1882.] Solar Influence on Organisms. 729 
dences, which cause very remote portions of the human 
species, without any communication with each other, to 
arrive at the same time at identical ideas and imaginations. 
In the 13th century the Latins, Greeks, Syrians, Jews, and 
the Mussulmans adopted scholasticism, and very nearly the 
same scholasticisms from York to Samarcand ; in the 14th 
century everyone in Italy, Persia, and India yielded to the 
taste for mystical allegory ; in the 16th art was developed in 
a very similar manner, in Italy, at Mt. Athos, and at the 
Court of the Great Moguls, without St. Thomas, Bar- 
hebrseus, the Rabbis of Narbonne, or the Motecallemin of 
Bagdad having known each other, without Dante and 
Petrarch having seen any Sofi, without any pupil of the 
school of Perouse or of Florence having been at Delhi.” 
It is interesting to notice the average foreheads of the 
Greek sculptures as seen in the friezes from the Parthenon, 
in the British Museum. They are, if anything, lower than 
the average seen in modern foreheads. About this faCt there 
can be no mistake, which is significant if we suppose that 
the Greek artist would reproduce the average types prevailing 
among his countrymen. The gods themselves are represented 
with ordinary, if not low, brows. This might be intelligible 
in Bacchus and Herakles, but not in Apollo and Zeus. 
Many of the groups also display what we should call short, 
squat figures, though the gods are figured with finely propor- 
tioned limbs. Probably many reflections which might here 
arise escape us from their very nearness. 
VII. DETECTION BY ELECTRICITY OF THE 
ANNUAL CULMINATIONS OF THE 
SOLAR INFLUENCE ON ORGANISMS.* 
By Nils Kolkin. 
t T came to my notice, several years ago, that if one end 
of a hair or thread were tied to a watch-key, or some 
similar objeCt, and a person, seated comfortably before 
a table, with his elbow resting on the same, took hold of the 
* Read at the Montreal Meeting of the American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science. 
VOL, IV. (THIRD SERIES). 3 B 
