THUR I Tissete ities seaees i a LaRue abiahtty Heir ey Natty sei Ba Pf ‘ Hy i tt bh ebeteg OME af HET jetitt “ Burin i i} HALT ratty Ha : ety tw) ut ™“ ei ‘: SIT TH2 vdgehe threds 4 Bit st titi i sheehine HE me gereticcee arieptiess teshiccsa STSts! oy uh Vtoiee ware Sinesee? ‘= besiers its ‘ ay ht bt pe dekeeeg ah, ny His ii , CPI ae Fe eS Om gab Fis Tt eg Da pea ee ‘ aahatetcaaegt ‘ Cra ee he ee PUN babe OL) ‘ 4 Weert ad dep ee PLA ecPer Me rier ie ee | tht et ee ad atten ve i iieal \ it RAO i Had ye rey 4M Othe te RG if if k 4 w - > “ot Ms mi! + haw, 4 es? ot Sif ote e Li ret: ae ahi Weare fia : ra Ate uh BO AM eu & i ‘4 Bie ir ir Phy Nae Uy } ae tf , Aly Gitte 4 sh ( f H iy i i ity its) ry Ay THE EDINBURGH NEW PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. has A THE lef Le~, EDINBURGH NEW PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL, EXHIBITING A VIEW OF THE PROGRESSIVE DISCOVERIES AND IMPROVEMENTS f f IN THE fap Sete | toe * SCIENCES AND THE ARTS. 5 EDITORS. THOMAS ANDERSON, M.D., F.B.S.E., &c., 1 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY-IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW ,; i Sir WILLIAM JARDINE, Barr., FP. BSE, &., AND JOHN HUTTON BALFOUR, M.D., F.RSE., &., PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND BOTANY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, JANUARY. .:..;). APRIL 1855. VOL. I. NEW SERIES. EDINBURGH : ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK. LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS, LONDON. MDCCCLYV. EDINBURGIL: PRINTED BY NLILL AND COMPANY, OLD FISHMARKET, CONTENTS. . On the Means of realizing the Advantages of the Air- Engine. By Witi1am Jonn Macaquorn Ranking, Civil Engineer, F.R.SS. Lond. and Edin., &., . On the Intrusion of the Germanic Races into Europe. By Dantet Witson, LL.D., Professor of History and English Literature, University College, Toronto. Communicated by the Author, . On the Hyposulphites of the Organic Alkaloids. By Henry How, Professor of Chemistry and Natural History, King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia, . On some of the more recent changes in the Area of the Irish Sea. By the Rev. J. G. Cummine, M.A.,F.G.S., Vice-President of King William’s College, Castletown, Isle of Man, ' ; : ; . On the Chemical Composition of some Norwegian Minerals. By Davip Forsss, F.G.S., A.I.C.E., . On Mineral Charcoal. By Professor Harkness, . On a Simple Variation Compass. By Witiiam Sway, F.B.S.E., : : : . 5 . Notes on some Substances which exhibit the phenomena of Fluorescence. By Dr J. H. Giapstons, in a Let- ‘ter to Dr ANDERSON, . e PAGE 33 47 57 62 fig 76 83 li CONTENTS. PAGE 9. On Mechanical Antecedents of Motion, Heat, and Light. By Witi1am Txomson, Esq., Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Glasgow. Communicated to the British Association, Section A, Monday, Sept. 28, 1854. [Author’s Abstract], ‘ ; 90 10, Further Observations on Glacial Phenomena in Scotland and the North of England. By R. Cuamsers, F.R.S.E., é R ; ; : 97 11. On the Great Terrace of Erosion in Scotland, and its Re- lative Date and Connection with Glacial Phenomena. By R. Cuampers, F.R.S.E., ‘ . eve 12. Geological Survey of Great Britain, : 2 je BOG 18. On the Action of Organic Acids on Cotton and Flax Fibres. By F. Cracz Catvert, F.CS., M.R.A. of Turin, Professor of Chemistry, Royal Institution, Manchester, ; : : : > aS 14, On a Hermaphrodite and Fissiparous Species of Tubico- lar Annelid. By Tuomas A. Huxtey, F.R.S., Lec- turer on General Natural History in the Government School of Mines, : : , oo aS 15. On the Artificial Preparation of Sea Water for the Aqua- rium. By Gzorce Witson, M.D., F.R.S.E., Lecturer on Chemistry, . ; ‘ ; , oo kZed 16. Notice of the late Professor Edward Forbes, ae here 17. Introductory Lecture delivered at the opening of the Na- tural History Class in the University of Edinburgh, on Wednesday, lst November 1854. By the late Epwarp Forses, F.R.S., F.G.8., Regius Professor of Natural History, : : : . 145 CONTENTS. REVIEWS :— . Die Conchylien der Nord-Deutschen Tertiar-gebirges. The Fossil Shells of the Tertiary Formations of the North of Germany. By Prof. Bryricu, . Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Researches of John Dalton, Hon. ‘D.C.L., Oxford, &. By Witt Cuaries Henry, M.D., F.R.S., . . The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours, and their applications to the Arts. By M. E. Curvrevt, Membre de I’ Institut de France &c., &c., CORRESPONDENCE :— . Letter from Mr M‘Anprew to Dr Batrour, relative to a Communication from the late Professor E. Forbes, . Selwyn on Australian Geology, . Spratt on the Occurrence of Coal in Turkey, PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES :— Royal Society of Edinburgh. . Farther Experiments and Remarks on the Measurement of Heights by the Boiling Point of Water. By Pro- fessor J. D. Forses, : . On the Chemical equivalents of certain Bodies, and the relations between Oxygen and Azote. By Professor Low, - Miscellaneous Observations on the Salmonide. By Joun Davy, M.D., F.R.S., Inspector-General of Army Hospitals, : : : : . On the Structural Character of Rocks. Part III., Re- marks on the Stratified Traps of the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. By Dr Fremine, : : iil PAGE 158 163 169 val 172 174 175 176 176 iv CONTENTS, PAGE SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE :— ZOOLOGY. 1. Chlorophyll in Green Infusoria. 2, Noctiluca Miliaris. 3. Actinia Troglodites. 4. Testaceous Mollusca, 177-180 GEOLOGY. 5. Action of Water and Air on Basalt. 6. Pleistocene Classification. ‘7. Observations on some Mines of the United States, . ‘ . 180-181 CHEMISTRY. 8. Researches upon the Ethers. 9. Constitutions of the Amides. 10. Alcohol from the Tubercules of Aspho- delus ramosus, . : : : 181-183 BOTANY. 11. On Datura Stramonium. 12. New Himalayan Genera. 13. Plants in the Crimea, ‘ , S32 Loy MINERALOGY. 14, Artificial Production of Silicates and Aluminates. 195. Meteoric Iron from Greenland. 16. Analysis of some Minerals, : ‘ ; i 185-187 CONTENTS. . Notice of Ancient Moraines in the Parishes of Strachur and Kilmun, cna By CuarLes Macuaren, F.R.S.E., : . Physical Features of Saturn and Mars, as noted at the Madras Observatory. By Captain W. 8S. Jaco, _H.E.L.C. Astronomer. (With Two Plates), . A recent Revision of a portion of the Catalogue of Stars published by the British Association in 1845. By Captain W. S. Jacozs, H.E.1.C. Astronomer at Ma- dras. Communicated by Professor C. P1azz1 Smytu, . Some Additional Experiments on the Ethers and Amides of Meconic and Comenic Acids. By Henry How, PAGE 189 203 206 Professor of Chemistry and Natural Ss Lie ae S - College, Windsor, Nova Scotia, . A Draft Arrangement of the Genus Thamnophilus, Vieillot. By Puitie Lutztey Scrater, M.A., F.Z.S., . On the Production of Boracic Acid and Ammonia by Volcanic Action. By Roperr Warineron, F.C.S., . On the Principal Depressions on the Surface of the Globe. By Dr Grorce Burst, Bombay, . On the Action of Gallic and Tannic Acids in Dyeing. By F. Crace Catvert, F.C.S., M.R.A. of Turin, Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, Man- chester, : : : ; . On the Geological Range of the Pterygotus problemati- cus. By the Rev. W. 8. Symonpns, F.G.S., 212 226 250 253 265 269 ii 10. ad. 12. 13. 14, 15. 16. 9B 1. CONTENTS. Notice of Shoals of Dead Fish observed on the passage between Mirimachi, New Brunswick, and the port of Gloucester. Communicated by the Rev. W. S. Sy- monpDs. With some Remarks by Sw W. Jarpine, Bart., On aSimple Method of distributing naturally Diverging Rays of Light over any azimuthal angle, with de- scription of proposed Spherico-Cylindric and Double- Cylindric Lenses, for use in Lighthouse Dlumination. By Tuomas Stevenson, F.R.S.E., Civil mis ce (With a Plate), : On Annelid Tracks in the Equivalents of the Millstone Grits in the South-west of the County of Clare. By Rospert Harkness, Hsq., F.R.S.E., F.G.S., Professor of Geology, Queen’s College, Cork. (With a Plate), Description of New Coniferous Trees from California. By Anprew Murray, W.S. (With Six Plates), On the Colouring Matter of the Rottlera tinctoria. By Tuomas Anperson, M.D., F.R.S.H., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow, The late Lieutenant-Colonel John G. sper of the 95th Regiment, : : The late Professor Edward Forbes, A description of certain Mechanical Illustrations of the Planetary Motions, accompanied by Theoretical Inves- tigations relating to them, and, in particular, a new Explanation of the Stability of Equilibrium of Sa- turn’s Rings. By James Erriot, Teacher of Ma- thematics, Edinburgh, REVIEWS :— Die Kreidebildungen, casi Von Dr Ferp. Ror- MER. 1854, . : 2. Coupe Géologique des Environs des Bains de Rennes. Par A. p'Arcuiac, 1854, 3. The Entomologist’s Annual for 1855, comprising No- tices of the new British Insects detected in 1864. PAGE 271 273 278 284 296 302 307 310 336 336 CONTENTS. Edited by H. T. Statnton, Author of the ‘* Entomo- logist’s Companion.” , 4, Proceedings of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club, 1854, 5. Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Club, 1853, 6. Malvern Naturalists’ Field Club, 1855, 7. Introductory Text-Book of eeedeEn ae Davip 5s t.G.5:, 8. Catalogue of the Birds in the Museum of the Honour- able Kast India Company, ‘ 5 CORRESPONDENCE :—~ 1. Letter from Mr W. Mills, pa icret i in N fae Isl- ‘ands, 2. Natal Geology. Extract of Letter from Dr. P. C. SuTHERLAND to the late Professor HE. Fores, 3. Himalayan Geology. Extract of a Letter from T. Oxp- HAM, Hsq., to the late Professor E. Forszs, 4. Gutta Percha in India. Extract of a Letter from Dr Hueu Ciecuorn, Madras, to ! rofessor BALFour, PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES :— Royal Society of Edinburgh, . Royal Physical Society, Botanical Society of Edinburgh. Californian Academy of Natural Sciences, PusiicaTions RECEIVED, SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE :— ZOOLOGY. 1. Melanerpes formicivorus. 2. Société Zoologique d’ Accli- matation. 3. Introduction of Foreign Species of Sal- mon. 4. Eschara cervicornis, ? 376— GEOLOGY. 5. Cause of the Gray Colour in Dolomite and other Nep- tunian Rocks, : 3 ; iil PAGE 342 345 345 345 348 349 349 350 301 302 352 363 371 374 379 377 377 lv CONTENTS, PAGE CHEMISTRY. §. Preparation and Properties of Aluminium. 7. Solubility of Carbonate of Soda, 8. Ona Compound of Methyle and Tellurium. 9. Examination of the Rind of the Mangosteen, . : ; : 378-380 BOTANY. 10, Gutta Percha of Singapore. 11. Mora excelsa, 12. Ve- getable Oils in the Amazon and Rio Negro Districts. 13. Cyperus polystachyus, 14. Palma Jagua of the Orinoco. 15. Fungus in a Cavity of the Lung. 16. Aloe-Wood, or Aloes of Scripture. 17. Origin of the Cultivated Wheat. 18. Balanophoracez. 19. Wellingtonia gigantea. 20. Medicinal and Economical Plants of Victoria, : 380-386 MINERALOGY. 21. Mineralogy of the Dolomite of the ei 22. Remark- able Brazilian Diamond, : 386-388 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 23. Relative Levels of the Red Sea and Mediterranean. 24, Uprise in the South SeaIslands, . ; 388 MISCELLANEOUS. 25. Uncertainty of Preserving Records in Walls or Founda- tions of Buildings, : ; : A 388 ERRATA IN LAST NUMBER. Page 146, line 37, for geology, read zoology, », 149, line 3, for layworm, read lugworn, ,, 158, line 32, read “the services that we find the scientific. Amidst arduous duties a naval officer,” &e. » 154, line 16, for Now, read That », 155, line 10, read “ It is true that natural history, unlike its sister sciences, physics and chemistry,” &c. » 168, line 33, after the word birds, insert are regarded, THE EDINBURGH NEW PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. On the Means of realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. By Witu1aM JoHN Macaquorn Rankine, Civil Engineer, F.R.SS. Lond. and Edin., &c.* Section J. Summary or THE Laws oF THE Mutuat RELATIONS oF Heat anp MrcuanicaL Power, AND OF THE THEORETICAL Erriciency or THERMo-DyNamic ENGINES. 1. The principal object of this paper is to explain the ad- vantages of certain improvements in air-engines, and the reasons for believing that, with these improvements, such engines will be found to be the most economical means of developing motive power by the agency of heat. For this purpose, it is necessary, in the first place, to state briefly the general principles which have been established by the joint agency of reasoning and experiment respecting the mutual relations of heat and motive power, and which are applicable to steam, air, and all substances whatsoever. It isa matter of ordinary observation, that heat, by ex- panding bodies, is a source of mechanical power; and con- — versely, that mechanical power, being expended either in compressing bodies, or in producing friction, is a source of heat. * Read tothe British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section G, at Liverpool, September 1854. VOL. I. NO. I—JAN. 1855. A 2 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of The general rules according to which these phenomena take place, have for some time been determined empirically, with more or less precision, for certain particular substances—for example, for steam ; but all systematic knowledge respecting them, as they affect all substances whatsoever, is deducible from two laws—that of the mutual convertibility of heat and mechanical power, and that of the efficiency of thermo- dynamic engines; the term thermo-dynamic engine being used to denote any body, or assemblage of bodies, which pro- duces mechanical power from heat. 2. THe Law oF THE MUTUAL CONVERTIBILITY OF HEAT AND MECHANICAL PoweR is this: That when mechanical power is produced by the expenditure of heat, a quantity of heat disappears bearing a fixed proportion to the power produced ; and conversely, that when heat is produced by the expenditure of mechanical power, the quantity of heat produced bears a fixed proportion to the power expended. This law was believed, and reasoned from, by some inquirers before it was proved by experiment; but being inconsistent — with the formerly prevalent hypothesis of the existence of a peculiar substance as the cause of the phenomena of heat, it was recognised by few, until Mr Joule, by experiments on the production of heat by the friction of the particles of various substances, solid, liquid, and gaseous, not only demonstrated the mutual convertibility of heat and mechanical power, but ascertained the fixed proportion which they bear to each other in cases of mutual conversion, which is this: The wnit of heat generally employed in Britain—that is to say, so much heat as is sufficient to raise the temperature of one pound of water, at ordinary temperatures, by one degree of Fahrenheit’s thermometer—requires for its production, and produces by its disappearance, in other words, is equivalent to, 772 foot-pounds of mechanical power ; that is to say, so much mechanical power as is sufficient to lift a weight of one pound to a height of 772 feet.* * The value of Joule’s equivalent for a degree of the centigrade scale is 772X%2=1389°6 foot-pounds. For French measures, viz., centigrade degrees, kilogrammes, and metres, it is 423:54 kilogrammetres. See Philosophical Transactions, 1850. realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 3 This quantity is known by the name of Joule’s equivalent, and may be otherwise termed the dynamical specific heat of liquid water at ordinary atmospheric temperatures. 3. Illustrations of this law.—The dynamical specific heats of other substances may be determined either by direct experiment, or by ascertaining their ratios to that of water. For example, to heat one pound of atmospheric air, maintained at a constant volume, by one degree of Fahrenheit, requires the expenditure of 130°5 foot-pounds of mechanical power.” This is the real dynamical specific heat of air. The appa- rent dynamical specific heat of one pound of air, wnder con- stant pressure, is (for a degree of Fahrenheit) 183-7 foot-pounds ;* the difference, or 53:2 foot-pounds, being the mechanical power exerted by the air in expanding, so as to preserve the same pressure, notwithstanding the increase of its temperature by one degree. The apparent specific heat of air at constant pressure exceeds the real specific heat in the ratio of 1-41 : 1. All quantities of heat may be thus expressed by equivalent quantities of mechanical power. The heat required to raise one pound of liquid water from the freezing to the boiling point, and to evaporate it at the latter temperature, is 1147°:5 x 772 = 885,870 foot-pounds, of which 180°:0 x 772=138,960 foot-pounds is what is termed sensible heat, or the heat employed in raising the tempera- ture of the water, while the remainder 967°5 x 772=746,919 foot- pounds is the latent heat of evaporation of one pound of water at 212° Fahr., being the heat which disappears in overcoming the mutual attraction of the particles of water, and the exter- nal pressure under which it evaporates. _ The mechanical equivalent of the available heat produced ' * Tt is worthy of remark, that the values of the specific heats of air were predicted, to a close approximation, by means of the Mechanical Theory of Heat, three years before they were ascertained by M. Regnault’s experiments. (Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xx.; Comptes Rendus, 1853.) 9 A 4 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of by one pound of such kinds of coal as are commonly used for engines in Britain may be taken on an average as equal to that of the heat required to raise seven pounds of water from the temperature of 50° to 212° Fahr., and to evaporate it at the latter temperature ; that is to say, in round numbers, 6,000,000 foot-pounds. The total heat produced by the combustion of the coal is considerably greater ; but a portion necessarily escapes with the gases which ascend the chimney, and the above may be considered as a fair average estimate of the mechanical equi- valent of that which is practically available. 4, Mechanical Hypothesis respecting Heat.