tallised silicate. In all three qualities of the diamond-optical characteristics, hardness, and non-resistance to the intense heat of the blowpipe-these crystals were found by Mr. Maskelyne to be deficient. In opposition to this opinion of Professor Maskelyne are brought the experiments of Mr. Crookes, who finds that Mactear's crystals phosphoresce when exposed to the molecular rays in his high vacuum tubes exactly in the same manner as real diamonds. Subsequently also Mr. Maskelyne himself, in a letter addressed to the Times, acknowledges that Mr. Mactear may have produced particles of crystallised carbon, though there were none submitted to him at his first trial, and in compliance with the request of that gentleman, he consents to suspend his judgment until the method by which the crystals are obtained has been made public.

GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY.

Discovery of Silurian Rocks below the Gault in Hertfordshire.-Two years ago the boring for a well at Messrs. Meux's brewery showed that the Devonian rocks lie immediately beneath the Lower Greensand of the London basin; a similar discovery has now been made in Hertfordshire. Important borings and extensions have been for some time carried on by the New River Company, for the purpose of obtaining a larger supply of pure water from the chalk. In a boring near Cheshunt, at a depth of 800 feet, and immediately beneath the gault, the auger brought up specimens of rock which Mr. Etheridge pronounced to belong to one of the oldest formations in the British Islands. On the land lying immediately below the Gault bed of Hertfordshire, therefore all the older strata, the Devonian, carboniferous, and oolite, have either never been deposited or have been completely denuded, and we now find there the Wenlock shale of the Upper Silurian formation, richly fossiliferous, and dipping at an angle of 40°, but in which direction is not yet known.

A New Underground Lake.-Near Tlemcen in Algeria some miners, in the course of blasting operations undertaken during the past summer, came upon the entrance to a large cave, the floor of which was covered with water. By the help of a hastily constructed raft the workmen sailed along this subterranean stream until, at a distance of between 60 and 70 yards, they emerged on a large lake of clear water lying in a huge cavern, which they estimated to be over a mile and a half long by a mile wide. At the extreme end of the lake they found a huge fissure into which the water flowed quietly, and which appeared to be the entrance to a channel extending in a southerly direction.

Prehistoric Caves in Moravia.-The exploration of two caves lately discovered in a hill near Stumberg, in Moravia, has brought to light a large number of remains of the highest scientific interest. The human occupants of the first of these caves seem to have lived in the oldest stone age or paleolithic period; their implements and tools, relics of which have been found, are all of stone, and are accompanied by bones of the cave bear, the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the cave ox, and other antediluvian animals. In the second cave-the Dwarf's Cave, as it is called on the spot-remains of the same kinds of animals have been found; but the men who occupied it must have lived at a later era, and have been acquainted, to some extent, with the use of metals. The articles obtained in this cave include tools of horn and bone showing traces of artifical work, arrow-heads and knives of bronze, as well as some fragments of pottery covered with characteristic ornaments.

Paleontological Discoveries.-At the end of last year Professor O. C. Marsh described in the "American Journal of Science and Arts" a new species of gigantic dinosaurian animals which he has discovered in the Upper Jurassic formation of the Rocky Mountains. To this species belongs the huge Titanosaurus, and a still larger reptile recently discovered, the Atlantosaurus immanis, which must have been over 100 feet in length. With these monsters occur some of the most diminutive dinosauri yet found, one, the Nanosaurus, not being larger than a cat.

In some rocks of Purbeck age Professor Owen has found the fossil remains of diminutive crocodilian reptiles which cannot have been more than 18 inches in length; he has given it the name of Theriosuchus pusillus. The same distinguished palæontologist has described, under the name of Titanosuchus ferox, another gigantic reptile, belonging to the same order of Theriodontia, whose fossil remains were found in the triassic beds of South Africa; from the dental characteristics this must have been an animal of a fiercely carnivorous type.

In the Siwaliks of the Punjab some bones have been found of a large anthropoid ape, which must have belonged to a creature intermediate in size between the orang and the gorilla, and, judging from the teeth, of the chimpanzee type. The specimen is of great interest, as being the first trace of the larger anthropoid apes found in India, and also on account of its resemblance to the great apes of Western Africa.

PHYSICS.

The invention of the telephone and phonograph, and the threatened subjugation of gas illumination by the electric light, will no doubt cause a record of physical discovery during the year to be looked for with interest. In fact, it would require a far larger space than that at our disposal to relate all that has been accomplished in this branch of experimental science.

