524 Paradoxical Phenomena in Ice-caves . [August, 
cupy professorial chairs in our colleges ; they fill the posts 
of botanists and geologists to our colonial governments ; 
they hold high positions in the respective staffs of the 
British Museum, of the Geological Survey of India, and of 
our exploring expeditions. If we pass to the regions of 
Applied Science we find aliens in increasing numbers 
managing our most important manufacturing establish- 
ments. In the year 1858 there was one foreign chemist 
employed in the great alkali district of south-western Lanca- 
shire. How many are there now ? Nay, Dr. Reimann 
does not scruple to boast, in the “ Faerber-Zeitung,” that 
English manufacturers owe whatever eminence they may 
claim not to Englishmen, but to Germans. Making all due 
allowance for exaggeration, there is too much reason to own 
that we as a nation are sinking into the position of mere 
“ hewers of wood and drawers of water,” whilst every func- 
tion requiring disciplined intelligence — save and except the 
miserable task of speech-making — is passing into the hands 
of strangers. 
Now we submit that it is not in virtue of any inbred defi- 
ciency if the countrymen of Newton, of Faraday, and of a 
few living biologists and physicists, are outstripped in the 
pursuits of Science by any nation upon earth. If we fall 
short, as the piClure we have just hastily sketched so 
plainly shows, it is due to that deplorable “ English system 
of education ” to which we cling with an attachment so 
fanatical. Are we still to go on passing examinations whilst 
other nations are effecting organic syntheses ? Are we to 
accept our senior wranglers and double first-men as an 
equivalent for their discoverers and inventors ? If so, all 
other reforms and “ movements ” notwithstanding, our ab- 
dication of the rank we once held is sealed and signed. 
II. PARADOXICAL PHENOMENA IN ICE-CAVES.* 
By N. M. Lowe. 
f N the “ Scientific American ” for March 29th last there 
appeared a letter from Mansfield, Ohio, inquiring as to 
the cause of the phenomena in an ice cave which is to 
be found in Decorah, Iowa, and for which there appears 
* Read before the Boston Scientific Society, April g, 1879. 