—Heat, being convertible with mechanical power, is convertible also with the vis-viva of a body in motion. The British unit of heat, one degree of Fahrenheit in a pound of liquid water, is equi- valent to the vis-viva of a mass weighing one pound, moving with the velocity of 223 feet per second, being the velocity acquired in falling through a height of 772 feet. A mass of water, of which each particle is in motion with this velocity, _ has its temperature elevated by one degree of Fahrenheit, upon the extinction of the motion, by the mutual friction of the particles. It is natural to suppose that the motion, during this phe- nomenon, has not been really destroyed, but has been con- verted into revolutions of the particles in vortices or eddies too small to be perceptible by any of our modes of observation ; and that the centrifugal force of such eddies is the cause of the tendency of hot bodies to expand, melt, and evaporate. A hypothesis of this kind has long been entertained, and within the last few years it has been used so as to deduce the laws of the mechanical action of heat from the principles of ordinary mechanics, to a certain extent in anticipation of the results of experiment.* As those laws, however, have now been exactly ascertained by experiment, it must be borne in mind, that their certainty is in no way dependent on the truth of the hypothesis in question; the probability of the hypo- thesis being, on the contrary, dependent on the truth of the laws. * See Transactions of the Royal Society of Kdinburgh, vol. xx. realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 5 5. Threefold Effect of Heat—The communication of heat to a substance produces, in general, three kinds of effects (set- ting aside chemical, electrical, and magnetic phenomena, as being foreign to the subject of the present paper) :— 1st, An increase of temperature and expansive pressure ; that is to say, an increased tendency to the communication of heat to other bodies, and to the development of mechanical power by expansion. 2dly, A change of volume; which, under a constant pres- sure, is an increase for every substance, except some liquids near their freezing points. ddly, A change of molecular condition ; as from the solid to the liquid state, or from the liquid or solid to the gaseous state, or any imperceptible change of molecular arrangement ; the change to the gaseous state being always accompanied by an increase of volume. The heat which produces the first of those effects is known by the name of sensible heat, as retaining the form of heat, and, in short, making the body hotter. The heat which produces the second and third of those fe fects is called latent heat, as having disappeared in developing a mechanical effect, and being capable of reproduction by re- versing the change which caused it to disappear. Changes of volume are in general accompanied by changes of molecular arrangement or condition, perceptible or imper- ceptible. The latent heat of expansion, or of evaporation, therefore, as the case may be, consists partly of heat which disappears in overcoming external pressure, and partly of that which disappears in overcoming the mutual attraction of the particles of the body. The latter forms by far the greater part of the latent heat of evaporation. For example, as already stated, there dis- appears, In evaporating one pound of water at 212°, a quantity of heat equivalent to 746,910 foot-pounds. The pressure of the steam produced is 2116:4 lb. on the square foot. Its volume is not known exactly by experiment, but is probably about 263 cubic feet more than that of the liquid water. Multiplying these two quantities together, it 6 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of appears that the heat expended in overcoming external pres- sure is equivalent to only 56,085 foot-pounds, leaving 690,825 foot- pounds for the mechanical equivalent of the heat which disappears in overcoming the mutual attraction of the particles of the water. On the contrary, the latent heat of expansion of a permanent gas consists almost entirely of heat which disappears in over- coming the external pressure, that which disappears in over- coming the mutual attraction of the particles of the gas being comparatively very small; in fact, in all practical calculations respecting air-engines, the latter quantity may be altogether neglected without sensible error, and the latent heat of expan- sion of the air treated as the exact equivalent of the mecha- nical work performed by it in the act of expanding. For example,—the product of the volume, in cubic feet, of one pound of air, at the temperature of 650° Fahrenheit, by its pressure in pounds per square foot, is 59,074 foot-pounds. If that pound of air be expanded under pressure, to 14 times its original volume, and be still maintained at the constant tem- perature of 650°, by being supplied with heat from an ex- ternal source, the work performed by it in expanding, will be 59,074 x hyperbolic-logarithm of 14 = 23,953 foot-pounds ; and this quantity will also be sensibly equal to the mecha- nical equivalent of the heat supplied, and which disappears during the expansion. In considering the performance of any thermo-dynamic engine, it is evidentthat the heat which disappears in pro- ducing increase of volume under pressure, is to be regarded as the real source of power; as it is a portion of this heat which is actually converted into mechanical work, while the heat expended in producing elevation of temperature, produces merely a tendency to the development of power. 6. Mode of Operation of Thermo-dynamic Engines in general.—The mode of operation of an elastic substance in performing mechanical work by the agency of heat, reduced to its simplest form, consists in the continued repetition, either realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 7 upon the same portion of the substance, or upon a succession of equal and similar portions, of a cycle of four processes, which, taken together, constitute a single stroke of the engine.* Process A. The substance is raised to an elevated tempera- ture. This process may or may not involve an alteration of volume. : Process B. The substance, being maintained at the elevated temperature, increases in volume and propels a piston, or some- thing equivalent to a piston. During this process heat dis- appears, and a supply of heat from without is provided equal in amount to the heat which disappears; so that the tempera- ture does not fall. Process C. The substance is cooled down to its original low temperature. This process, like the process A, may or may not be accompanied by a change of volume. Process D. The substance, being maintained at its depressed temperature, is compressed, by the return of the piston, to its original volume. During this process, heat is produced; and in order that it may not elevate the temperature of the sub- stance, and give rise to an increased pressure, impeding the return of the piston, it must be abstracted as quickly as pro- duced, by some external means of refrigeration. The substance, being now brought back to its original volume and temperature, is ready to undergo the cycle of processes anew, and so on ad infinitum ; or otherwise, it is rejected, and a fresh portion of the substance employed for the next stroke. When the latter-is the case, the operation of expelling the substance from the engine into the atmosphere, by the return of the piston, sometimes takes the place of the process D. Sometimes, either of the processes, B, C, or D, is the first in the order of time. The cycle of processes, however, preserves the same order of rotation. During the cycle of processes which has been described, the working substance alternately increases and diminishes in volume, in contact with a moving piston. During the increase of volume, the pressure of the substance against the piston * This cycle of processes was first described by Carnét (Reflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu) ; but his conclusions were vitiated by the assumption of the substantiality of heat. 8 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of communicates to the latter mechanical power. During the diminution of volume, on the contrary, the piston expends me- chanical power in compressing the working substance. The increase of volume takes place at a higher temperature, and therefore at a higher pressure, than the diminution of volume ; consequently, the mechanical power communicated to the piston, exceeds that taken away from it. The surplus is the power of the engine, available for performing mechanical work. 7. Efficiency of Thermo-dynamic Engines.—The efficiency . of a thermo-dynamic engine is the ratio which the available power bears to the mechanical equivalent of the whole heat expended. If it were possible to construct an engine such, that the heat communicated to the working substance should entirely disappear, the power produced by that engine would be the exact equivalent of the heat expended: that is to say, 772 foot- pounds for each British unit of heat; and its efficiency would be represented by unity. According to the average esti- mate already stated, it would produce power to the amount of 6,000,000 foot-pounds for each pound of coal consumed ; and, as a horse-power is 1,980,000 foot-pounds per hour, the con- sumption of coal would be 0°33 Ib. per horse-power per hour. It is impossible, however, by any engine, to realize anything approaching to this degree of efficiency. This arises from two causes :—/irst, the necessary loss of heat, depending on the limits of temperature between which the engine works, according to a law which has been already: referred to, and which will shortly be stated; and, secondly, the waste of heat and power arising from the engine’s not fulfilling exactly the conditions prescribed by theory. When the necessary loss of heat alone is taken into account, the efficiency as determined by calculation, may be called the Theoretical Maximum Efficiency of the kind of engine under consideration. When the waste of heat and power is also allowed for, the result is the actual efficiency of the engine. 8. Theoretical Conditions of Maximum LEficiency.—The latent heat of increase of volume at an elevated temperature, being the direct source of the power of a thermo-dynamic en- gine, it is obvious, that, ceteris paribus, the more we reduce realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 9 the other part of the expenditure of heat, namely, the heat which is expended in elevating the temperature of the working substance, the more nearly shall we attain to the maximum theoretical efficiency of the engine. It is theoretically possible to produce the required elevation of temperature, without any expenditure of heat. This is to be accomplished in two ways :— either, by elevating the temperature of the substance by com- pression during the process A of the cycle: the power re- quired for effecting such compression being obtained, during the process C, by depressing the temperature of the substance entirely by expansion ; or otherwise, by storing up in a mass of some solid conducting material (called an economizer or regene- rator), the heat given out by the working substance, while its temperature is being depressed, during the process C, and em- ploying the heat, so stored up, to produce the required eleva- tion of temperature during the process A. This method of economizing heat was invented in 1816, by the Rev. Robert Stirling. By one or other of those methods, it is theoretically possible to limit the expenditure of heat in a thermo-dynamic engine to that amount which disappears during the process B of the cycle, in producing increase of volume at an elevated tempera- ture. The heat which reappears during the process D, by the compression of the working substance at a low temperature, and which is carried away by refrigeration, constitutes the ne- cessary loss of heat; and, if this be deducted from the whole heat expended, the remainder will be the theoretical maximum value of the heat which is permanently converted into mecha- nical power, and its ratio to the whole heat expended will be the theoretical maximum efficiency of the engine. 9. Absolute Temperatures. —'The theoretical maximum efficiency of a thermo-dynamic engine, depends upon what are called the absolute temperatures of the working substance, during the second and fourth processes of the cycle ; that is to say, the absolute temperatures at which heat in a theoretically perfect engine is received and abstracted respectively. Abso- lute temperatures are measured by the product of the pressure and volume of a given weight of a given perfect gas. A per- fect gas is one in which the mutual attraction of the particles is insensible. 10 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of The Absolute Zero of Heat on a perfect-gas thermometer, is that point on its scale which corresponds to total absence of heat ; and from this point absolute temperatures are under- stood to be reckoned, in the law stated in the next article. According to the latest determination, from the experiments of Messrs Joule and Thomson, the Absolute Zero of Heat does not differ by any amount appreciable in practice from the 4b- solute Zero of Pressure, being the temperature at which (if 1t were possible for a perfect gas to preserve its properties at so intense a degree of cold) the product of its pressure and volume would be reduced to nothing; and this point is 493° of Fahren- heit below the temperature of melting ice; that 1s to say, 493°—32°=461° below Fahrenheit’s ordinary zero.* 10. THe Law oF THE Maximum Erricrency or THERMO- DYNAMIC ENGINES is expressed by the following proportion :— As the absolute temperature of receiving heat is to the difference between the absolute temperatures of recewing and discharging heat, so is the whole heat received to the portion of heat permanently converted into me- chanical power ; that is to say, so is unity to the efficiency of the engine. This proportion may be otherwise expressed, as follows :— As the absolute temperature of recewing heat is to the absolute temperature of discharging heat, so is the whole heat received to the necessary loss of heat.t oa * The product of the volume in cubic feet of one pound of atmospheric air, by its pressure in pounds on the square foot, at the temperature of melting ice, is 26,214 foot-pounds. The corresponding product, at any other tempe- rature, is found with a degree of accuracy sufficient for practical purposes, by multiplying the absolute temperature by see = 53:172 foot-pounds per degree of Fahrenheit. In the detailed investigations already referred to, the absolute zeros of heat and of pressure have had various positions assigned to them as the most probable, within a range of about 4° Fahrenheit, according to the degree of precision of the experimental data, existing at the periods when the several papers were written. This range of variation, however, is not sufficient to cause any error of practical importance in calculations re- specting engines. {t There are other forms in which this law might be expressed; but those realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. Bi To illustrate the above law, the following table is added, showing four examples of the efficiencies of theoretically perfect engines working between limits of temperature to which there will be occasion to refer in the sequel: the 7th column shows, in each case, the maximum theoretical duty of a pound of coal, supposing, as before, that the whole available heat of its combustion is equivalent to 6,000,000 foot-pounds: the 8th column shows, for each example, the corresponding minimum theoretical consumption of coal per horse-power per hour: the limits of temperature chosen in the five examples are respec- tively as follows :— (1.) The limits of temperature for a condensing steam-engine, with a pressure of 42 lb. per square inch in the boiler, and 2:9 lb. per square inch in the condenser: (in every instance in this paper in which a pressure is mentioned, it 1s to be under- stood to mean the total pressure and not the excess above the pressure of the atmosphere). (2.) The limits of temperature for a non-condensing steam- engine with a pressure of 153 lb. per square inch in the boiler. (3.) A probable estimate of the limits of temperature of Ericsson’s air-engine of 1852. (4.) The same for Stirling’s air-engine, and also for that of Napier and Rankine. The actual efficiency of these engines will be a cigs in another part of this paper. Examples of Maximum Theoretical Efficiency. 2 Temperaturesin degrees of E Fahrenheit. ie fa ten Maximum theo. | Maximum theo-| 1eoretica & een Finioien cick Sa Sabie lati Rear ae i s Ordinary. Absolute. Coal, ft.-1b. horse-power a per hour, lb. io Higher.) Lower. | Higher.| Lower. ¥ 70") 140) 731 | Gol 139 — 0-178 | 1,067,000 | 1-86 Dace, 212. | 827/673 148 — 0-180 | 1,080,000 1:83 Shy 6480) 100 | 941-1 561 380 — (0-404 | 2,424,000 0:82 4 | 650 | 150 | 1111 | 611 | 449° — 0-450 | 2,700,000 0:73 stated above are the most readily applicable to the performance of engines worked by heat, and are therefore to be preferred in a paper such as the present. See Trans. Royal Soc., Edin., vol. xx. (1850 to 1853), and Phil. Trans., 1854. Carnot was the first to perceive, that the maximum effect of the expendi- ture of a given quantity of heat in a thermo-dynamic engine must be a func- 1:2 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of In order to show the manner in which the pressure and volume of elastic substances vary, In producing the maximum theoretical efficiency of a thermo-dynamic-engine, so as to verify in every case the general law, a supplement is added to this section, containing detailed computations for three ex- amples of theoretically perfect engines: viz., a steam-engine working between 270° and 140°, an air-engine working be- tween the same temperatures, and an air-engine working between 650° and 150°. 11. As the law above stated is true for all substances what- soever in all conditions, it is obvious that, in a purely theo- retical point of view, the only reason for preferring any one substance to another, as the agent in converting heat into mechanical power, is the greater ease and safety of causing it to expand by heat at a high temperature. In this point of view, permanent gases are preferable to vapours rising from liquids ; for the density of a permanent gas can be regulated at pleasure so as to limit its pressure at any temperature, how elevated soever, to a safe and manageable amount; whereas a given vapour, while in contact with its liquid, has but one pos- sible density for each given temperature, and consequently but one possible pressure ; and as the pressures of the vapours of all easily obtainable fluids increase very rapidly with the temperature, it would be unsafe to use vapours at temperatures at which it is safe and easy to use permanent gases. For ex- ample, at the temperature of 650° Fahr. (measured from the ordinary zero), a temperature up to which air-engines have actually been worked with ease and safety, the pressure of steam is 2100 pounds upon the square inch; a pressure which plainly renders it impracticable to work steam-engines with safety at that temperature. SUPPLEMENT To Section I.