Radiant Matter.-Mr. Crookes's remarkable researches in the region of molecular physics open out a new field of investigation, and have already led to unexpected results. By increasing the exhaustion in the vacuum tubes, Mr. Crookes thinks he has proved the existence of what Faraday believed to be a fourth or ultra-gaseous state of matter. When the electric spark passes through an ordinary vacuum tube a dark space is observed round the negative pole; but as the gas in the tube is more and more rarified, this dark space is removed farther from the pole, and finally a phosporescent light appears on the farthest part of the tube away from the pole. This phosphorescent light is not the same as that observed in common vacuum tubes; such tubes give different spectra, according to the nature of the residual gas, while the phosphorescence in Crookes's highly rarified media gives a continuous spectrum of the same kind, whatever be the nature of the gas, modified only by the nature of the substance of which the tube is composed, or rather on which the stream of electrified molecules is made to impinge.

To explain these phenomena Mr. Crookes falls back on what is generally called the kinetic theory of the constitution of gases. According to this theory the infinitesimally small molecules of which a gas consists are continually moving in all directions with intense velocity, and are therefore at every instant coming into contact with one another; the molecules move in straight lines, but as the collisions succeed each other with excessive rapidity, their free paths between those collisions must be exceedingly small. At a

very high degree of exhaustion the space for a molecule to move in becomes much more extensive, and its mean free path is much larger. Under the influence of the electric current a stream of molecules is made to move comparatively a long distance in rectilinear paths, until impinging on an obstacle their energy is checked and manifests itself as light and heat. To use Mr. Crookes' own words: "In these highly-exhausted tubes, the molecules of the gaseous residue are able to dart across the tube with comparatively few collisions, and, radiating from the pole with enormous velocity, they assume properties so novel and characteristic as to entirely justify the application of the term borrowed from Faraday, that of Radiant Matter."

The Electric Light.-The attempts to introduce the electric light as an illuminating agent for general use have not had any large amount of success. Holborn Viaduct, Waterloo Bridge, and the Thames Embankment have been lighted by it; it was tried in Billingsgate Market and in the Albert Hall, in the front of the Gaiety Theatre, and in the offices of the Times. In Paris it has also been used to light up the Place de l'Opera and several of the railway termini; for purposes such as these it has been found to succeed. For exciting the current various forms of dynamo-electric machines have been tried-in this country, the Gramme, the Lontin, and the Siemens machines; in America, the Wallace-Farmer and Brush machines; for producing the light we have had the Jablochkoff, the Werdermann, and the Rapieff burners.

Inventors, however, have not been able to overcome the great difficulty which prevents the electric light from being used for general and domestic purposes; they have not succeeded in subdividing the current indefinitely. Mr. Edison, indeed, has twice threatened us with a light which would quite supersede gas as an illuminating agent. At the end of 1878 he invented a lamp in which the light was obtained from the incandescence of platinum heated by the electric current. Afterwards it was found that platinum melts at a temperature below that at which it attains the intensity of incandescence required, and Mr. Edison has not succeeded in providing for the interruption of the current which this melting produces. In December of last year we were again assured that the difficulty had been overcome. Mr. Edison had substituted a horse-shoe of carbon made from baked paper, which was rendered incandescent by electricity in a very high vacuum. By the last account, however, this too is said to be a failure.

The Telephone.--Bell's telephone has now been improved so far as to reproduce the speech in louder and more audible accents; the buzzing noise due to induction when currents are passing in neighbouring wires has also been got rid of. An instrument on quite a different principle has, however, been invented by Mr. Edison, which is said to be free from the defects of Mr. Bell's telephone. Accident led Mr. Edison to notice that when a slip of paper, moistened with a chemical solution, is drawn between two metallic surfaces, it slips much more easily when an electric current is passed through the circuit. Taking advantage of this principle he has constructed a telephonic receiver, the sounds from which can be heard in any part of a large room. In the latest form of the instrument he replaces the slip of paper by a revolving chalk cylinder, impregnated with sulphate of soda or other suitable solution, and kept moist on the surface. Against this cylinder presses a platinum pointed spring, whose motion is communicated to a diaphragm of mica. By the vibration of the diaphragm the sounds spoken into the telephone at one end of the circuit are reproduced in the receiver at the other. Both Bell's

improved telephone, and the new invention of Edison are shortly to be worked commercially in the City of London.

