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SCIENCK 



[Vol. XIV. No. 343 



SCIENCE 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



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Vol. XIV. 



NEW YORK, August 30, 18 



No. 343. 



CONTENTS : 



A Cincinnati Electric Railroad.. 141 

 The Pcetsch Freezing Process in 



Mining Operations 142 



The Production of Sugar 143 



Fattening Lambs — 144 



Pearl Oysters.... 145 



The World's Fair of 1892 146 



Electrical News. 



Atmospheric Electricity 147 



A New Lamp 147 



Health Matters. 

 TheKola-Nut 147 



Near-Sightedness 



Eau de Cologne Tippling.. 



Hygiene Congress. 



Notes and News 



Editorial 



The World's Fair. — Laws 

 Destruction of Weeds. 

 Mr. Wallace on Darwinism 

 Book-Reviews. 



Stellar Evolution and it; 



Geological Time 



Among the Publishers 



Rela 



On Monday of this week the executive branch of the com- 

 mittee on site and buildings for the World's Fair held its first meet- 

 ing in the committee rooms in the Times building. The members 

 present were Charles A. Dana, chairman ; John Foord, secretary ; 

 ex-Mayor Grace, Henry R. Towne, Isidor Straus, Samuel Gompers, 

 C. F. Chandler, and John H. Starin. On motion of Mr. Towne it 

 was resolved that Central Park, as a site for the fair, be excluded 

 from immediate consideration. It was also decided to lay aside, 

 for the present at least, all suggestions in regard to sites not on or 

 near Manhattan Island, and to divide the water front and inland 

 site propositions into two groups for separate consideration. Ac- 

 cordingly the secretary was requested to organize two excursions 

 for a personal inspection by the committee of all the sites deemed 

 worthy of examination. The first trip was on the water, starting 

 from the foot of; East Thirty-second Street at 12 o'clock Wednes- 

 day, Mr. Starin supplying the steamer. As Randall's, Blackwell's, 

 and Ward's Islans have been suggested for consideration, the com- 

 mittee decided to invite the presidents of the board of charities and 

 correction and the board of emigration to join the excursion party. 

 The trip was continued up to Pelham Bay Park and other available 

 water-front plots. The second excursion was fixed for Thursday, 

 but the hour and place were left open. The New-York Central 

 Railroad Company has offered a special car for the use of the com- 

 mittee on its inland trip, which will probably be largely devoted to 



the annexed district. Whatever conclusions the committee reach 

 will be reported to the main committee for approval or rejection. 

 While the committee was in session Mr. Erastus Wiman called to 

 recommend certain sites on Staten Island. The committee spent 

 considerable time in looking over the scores of suggestions as to 

 sites. The work of sorting was not an easy task, but the sifting 

 process resulted in a list of a dozen or twenty. 



It is one of the self-evident truths that the grounds of neat and 

 painstaking farmers and gardeners should not be permitted to be- 

 come annually seeded with weeds from the lands of their more 

 slovenly neighbors. It seems that in Wisconsin there is on the 

 statute books a law intended to prevent this injustice, and which 

 needs only to be enforced to accomplish much good. This law 

 does not, as is pointed out in a recent bulletin of the agricultural 

 station of the University of Wisconsin, demand the destruction of 

 all pernicious weeds, but it is aimed at the principal offenders, and 

 if these can be kept under subjection by its means, the damages 

 from these pests on the farm will be materially reduced. It is a 

 matter of interest that all the weeds condemned in the law were 

 introduced into this country from Europe. There are, it is true, 

 native species of the cocklebur, but Dr. Gray believes that the one 

 that has become a troublesome weed, and has very justly been in- 

 cluded in the weed law, is not native, but has been naturalized 

 here. The fact that these troublesome weeds have invaded our 

 country from other continents, and, despite the efforts that have 

 been put forth for their destruction, have spread themselves over 

 so many of our farms, illustrates how great is their power to cope 

 with conditions, and emphasizes the importance of vigorous con- 

 certed action to keep them under subjection. 



MR. WALLACE ON DARWINISM. 1 



To ALL who have read the life and letters of the late Mr. Dar- 

 win it must appear that, over and above the personal and scientific 

 interest which attaches in so high a degree to that admirable biog- 

 raphy, there is what may be termed a dramatic interest. The an- 

 tecedents of Charles Darwin, the Sir Isaac Newton of biology, in 

 Charles Darwin, the undergraduate at Cambridge — hitherto un- 

 conscious of his own powers, and waking up to a love of science 

 under the guiding influence of a beautiful friendship ; the delight 

 and the diffidence which attended his nomination by Professor 

 Henslow as a suitable naturalist for the " Beagle" expedition; the 

 uncertainty which afterwards marked the course of negotiations 

 between his family on the one hand, and the Admiralty on the 

 other, wherein issues of incalculable importance were turning and 

 re-turning in the balance of chance, determined this way and that 

 by the merest featherweights of circumstance ; the eventual sud- 

 denness of a decision which was destined to end not only, as his 

 father anticipated, in an " unsettling " of his own views, but also, 

 and to a never paralleled degree, in the unsettling of the views of 

 all mankind ; the subsequent dawning upon his mind of the truth 

 of evolution in the light of his theory of natural selection, and the 

 working out of that theory during tvi^enty years of patient devotion 

 in the quiet retirement of an English country life ; the bursting of 

 the storm in 1859, and all the history of the great transformations 

 which have followed ; — these in their broadest outlines are some of 

 what I have ventured to call the dramatic elements in the records 

 of Mr. Darwin's life. 



Now, not least among these dramatic elements is the relation in 

 which Mr. Darwin's work stood to that of Mr. Wallace. For as- 

 suredly it was in the highest degree dramatic, that the great idea 

 of natural selection should have occurred independently and in 

 precisely the same form to two working naturalists^ that these 

 naturalists should have been countrymen ; that they should have 

 agreed to publish their theory on the same day ; and last, but not 

 least, that, through the many years of strife and turmoil which fol- 

 lowed, these two English naturalists consistently maintained to- 

 wards each other such feelings of magnanimous recognition, that 



1 From the Contemporary Review. 