—A. Example of the Computation of the power produced by the combustion of one pound of Coal in a theoretically perfect Steam-Engine, working between the tempera- tures of 270° and 140° of Fahrenheit. Data. Mechanical equivalent of the whole available heat obtained by the combustion of 1 Ib. of coal, 6,000,000 ft.-Ib. tion of the temperatures of receiving and discharging heat: but the hypothesis of the substantiality of heat misled him as to the nature of the function. realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 13 In Boiler. In Condenser. Temperatures (ordinary scale), 270° Fahr. 140° Absolute temperatures, ; 731° 601° Pressures, 1b. Ib. Per square inch, . 4 ‘ 41-93 2°89 Per square foot, . ' . 6038: 415°7 Cubic feet. Volume of one pound of steam in the boiler, 9°852 Latent heat of evaporation of one pound of ft.-lb. steam (mechanical equivalent), . 715,800 Computation of the Maximum Theoretical Duty of one pound of Coal by the General Law. 270°—140° 130° Theoretical maximum efficiency, ——H3]° = ABjo= 0-178 Duty of one pound of Coal, a x 6,000,000 =1,067,000 as in Example I. of the table in article 10. Computation of the Maximum Theoretical Duty of one pound of Coal, introducing the changes of pressure and volume undergone by the Steam. Water evaporated by one Ib. of coal, __ available heat of combustion 6,000,000 ~ Jatent heat of one Ib. of steam 715,800 Ratio of expansion required to enable the steam to produce its maximum effect, 10°774. The detailed computation of this ratio is too tedious to be inserted here. The method pursued is fully explained in the Philosophical Transactions for 1854, Part I. per lb. of water.| per Ib. of coal. ~~ cubic feet. | cubic feet. Space filled by steam at full pressure, 9°852 82°579 at the end of the expansion, ; 106:04 888-82 = space traversed by the piston. ft-lb. 139 ft.-Ib. Effect of one pound of steam, 715,800 x 731 = 12729 * This quantity consists of the total action of the entering and expanding steam, on one side of the piston, diminished by the action of the steam which ~ 14 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of ft.-lb. Effect of one pound of coal, 127,297 x 8°382=1,067,000 as before, Mean effective pressure during the whole action of the steam, __ effect 127,297 1,067,000 ~~ space S060K" 04 ro ZA HAGnON 1200 46 lb. per square foot = 8°34 Ib. per square inch. Coal per horse-power per hour. 1,980,000 1,067,000 article 10. = 1°86 lb., as in the 1st example of the table in B. Example of the Computation of the power produced by the combustion of one pound of Coal in a theoretically perfect Air- Engine, working between the temperatures of 270° and 140° of Fahrenheit. (The object of the following computation is not to exemplify the mode of working of any existing or proposed air-engine, but simply to illustrate the fact, that the maximum theoretical efficiency of thermo-dynamic engines is the same when the limits of temperature are the same, of what nature soever the working substance may be. It is also to be observed, that the maximum theoretical duty of one pound of coal in an air-engine is independent of the rate of expansion of the air, and of its density and pressure. The rate of expansion affects the weight of air which must be employed to perform a given duty, and the densities and pres- sures affect the size of the receivers and cylinders required to contain that weight of air. If definite values, therefore, are assumed for those quan- tities in the following calculations, it is only for the sake of fixing the ideas, and giving numbers instead of algebraical symbols.) Data. Mechanical equivalent of the whole available heat obtained is being condensed on the other side, and also by the power consumed in pro- ducing, by the forcible compression of part of the steam into the liquid state, a quantity of heat sufficient to raise the temperature of the water from 140° to 270° Fahrenheit, realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 15 by the combustion of one pound of coal (as before) 6,000,000 foot-pounds. Ratio of expansion of air, : ; 1:14 ‘The air is alternately expanded and compressed in this ratio. During During Expansion. Compression. Temperatures (ordinary scale), 270° Fahr. 140° Absolute temperatures, we ee 601 Product of the volume of one pound of air in cubic feet by its pressure in pounds on the square foot at 32° Fahr., 26,214 ft.-lb. Computation of the Mamimum Theoretical Duty of one Pound of Coal by the general law. | 270, — 140° 130 Theoretical maximum efficiency, 731 73] 0:178 130 Duty of one pound of coal, 731 x 6,000,000 ft-lb. = 1,067,000 ft.-lb., as in Example I. of the table in article 10. Computation of the Maximum Theoretical Duty of one Pound of Coal, introducing the changes of Pressure and Volume of the Air, Product of the pressure and volume of one pound of air at the Lat = ‘temperature of 270°, 26,214 x sn aet = 26,214 x fe a 38,869 ft.-lbs. Power developed by one pound of air during its expansion at 270° Fahr. to one and a half times its original volume, being also the mechanical equivalent of the heat expended to produce that expansion. 88,869 x (hyp. log. 1 = 0:4054652) — 15,760 ft.-Ib. Weight of air which is expanded to one and a half times its volume at 270° Fahr. by the combustion of one pound of coal, 6,000,000 15,760 q Pressures and volumes of the air at different periods, sup- posing the greatest pressure to be 120 lb. per square inch. 16 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of Pressures. Volumes. lb. per Ib. per cubic feet cubic feet sg. inch. sq. foot. per Ib. air. per lb. coal. - At the beginning of the 120 17,280 2-2494 856358 expansion, ; pee cbs the a 80 11,520 33741 1284-537 pansion, Space through which the air expands, . 1:1247 428-179 = space traversed by the piston. Power = Mean Pressure Mea essures. he x Space. Ib. per lb. per in ft.-pounds. sq. inch. sq. feet. per lb. air. per Ib. coal. Mean pressure and power during he 97°3 expansion, Deduct mean pres- sure and power during the a 80°0 11520°85 12,957 4,933,000 731 of the above, . 14012°88 15,760 6,000,000 pression, = Effective mean pres-) chi and power, 17.3 2499-08 2,808 _1,067,000 731 The calculations A and B illustrate the fact, that the maxi- mum theoretical effect of one pound of coal between a given pair of temperatures is the same, whether the working sub- stance be air or steam. C. Example of the Computation of the Power produced by the Combustion of One Pound of Coal in a theoretically perfect Air-Engine, working between the temperatures of 650° and 150° of Fahrenheit. Data. Mechanical equivalent of the whole available heat obtained by the combustion of one pound of coal (as before), 6,000,000 foot-pounds. Ratio of expansion of air, 1: 14. realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 17 During Ex- During Com- pansion. pression. Temperatures (ordinary scale), 650° Fahr. 150° Absolute temperatures, : 11 Flare 611° Product of the volume of one pound of air in cubic feet by its pressure in pounds per square foot at 32° Fahr., 26,214 foot-pounds. Computation of the Maximum Theoretical Duty of One Pound of Coal by the general law. Maximum theoretical efficiency, i ome ha = PO0nE G45 MII 1111 Duty of one pound of coal, one x 6,000,000 = 2,700,000 ft.-lb., as in Example IV. of the table in Article 10. Computation of the Maximum Theoretical Duty of One Pound of Coal, introducing the Changes of Pressure and Volume of the Air. Product of the pressure and volume of one pened of air at the temperature of 650°. 650 + 461 1111 ee ee OO —! U Power developed by one pound of air during its expansion at 650° Fahr. to 14 times its original volume, being also the mechanical equivalent of the heat expended to produce the expansion. 59,074 x (hyp. log. 1 = 0-4054652) = 23,953 ft.-lb. -Weight of air which is expanded to 14 times its volume at 650° Fahr. by the combustion of one pound of coal. 6,000,000 ~ 23,953 =< 250°5 lb. Pressures and volumes of the air at different periods, sup- posing the greatest pressure to be 120 Ib. per square inch. VOL. I. NO. 1.—JAN. 1855. B 18 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of Pressures. Volumes. ——e— ee _ Pe cas aaa RE aE TRS anata Ib. per Ib. per cubic feet. cubic feet. Sq. inch. sq. foot. per lb. air. per Ib. coal. At the beginning of the 120 17,280 34186 856-368 expansion, At the end of the ex- 3‘ pansion, ‘ \ 80 11,520 5 1279 1284 537 Space through which the air expands, . 1-°7093 428-179 = space traversed by the piston. Power = Mean Pressure x Space. eo. = Ib. per lb. per in ft.-lb. Sq. inch. _8q. foot. per Ib. air. per Ib. coal. Mean Pressures. expansion, Deduct mean pres- sure and power during the ea 35 7707-09 13,173 3,300,000 ressl ae ace ie Mick ma of the above, Effective mean pres- sure and power, 500 43°8 6305°79 10,780 2,700,000 1111 Theoretical minimum consumption of coal per horse-power per hour. Mean pressure and power during the 97:3 14012°88 23,953 6,000,000 1,980,000 2,700,000 as in Example IV. of the table in article 10. Synoptical Table of the preceding Examples. = 0-73 lb. Temperatures. Effective Spaces Effects Reference.| Working substance. EE i | seasiina, Calinery Absolute | 1b. per Per lb. of 1 Fahr. Fahr. square ft. « er ib. OI Coal. i Cubic feet.| _ Foot A STEAM (maximum ~ se "| pounds. pressure 41:93 270 73] Ib. per square & & 1200-46 | 888°82 | 1067000 inch = 6038 per | { 149 601 square foot). perinch=17,280 B AIR (maximum 270 73) ) & & per square foot). pressure 120 Ib. 2492-03 | 428-179 | 1067000 140 | GOL J C AiR (maximum |) 650 1111 pressure same as ! & & 6305:79 | 428:179 | 2700000 above). 150 611 realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 19 A detailed mathematical investigation of the theory of air- engines, with and without regenerators, is contained in the third and fourth sections of a paper on Thermo-dynamics in the Philosophical Transactions for 1854, Part I., together with some numerical illustrations. Theoretical investigations of the duty of air-engines of dif- ferent forms are contained in a paper by Mr Joule (Phil. ‘Trans., 1851), and in a series of papers in the American Jour- nal of Science for 1853 and 1854, by Professor F. A. P. Bar- nard, the first American author, so far as I know, who has aided in the development of the consequences of the dynami- cal theory of heat. Section I].—On tue Actuat EFFICIENCY oF THERMO-DYNAMIC ENGINES: OF STEAM-ENGINES IN PARTICULAR. 12. Causes of Waste of Heat and Power.—In considering the waste of heat and power which constitutes the difference between the actual performance and the maximum theoretical performance of engines worked by heat,—as the object now in view is to compare different kinds of engines together, it is not necessary to take into account those causes of loss of power which either are or might be made nearly alike in all kinds of engines, such as the friction of the machinery; those causes alone will bg considered which affect the relation between the expenditure of heat and the action of the working elastic sub- stance upon the piston,—in other words, the indicated power of the engine ; and from these causes will be further excepted the waste of power in forcing the working substance through narrow valve-ports and passages, as this kind of waste arises only from an error in mechanism. As thus restricted, the causes of waste of heat and power may be divided into five classes—jirst, Imperfect communication of heat from the burning fuel to the working substance ; second, Imperfect abstraction of the heat, which constitutes the necessary loss explained in the preceding section; third, The communication of heat to or from the working substance at improper periods of the stroke; fourth, Any expenditure of heat in elevating the temperature of the working substance ; fifth, Imperfect B2 20 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of arrangement of the series of changes of volume and pressure undergone by the working substance during the stroke. The fourth and fifth causes of waste are often connected with each other. 13. Application to the Steam-Engine.—In the steam- engine the first cause of waste of heat exists when the boiler presents an insufficient surface to the products of combustion, and may be considered to be almost completely removed in tubular boilers of the best construction when properly worked. It is well known that, with such boilers, the consumption of fuel per horse-power per hour is about one-fifth of what it has in some instances been ascertained to be where boilers of in- sufficient surface have been employed. ‘The second cause of waste exists where the condensation is imperfect. The third cause of waste, where the cylinder, steam-passages, and boiler are exposed to the loss of heat by conduction and radiation. As the means of indefinitely diminishing the waste of heat in steam-engines from those three causes are already to a great extent practised, it 1s unnecessary here to refer to them farther. 7 14. Action of the Steam in a perfect Steam-Engine.—To understand the mode of operation of the fourth and fifth causes of waste in the steam-engine, let us consider what the action of the steam in a theoretically perfect engine ought to be. We shall commence with the process B of the cycle con- stituting the stroke, described in article 6. An assigned por- tion of water being at the required temperature of evaporation, is converted into steam at that temperature, and at a pressure depending on that temperature, by the expenditure of a cer- tain amount of heat, called the latent heat of evaporation, which also depends on the temperature. The steam being ad- mitted to the cylinder, propels the piston before it; and when the assigned portion of water has been thus admitted in the form of steam, the communication with the boiler is shut. This completes the process B. The steam now, without receiving or discharging any heat, expands: during this expansion its temperature falls by the conversion of heat into mechanical power; the pressure, of course, diminishes at the same time: this expansion ceases realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 21 when the pressure and temperature of the steam have fallen to the degree fixed for its condensation. This completes the process C. During the process D the piston returns, and a portion of the steam is liquefied by contact with some cold conducting substance, which abstracts the heat generated by - its liquefaction, so as to maintain it at the fixed temperature and pressure. The process D ought to stop in time to leave a portion of uncondensed steam sufficient for the process A, now about to be described. The water and steam being now pre- vented from receiving or discharging heat by conduction, the piston continues its return stroke, and forcibly compresses the remaining portion of steam into the liquid state. This con- stitutes the process A; and the portion of steam so condensed ought to be just sufficient, by the heat generated by its lique- faction, to elevate its own temperature, as well as that of the water previously liquefied, to the original temperature of eva- poration, so that the entire portion of the water employed may be in every respect in the same condition as it was at the be- ginning of the cycle of processes B, C, D, A, which may be repeated ad infinitum. Such an engine would fulfil the con- ditions of maximum theoretical efficiency ; for the elevation of the temperature of the water would be effected without expen- diture of heat, and the only heat expended would be the latent heat of evaporation: those results being produced by the proper ‘arrangement of the changes of volume and pressure undergone by the working substance during each stroke. 15. Lmpracticability of such a perfect Steam-Engine.—It is impossible to fulfil wholly in practice the conditions pre- seribed in the preceding article. To show the nature of the obstacles, let us begin with the process A. The forcible com- pression of a certain proportion of the steam into the liquid state would not only cause a very inconvenient degree of in- equality in the action upon the piston at different periods of the stroke, but it is difficult to conceive any mechanism by which it could be effected in practice. The steam must there- fore be wholly liquefied during the process D, and the tempe- rature of the feed-water must be raised from the point of con- densation to that of evaporation by expenditure of heat. A certain amount of heat is thus wasted; at the same time the 22 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of power which would have been expended in compressing the steam is partly saved; but the saving of power bears a small proportion to the mechanical equivalent of the heat wasted. The amount of waste thus occasioned is comparatively un- important in practice, provided it be not increased by unskil- ful methods of heating the feed-water; for, under ordinary circumstances, the heat required for that purpose seldom ex- ceeds one-seventh part of the latent heat of evaporation, and it may be considered to reduce the efficiency of the engine below the theoretical maximum by about one-sixteenth. Another and a more important point in which the conditions prescribed by theory cannot be exactly fulfilled, is the extent of the expansion during the process C: if this expansion were carried in practice down to the pressure of condensation, the cylinder and every part of the engine would be bulky, heavy, and costly, and the action of the steam upon the piston, dur- ing the latter portion of the stroke, would be so feeble as to cause an unsteadiness of motion unsuitable for the driving of machinery. The expansion, therefore, cannot be fully carried out. The diminution of efficiency from‘ this cause depends upon the extent to which the expansive working is carried. Should the expansive working be wholly omitted, the efficiency may be reduced to one-third or one-fourth of its theoretical value, or even less, according to circumstances. 16. Actual Efficiency of well-constructed Steam-Engines. —In single-acting engines for pumping water, in which the difficulties of employing a great extent of expansive working are the least, the actual efficiency has already, in some cases, attained a value nearly approximating to its maximum theo- retical value. In double-acting engines, however, so long a range of expansive working cannot be employed; and their ordinary average consumption of coal, when skilfully made and worked, is four pounds per horse-power per hour, the coal being of the evaporating power already specified. This cor- responds to an efficiency represented by 0-0825, being about 0:46 of the theoretical maximum. Considering that the causes of waste of heat and power in the steam-engine are, as has been already explained, incapable realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 23 of being wholly removed in practice, it may be estimated that the greatest amount of actual efficiency to be expected in double-acting steam-engines by any probable improvement, is about three-fourths of the theoretical maximum, or 0:133,— corresponding to a consumption of coal, calculated as before, of 24 lb. per horse-power per hour. SUPPLEMENT To Section II.