she marries; and finally, as Lady Bracknell, over every man whom her vanity or self-interest mark out as an advantageous conquest.

There is, of course, an amiable and devoted heroine waiting to console the hero in the third volume, as soon as the difficulties created by parental authority and a semi-engagement to another can be disposed of.

The author's buoyancy of style makes the disentanglement of these complications pleasant reading; and the male characters are happily, though slightly, sketched. Their relations to each other are feelingly and sympathetically drawn, and there is a touch of pathetic truth in the survival of boyish friendship over all the rivalries, hostilities, and even betrayals of later life.

Science Notices.

Hydrophobia and M. Pasteur.-The experiments of M. Pasteur have raised some grave issues in the medical world, and the public are beginning to suspend their judgment on the whole case. We cannot but think that the learned professor of the Rue d'Ulm has held his ground, and proved the beneficent nature of his discovery. A few words on the method of inoculating against hydrophobia will perhaps not be unwelcome to our readers. The whole discovery, if discovery it be, has been wrought out of experiments on living animals, a fact which will naturally account for the bitterness of many of M. Pasteur's opponents. The first attempt to

discover the microbe of the disease was made from the saliva of a child who had died of hydrophobia. Out of four rabbits inoculated three succumbed rapidly; the fourth recovered. Five other rabbits were inoculated with the saliva of one of the diseased, and all rapidly died within a period of twenty to thirty hours respectively. Having arrived at this point, M. Pasteur endeavoured to find other living subjects in which to cultivate the virus. A curious result ensued. While the disease propagated from rabbit to rabbit was exalted in intensity, in passing through different generations of the monkey it became gradually less virulent. Once in possession of an attenuated virus, M. Pasteur proceeded to practise upon a number of dogs. Twenty-three dogs were first inoculated, and then exposed to the bite of mad companions, and, strange to say, all escaped the disease.

Human Inoculation.-In the meantime Joseph Meister, a young Alsatian, had been severely bitten by a dog that bore all the marks of madness. He was considered hopelessly doomed to hydrophobia, and the doctors begged M. Pasteur to try upon the poor victim the experiment of his new discovery. Young Meister received thirteen

inoculations, the last in the series being very virulent and capable of conveying the disease in the most aggravated form had the system not been protected by the previous injections. It is now more than a year since this happened, and the young Alsatian is in good health and has completely recovered from the effects of the bites and the inoculations. Since that date a stream of patients has besieged the laboratory of the Rue d'Ulm, and the papers last July give 1500 as the probable number of those who had presented themselves for M. Pasteur's inoculations. In this number there must necessarily be many who are the victims of imaginary fears, but there still will remain a considerable number who had been veritably exposed to all the horrors of this terrible complaint, and have been saved by the genius of the great biologist. The moral effects of the treatment cover a wide field, and have not received sufficient justice at the hands of M. Pasteur's opponents. Granting, as some contend, that hydrophobia is nothing more than a disease of the nervous system brought about by mental fear and overwrought susceptibilities, we cannot but recognise the beneficent and soothing effect of a treatment which by inspiring confidence allays the excessive timidity and gloomy anticipations of the patient, and inspires a confidence that is most powerful in restoring a state of health.

