal campaign of 1S14 to assist in the defence of 

 Paris, and rendered good service in the brigade of artillery. 

 At the conclusion of peace he devoted four years to prac- 

 tical studies in military engineering at the Ecole d'Appli- 

 cation of Metz, and entered the army as lieutenant in a 

 pontoon regiment. His military career was marked by a 

 rapid and regular promotion through the different grades, 

 terminating in his appointment as an Artillery General of 

 Division in 1855. 



General Morin's reputation rests however chiefly on his 

 achievements in the peaceful departments of physical 

 research, as well as on unusual executive abilities in the 

 same connection. As an investigator his attention was 

 directed almost entirely to the solution of problems in 

 mechanics. In a remarkable series of memoirs presented 

 to the Academy at Paris, during the years 1833— 1S35, 

 Morin gave the results of exhaustive experiments on 

 friction, and established the three general laws of this 

 part of mechanics, viz. : — Friction is proportional to the 

 pressure exerted by a body on the supporting surface ; 

 depends on the nature and smoothness of the surfaces in 

 contact, but not on their superficies ; and is independent 

 of the rapidity of the motion. Equally well-known is his 

 ingenious apparatus for determining the laws of falling 

 bodies, in which a pencil attached to a falling weight, 

 describes a curve on a perpendicular cylinder, rotating 

 alongside the path of the descending body. The para- 

 bolic curve obtained by this simple but exact contrivance, 



