100 
such a green as we have never, either before or since, 
seen in the heavens. We saw patches or smears of 
something like verdigris-green in the sky; and they: 
changed to equally extreme blood-reds, or to coarse 
brick-dust reds, and they in an instant passed to the 
color of tarnished copper or shining brass. Had we 
not known that these effects were due to the passage 
of the ash, we might well have been filled with dread 
instead of amazement; for no words can convey the 
faintest idea of the impressive appearance of these 
strange colors in the sky, seen one minute and gone 
the next, resembling nothing to which they can be 
properly compared, and surpassing in vivid intensity 
the wildest effects of the most gorgeous sunsets. 
The ash commenced to pass overhead at about mid- 
day. It had travelled (including its détour to the 
west) eighty-five miles in a little more than six hours. 
At 1.50 it commenced to fall on the summit of Chim- 
borazo, and, before we began to descend, it caused the 
snowy summit to look like a plougbed field. The ash 
was extraordinarily fine, as you will perceive by the 
sample I send you. It filled our eyes and nostrils, 
rendered eating and drinking impossible, and reduced 
us to breathing through handkerchiefs. It penetrated 
everywhere, got into the working-parts of instruments 
and into locked boxes. The barometer employed on 
the summit was coated with it, and so remains until 
this day. That which  ssed beyond us must have 
been finer still. It travelled far to our south, and 
also fell heavily upon ships on the Pacific. I find that 
the finer particles do not weigh the twenty-five thou- 
sandth part of a grain, and the finest atoms are lighter 
still. By the time we returned to our encampment, 
the grosser particles had fallen below our level, and 
were settling down into the valley of the Chimbo, 
the bottom of which was 7,000 feet beneath us, caus-. 
ing it to appear as if filled with thick smoke. The 
finer ones were still floating in the air, like a light fog, 
and so continued until night closed in. 
In conclusion, I would say that the terms which I 
have employed to designate the colors which were 
seen are both inadequate and inexact. The most 
striking features of the colors which were displayed 
were their extraordinary strength, their extreme 
coarseness, and their dissimilarity from any tints or 
tones ever seen in the sky. even during sunrises and 
sunsets of exceptional brilliancy. They were unlike 
colors for which there are recognized terms. They 
commenced to be seen when the ash began to pass 
between the sun and ourselves, and were not seen 
previously. The changes from one hue to another, to 
which I have alluded, had obvious connection with 
the varying densities of the clouds of ash that passed; 
-which, when they approached us, spread irregularly, 
and were sometimes thick and sometimes light. No 
colors were seen after the clouds of ash passed over- 
head and surrounded us on all sides. 
I photographed my party on the summit of Chim- 
borazo whilst the ash was commencing to fall, black- 
ening the snow-furrows; and, although the negative 
is as bad as might be expected, it forms an interest- 
ing souvenir of a remarkable occasion. 
EDWARD WHYMPER, 
SCIENCE. 
[Vou. IIL, No, 51. 
MODERN PHYSIOLOGICAL LABORATO- — 
RIES: WHAT THEY ARE AND WHY 
THEY ARE1—It. 
WE have seen that Haller laid the foundation of the 
knowledge that the body of one of the higher animals 
was essentially an aggregation of many organs, each 
having a sort of life of its own, and in health co- 
operating harmoniously with others for the common 
good. In the early part of this century, before sci- 
entific thought had freed itself from mediaeval guid- 
ance, this doctrine sometimes took fantastic forms, 
For example: a school arose which taught that each 
organ represented some one of the lower animals. 
DuBois-Reymond relates that in 1838 he took down 
these notes at the lectures of the professor of anthro- 
pology :— 
** Each organ of the human body answers to a definite animal, 
is an animal. For example, the freely movable, moist, and slip- 
pery tongue is a cuttlefish. The bone of the tongue is attached 
to no other bone in the skeleton; but the cuttlefish has only one 
bone, and consequently this bone is attached to no other. It fol- 
lows that the tongue is a cuttlefish.” 
However, while Professor Steffens and his fellow- 
transcendentalists were theorizing about organs, oth- 
ers were at work studying their structure; and a great 
step forward was made in the first year of our century 
by the publication of Bichat’s ‘Anatomie générale.’ 
Bichat showed that the organs of the body were not 
the ultimate living units, but were made up of anum- 
ber of different iojceeenen textures, or tissues, each 
having vital properties of its own. This discovery 
paved Gite way for Schwann and Schleiden, who laid 
the foundation of the cell-theory, and showed, that, in 
fundamental structure, animals and plants are alike, 
the tissues of each being essentially made up of ag- 
gregates of more or less modified microscopic living 
units called cells. Our own generation has seen the 
completion of this doctrine by the demonstration that 
the essential constituent of the cell is a peculiar form 
of matter named protoplasm, and that all the essen- 
tial phenomena of life can be manifested by micro- 
scopic lumps of this material; that they can move, 
feed, assimilate, grow, and multiply; and still fur- 
ther, that, wherever we find any characteristic vital 
activity, we find some variety of protoplasm. Physi- 
ology thus became reduced, in its most general terms, 
to a study of the faculties of protoplasm; and mor- 
phology, to a study of the forms which units or ag- 
gregates of units of protoplasm, or their products, 
might assume. The isolation of botany, zodlogy, and 
physiology, which was threatened through the in-— 
creased division of labor, brought about by increase 
of knowledge, necessitating a limitation of special 
study to some one field of biology, was averted; and 
the reason was given for that principle which we have | 
always insisted upon here, —that beginners shall be 
taught the broad general laws of living matter before 
they are permitted to engage in the special study of 
one department of biology. , 
If I be asked, what have biological science in gen- 
eral, and physiology i in particular, done for mankind 
1 Concluded from No. 50. Address by Dr. H. Newell Martin, 
