286 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 379 



als did he meaa to restate by those six, etc. I do not by any 

 means say that this is the case, or that Browning is not a 

 great original poet for other reasons than a somewhat com- 

 plicated syntax. I am only taking the libertyof using him, 

 with the permission of his admirers, as an illustration ; just 

 as I have used Shakespeare as an illustration of a poet whose 

 works have lived because (as I think) they are not purely 

 didactic, or purely cumulative of examples of those princi- 

 ples and tendencies with which the world, since the date of 

 its emergence from chaos, has been perfectly familiar. 



Is it not a fact, that if, three hundred years from this 

 date, a twenty-second century man should come across one 

 of Mr. Harrigan's dramatic pieces (one of the "Mulligan" 

 series, for example), he would find in it more chronicle of 

 the familiar manners of the nineteenth century than he will 

 find in Mr. Browning's poetry? Should the twenty -second 

 century sociologist or philologist be interested in the city of 

 New York, for example, will he not be more instructed by 

 one of Mr. Harrigan's "Mulligan" plays than by reitera- 

 tions, however antiquarian their sources, of those truths of hu- 

 man nature with which doubtless his own twenty -second cen- 

 tury literature will teem? Men and women are pretty much 

 alike in any century, have always been and doubtless al- 

 ways will be — the same passions, motives, and frailties. The 

 comparative safety of virtue, and perilousness of vice; that 

 goodness is rewarded and badness punished, — are items 

 which doubtless the twenty-second century reader will con- 

 cede as fi'eely as we do. Nor will a narrative, however dis- 

 tinctly re-teaching those admirable lessons, become solely on 

 that account immortal. The twenty-second century man 

 will doubtless be fairly aware of the average moral proba- 

 bilities. But, should he be a student of intellectual progress, 

 or curious as to the Browning century, and desire to learn 

 about this nineteenth century poet's American cousins (to 

 learn about as much of them as Shakespeare has dropped as 

 to his own contemporary Dutchman and Frenchman and 

 Spaniard); should he happen to direct his inquiries as to 

 what were the manners, not of superior persons, but of the 

 general, in the metropolis of the western nineteenth-century 

 world; should he unearth its motley mise en scene, where 

 Christian, Jew, and Pagan, where Occidental, Oriental, and 

 African (white, yellow, and black), were all massed in 

 good-natured communion, — he would find in one of Mr. 

 Harrigan's pieces as rich a storehouse of folk-lore, and an- 

 notate it as eagerly and as learnedly as we annotate the 

 " Comedy of Errors" or the "Merry Wives of Windsor." 

 He would make notes upon the fact that such interesting 

 ellipses as " Go chase yourself around the block," or " Take 

 a drop, will you?" were an invitation to over-much preten- 

 sion to descend from its stilts, with quite as much appetite, 

 for example, as we to-day discover that such "sabre cuts of 

 Saxon speech '" as " painting fke town red," ' or to " fire 

 out,"^ or " to shake,"" or " It's a cold day " ' (meaning a day 

 of disappointment), or "too thin,"" are actually resurrec- 

 tions from the Shakespearian day and date. 



[Continued on p. 288.] 



' 1 Henry IV., II. iv. 13. 



2 Sonnet, csliy. 14; Passionate Pilgrim, ii. 14. 



3 Lear, I. i. 42. 



" Cymbeline, II. iii.; 2 Henry VI., I. i. 5-37. 

 P Henry VIII., V. iii, 125. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The Philopatrian Society of New York have waited upon 

 Provost Pepper of the University of Pennsylvania with a view of 

 establishint; a chair in GaeHc at that institution. The question is 

 under consideration. 



— The Mexican Government has granted a concession to a com- 

 pany to construct a railroad from a point on the Inter-Oceanie 

 Railway to the volcanoes of Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl, and 

 up the sides of those mountains. 



— The United Electric Traction Company has been organized in 

 this city, with a capital of seven million dollars. The new com- 

 pany is virtually a consolidation of all the various Daft electric 

 companies into one central company. This will doubtless give a 

 new impetus to the development of electric traction. 



— The American Metrological Society, at a meeting held in 

 Washington last month, advocated the adoption of the metric 

 system by the government for custom house and foreign mail 

 service. The metric system is now used by twenty-four nations 

 in invoicing goods for shipment abroad, and many of them use it 

 for all purposes. 



— The council of the Appalachian Mountain Club has issued 

 invitations to a number of persons throughout the State of Massa- 

 chusetts to a conference, to consider the subject of the preserva- 

 tion of natural scenery and historic sites in that State. JThe con- 

 ference will be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 

 on Saturday, May 24, at 13 noon. 



— At the connmenceraent of the Medical and Dental Depart- 

 ments of the University of Pennsylvania, held May 1, there were 

 graduated 117 in medicine and 70 in dentistry. Of these, 'A wer& 

 from BrazU, 2 from Cuba. 5 from Germany, i from Switzerland, 

 3 from Scotland, and one each from Hayti, Nicaragua, New 

 Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Japan, England, 

 and United States of Colombia. 



— Some interesting experiments on the physiology of eponges 

 have been recently made by Dr. Lendenfeld of Innsbruck (Hum- 

 boldt). He operated with eighteen different species, putting 

 carmine, starch, or milk in the water of the aquarium and also 

 trying the effect of various poisons, — morphine, strychnine, etc. . 

 The following are some of his results, as we learn from JSature: 

 absorption of food does not take place at the outer surface, but in 

 the interior; only foreign substances used for building up the skel- 

 eton enter the sponge without passing into the canal-system. 

 Grains of carmine and other matters often adhere to the fiat cells 

 of the canals, but true absorption only takes place in the ciliated 

 cylindrical cells of the ciliated chamber. These get quite filled 

 with carmine grains or milk spherules, but starch grains prove too 

 large for them. Remaining in these cells a few days, the car- 

 mine cells are then ejected; while milk particles are partly digest- 

 ed, and then passed on to the migratory cells of the intermediate 

 layer. Any carmine particles found in these latter cells have en- 

 tered accidentally through external lesions. The sponge contracts 

 its pores when poisons are put in the water, and the action is very 

 like that of poisons on muscles of the higher animals. Especially 

 remarkable is the cramp of sponges under strychnine, and the 

 lethargy (to other stimuli) of sponges treated with cocaine. As 

 these poisons, in the higher animals, act indirectly on the muscles 

 through the nerves., it seems not without warrant to suppose that 

 sponges also have nerve cells which cause muscular oantraction. 



— The four most valuable minerals found in Persia are coal, 

 iron, copper, and lead, while it has leen ascertained that there 

 are large deposits of the purest petroleum in south-west Persia. 

 In the north a coal-field of great extent has been proved to exist 

 in the neignborhood of Teheran. The coal has been tested, and 

 experts affirm that it will bear comparison not unfavorably with 

 the best English coal. Another coal-field of excellent quality has 

 more recently been discovered in the GisaUim Hills, less than fifty 

 miles from Bushire. The total area covered by the coal-fields of 

 Persia is belived to be vast. Nor are the iron mines less prom- 

 ising than coal. Those in the vicinity of Teheran, according ta 

 Bradstreefs, are very rich, the ore containimg about 70 per cent 

 of metal; and they aie situate within half a mile of the coal field. 



