426 Analyses of Books. [July, 
Mention is also made of two American lac-insects ( Carteria 
larrece and C. mexicana), which secrete a matter supposed iden- 
tical with the lac of India produced by C. lacca. 
A new wax-producing inseCt, Cerococcus quercus, is also 
described. 
The Mason College Magazine. Vol. L, No. 5, May, 1883. 
Birmingham : Cornish Bros. 
On taking up this little magazine we expedted to find something 
thought-provoking, and we were not disappointed. “Overtaking 
the Rays of Light,” by M. J. H. Poynting, Professor of Physics, 
is a most remarkable paper, calculated to inspire even the ablest 
among us with a wholesome dread of dogmatism in our attempts 
at interpreting the universe. It has been beforetime suggested 
that a being able to take up its position at any given distance 
from the earth and endowed with an indefinitely increased power 
of vision, might see the past history of our earth pass in a strange 
panorama. But Mr. Poynting improves on the idea. He sup- 
poses an observer travelling to or from the earth at speeds com- 
parable with that of light. Time would appear to be altered in 
scale, and even to be reversed. “ If the observer were to quicken 
up his speed till he received twice as many luminous vibrations 
in the same time, the present colours would all move quite out 
of the range of his vision beyond the violet, and would be re- 
placed by those long waves beyond the red, which we can now 
only perceive by their heating effeCts. The earth itself sends 
out such rays, and it would most likely appear to be a red-hot 
globe, while boiling water would be of dazzling brightness.” On 
the other hand, by receding from the earth at a proper speed, 
but with his eyes still turned towards it, he would see the con- 
clusions of events before their beginnings. These considerations, 
especially if taken in connection with certain suggestions made 
by Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S. (“Journal of Science,” 1879, p. 34), 
will show us what is the true nature, not merely of matter, but 
even of time and space. 
“ Another Point of View ” is a sarcastic, but, we fear, too life- 
like sketch of students and of their doings in certain colleges. 
At a meeting of the Union a debate on the Vegetarian question 
is reported. Miss B. Clarke, who introduced the subject, made 
the curious assertion that the deficiency of nitrogen in vegetables 
was to be made up by eggs, butter , and cheese, forgetting that 
butter has very slight claims to be called a nitrogenous body, 
that, like eggs and cheese, it is an animal product, and that all 
these three substances could be had only at prohibitive prices if 
the slaughter of fowls and cattle for food were to cease. 