The Age of Bronze in Europe.-Dr. S. Müller has studied the remains of Mycene, explored by Dr. Schliemann, and claims for the old inhabitants a civilization far superior to the primitive Greek art. Many objects are found here that were unknown to early Greece; glass, porcelain, ostrich eggs, and ivory. The ornamentation bears an Oriental character, partaking both of Assyrian and Egyptian, or, better still, of Phoenician type. The funeral rites are Oriental, not Greek. All the metal work is in bronze, no iron is found. It is extraordinary how widespread is the civilization that is distinguished by the use of bronze as metal. The researches of Dr. Schliemann at Tiryns, have brought to light the ruins of a gigantic fortress or treasure house. The walls of the palace, constructed of enormous materials, are sometimes from forty-five to fifty-one feet thick, and enclose a staircase, three corridors, and eleven vaulted chambers. There are unmistakable traces of apartments for men and women, porticoes, and outer courts. Beautiful vases worked with geometrical patterns have been exhumed, and point unmistakably to a Phoenician origin. And all this cyclopean masonry was put together by tools of bronze or stone; for iron is most markedly absent. In the Caucasus, too, most interesting discoveries have been made, and all referable to the same phase of civilization. Without doubt there is a common origin to the age of bronze. We can trace three distinct streams that have invaded Europe, by the Black Sea, by the Méditerranean, and by Asia Minor, and these all point to Asia as a common source. From his studies on the antiquities of Mycene, Dr. Müller places the age of bronze at about 2000 years B.C., and consequently anterior to the poems of Homer.

Formation of the Basin of the Atlantic.-Sir W. Dawson's address as President of the British Association this year-was confined to that branch of science of which he is a past master. It might be best defined as a charming monograph on the basin of the Atlantic. One of the most startling results achieved by the Challenger expedition was to establish the permanent nature of the great ocean basins. We are glad to see that Sir. W. Dawson lends the great weight of his name and authority to the new hypothesis. It is impossible to look upon a map without being struck by the marked position of the most ancient rocks of the earth-viz., the Laurentian series. In America the long lines of this old mountain chain extends along the Labrador coast and the north shore of the St. Lawrence. In Europe a similar feature is reproduced in the Highlands, the Hebrides, and the Scandinavian mountains. The Malvern hills in England are the single survivors of this far-off time. The president holds that within the Laurentian period the earth's crust began to rise above the general surface, and the subsidence thereby caused formed the bed of the Atlantic, and these broad features have roughly subsisted to the present day. This high land would be subject to erosions and denudations; the detritus thus produced would be carried to the ocean shores, and further mountains be formed by these great lines of deposition. This portion of the crust becoming weighed down, would become more liable to shrinking and lateral pressure. The permanence of the ocean bed is accounted for in this wise. The sediment accumulated along the shores would hold back the heat of the earth, and thus intensify the internal throes, while the ocean floor, constantly bathed with currents of cold water, would be more rapidly cooled, and would become thicker and stronger. We should have thus on the shores greater folding and elevation, produced by the hard thick ocean floor as it settles downward squeezing upward and plicating all the soft sediments deposited at its edges. The theory is as ingenious as it is satisfactory.

Professor Bonney on Shore Formations.-The foregoing views received further and powerful support from Professor Bonney's masterly address. Sediment from rivers, he contends, is deposited comparatively near the shores of continents. Even in the case of very large rivers only the finer sediment is carried far from land. The Challenger soundings have shown that 150 miles is about the maximum distance from land within which any important quantity of detrital material is deposited. Hence the coast is fringed by a zone of sediment which, after passing a maximum of thickness within a short distance from the shore, gradually thins away. This detrital fringe is probably now here more than seventy or eighty miles wide; the coarser sands do not usually extend for so much as a quarter of this distance. The inertia of the mass of the ocean water quickly arrests the flow of even the mightiest river, and reduces it to a mere superficial current. Hence the great ocean basins are regions where rock-building is carried on slowly and chiefly by organic

agency.