—On the Steam-and-Ether Engine of M. du Trembley. (16 A.) This engine exemplifies one means of diminishing that difficulty attending the fulfilment of the conditions of theoretical perfection in the steam-engine, which arises from the impracticability of expanding the steam until its pressure has fallen to that corresponding to a low temperature of con- densation. Instead of carrying the expansion of the steam to the great extent required by theory, it 1s carried to such an extent only as is convenient in practice. The steam is then liquefied at the pressure attained at the end of its expansion, and the heat given out during its liquefaction is employed to evaporate ether, which works an auxiliary engine. By this process, after the expansion of the steam has been carried to a certain extent, vapour of ether is in fact substituted for the steam and made to perform the remainder of its work in its stead ; and as the vapour of ether, at a given temperature, exerts a higher pressure and occupies a less volume than steam does, the cylinder of the auxiliary ether-engine occupies much less space, and gives a more steady action than would be required for the performance of the same work by continuing the ex- pansion of the steam. The maximum theoretical efficiency of the steam-and-ether engine is the same with that of any other thermo-dynamic en- gine working between the temperature of evaporation of the water, and that of liquefaction of the ether. Its advantage consists in obtaining a nearer parce to that theoretical efficiency within given limits as to the bulk and cost of the engine, than is practicable with an engine worked by steam alone. 24 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of Section III.—-On toe Actua Erricrency or Atr-ENGINES. 17. As the object of this paper, in referring to the actual performance of previous air-engines, is to illustrate the waste by which that performance falls short of the theoretical maxi- mum, I shall refer to those engines only which have actually been at work, and the details of whose performance have been made public with tolerable precision, namely, the engine of the Messrs Stirling, and that of Captain Ericsson, which latter was used for marine propulsion about the year 1852. 18. Stirling’s Air-Engine.— In describing generally the air-engine which was invented by the Rev. Robert Stirling in the year 1816, and improved by him and Mr James Stir- ling at subsequent periods, it will be sufficient to speak as of a single-acting engine only; a double-acting engine having simply a similar apparatus for each side of the piston. Suppose a cylindrical cast-iron air-receiver, of sufficient strength to be safe with a working pressure of sixteen atmo- spheres, with a convex hemispherical bottom, and a concave hemispherical top, to be placed in a vertical position over a flue connected with a furnace, but screened from the radiant heat; the hemispherical bottom of this receiver constitutes the surface for the reception of heat; I believe it was 3 inches thick in the engine last erected. Within this vertical receiver there is a hollow metal plunger, filled with some non-conduct- ing substance, and capable of being moved up and down by means of arod. This plunger is of precisely the same form with the receiver, but considerably less in height, and some- what less in diameter. The effect of raising this plunger is to displace the air from the upper part of the receiver, and to send it down to the bottom, where it is exposed to heat; the air passing through the space between the plunger and the sides of the receiver: the effect of lowering the plunger is to. cause the air to return to the top of the receiver. In the in- terior of the uppermost part of the receiver is a coil of small tubes, in which cold water is made to circulate, and amongst which the air must pass whenever it is displaced. Lower down, and occupying the annular space between the realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 25 plunger and the receiver, are a number of parallel vertical plates of metal or glass, with narrow interstices between them, through which the air must pass on its way up or down. This system of plates is called the Eeonomizer or Regenerator ; its object being one which has already been explained in ar- ticle 8, namely to store up the heat given out by the air dur- ing the process C, when its temperature is being lowered, and to give back the same heat to the air during the process A, so as to raise its temperature. Lower still, the receiver has an internal false bottom, pierced with many small holes, through which also the air must pass, and whose effect is to bring every part of the air into close contact with the heated iron bottom of the receiver. Suppose, further, that this receiver communicates at its top, through a sufficiently wide passage or nozzle, with the lower end of a working cylinder containing the piston ; the receiver and cylinder are, in the first place, filled with compressed air, of any required density, by means of a small forcing-pump. As the same mass of air is used over and over again, this pump has to be subsequently worked to no further extent than is necessary to supply the loss of air by leakage, which has always been found to be extremely small. A pump is also required to keep up a stream of cold water through the coil of tubes before mentioned. 19. Mode of operation of Stirling’s Air-Engine.—Suppose the piston to be at the bottom of the cylinder, and the plunger at the bottom of the receiver, the mass of air in the receiver is now at the top amongst and near the cold-water tubes, and its temperature is low. Let the plunger now be. partially raised, part of the air is forced down through the economizer into the space between the outer and inner bottoms of the receiver, and through the holes of the inner bottom, into the space below the plunger. In passing over the heated bottom of the receiver, it has, in the first place, its temperature raised by the reception of heat from the furnace. At this point the cycle of processes formerly described may be held to begin. Process B.—The air below the plunger receives an addi- tional supply of heat from the furnace, which disappears in expanding it. The air below the plunger, in the act of ex- panding, lifts up the plunger and the mass of air above it, 26 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of which latter mass of air, passing through the nozzle, lifts the piston. Process C.—The plunger descends and forces the air below it through the holes of the inner bottom, and through the metal or glass plates of the economizer, which absorb, more or less completely, the sensible heat of the’air. This air, by passing amongst the cold-water tubes, enters the space above the plunger. Should it leave the economizer at a temperature higher than that of the cold-water tubes, the latter abstract an additional portion of its sensible heat. Process D.—The piston descends, compressing the whole mass of air; the heat so generated is abstracted by the cold- water tubes. Process A.—The plunger partially rises, as before; a por- tion of air descends through the economizer, and recovers the heat remaining stored up there. Should its temperature, on leaving the economizer, not have attained its original elevation, the additional sensible heat required is supplied from the fur- nace through the bottom of the receiver. The cycle of processes is now finished, and may be repeated ad infinitum. Thus it appears that the air confined in the receiver and cy- linder of Stirling’s air-engine consists of two portions: one por- tion, which always remains above the plunger, and which serves merely as a perfectly elastic cushion, to transmit pressure and motion between the piston and the other portion of the air, and not as a means of developing power; and another portion of air, which, being driven by the plunger to the bottom and top of the receiver alternately, is successively heated, expanded, cooled, and compressed ; and, as the expansion takes place at a high temperature, and the compression at a low one, more power is produced by the former than is consumed by the latter, and thus there remains a surplus of available power for the en- gine.* The existence of the cushion of air before-mentioned, * In calculating the space to be traversed by the piston of an air-engine, in which part of the air acts as a cushion, allowance must be made for the space through which this cushion-air expands and contracts, with the variation of pressure, as well as for the space required for the changes of volume of the working-air. The total space traversed is thus increased in a certain propor- realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 27 leads to an important practical advantage; for it is this air alone which comes into contact with the cylinder, the piston, the packings of the piston and those of the plunger-rod, which are consequently never exposed to a high temperature. It was, perhaps, mainly in consequence of this, that Stir- ling’s engine, with its final improvements, required less oil and fewer repairs, worked with less friction, and was less liable to get out of order, when properly managed, than any steam- engine. Stirling’s air-engine employed to drive the machinery of the Dundee Foundry, was double-acting, having two receivers, one connected with the top and the other with the bottom of the cylinder. The plungers of those receivers were suspended by their rods from the opposite ends of a small beam. A reci- procating motion was given to that beam by means of a piece of mechanism which possessed a power of regulating the length of stroke of the plungers ; and in its effect, though not in its construction, was analogous to the link motion. The testimony of Mr James Stirling to the advantages of this engine was corroborated by that of the late Mr Smith of Deanston and by that of Mr James Leslie. 20. Lficiency of Stirling’s Air-Engine.—According to Mr Stirling, the air in his engine received heat at the temperature of 650° Fahr., and discharged the lost heat at that of 150° Fahr. The fourth example of the table in Article 10 shows that the efficiency of a theoretically perfect engine, with those limits of temperature, would be 0°45, and its consumption of coal 0-73 of a Ib. per horse-power per hour. It appears that the actual consumption of coal per horse- power per hour was about 2-2 lb., being three times the con- sumption of a theoretically perfect engine, and corresponding to an actual efficiency of 0-15, or one-third of the maximum theoretical efficiency. Stirling’s air-engine, therefore, was more economical than any existing double-acting steam-engine,—probably indeed more economical than any possible double-acting steam-engine. tion, and the mean effective pressure diminished in the same proportion; so that the mechanical effect remains unaltered. 28 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of As compared, however, with a theoretically perfect engine, working between the same temperatures, it appears that two- thirds of its expenditure of heat was wasted. 21. Causes of waste in Stirling's Air-Engine.—We shall now investigate the causes of waste in Stirling’s air-engine according to the classification explained in article 12. (1.) Imperfect communication of heat from the burning fuel to the working substance.—As the heating surface in Stirling’s air-engine consisted simply of the hemispherical bottoms of the receivers, it was of the worst form possible for exposing a large surface within a given space. A steam-boiler of that form would occasion an enormous waste of fuel; it is probable, therefore, that this first cause of waste operated powerfully in Stirling’s engine. (2.) Imperfect abstraction of the lost heat.—It is probable that Stirling’s engine was comparatively free from this cause of waste, for the cold-water tubes exposed a large surface, and were abundantly supplied with water. (3.) The communication of heat to or from the working substance at improper periods of the stroke.—This cause must have operated powerfully to occasion waste of heat in Stirling’s engine, for the following reason :—It is obvious, from the construction of the engine, that the air, whether being expanded or compressed, must have been continually circulating over the heated bottom of the receiver, and re- ceiving heat through it from the furnace, at all periods of the stroke. Now it is only while the air is being expanded that the heat received by it is effective in producing power ; while the air is being compressed, the heat received by it is de- trimental. The heat received, therefore, by the air in Stir- ling’s engine during at least one-half of each stroke—that is to say, probably one-half of the heat received—must have been absolutely wasted: it would be simply carried to the cold water tubes, and there abstracted, without producing any work. It is probable that, in an air-engine free from such cause of waste of heat, a much smaller-extent of cooling sur- face would be found suflicient to abstract the lost heat. (4.) Hapenditure of heat in elevating the temperature of the working substance.—In the air-engine, the sensible heat of - OO a realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 29 temperature is not, as it is in the steam-engine, of secon- dary importance. If the temperature of the air in an air- engine were elevated altogether by means of heat supplied from the furnace, the waste from this cause would be from three to four times greater than the latent heat of expansion which performs the work, and the economy of the engine would be entirely destroyed. Some persons, founding their calculations upon this supposition, have pronounced the air- engine to be necessarily wasteful and inefficient. The sensible heat in question might be entirely produced by an additional compression of the air performed during the process A, the power employed to effect such compression being developed by an additional expansion performed during the process C, in which the temperature of the air falls. To afford room, however, for the additional expansion, the bulk of the engine would have to be increased about five-fold, which would render it inconvenient in practice, especially for propel- ling ships. The process actually pursued in Stirling’s engine, of storing up the sensible heat by means of the economizer or regene- rator, and using it over and over again, has already been generally described. In the original engine of the Rev. Robert Stirling, the regenerator consisted simply of the sides of the receiver and plunger, the latter being covered with a network of wires, in order to increase the surface; in the engine, as improved by Mr James Stirling, it is composed of thin parallel plates of metal or glass. In Captain Ericsson’s engine it con- sists of several sheets of wire gauze. The efficacy of a regenerator to prevent expenditure of heat in raising the temperature of the air increases with its mass and surface; but no amount of mass and surface, how large soever, is sufficient to make it act with theoretical perfection. There is reason to believe, however, that both in Stirling’s and in Ericsson’s engines the masses and surfaces of the regenera- tors were sufficient to reduce the waste of heat, in raising the temperature of the air, to a very small quantity. Some persons, overlooking the latent heat of expansion— the real source of power—appear at one time to have imagined that a theoretically perfect regenerator would prevent all ex- 30 W. J. M. Rankine on the Means of penditure of heat whatsoever, except losses by conduction and radiation. This amounted to representing Stirling’s air- engine as a machine for creating power out of nothing, popu- larly called a “perpetual motion.” It is very probable that the promulgation of that erroneous theory may have led scien- tific and practical men to regard the real performances of this engine as delusive, and may have been the cause which, not- withstanding its economy as compared with steam-engines, prevented the extension of its use beyond the Dundee Foundry. (5.) Imperfect arrangement of the series of changes of vo- lume and pressure.—lt is not likely that in Stirling’s engine any material amount of waste arose from this cause, for the series of changes in question would be regulated by the rela- tive motions of the piston and plungers; and those motions being susceptible of adjustment, as in the case of the piston and slide-valve of a steam-engine, would be fixed, by trial, so as to act in the manner found to be most advantageous. From all that has been stated, it appears,—that the principal causes of waste of heat in Stirling’s engine were—first, defi- ciency of heating surface, and, secondly, communication of heat to the air during that part of the stroke when it was not being expanded ;—that the latter cause was sufficient of itself to double, or nearly to double, the theoretical consumption of fuel; that the actual consumption of fuel was triple the theo- retical consumption; but that, notwithstanding such defects, the engine was economical as compared with steam-engines. 22. Ericsson’s Engine of 1852.—In this engine the com- pression and expansion of the air were performed in two dif- ferent cylinders, and at each stroke the air which had been used was expelled into the atmosphere, a fresh supply of air being at the same time taken in to perform the next stroke. This process of expelling the used air, and taking in fresh air corresponded to the process C of the cycle; for the air ex- pelled being, while in the cylinder, at a high temperature, was driven through a regenerator of wire gauze, and there left its sensible heat. This mode of working involved a great practical disadvantage, especially for marine purposes ; for the cylinders had to be made large enough to contain the requi- realizing the Advantages of the Air-Engine. 