i88 4 -J The Potassium Nitrite Outcry. 27 
The guarantee for the altitudes is, then, the barometer 
alone, and the following sentence is perhaps worth consi- 
dering, because not written on purely theoretical grounds : — 
A ieady in 1880 (p. 292) “great deposition of perennial ice 
on land mcieases the temperature of neighbouring vapour 
to be absorbed by the sea, and favours the absorption of the 
heavy gases; it lowers barometric pressure.” If this be right 
the altitudes would be liable to being overrated increasingly, 
proceeding inland on polar ice increasing in thickness ; prin* 
ci pally in ceitain seasons and in comparison with barometric 
piessuie or the neighbouring polar sea, where the pressure 
is relatively increased by absorption of vapour, the whole 
1 elation in these regions being thus to a certain degree out 
ol comparison with the similar relation in other regions 
where experience was acquired. 
V. THE POTASSIUM NITRITE OUTCRY. 
a-. 
J N days of old scientific discoverers often found it needful, 
or at least prudent, to record their observations and 
conclusions in language not too readily intelligible to 
the outside world. Sometimes a faCt was veiled in the form 
of an anagram. Sometimes a theory was presented as if in 
joke, or was followed up by a sham refutation, so that it 
became difficult to prove what were the real opinions of the 
author. The reason why truth, or endeavours after truth, 
had to be thus carefully veiled was, as most of our readers' 
are aware, the jealousy of the Church. But what few of 
us duly consider is that— as far as one of the most important 
of the Sciences is concerned — we are fast drifting into a 
position which will render similar precautions necessary in 
our (/Mtfsf-enlightened times. Just as a couple of centuries 
ago there were men who studied the transactions of acade- 
mies and the writings of individual savants merely in the 
hope of detecting some new heresy, so at the present day 
the New Inquisition is unceasingly at work. Its familiars 
carefully examine all physiological, and especially all medi- 
cal, works and journals, — not for instruction, not for criti- 
cism, but in the hope of finding something which, by the 
d 2 
