396 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
the volcano. Heathen Greece went over into heathen Egypt and brought back 
the graven deities; taking from them her first lessons in art, but the Gods of 
Egypt became not the Gods of Greece, but came to decorate her architecture 
&.nd give ideals in conventional forms. In time Heathen Rome crossed over to 
Greece and brought back at the wheels of her war chariots an army of living 
marbles to decorate her capital and to decorate Pompeii, and other fashionable 
watering-places. And again came the Goth and Vandal southward to Rome, 
and heeding neither art nor deity, destroyed forever all that was typical of the 
high civihzation of the era of the Caesars. Meanwhile ashes and pumice and 
lava, had covered Pompeii and Herculaneum, Cumae and Stabiae, and when 
at the end of eighteen hundred years they were exhumed, heathen worship had 
passed from among civiHzed nations. Jupiter and the lesser divinities found 
themselves illuminated by the white light of scientific investigation and not by 
the lurid torch of incense, burning priests or by sacrificial fires. They were still 
the highest achievements in the art of sculpture, but they were no longer Gods. 
Artists and archaeologists, antiquarians, and expert critics go there to study, but 
the day of their sanctity has forever passed away. 
It would have been easier for me to have written much more than I have, 
than to have attempted to make typical selections as I have. If I have succeeded 
in giving an idea of the extreme value and unique character of this great collec- 
tion, I must be content. 
PHYSICS. 
ELECTRICAL PHENOMENA IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 
GEORGE H. BOEHMER. 
In June, 1873, the Chief Signal Officer of the Army ordered the erection of 
a station of observation on the summit of Pike's Peak, Colorado, the establish- 
ment of which became entrusted to me; and while engaged in the execution of 
this task I had occasion to observe some electrical phenomena which, in consid- 
eration of the altitude at which they were observed — an altitude at which thus 
far very few, if any, observations on the subject had been made, — are supposed 
to be of sufficient interest to justify their publication. 
In addition to my own observations — terniinating in December, 1873 — I have 
collected from the daily journals kept by the observers stationed at Pike's Peak 
until the close of the year 1880, with permission granted by the late General Albert 
J. Myer, all the facts bearing upon the subject, giving them in the exact language 
of the respective observers and without venturing to discuss them and offering 
only a few explanatory remarks on my own observations. 