31 site supply of air at the ordinary atmospheric pressure, and the engine was consequently of enormous bulk and weight as compared with its power. To proceed to the process D: It consisted in compressing the air with which the compressing cylinder had been filled to about two-thirds of its original volume, and forcing it into a receiver or magazine for compressed air. ‘There was no pro- vision in the compressing cylinder for abstracting the heat produced by the compression, and a certain waste of power must have arisen from this cause, which will be again referred to in its order. The process A consisted in opening the induction-valve of the expanding cylinder, and filling that cylinder about two-thirds full of the compressed air. In the act of entering the ex- panding cylinder, the air passed through the regenerator which was fixed in the nozzle, and, receiving the heat stored up there, had its temperature elevated. On the admission of the proper quantity of air, the induction-valve was closed. The process B consisted in the expansion of the air in the expanding cylinder, the latent heat being supplied from a furnace placed directly beneath the bottom of that cylinder. The process C was then recommenced by opening the educ- tion-valve, to allow the hot air to escape through the regene- rator, and so on, as before. 23. Lficiency of Eriesson’s Engine of 1852.—In caleu- lating the efficiency of this engine, I have been guided chiefly by data contained in the report of Professor Norton (regarding him as a neutral inquirer). As nearly as I can judge, the ef- ficiency of a theoretically perfect engine, working between the same temperatures, would be 0-404, corresponding to a con- sumption of 0°82 lb. of coal per horse-power per hour. Ac- cording to Professor Norton, the actual consumption was 1:87 lb. of anthracite, being equivalent to 2:8 of bituminous coal, if 3 lb. of bituminous coal of the quality specified in this paper be taken as equivalent to 2 lb. of anthracite. This is about 34 times the consumption of a theoretically perfect engine, and corresponds to an actual efficiency of 0-118, being less than the maximum theoretical efficiency in the ratio of 0-295 to 1. The waste of heat and power, therefore, in Ericsson’s 34 W. J. M, Rankine on the Air-Engine. engine must have been very great, though it was economical of fuel as compared with steam-engines. 24. Causes of waste of heat in Ericsson’s Engine of 1852. —(1.) Imperfect communication of heat from the furnace to the air.—This cause of waste of heat must have operated to a great extent in the engine in question ; for the heating surface was simply the bottom of the expanding cylinder; at the same time an extensive heating surface was rendered doubly neces- sary by the low pressure of the air; for, as was long since shown by Dulong and Petit, the power of gases to receive and communicate heat increases with their pressure. (2.) Imperfect abstraction of the lost heat.—It has already been stated that there was no provision for abstracting the heat produced in the compressing cylinder; the direct effect of this would be to cause an additional and unnecessary ex- penditure of power in compressing the air. (3.) Communication of heat to the air at improper periods of the stroke.—This cause of waste must have operated to a considerable extent; for the air, after having performed its work, and while in the act of being discharged into the at- mosphere, continued to circulate over the heated bottom of the cylinder, and must have carried away a considerable amount of heat. This heat would not be stored in the regenerator, which must have received no more heat from the escaping air than had been previously abstracted from it bythe air when entering, or otherwise the temperature of the regenerator would have gone on continually rising. (4.) Eapenditure of heat in raising the temperature of the air.—There is reason to believe that in Hricsson’s engine, as in Stirling’s, the regenerator was adequate to prevent any considerable waste from this cause. (5.) Improper arrangement of the changes of volume and pressure.—There is no reason to believe that any material waste arose from this cause. : It may be observed that Ericsson’s engine, as well as Stir- ling’s, was absurdly represented by some parties as a “ per- petual motion.” (To be continued.) On the Intrusion of the Germanic Races into Europe. 33 On the Intrusion of the Germanic Races into Europe.* By DanteEL Witson, LL.D., Professor of History and English Literature, University College, Toronto. Communicated by the Author. Dr Arnold, in that beautiful but imperfect narrative of Ro- man History which his lamented death arrested in its progress towards completion, after devoting a chapter to the descrip- tion of the general condition of Europe at the commencement of the fourth century before the Christian era, thus concludes : —*“ Such was the state of the civilized world, when the Kelts, or Gauls, broke through the thin screen which had hitherto concealed them from sight, and began, for the first time, to take their part in the great drama of the nations. For nearly two hundred years they continued to fill Europe and Asia with the terror of their name; but it was a passing tempest ; and, if useful at all, it was useful only to destroy. The Gauls could communicate no essential points of human character in which other races might be deficient; they could neither im- prove the intellectual state of mankind, nor its social and political relations. When, therefore, they had done their ap- pointed work of havoc, they were doomed to be themselves extirpated, or to be lost amidst nations of greater creative and constructive power ; nor is there any race which has left fewer traces of itself in the character and institutions of modern civilization.” We must not, however, too hastily assume the extirpation of any race, or the altogether transitory and evanescent in- fluence of its physical or intellectual peculiarities, merely be- cause it ceases to play an independent part as a distinct nation. To those who recognise in all its fulness the influence of primary ethnological differences on national character and institutions, it cannot be doubted that the intermixture of races has largely affected the character of nations. The an- cient Pelasgic and Etruscan races have disappeared, yet pro- bably not by extirpation, but by absorption; and perhaps contributing, in no slight degree, by their diverse ratios of * Read before the Canadian Institute, April 1, 1854, VOL. I. NO. L—JAN. 1855. c 34 Dr Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of intermixture with Hellenic and Kelto-Italian blood, to produce the permanent differences between the two great nations of classic antiquity. That the Keltic ethnological element hag exercised no bene- ficial influence either on the intellectual or physical condition of medieval and modern Europe, is no less problematic. The blood of the Gaul still gives no partial hue to the complexion of Gallic France, nor ean we assume that no portion of our peculiar Anglo-Saxon national character—so different, in some respects, from that of our continental Saxon congeners—is de~ rived from the early intermixture of the Saxon and Scandi- navian with the native Celtic blood. The invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, as of the Danes and Northmen, was one of warriors, not of colonists with their wives and families, and their first settlement must have involved some extent of al- lance and mingling of races, such as we see taking place in eur own day with aborigines whose physical and moral cha- racteristics present a far more antagonistic diversity of aspect. But viewing the ancient Gauls as they first appear on the stage of history, unaffected as yet by those Germanic or Anglo- Saxon elements which temper “ The blind hysterics of the Celt,” the justice of one portion, at least, of Dr Arnold’s remarks may be perceived, if we look to the transitory nature of the Keltic philological influence on our own English tongue, and consider that while, for upwards of seven centuries after the date here referred to, no other intrusion of foreign races had taken place in the British islands than the very partial mili- tary occupation by the Roman legions, yet the English lan- guage retains no grammatical or constructive elements of the - ancient native Keltic or British tongues, and has so few ety- _ mological elements incorporated into its composite vocabulary, excepting such as are indirectly derived through the Latin, that the whole of such might be expunged without sensibly marring the richness and copiousness of the language. His- torically speaking, the English language of the British islands stands in precisely the same relation to its ancient geogra- phical area as the English of Canada and the United States the Germanc Races into Europe. 35 does to this portion of its widely-diffused modern area; in nei- ther is it the original language of any part of the countries to which it now pertains, but in both cases it has spread itself within well ascertained, though diverse periods, at the expense of earlier and more aboriginal languages, which it has dis- placed and superseded. Looking, however, upen the older ethnological stock of Bri- tish and European population, to which the Keltic elements of European languages and customs are traceable, it is import- ant to consider whether the well-ascertained date of its first appearance on the stage of history above referred to, in any de- gree coincides with that of its earliest intrusion into Europe, or with the appearance of that other hardy barbarian stock, which, issuing at a later period from its fastnesses in the old unexplored north, swept before it, in its young strength, the decrepit vestiges of Rome’s Imperial decline? In other words, I would inquire if the Keltic and Germanic races are coeval in their origin, or in their occupation of the European areas which they are found in possession of at the dawn of history? «¢ We can trace,” says Dr Arnold, “ with great distinctness the period at which the Kelts became familiarly known to the Greeks. Herodotus only knew of them from the Pheenician navigators; Thucydides does not name them at all; Xeno- phon only notices them as forming part of the auxiliary force sent by Dionysius to the aid of Lacedemon ; Isocrates makes no mention of them: but immediately afterwards, their incur- sions into Central and Southern Italy on the one hand, and into the countries beyond the Danube and Macedonia on the other, had made them objects of general interest and curiosity, and Aristotle notices several points in their habits and cha- racter in different parts of his philosophical works.” Like the first glimpses of the Kassiterides, or Tin Countries of Southern Britain, we discern, only vaguely and by chance incidental notices, the western Kelts, described by Herodotus as a people who “ dwell without the Pillars of Hercules, and bordering on the Kynesians, who live the farthest to the west of all the nations of Europe.”* Few passages of ancient his- * This description Dr Latham would refer to the Kelts as Iberians, and not to the Kelts in the general sense in which the designation is accepted, and as it eZ 36 Dr Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of tory convey to us a more vivid impression of the complete isolation of the diverse tribes then scattered over the European continent. The Pyrenees and the great Alpine chain, spread- ing eastward to the head waters of the Danube, formed, in the age of the Father of history, a barrier of exclusion for all the Transalpine races, scarcely less effectual than that which, for upwards of eighteen centuries thereafter, concealed this great antiquity, America, from the eyes of Europe. Kelts, Kymric or Gaelic, had doubtless crossed the Alps long prior to the first notice of them by Herodotus, and had established themselves in the fertile valley of the Po, as well as extended their influence far southward into the Italian peninsula. Whether, at that period, they had ever been present on any portion of the Hellenic area of Greece, may well be ques- tioned, notwithstanding the undoubted Keltic elements recog- nised in the Greek language. They had, however, already passed to the south of the Pyrenees, and intermingling with the older Iberians of Spain, constituted the ancient Keltibe- rian population of Arragon and Valencia: unless, indeed, we are prepared to recognise in the Keltz and Galatz of Aristotle and Diodorus something more than varied forms of the same name; though even then, the distinction will not necessarily imply a greater one than the philologist recognises between the Keltic elements of the ancient Greek and Latin, or the ethnologist perceives to separate the modern Gael and Kymri of Great Britain. To the Greeks of the age of Herodotus the Kelts were only known, by the chance report of some Phoenician seamen, as one among the rude tribes of the barbarian West, where the> coasts of Europe intruded furthest into the mysterious Atlan- tic main, which was to them the aqueous boundary of the world. The Greeks of that age little suspected that these same western Kelts reached from the shores of the Atlantic was understood by the Romans in the time of Cesar. But it is not at all im- probable that the population of Gallicia and the Biscayan provinces of Spain might have been purely Gallic B.c. 400, and yet that the displaced Ibéri of the south might have even crossed the Garonne in Cesar’s time. Immense dis- placement had taken place during the interval in the Spanish peninsula. But the name Garonne, like the Scottish Garry, is essentially Celtic and descriptive: the rough river, the Germanic Races into Europe. 37 Ocean as far as the Alps, and overflowing and sweeping round them, already occupied the valley of the Po, and extended nearly to the head of the Adriatic. ‘The narrow band of coast occupied by the Ligurian and Venetian tribes,” says Dr Arnold, when referring to the approaching Gaulish invasion of Rome, ‘“‘ was as yet sufficient to conceal the movements of the Kelts from the notice of the civilized world. Thus, im- mediately before that famous eruption which destroyed Her- culaneum and Pompeii, the level ridge which was then Vesu- vius excited no suspicion; and none could imagine that there were lurking close below that peaceful surface the materials of a fiery deluge, which were so soon to burst forth, and to continue for centuries to work havoc and desolation.”’ But though that celebrated eruption which took place in the first century of the Christian era is the earliest on record, it is well known to the geologist that the pent-up fires of Vesuvius and Solfatara had long before overflowed the Phlegrean fields ; and, in like manner, the philologist recognises, on no less in- disputable evidence, the traces of earlier Keltic intrusions than that which, in the fourth century of Rome, swept like a wast- ing torrent over Central Italy. The attention of the members of the Canadian Institute has recently been directed to the well known Keltic element now universally recognised as forming so important a constituent part of the Latin tongue. This Professor Newman assumes to be an essentially intrusive element ;- but in doing so he recognises it as derived from ™ Italian races, which, if not aboriginal, are known to us as the primitive inhabitants of well-defined areas of the Italian pen- insula at the very dawn of history. Among these Keltie Italians, the Umbrians and the Sabines are specially remark- able, and the essential Celtic* character of the Sabine clan- ship, out of which the later Roman clients, and the whole system of Roman patron and client, patres and plebs, were * For the purpose of discriminating between the undoubted modern Keltism of the Gael, Kymri, &c., of the British Isles and Bretagne, and the assumed but disputable Keltism, in this sense, of some ancient ethnological elements—e. g., the Celtiberians of Spain—the term Keltic is employed here in reference to all ancient and purely continental elements, that of Cedtic to all modern and British elements. 38 Dr Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of naturally developed, points to a social condition prevailing among the ancient tribes of Central Italy, and especially among the Sabines, more easily explicable by the analogies of modern Celtic clanship as it existed im Scotland down to the middle of the eighteenth century, than by any other source which history discloses to us. Assuming, with Pritchard, Newman, and other able philolo- gical critics, the Kelticity of the Umbrians, and the Kelto- Italian character of both the Umbrians and Sabines, we are left in no doubt as to the antiquity of the Keltic ethnological element in Scathern Europe. Among the primitive native Italian populations, the Umbrians were, at the earliest times, the cultivators of the soil and the builders of cities ; and their ancient capital, Ameria, was one of the oldest cities of Italy. Pliny assigns the date of its foundation 381 years before that of Rome. Specimens of the language of this people have been preserved to us in the celebrated Eugubine Inscriptions, dis- covered at Gobbio, the ancient Iguvium, and the relation of - this language to the Latin has been satisfactorily assigned by Grotefend and others. But without attempting to determine how far the famous Sabines and Latins, or the less important tribes of Piceni, Vestini, Frentani, and Marsi, which clustered around their ancient areas on the east, approximated to the Umbrian type, it is sufficient for our present purpose to know that “ the primitive Latin must have Keltized itself by im- bibing Umbrian,” (Newman’s “ Regal Rome,”) and that the Keltic element of the Latin is derived, being isolated and fragmentary, and only traceable to its etymological family groups by a reference to the surviving Celtic dialects. We are hence left in no doubt that that appearance of the Kelts or Gauls in Central Italy, B.c. 389, which Dr Arnold has cha- racterized as their “ beginning for the first time to take their part in the great drama of the nations,” was by no mean their earliest intrusion into Southern Europe. Dr Latham, who is little disposed to extend the Keltic area further than the strictest evidence will sanction, and even denies the Kel- ticity of the element mingling with the Iberian stock to con- stitute the Celtibéri of Spain (Hthnology of Europe, p. 37), in restricting the original area of this ancient race, remarks, “I the Germanic Races into Europe. 39 am inclined to limit the Keltic area, at its maximum exten- sion, to Venice westwards, and to the neighbourhood of Rome southwards. But this is not enough,” he adds, “ they may have been aboriginal in parts which they may seem to have invaded as immigrants.”