BIOLOGY.

A Remarkable Crustacean.-Professor Milne-Edwards, in a recent note to the French Academy, describes an extraordinary crustacean which has been dredged up on the north coast of Yucatan from a depth of 1,500 fathoms. He pronounces it to be a type of a new family of the Isopoda, and has given it the name of Bathynomus giganticus, for it measures no less than 9 inches by 4. Its most remarkable feature is the complicated respiratory apparatus ; this consists of a numerous series of branchiæ, in the form of tufts placed between the false abdominal claws, each blade of which, examined in the microscope, is seen to be a tube covered with very fine hairs. This abnormally extensive respiratory organ is probably necessitated by the conditions of life at such a great depth, but it was hardly to be expected that in a region so dark the animal would require the very well-developed eyes that it possesses. Mr. Milne-Edwards has found each of the eyes to comprise 4,000 facets.

Animal Substances found in Plants.-Some time ago Professor Nägeli, of Munich, discovered in the yeast-fungus substances usually supposed to be confined to animals, and Mr. Sydney Vines has now succeeded in obtaining similar results from one of the higher flowering plants. He found an extract in a solution of common salt of the seeds of the blue lupin (Lupinus varius), to contain the proteids belonging to the group of globulins, and hitherto known only to occur in animals. One of them is myosin, a constituent of dead muscle, and the other is vitellin, a constituent of the yolk of egg. Both vegetable vitellin and vegetable myosin were found to have the same reactions as the animal substances of the same name. An aqueous extract of the same seeds contained another proteid compound, having all the properties of an easily decomposable peptone, formed in the animal body by the action of the gastric or pancreatic juice on proteids.

Function of the Chlorophyll in Green Planaria.-Chlorophyll, the substance which gives the green colour to plants, is found also in animals belonging to very diverse groups. Among these are the green worms of the Planaria family, on which Mr. P. Geddes has been lately experimenting with a view of ascertaining what is the function of the chlorophyll which they contain. A number of these Planaria when placed in water and exposed to direct sunlight, gave off bubbles of gas containing from 40 to 55 per cent. of oxygen, enough to re-kindle a glowing taper. Further experiments with potash showed that the gas contained scarcely any carbonic acid. By treating the worms with alcohol, Mr. Geddes dissolved out the chlorophyll which they contained, and on adding iodine to an aqueous extract of the bleached and coagulated residue, he obtained the blue colour disappearing by heat, and appearing again on cooling, which is so characteristic of the distinctly vegetable substance starch. The physiological processes of these animals appear to produce not only chlorophyll, but starch, both of which are products of the action of vegetable life. The whole investigation of Geddes shows how nearly the chemical processes in some kinds of animals approach to those of plants. As he himself says:-"The Drosera and Dionea have received the name of Carnivorous Plants; with equal reasons these Planarians may be called Vegetating Animals.”

PART II.

CHRONICLE OF EVENTS

IN 1879.

JANUARY.

1. A proposal made to raise in Scotland, by means of a lottery, nine millions; three millions for the benefit of the City of Glasgow Bank shareholders.

The French Treaties of Commerce with Great Britain and Austro-Hungary denounced by the French Government, and notice given of their termination at the expiration of twelve months.

2. The following letter from the Queen, received by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, is published in a supplement to the London Gazette:

"Osborne, Dec. 26.

"The Queen is anxious to take the earliest opportunity of expressing publicly her heartfelt thanks for the universal and most touching sympathy shown to her by all classes of her loyal and faithful subjects on the present occasion, when it has pleased God to call from this world her dearly-beloved daughter, the Princess Alice, Grand-Duchess of Hesse. Overwhelmed with grief at the loss of a dear child, who was a bright example of loving tenderness, courageous devotion, and self-sacrifice to duty, it is most soothing to the Queen's feelings to see how entirely her grief is shared by her people. The Queen's deeply afflicted son-in-law, the GrandDuke of Hesse, is also anxious to make known his sincere gratitude for the kind feelings expressed towards himself and his dear children in their terrible bereavement, and his gratification at the appreciation shown by the people of England of the noble and endearing qualities of her whom all now mourn. Seventeen years

ago, at this very time, when a similar bereavement crushed the Queen's happiness, and this beloved and lamented daughter was her great comfort and support, the nation evinced the same touching

A