290 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
into and through the physical world at every point. There 
is to him nothing of mere surface, as in the case of men 
upon whom scientific knowledge has not dawned. The 
strength and the weakness of man come alike under his 
observation. This is a noble part of the destiny of medicine. 
It is not national, but cosmopolitan in its scope. The 
distinguishing pride and charactristic of medicine in our 
own day is, that, while retailing all that it has derived from 
ages and experience, the profession has now allied itself 
with science to a far greater extent than can be said of 
any other calling. Yet we are still, as it were, gathering 
sands by the sea-shore, but a vast amount of scientific know¬ 
ledge has been garnered, so that it can never again be lost. 
Every age produces its ideas, but even in those oscillations 
there is progress, and in each department of art solid truths 
are established in each succeeding generation upon the surest 
foundations.^^ 
Although we have written thus much, we feel that so far 
from having exhausted the subject, we have only just entered 
on its confines. Ideas cluster around each other as we give 
the rein to thought, so that it is probable, in the absence of 
more pressing matter, we may venture upon its consideration 
again. 
SPECTRUM ANALYSIS. 
We have before, and more than once, adverted to this beau¬ 
tiful mode of analysis. As in all other discoveries, some of its 
advocates seem to have been a little too hastv in their con- 
ft' 
elusions. Late researches, it is stated, go to show that Messrs. 
Bunsen and Kirchhoff generalised too soon, and upon insuffi¬ 
cient experiments, when they announced that certain metals 
were demonstrably present in the sun’s atmosphere. M. 
Morren, in a letter to the editor of CosmoSj asserts that the 
more conspicuous negative, or dark, bands in the solar spec¬ 
trum do not correspond so perfectly as was at first supposed 
to the coloured bands seen in the spectra of certain metals. 