—(Man and his Migrations, p. 169.) It may thus be assumed, as obvious and undoubted, that the invasion of Rome and Central Italy by the Gauls was no in- trusion of a new race, like the first appearance in Europe of the Huns in the fourth century, or of the Moors in the eighth century ef our era. May it not, however, indicate to us other intrusions of which it was a secondary cause? My belief is that it does. It is abundantly obvious that some great cause of dismemberment and revolution was then affecting the great Keltie race. Whatever their older area may have been, we find the Kelts soon after intruding into Thrace and Ilyricum, and appearing on the borders of Macedonia in the reigns of the great Philip and Alexander. They even overflow inte Asia; and, for nearly two centuries, glance, meteor-like, on the pages of ancient history, the dismembered relics of an old barbarian nationality, terrible though transient in the destruc- tive influences of its scattered fragments. This was the wan- ing struggle of the great Keltic stock. Upwards of two thou- sand years have elapsed, and still the fragments of that once predominant European branch of the human family linger on the western confines of Europe, preserving to us their ancient tongue, so invaluable for all the investigations of the ethnolo- gist; but assuredly their days are numbered, the hold of twenty centuries is at length giving way, and it seems pro- bable that, ere many more generations have passed, the living languages of the Kymri and the Gael will exist only, like the Cornish, in grammars and vocabularies of the philologist, and in the surviving fragments of their ancient literature. The stock by which the ancient Keltz of Europe have been displaced, and the classic nations superseded, is the Germanic or so-called Teutonic group, of which our own Anglo-Saxon race is the most powerful and widely diffused of all its mem- bers. ‘The intrusion of the Germanic stock into Europe lies beyond the assigned dates of ancient history; but many indi- cations serve to show, that while the Keltic races only obtrude 40 Dr Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of upon the historic arena in their decline, like some long- voyaging ship seen for the first time as it dashes amid the breakers of a strange and rock-bound coast, the Germanic races dawn upon us in their young barbarian strength, with all their national being still awaiting its development, and with the geographical arena of their historical existence occu- pied by the precursors whom they came to displace. Assuming, as a general rule, the uniform north-western -progression of Kuropean population from the Asiatic cradle-land of the human race, to which science, no less than revelation, points, we are thence led to assign a certain relative age to races from their geographical position. In the extreme north are still found the Ugrian Fins and Laps, pertaining to a stock whose congeners abound in Asia and find their modern European representatives in the intrusive Majiars of Hungary, but who, as an ancient European stock, appear as the probable repre- sentatives of those Allophyliz, whose existence in the north of Europe, and in Britain, in periods prior to all written his- tory, is now generally accepted as an established truth. In like manner, the mountainous Basque region of the Pyrenees shelters the last remnant of the ancient Iberian stock, an un- classed, if not aboriginal Allophylian race; while, among the mountains of Albania—like waifs caught in the eddy of the great western stream of population—are still found the Skipe- tar, another unclassed race, who, for aught that can be said to the contrary, may as truly represent to us the aboriginal Pelasgi of Greece, as the Basques undoubtedly do the Ibéri of Spain. Leaving those, and coming down in point of time to the Indo-European historic races, we find the Gaelic Kelts in the extreme north-west, as in North Britain and Ireland, and in Gaul, with the Kymric and other Kelts, as the Welsh of England, and the Cimbri and even the Teutones* of the * The science of Ethnology is still so much in its infancy, that it will least surprise the most zealous of its students to find its longest accepted terms called in question. Dr Latham has advanced reasons in his ‘“ Ethnology of Europe,” for believing that, “instead of the ancient Kelts of Iberia having been Kelts in the modern sense of the word, the Kelts of Gallia were Iberians,” i. ¢., were a different race from the Gauls north of the Garrone. Next to the term Celtic, no word is better established among English, though not among continental ethnologists, than Teutonic, as equivalent to Germanic, and thereby the Germanic Races into Europe. 41 northern shores of the European mainland, all occupying the geographical positions to which the foremost intruders into the European area must have been driven by the accession of successive migrations from the east. In Greece and Italy were the Hellenic and Kelto-Italian successors of the Pelasgi, with, in the Italian peninsula, the intrusive Semitic race of the Rasena or Htruscans. In Spain were the Ibéri and Celti- béri, with also a small intrusive race: Phcenician or Punic; and those with the Phocian and Punic colonies of Masallia contradistinguished from Keltic. The term, however, is at best arbitrary, at worst altogether false ; for it is by no means improbable that the Teutones were ’ Keltic, as it is certain that the evidence of Appian tends to show that both they and the Kymbri were of Gallic origin. (Vide Latham’s “ Germania of Taci- tus,” pp. cx., clx., clxiv.) The names Jeutones and Teutoni have been mis- takenly assumed as derived from the German deutsch, teut-sch=teut-oni. But the word signifying people, from which deutsch is derived, is either written, thiud, Anglo-Saxon theod, or diut; never thiut, or theut, stillless tewt. Teut, on the contrary, appears to be a Gallic syllable. We find, among the Gauls, Teutomatus (Ces. b. 7), Teutates (Lucan), Teutomalus (Liv. Epist.). One of the Teuton chiefs was called Teutobochus or Teutobodus (Florus and Eutro- pius), while Pliny (v. 32) speaks of a Galatic people: Teutobodiaci. Another of the captive Teuton chiefs is named by Plutarch, Boiorix; while Livy (34, 46,) names a Boiorix of a “ Regulus”? among the Galli Insubres in Upper Italy. There was a weapon peculiar to the Teutons, called cateja (vide Virgil, b. 7, Teutonico ritu soliti vibrare cateias), which Isidor calls Genus Gallici telie: the termination eja being strictly Gallic. Among the Belgs were the Aduatici, whose name is purely Keltic, and even recals that of the Atacotti in Britain; but these Aduatici were, according to Cesar, descendants of the Cimbri and Teutoni. Old Festus (de signif. verborum) says that the Ambrones who fol- lowed the Teutoni, were gens Gallica. ‘The Kymbri themselves were anciently known as Galli. The oldest author mentioning them is Sallust (Bell. Jugurth., ec. 114, adversorum Gallos ab ducibus nostris Q. Cepioni et M. Manlio male pugnatum est); alsothe Kimbric slave sent to kill Marius at Mintuone is called natione Gallus by Livy (Epist. 77). The latter notices tend to show that the assertion of Strabo, or rather Posidonius (Strabo 7), afterwards repeated by Plutarch (Marius, c. 11), that the Cimbri and Cimmerii are the same, is not one to be hastily rejected, though so able and cautious an authority as Dr Latham has expressed himself as “utterly disbelieving the Cimmerii of the Cimmerian Bosphorus to have been Keltic.” (Man and his Migrations, p. 169.) The above argument is chiefly designed, however, to justify the substitution of the term Germanic for that of Teutonic, employed by me elsewhere, and generally used in England to designate the Scandinavo-German race. Even if the Teu- tons can be shown to be Germanic, they were always a comparatively small and unimportant tribe, nor is the suitableness of the denomination Germanic disputed by any one; the supposed risk of confusion with it, in its modern political sense, has alone interfered with its adoption. 42 Dr Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of and the larger Mediterranean islands, constitute the popula- tion of Southern Europe, when the curtain first rises and reveals to us the great arena of the world’s later civilization. To the north of this, our imperfect knowledge suffices to dis- close the central area of the continent, lying between the Alps and the German Ocean, occupied, from the Atlantic to the head of the Adriatic, by the different branches of the Keltic stock, and thence eastward to the Kuxine Sea, and along the valley of the Danube, by the Scytho-Sarmatian stock, includ- ing the whole Lithuanian and the first of the Slavonian populations, by whom so large a portion of their ancient area is still retained. Of these latter the Lettes are the most ancient: the Lithuanic being the likest of all the Indo-Eu- ropean tongues to the Sanskrit, the ancient sacred language of India. As a broad ethnological sketch of the superficies of Europe at the dawn of authentic history, this is no baseless theory, but an outline of facts as well established as the nature of the imperfect evidence admits. But it will be seen that only a very slight extension of the old Ugrian area, such as 18 pre- supposed by the assumption of the Fins and Laps of Northern Europe constituting the remnant of a more widely diffused Allophylian stock, is requisite to occupy the whole of Europe, without the presence of a single branch of the Germanic stock in any of their later geographical areas. While, however, those various older races were gradually moving westward, ever pressed from behind by fresh swarms from the Asiatic hive, till the Gael overflowed from Gaul into Britain, north- ward into the Kimbric Chersonesus, and southward into Italy, the younger Germanic stock entering Europe by the only unguarded portal, between the southern spur of the Ural Moun- tains and the Caspian Sea, circa 500 v. 400 B.c. (2), found their way along the banks of the tributaries of the Vistula to the Baltic. | Besides the approach to Southern Europe by the Mediterra- nean, by means of which the isolated Semitic populations of Etruria, Gadir, and Tartessus, and the Phocian and other colonial offshoots of south-eastern civilization, reached its north-western shores, there are only two passages, or at most the Germanic Races into Europe. 43 three, open to the migratory wanderers from Asia to Europe. The most southern of these, which required the navigation of the Hellespont or the Thracian Bosphorus, may be supposed to have been the course pursued by the ancient Pelasgi, or some still older southern Allophyliz, in times lying beyond all history. This road, however, we know was early closed by the occupation of the whole of Asia Minor by Phrygians, Lydians, Lycians, Pheenicians, and other civilized and war- like people, whose presence entirely precluded the approach of any migratory horde to the shores of the Propontis. Beyond this, therefore, later migratory tribes, including, perhaps, the earliest pioneers of Keltic colonization, would find open for them the narrow passage formed by the lower valleys between the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, and then reaching the northern shores of the Kimmerian Bosphorus, they would enter by the passage between the Carpathian Mountains and the Euxine into the fertile valley of the Danube. This road, also, in itself narrow and straightened, was closed against such nomade intruders long prior to the dawn of history, by the occupation of the whole country around the lower Danube by Scythic tribes belonging to the Thracian division. These warlike tribes were in undisputed possession of this important Kuropean area when we obtain our first glimpse of them in the pages of Homer, and no doubt can be entertained of their ability to withstand the encroachments of all later intruders. Thus, then, at the assumed period of the immigration of the Germanic nomades, after the entire occupation of Southern and Central Europe by older races, there remained only one road open for tribes immigrating westward from Asia into Europe, through the Ural passage to the north of the Caspian Sea; and thence—the southern road through the valley of the Danube being now closed—they must have crossed the vast prairies of Russia, along the northern edge of the impenetrable forests of Volhynia and Poland, and the watershed of the Dnieper and the Vistula—the route pursued by the Huns, under Attila, in the fifth century—and thence along the _ tributaries of the Vistula to the Baltic. Here the ethnologist _ may be said to strike the trail of the first Germanic nomades. The later Cimbri or Kymri, and the younger Scytho- Sarmatians 44 Dr Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of in their wake, having been obliged to pursue a north-western course till they reached the shores of the older Baltic, the Kymri, and no doubt also the Belg, penetrated still further to the westward, while their Scytho-Sarmatian followers re- mained at the Vistula. The Germanic nomades, beginning their intrusive migration long after their precursors had consolidated their power, and occupied their borders with the increased numbers of a settled population, were compelled to pursue the still more northern, but less encumbered course ; while being, in the common movement towards the west, driven to the shores of the Baltic near Livonia and Esthonia, they crossed to the Islands, to Gottland, Oland, and to Scania, and there settling themselves in the great northern Scandinavian peninsula, where archeological research proves them to have displaced an older Allophylian population, they nursed their young strength, preparatory to their intrusion on the historic area of ancient Europe. Archeological investigations contribute many valuable ac- cessories to such ethnological inquiries, and specially tend to confirm the conclusions here advanced relative to the late arrival of the Germanic nomades in Western Europe. ‘This is strik- ingly shown bythe abrupt transition from the aboriginal stone relics to the evidences of the Metallurgic arts of the last Pagan period disclosed in the sepulchral depositories of Northern Scandinavia.* Having established the Germanic nomades as a settled people in the northern peninsula still occupied by one great branch of the Germanic stock, the course pursued by them when they in turn became the aggressors is abundantly mani- fest, even now, on the map of Europe. Passing over into Denmark, and to a great extent displacing and dispossessing the Kymri, they entered Central Europe from that point d’appui, penetrating like a wedge between the Gauls and the Sarmatians, and gradually occupying the whole modern Ger- manic area between the Elbe and the Rhine. This is the movement which I conceive manifested itself by that over- flowing of the Gauls into Central Italy, by means of which they, and thus also, indirectly, the Germanic aggressors on * Vide Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, p. 358. the Germanic Races into Europe. A5 their rear, began, for the first time, to take their part in the great drama of the nations. Then it was that the Gallic population, pressed on from the north-east and confined on the west by the Atlantic, passed over into Britain; not, in- deed, occupying it for the first time with a Keltic population, but intruding upon the older Keltic occupants, the Gallic Cantii, Belge, and others of those newer southern tribes, whose sympathy with their continental brethren first exposed their country to the aggressive arms of Rome. Few questions in ancient ethnology have been more keenly disputed than the Germanic or Keltic character of the Belge of Picardy ; but nearly all ethnologists now agree in assuming thai the Belgze of Britain came from Belgic Gaul, and in the opinion that the continental Belgze were Kelts. These points being assumed, all that we learn of the Belge from Czesar—their warlike hardihood in maintaining the passes of the Rhine, the diversity of their dialect from the older Gauls, and the union and consanguinity recognised among themselves (Ces. Bell. Gall., X1.,4)—confirm the idea of their recent migration from the eastern shores of the Rhine, and the consequent re- centness of the Germanic intrusion of which this was a product. The same great Germanic migration from the north into the centre of Europe, pressing southward, drove a part of the intercepted Keltze to seek an outlet down the valley of the Danube, encountering in that fertile region Illyrian and Thracian occupants, and mingling with or displacing them in that rich country, the fertility and many natural advantages of which have so often contributed to make it the theatre of contending claimants. This may account for the two names, Danube and Iser: the former the Keltic name, afterwards adopted by the Romans, while the latter was accepted by the Greeks. When Alexander the Great, in 335 B.c., moved against the Thracians, he found the Kelts already settled to the east of the Adriatic, and received offers of alliance from them, not as a recent band of strange intruders, but as the proud and ambitious aggressors, who, at a later period, under Brennus, invaded Macedonia and AMtolia, and even attacked the holy Delphic shrine. The Keltic tribes, thus cut off from the great stock, and compelled to retrace their course, not only 46 On the Intrusion of the Germanic Races into Europe. penetrated eastward, as we have seen, into Thrace, but passed over into Asia Minor, where they peopled Galatia; while, if we hold to the true Kelticity of the Keltic element of the Celtibéri of Spain, we may account for a similar overflow of the Gallic Kelts into the Iberian peninsula. Thus we have the non-Indo-Germanic Phoenician, Punic, Etruscan, and other Semitic elements, passing by the southern- most route, from the shores of the Levant, into Southern Kurope, and consequently not diffused as from a common centre, but occupying isolated and widely scattered positions. — The oldest branch of the great Indo-European family of nations, the Gallic Kelts, follows by the southern land passage: preceding the classic races, and contributing to them a large portion of the philological elements by which they are known to us. How far they may also have contributed to their ethnological elements is uncertain. Whence, indeed, the Hellenic stock is derived is still a problem scarcely yet at- tempted to be solved. Was it derived from Italy to Greece, as Dr. Latham inclines, not without reason, to believe (Zthnol. of Europe, p. 97), or from Greece to Italy? Was it the pro- duct of an intermixture of Keltic and Pelasgic blood, or of Pelasgo-Keltic and Semitic blood? Intermixture of blood, not purity of race, seems the law of highest development in the historic races ; and hence, perhaps, it is that the old Keltic migration moved on westward and diffused itself over the great central area of Transalpine Europe through long unre- corded centuries, only making itself known by the shock with which it was rent in pieces when it came into collision with the younger historic races. Behind these Kelts came the Scytho-Sarmatian stock, still occupying to a great extent its original European area, though taking up so small and in- significant a section of the historic page; while the younger Germanic stock, Jacob-like, seizing the birthright and the portion of the elder, has overstepped it in the race, preoccu- pied the area of the displaced Kelts, shared in the spoils, and borne a prominent part in the reinvigoration of Southern Europe; and now entering on the possession of this vast continent of America, and of that other new world which lies sheltered in the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, On the Hyposulphites of the Organic Alkaloids. 