Persistency of Floral Types.-Professor Carruthers, in the Biological Section, drew attention to the great antiquity of the present Egyptian flora as evidenced by an examination of hitherto unopened tombs. Happily the exploration was made by no less distinguished a botanist than Dr. Schweinfurth. The plant remains were included within the mummy wrappings, and, being thus hermetically sealed, have been preserved with scarcely any change. These specimens, four thousand years old, supply means for the closest examination and comparison with their living representatives. It is difficult to realize the wonderful state of preservation in which the flowers that were employed as garlands still are. The colour of the petals of the poppy, and the occasional presence of the dark patch at their bases, present the same peculiarities as are still found in this species growing in Egyptian fields. The petals of the larkspur not only retain their reddish violet colour, but present the peculiar markings which are still found in the living plant. A garland composed of wild celery and the small flowers of the blue lotus, fastened together by fibres of papyrus, was found on a mummy of the twentieth dynasty about three thousand years old. The cereals, too, are good specimens of the species still cultivated. This observation is true also of the cultivated grains belonging to prehistoric times. The wheat found in the purely British portion of the ancient village explored by General Pitt Rivers is equal to the average of wheat cultivated at the present day. The wheat from the lake-dwellings in Switzerland are also fair samples. Grains of maize from the prehistoric mounds in the valley of the Mississippi and from the tombs of the Incas of Peru represent fair samples of this great food substance of the New World. The early peoples of both worlds, then, had under cultivation these important cereals, and it is remarkable that in our own country, with all the appliances of scientific cultivation and intelligent farming, we have not been able appreciably to surpass the grains harvested by our rude ancestors two thousand years ago.

The late Cold Seasons. It is seldom we have had to chronicle such persistent low temperature as during the past twelve months. The highest number of weeks in which the temperature was above the average was twelve in the north-east of England, and only six in the Channel Islands. November, 1885, is the only month in which the resultant temperature for the whole of the British Islands was above the average, and then the excess amounted only to one degree. Of the remaining eleven months, one was up to the average, one fell a degree below, four fell two degrees, three had a deficiency of three, and two a deficit of four degrees. The excess of heat in the north-east of England and its deficiency in the southwest would almost point to the fact that the sea breezes which bring the latter locality so much genial warmth, for some cause or other have been robbed of their heat during the past twelve months.

Notices of Books.

The Clothes of Religion. A Reply to Popular Positivism: in two Essays and a Postscript. By WILFRID WARD. London and New York: Burns & Oates.

E are the more glad to welcome this addition to our scanty philosophical literature, because we inadvertently omitted to notice Mr. Ward's former contribution to a like controversy. Our neglect of "The Wish to Believe" is somewhat excused by our knowledge that Catholic readers will have certainly made acquaintance for themselves with that work. They will be aware that, in anything that comes from Mr. Ward's pen in defence of the truths of natural religion, they may expect telling arguments, enforced and illustrated with an abundance of apt illustrations. They will not be disappointed in the little volume now before us. Mr. Ward intervened in a controversy between Mr. F. Harrison and Mr. Herbert Spencer at precisely the point where he had most scope for employing his talents in the service of truth, and he did so with excellent effect. Events move so quickly at the present day, that the general reader will probably be glad to be reminded of the general bearings of a discussion which attracted a good deal of notice more than two years ago. Mr. Spencer had argued that "the Unknowable," which he had set up as his divinity, was the true object of worship and reverence, and legitimately satisfied those cravings for a religion, of which he fully acknowledged the existence and importance. Mr. Frederic Harrison had no difficulty in demolishing any such pretensions on the part of " the Unknowable," and in showing that it had no right to be regarded with religious feelings, or indeed with any feelings at all. But he then went on to explain that true religion consists in the worship of Humanity; and it is this point which Mr. Ward takes up. He proceeds to show that Mr. Harrison's arguments against Mr. Spencer's religion are equally valid against his own. Each of them has appropriated "the clothes of religion," and has dressed a phantom with them; when we strip off the clothes, we find nothing remaining. What his arguments are in detail, how he applies the threefold test-that it should guide life, support in affliction, and give hope in death-to the religion of Humanity, we must leave our readers to learn from Mr. Ward's own pages. Any analysis would be unfair, as not exhibiting the fertility of illustration which makes them such easy and attractive reading.

The best proof that Mr. Harrison felt the force of Mr. Ward's arguments is that, in a subsequent article on "Agnostic Metaphysics," he considerably modified, really if not verbally, his original position. In his second article, Mr. Ward pointed out that these modifications amount to a virtual abandonment of his previous