47 the Germanic—or as we too limitedly designate it, the Anglo- Saxon—race is entering on fresh aggressions and claiming a wider theatre for the arena of its triumphs. Whether the stirring among the Lithuanic and Slavonic races of Hastern Europe, which now thrills us with the rumours of war, and shakes all Europe with the coming struggle, be any symptom of the long dormant energies of her Scytho-Sarmatian stock awaking at length to assert the claims of a long-proscribed priority of birthright, is a question which had attracted the notice of Panslavic students of ethnology before it forced itself on the attention of European diplomatists. On the Hyposulphites of the Organic Alkaloids. By HEnry How, Professor of Chemistry and Natural History, King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia. In a recent communication to the Royal Society of Edin- burgh,* I mentioned that when strychnine is exposed to the action of sulphide of ammonium, the hyposulphite of this base is formed, together with a peculiar and distinct product whose nature is not yet made out. The experiment affording these indications was made with free access of air, and I thought it extremely probable that the production of the hyposulphite was to be attributed in a great measure, if not entirely, to the formation in the first place of the hyposulphite of ammonia, from absorption of oxygen by the sulphide of ammonium, and the subsequent displacement of the volatile, by the fixed alkali, the transformation of the sulphur salt of ammonium being represented by the equation, NHS, HS +40 = NH,O, 8,0, +HO. ee —— I reasoned that if the hyposulphite of strychnine really re- sulted from this succession of changes, the other alkaloids should present a similar deportment under the same circum- stances. I, therefore, made corresponding experiments with some of these, and found that in the majority of the cases I tried, their hyposulphites are readily obtained; and they form * Trans. Roy. Soc. Hdin., vol. xxi., page 33, 48 Professor How on the Hyposulphites so well-defined and beautiful a class of salts, as to merit a fuller and more accurate description than they have yet received. Indeed when I commenced their study I was of opinion that they were quite unknown, and it was only when my examina- tion of this series of compounds was nearly completed, that I discovered that one of them, namely, the salt of quinine, had been already described. This description is accompanied by analytical numbers which, as I shall show in the sequel, must have related to a very equivocal specimen, as they are far from concordant with the real composition of the salt in ques- tion; and it is probable that the materials employed in its formation, by double decomposition, were not pure. In addition to their great beauty and their mode of forma- tion by a novel method, which is interesting in itself, these salts present claims for consideration on another ground. The peculiar nature of hyposulphurous acid renders its combina- tions with the alkaloids valuable as a means of establishing or controlling their atomic weight. Since this acid is instable in the free state, it is scarcely capable of forming acid salts, and basic compounds of the alkaloids being unknown, their hyposulphites must be composed in the relation of atom to atom of the proximate constituents, There are few subjects in organic chemistry which have been more discussed by vari- ous experimenters than the atomic weight of the vegetable bases, and most especially is this the case with quinine and cinchonine. Platinum salts of the alkaloids generally are now known not to afford by any means the infallible criterion they were once supposed to do; and a more certain indicator of the molecular equivalent, particularly of the natural alkalis, has been found in the amount of elements contained in their derived methyl, ethyl, and amyl bases. It is by this means that recent researches have placed it beyond doubt that qui- nine* and cinchonine}t have respectively forty and thirty- eight atoms of carbon in their molecules. The hyposulphites of these bodies, as I shall describe them in this paper, are in complete accordance with these results. As regards the production of the hyposulphites in general, * Strecker, Comptes Rendus. ¢ Stahlschmidt, Annalen der Chemie dnd Pharmacie, vol. xc., page 218. of the Organic Alkaloids. 49 by this process, I have found that when the alkaloids are di- gested with fresh aqueous sulphide of ammonium, and some spirit of wine in an open flask, after a lapse of time, varying from a few hours to a day or two, hydrosulphuric acid cannot be detected, while hyposulphurous acid is present in abund- ance, in combination either with ammonia alone, or with it and the alkaloid employed. The comparative insolubility of the organic salt appears to be that which determines or favours its formation; for the deportment of all the bases is not the same in this process, which affords an interesting instance of the modifying influence exerted by circumstances over the play of chemical affinities; for here we see some of those al- kaloids which are thrown down from their salts by aqueous ammonia, in their turn displacing this alkali when the circum- stances are, as it were, reversed. It is also curious to observe how the presence of the fixed base determines the formation of hyposulphurous acid so rapidly in comparison with its produc- tion in aqueous sulphide of ammonium alone. I have also found that some of the alkaloids dissolve when a current of sulphuretted hydrogen is passed through water in which they are suspended,* and these fluids yield hypo- sulphites by digestion. The salts of this acid may also be obtained by double decomposition in cases where the alkaloids afford sufficiently soluble and neutral compounds with other acids to start from, and I have used this method in several instances. - The following is the account of the salts I have examined, and I am again indebted to Professor: Anderson, in whose laboratory in Glasgow this investigation was pursued, for some specimens of the pure alkaloids from his collection. Hyposulphite of Quinine.—This salt is obtained after about a day’s digestion of pure quinine with sulphide of ammonium and a little spirit of wine. It separates from the fluid in * When strychnine is treated in this way, it yields a crystalline hydro- sulphuret. The salt occurs in the form of colourless prismatic needles as deposited from cold water; it is very unstable, being resolved on standing into sulphuretted hydrogen, which escapes, and the pure base. This effect is brought about immediately on boiling the aqueous solution of the crystals. I am not aware that the hydrosulphuret of an organic base has been before observed. VOL. I. NO. I.—JAN. 1855. D 50 Professsor How on the Hyposulphites opaque white tufts of needles, which are rendered pure by one crystallization from water. It is perfectly neutral to test paper, dissolves readily in boiling water, and is imme- diately deposited on cooling, as it requires about 300 parts of this menstruum at the ordinary temperature, to retain it in solution. It is readily obtained by asable decomposition between hy- posulphite of soda and hot solution of neutral salts; but if the former reagent be added to a cold solution of the crystallized acid sulphate of quinine, the fluid becomes instantly milky, from the presence of precipitated sulphur, and smells of sul- phurous acid; and when it has become clear, the walls of the yessel are seen to be covered with the peculiar dendritic crys- tals of the hyposulphite of quinine. When dried, it afforded these results on analysis :— 3°883 grains, dried at 212°, gave 8:945 ... carbonic acid, and 2°365 ... water. 3°435 ... dried, gave by deflagration, 27080 ... sulphate of baryta. Experiment. Calculation. —— Carbon, . . 62°82 62:99 C,, 240 Hydrogen, . 6°76 6°56 H,,. 25 Nitrogen, . ais 7:34 N, 28 Oxygen, : ae 14°72 O, 56 Sulphur, « +830 8°39 8, (32 100°00 100°00 381 which agree perfectly with the formula for the dry salt, C,, H,, N, 0,, HO 8, 0, The crystals contain in addition two equivalents of water, § 3°640 grains, air-dry, lost at 212° (0:170 ... water. leading to a percentage of 4°67, and 4°51 is required by a ig for the formula C,, H,, N, 0,, HO, S, 0,42 aq. The mean results of the analyses of this substance by We- therill,* to which I have already alluded, were these :— * Liebig’s Annalen, lxvi., page 150. of the Organic Alkaloids. 51 Carbon. 6s 6. 61:35 Hydrogen, . . 6°72 Nitrogen, Chat to Oxygen, «+ + L138 Sulphur,» .-.« 8750 100°00 and the author concludes that quinine contains either 38 of 19 atoms of carbon, and 24 or 12 atoms of hydrogen, and the formula he calculated, C,, H,, N, O, HoS, O,, agreed per- fectly with his results. That which I have given, however, for quinine, is borne out by the researches of Strecker, before mentioned, and is now allowed to be the correct expression for the base. Hyposulphite of Cinchonine is so readily obtained by double decomposition, owing to its sparing solubility, that I at once prepared by this means a sufficiency of the salt for ana- lysis, though it is also formed by the other method. It is a very fine salt, crystallizing from water left at rest, in colour- less, transparent, four-sided prisms, of large size. It dissolves in hot water with ease, but requires 205 parts of this men- struum when cold. It is perfectly neutral, and gave the fol- lowing results on analysis :— 4°323 grains, dried at 212°, gave 110300 ... carbonic acid, and 2°745 ... ‘water. 4°3860 ... dried at 212°, gave, by deflagration, ~3'158 ~~... sulphate of baryta, Experiment. Calculation. Carbon, . * 64:98 64:98 C.. °° 228 Hydrogen, . 7:05 6°55 H 23 Nitrogen, s;o@ .¢ js. 7:97 N, 28 xy Zen;” is tion. 11°39 O, 40 pulpour, .-. _ 8-91 911 S, 32 100-00 100-00 351 which agree with the formula C,, H, N, 0, HOS, 0, The crystals contain one atom more of water. 4°985 grains, crystals, lost at 212° O120" ...) “water Die 52 Professor How on the Hyposulphites equal to 2-40 per cent., and 2:22 corresponds with the salt ; C,, H,, N,, HO 8, 0, + aq. This formula for cinchonine was arrived at by Stahlschmidt, as before mentioned, by acting upon the base with iodide of methyl. About the same time I had come to the same con- clusion, from working with iodide of ethyl,* but ceased pursuing the subject on finding that I was forestalled. Having some of the iodide of the ethyl base, however, I tried to form the hy- posulphite by double decomposition, but the former salt is so difficultly soluble in cold water as to crystallize out quite un- changed from the solutions of itself and hyposulphite of soda, mixed at the boiling-point. I had not a sufficient quantity of material to try any other process. Hyposulphite of Morphia.—I was unable in two trials to obtain this salt by digestion of the base with sulphide of am- monium, hyposulphurous acid was formed, but remained in com- bination with ammonia alone. I was more successful by operat- ing with concentrated hot solutions of hyposulphite of soda, and pure hydrochlorate of morphia. The fluid concreted to a solid mass, which, on being pressed when cold, and washed with a little cold water, was redissolved in the same liquid hot. It separated on cooling in white, silky, lustrous needles, very like the hydrochlorate. It was the pure hyposulphite. It is a comparatively soluble salt, requiring only 32 parts cold water for its solution; it is extremely soluble in this men- struum when boiling, less so in hot spirit, and so insoluble in the same at the ordinary temperature, that 1050 parts re- tain but one of the salt. It was quite neutral, and gave on analysis, 4°725 grains, dried at 212°, gave 9°755 ... earbonic acid, and 2°620 «+» water 5475 ... dried at 212°, gave 3°490 .., sulphate of baryta. * IT obtained an iodine salt, quite analogous to the product described by Stahlschmidt, crystallizing in fine 4-sided prisms ; it gave 28°14 per cent. iodine, and 28°23 corresponds with the formula :.— Cy Hy Ny O,, 0, H;.1 which represents iodide of ethylocinchonine. O_O of the Organic Alkaloids. 53 Expt. Calc. — Carbon, 56°49 56°66 C,, 204 Hydrogen, 6°16 Gil 5 3) 22 Nitrogen, one 3°88 N 14 Oxygen, vee 2447 0, 88 Sulphur, 8°74 S384 > SZ 100°00 100:00 360 ws mmm OO These results show that the salt dried at this temperature re- tains water, and has the composition, C,, H,, NO,, HO, S, 0,+2 HO. The crystals contain, in addition, two atoms of water; 5°08 grains, crystallized salt, lost at 212°, O25) .... ‘water. equal to 4°92 per cent., and 4°76 is required by this deduction of 2 aq. from the formula, C, ,H,, NO,» HO, S, 0,+4 HO. Hyposulphite of Codeine.—This salt is readily procured by digesting the pure base with sulphide of ammonium. The fluid is evaporated to dryness after twenty-four hours, and the residue redissolved in a small quantity of hot water. The new salt then separates on cooling in rhombic prisms with dihe- dral summits; from dilute fluids these crystals may be ob- tained of large size. It is a soluble salt, requiring only 18 parts of cold water and very little spirit to take it up; it is neutral to test paper. It gave on analysis, 8:°309 ... carbonic acid, and 2°210 ~=~«.«..~=s water { 3°998 grains, dried at 212°, gave 2°662 ... sulphate of baryta. 3°748 grains, dried at 212° gave Expt. Cale. —_—————_ Carbon, 60°46 60°67 C,, 216 Hydrogen, 6°55 Gp), 3822 Nitrogen, tee 3:93 N 14 Oxygen, “ Boas YOR G2 Sulphur, 9°12 8:938'"S, 32 ee me em 100°00 100-00 356 ore ae eel 54 Professor How on the Hyposulphites hence the formula of the salt, so dried, is C,, H,, NO, HO $, 0, the crystals contain in addition five atoms of water ; 4215 grains, crystalized salt, lost at 212° 0-457 ++» water the percentage resulting from this experiment is 10°84 : 11:22 is required to correspond with the formula ; C,, H,, NO, HO S,0,+5 aq. Hyposulphite of Strychnine—tThis salt is the principal product when the base is digested with sulphide of ammonium with free access of air. It is easily obtained by evaporation of the fluid after heating for a day or two, to complete dryness at 212°, and taking up the soluble portion of the residue in boiling water. The imperfectly examined product, elsewhere alluded to*, remains behind, and the fluid deposits the hypo- sulphite of strychnine on cooling, in colourless scales. By one other crystalization these may be obtained quite pure, and from a dilute solution I have seen them, even on the small scale, in rhomboidal plates with sides of one-eighth inch in length. It dissolves readily in boiling water, and of this liquid when cold, 114 parts retain but one of the salt. It is quite neutral and the following is its analysis, 4211 grains,t dried at 212°, gave 9-740. ... carbonic acid, PLO Dw criss water, f 5 015 grains,t dried at 212°, gave Cs ll 5 earbonic acid, and 2737) | o.. water, J 4°315 grains, dried at 212° gave { 2-610 ... sulphate of baryta, Expt. — ——— kL it. Cale. oS aes Carbon, 63°08 63°05 63°00 C, 252 Hydrogen, 5°79 6:06 6:00 H,, 24 Nitrogen, TOO ING ee Oxygen, ree tee 16°00 O;, 64 Sulphur, 8°29... «+. 800 S, 32 100°00 100°00 100-00 400 i * Trans. Royal Society of Edinb., vol. xxi., p. 33. + I am indebted for these analyses to Mr Robert Davidson, a gentleman studying in Dr Anderson’s laboratory. ———— a of the Organic Alkaloids. 55 whence it appears that the salt is not anhydrous at this tem- perature, but has the composition, C,, H,, N, 0,, HO, $,0,+ HO. and the crystals contain two atoms more of water, { 4475 grains, air-dry, lost at 212° Gol fare ne ve Water, giving 3-91 per cent., and 4:30 agrees with this loss by the salt, C,, H,, N, 0,, HO, S, 0,43 aq. Hyposulphite of Ethylostrychnine.—This salt cannot be obtained by the reciprocal action of the iodide of this base* and hyposulphite of soda, for, owing to the insolubility of the former in cold water, by far the greater part of it crystallizes out unchanged when the fluid cools. A small quantity of hy- posulphite, however, is procured by evaporation of the mother liquor; it crystallizes in delicate needles, very soluble in _ water and spirit. The same compound may be obtained by passing a stream of sulphuretted hydrogen into the carbonate of thylostrychnine,*} and allowing the liquid to stand exposed to a moderate heat. It is, however, in this case accompanied by a product which, to judge from appearances, is the same as that formed by the action of sulphide of ammonium upon strych- nine, already more than once alluded to. This substance. which has a yellow colour, and is of extreme solubility in spi- rit, and nearly insoluble in water, seems to prevent the hypo- sulphite of ethylostrychnine, which is present in abundance, from being easily purified or readily taking on the crystalline condition. For this reason I was unable, with my stock of substance, to obtain the salt in a state suitable for analysis. Hyposulphite of Brucine—When brucine is digested with sulphide of ammonium and a little spirit, this salt is obtained in the course of a few hours. It crystallizes from the liquid, and requires but one other crystallization from boiling water, for complete purification. It then occurs in tufts of colourless prismatic needles, which are difficultly soluble in cold water, * Trans. Royal Soc., Edin., vol. xxi., page 33 + Ibid., page 42. 56 Professor How on the Hyposulphites 105 parts retaining but one of the salt. It is perfectly neutral to test paper. In the analysis which follows, the salt was dried by simple exposure over oil of vitriol under a bell jar, as it decomposes in the water-bath, and only partially loses its water of crystallization 7m vacuo, and is, moreover, so hygro- scopic in this state, as to absorb moisture with great rapidity when exposed to the air. The results it afforded were these :— f 4757 grains, dried over HO SO., gave 9°870 ... carbonic acid, and 2:810° «... > water. 4670 ... dried over HO SO., gave ( 2°220 ... sulphate of baryta. Experiment. Calculation. a a Pe Carbon; ! 69 "5636 56°67 Ci are Hyrogen,. . 6°58 6°36 Hs 31 Nitrogen, we 5°74 Ny 28 Oxygen, . 4. ont 24°66 O,,.. 120 Sulphur . . 6°53 6°57 S, 32 100-00 100-00 487 which accord in a perfect manner with the formula C,, H,, N, 0,,HO,S8, 0,44 HO. The crystals contain another atom of water, which they lose over oil of vitriol. 0'175 ... water. equal to 1:79 per cent., and 1:81 is required to make up the salt, } 9°765 grains, lost C,, H,, N, 0,,HO S, 0,45 HO. When exposed to the temperature of 212°, the salt loses one-tenth of its weight in the course of time, and a portion of its sulphur evidently passes off in some form, for a specimen which had been heated to this point for about three days afforded less than 5 per cent. of sulphur on analysis. It was also found to be no longer soluble in boiling water, a consider- able amount of a brown resinous matter remaining undissolved. The fluid contained some hyposulphurous and much sulphuric acid. Hyposulphite of Papaverine.—I failed to obtain this salt of the Organic Alkaloids. 57 in appreciable quantity by the digestion process. I ascertained however that it is a soluble salt. Hyposulphite of Furfurine.— On addition of hyposul- phite of soda to a solution of crystallized hydrochlorate of this base, an oil separates, which passes, after some time, into co- lourless needles. Hyposulphite of Aniline may be formed by adding the soda salt to a strong solution of the neutral hydrochlorate of this vola- tile base, when it is speedily deposited in pearly scales. I could not obtain it pure, however, for it does not admit of re-crystal- lization. When taken up in warm water, in which it is readily soluble, the fluid becomes milky before the boiling point is reached; at this period aniline may be perceived to escape by its odour, and, immediately after, sulphurous acid is evolved in large quantity, and the salt is quite decomposed, the base not being a sufficiently powerful one to retain the hyposul- phurous acid. The following is a tabular view of the salts whose analyses are given in this paper :-— oo ratte of Quinine, dried at 212°, C,, H,, N, O,, HOS, O, crystallized, C, H,,N,O,, HOS, 0, + 2 aq. Cinchonine, dried at ais st C,, H,, N, 0,, HO 8, 0 crystallized, C,, H,, N, O, HO 8, O,+ aq. Morphia, dried at 212°, C,,H,, NO, HO S, 0,42 aq erystallized, C,, H,, NO, HO S, O,+4 aq ‘Codeine, dried at 212°, C,, H,, NO, HO S, . ... erystallized, C,H, NO, HOS, 0,+5 aq Strychnine, dried at { 3 212°, } C,, H, N, 0, HO S$, 0, +aq crystallized, OC, H,, N,O, HOS, 0,4 3aq Brucine, dried overSO,, C,, H,, N,O, HOS, 0,+4aq crystallized, OC,, H,, N, O, HOS, 0,45 aq On some of the more recent Changes in the Area of the Irish Sea. By the Rev. J. G. Cummine, M.A., F.G.S., Vice- Principal of King William’s College, Castletown, Isle of Man. In a memoir read before the Geological Section of the Bri- tish Association, at its meeting in Cambridge in 1845, I 58 Rev. J. G. Cumming on some of the more recent directed attention to certain accumulations in the Isle of Man of boulder clay with post-pleiocene sands, capped by ex- tensive terraces of drift gravel, and from an examination of the contents of these beds I endeavoured to trace out the gene- ral direction of the currents in the neighbouring seas at the period of their deposition. In the present paper I wish to point to a few facts bearing upon the subsequent removal of a large portion of them, and the formation of the basin now occupied by the Irish Sea. I look upon the Isle of Man as affording, from its central position, an admirable clue to the changes which have taken place in this area, and as presenting to us a gauge by which to measure the relative level of the sea and land in the middle portion of the British Isles. For there is no evidence of any elevation or depression in more recent geological times affect- ing the Isle of Man per se, and not extending in a greater or less degree to the surrounding countries. All the evidences of later movements appear to be common to it and the sur- rounding coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. I do not now enter into the question as to how the changes in the relative levels of sea and land were brought about, whe- ther by the alternate elevation and depression of continents affecting the general level of the ocean, the change in intensity of gravitation at particular localities, or the absolute depres- sion and elevation by volcanic or other agency of this portion of the globe. I have now simply to trace out certain facts _ indicative of considerable movements of an oscillatory charac- ter affecting the relative level of the sea and land, and to en- deavour to point out those of the most recent date which have given their present contour to the shores surrounding the Irish Sea. In various memoirs which I have read before the Geologi- cal Society of London during the last ten years, I have de- tailed the facts which lead me to the conclusion that during the deposit of the boulder-clay (which was a period of depres- sion, and in which the climate of this region was of a more arctic character than is at this present time experienced), there was a gradual submergence of the Isle of Man, and (as I believe), of the coasts of the countries immediately around it "| Changes in the Area of the Irish Sea. 59 to an extent of at least 1600 feet. At one period during the re-elevation (which was to an extent of about 15 feet above the present high-water-mark), there was a stationary interval, the sea-bed of the time of the formation of the great drift- gravel being left dry, and forming an extensive plain stretch- ing out and uniting the present countries of England, Scot- land, Ireland, and Wales. I believe that at the same time England was similarly united to the Continent of Europe. Then succeeded the second Hlephantine period in which took place the immigration into these regions (amongst other quadrupeds now herein extinct), of the Cervus Megaceros or Great Irish Elk, whose remains have been found in the Isle of Man embedded in fresh water marls occupying basin-shaped depressions in the great drift-gravel plain. The presence of these remains indicates the existence of large treeless districts during a considerable time in which the race greatly multiplied. Into the changes of climate and surface of the country which led to its ultimate extinc- tion I will not now inquire. The basins containing the marls in which the remains are found, and the plains themselves, have since been covered with vegetation, and are still in many parts occupied by beds of turf, in which are found the trunks of trees, chiefly oak and elm. But during the same period the ocean appears to have been quietly eating back its way into this terrace of the drift gravel, and resuming its more ancient sway, separating again Ireland and the Isle of Man from Great Britain, and cutting off the further immigration of animals and plants. Along all our coasts we find cliffs of this drift-gravel retiring in many places to a little distance inland, but where the gravel rests upon palzeozoic rocks forming often part of the present coast- line. It would be fruitless to speculate upon the length of that stationary period during which the process of the dis- truction of this upheaved sea-bed was going on. To excavate Castletown bay, in the south of the Isle of Man, alone must have occupied many hundred years. How many thousands must have been taken up in cutting out, by the same process 60 Rev. J. G. Cumming on some of the more recent and removing the materials between the southern extremity of the Isle of Man and a line extending from St David’s Head to Carnsore point. How vain the attempt to measure the time. That the destructive action was more rapid and intense from the south than the north, appears from the fact, that whilst in the north of the Isle of Man we have still remaining a tract of about fifty square miles of pleistocene deposits, in the south they are only preserved where resting upon the paleeozoic rocks and at the head of deep bays. Why this should be the case we can immediately perceive by contrasting the narrow North Channel with the more open St George’s Channel to the south. One of the clearest proofs of the long-continued action of the sea, at a higher relative level than at present of about fifteen feet, is to be found in the Isle of Man along the south- eastern, southern and south-western coasts, in the presence of a series of water-worn caves, which are hardly reached by the highest tides which now occur. No one can inspect these coasts without observing the trace of extensive denudation and destruction above the present sea-line. The Eye of the Calf, the Burrough and Fistard Head, drilled completely through ; deep caves in the paleeozoic rocks at Peel, Brada, Perwick, Langness, Santon, Port Soderic ; deep indentations in the drift-gravel wherever the sea wall of paleeozoic rocks has been broken by a chasm, or descends below the line of high water. This is instanced in the horse-shoe bays and creeks of Port-Erin, Perwick, Port St Mary, Poolvash, Castle- town, Derbyhaven, Coshnahawin, Saltric, Greenock, Douglas, Growdale, Laxey, and Cornah—all embraced by hard por- pheries, basalts, schists, and carboniferous limestone, which are capped by the drift-gravel. In most instances, these bays and creeks present, at their head or innermost recesses, perpendicular cliffs of the boulder- clay and drift-gravel, not rising in every instance from the present high water-mark, but from a level about fifteen feet above it, and having a low raised beach of a more recent date between them. Of this lower raised beach I have now to speak. At the foot of certain slightly inland cliffs of the post-pleiocene period, Changes in the Area of the Irish Sea. 61 _ on the coasts of the Isle of Man, England, Ireland, and Scot- land, we have, extending down to the present high water-mark, and of various breadths, a low beach containing organic re- mains of the fauna now inhabiting our seas; at any rate, I am not aware of any extinct species being found in it as in the pleistocene beds. The slope is generally gradual from the base of the pleisto- cene inland cliff to the present sea-level, and on it are situated the older parts of many of our sea-port towns. Instances will probably occur to many here. The question is, does the present high water-mark really determine the ex- tent of the elevation of the land since the formation of the cliffs in the pleistocene beds? I believe not. The elevation must at one time have been greater than it is at present ; and it may have been to such an extent as a second time to lay dry a large portion of the area of the Irish sea. Why so? We find on various parts of the coasts submerged forests. The growth of these forests we have good reason for attribut- ing to a period posterior to the boulder-clay and drift-gravel, posterior to the formation of the inland cliffs in the pleisto- cene series. That they must have been so in some instances is certain ; for, in the south of the Isle of Man, at Strandhall in Pooloash Bay, we find a submerged forest with the roots of the trees running down into the boulder-clay ; the boulder- clay itself resting upon limestone-beds, grooved and scratched in direction N.E. and S.W. very nearly, and containing scratched boulders. As the drift-gravel was formed from the destruction of the boulder-clay, during the period of the re- elevation of the island, this at present submerged forest must also have grown after the formation of the drift-gravel ter- races, and after the formation of the cliffs in it, and in the boulder-clay. In other words, it must have grown upon an area left dry by an elevation of the Irish Sea bottom, at an epoch subsequent to that long stationary period during which the sea eat back its way into that vast plain connecting the present British Isles, on which the Megaceros and other ani- mals, which are now here extinct, lived and roamed. | The submergence of these forests points again to another subsidence of this area to the extent indicated by the present 62 Mr David Forbes on the Chemical high-water mark. Whether it may have occurred, or been going on, during the historic period, will probably be a “vexata questio.” It has been stated to me, on good autho- tity that, about forty years ago, after a violent storm which tore up large quantities of the submerged turf in Pooloash Bay, some remains of buildings were observed between high and low water. We venture to bring forward these few facts with the view of affording a clue to the formation of the present con- tour of the coasts of the Irish Sea, and of directing the atten- tion of naturalists to the manner and period or periods in which occurred the immigration into the British isles of plants and animals, and also the manner in which the immigration may have been stopped, renewed, and stopped again. eee, On the Chemical Composition of some Norwegian Minerals. By Davin Fores, F.G.S8., A.LC.E. During a residence of many years in Norway I have availed myself of the opportunity thereby afforded of studying the mi- neralogy of several districts of that country, with special re- ference to the circumstances under which the minerals occur- red, and the causes which led to their appearance. In order to do this with effect, I found it necessary to enter upon their chemical investigation, and it then became evident that, the occurrence in these minerals of elements so rare as to preclude chemists in general from studying their properties with that precision which has been the case with most of the other elementary bodies, involved the subject in much obscu- rity, and before I could have confidence in the results obtained, I was compelled to acquire some knowledge of the characters of several bodies which had not previously come under my obser- vation, as, for example, thorina, yttria, tantalum,* columbium,* » It must here be observed with reference to the names of tantalum and columbium that the original nomenclature has been strictly adhered to in this communication, tantalum being considered as the metal discovered by Eke- berg in 1802, in the Kimitotantalite, whilst columbium was previously dis- covered in 1801, by Hatchett, in the American columbite; this has since been called niobium by Rose.— Vide Connell, London Philosophical Magazine, 1854, p. 461. Composition of some Norwegian Minerals. 63 glucina, zirconia, lanthanium, &c. It was only after I had familiarized myself as much as possible with these substances, that I proceeded to the analysis of a series of the Norwegian minerals which I had collected, paying especial attention to those containing the rare elements; and as many of the results obtained appeared likely to prove of interest, and some, appa- rently new species, were determined, it 1s proposed to com- municate them from time to time. [.—EUXENITE. This mineral was first found by Keilhau at Jolster in Nordre Bergenstift, and was recognised as a distinct species by Scheerer, who analysed it. Some time after a mineral was found by Weibye, near Arendal, supposed to be yttrotantalite, but on analysis by Scheerer (who states Tvedestrand as its locality), was proved to be euxenite.* When Mr Dahl and myself examined this district} we found two minerals pretty nearly agreeing with Scheerer’s description in external ap- pearance, but on further examination they were found to differ greatly from each other ; one, however, found at Alve on Tro- moen, an island near Arendal was evidently the euxenite of Scheerer. This we found crystallized in prisms apparently belonging to the rhombic system, and well defined, but, from the faces being rough, and invariably covered by a thin greenish-gray scale, they could not be accurately measured. The following measurements taken by Mr Dahl must, there- fore, be considered only as approximative. Fig. 1. 6 iM =, 117° .and (& + s = '126° ae m:Mz= 90° r:m — 154° 80’ ao tao 30, or 140° 15’ OF .= NE = LOT” Alsoa = P,r=mP o, Wheremis N11; M= © Be yen Eco, ica aE Fracture conchoidal, with no trace of cleavage ; colour, black ; * Poggendorf Annalen, vol. 50, p. 149. + Norske Magazin for Naturvidenskab, viii., p. 3. 64 Mr David Forbes on the Chemical streak, reddish-brown. Lustre, brilliant and metallo-vitreous ; translucent with a reddish-brown colour when in very thin splinters. Hardness, 6°5. Specific gravity taken at 60°F, of a small crystal = 4:99, and of a pure fragment of a large crystal = 4°89. Heated in a glass-tube it does not change colour or lose lustre. Before the blowpipe, infusible and. unchanged. With borax in the oxidating flame it gives a brownish-yellow glass some- what lighter in colour when cold. In the reducing flame it is unchanged, even on flaming. With phosphate of soda and ammonia it gives a glass which is greenish-yellow whilst hot, but nearly colourless on cooling. Gives no reaction either of titanium or manganese, although it contains both these metals. The analysis was conducted as follows :— 20-81 grains of the pure mineral impalpably powdered were ignited in a gold crucible and lost 0°60 grains, becoming some- what lighter in colour. 160 grains bisulphate of potash were then added, gradually fused, and kept melted for several hours until the mineral appeared completely decomposed. As much as possible was removed from the crucible whilst in a pasty state, softened with cold water in an agate mortar, and reduced carefully to fine powder ; the crucible was likewise washed with cold water, and the whole being made up to 16 oz., was allowed to digest for 18 hours at the ordinary temperature in a beaker. The clear supernatant fluid was carefully decanted off; 16 oz. more cold water added and allowed again to digest for 24 hours ; this was repeated a third time and the insoluble mat- ter then thrown on to a filter, well washed with cold water, dried, and incinerated. It weighed 8:03 grains. This residue on heating became of a brilliant yellow colour, but was quite white when cold, and possessed all the characters of columbic acid.” 7 The solution was now boiled for some time, when a precipi- tate fell, which was washed, dried, and incinerated, and * As to whether the columbic acid might contain also tantalic acid I am not prepared to say, as I believe there is not at present any accurate means of se- parating these two substances. ae Composition of some Norwegian Minerals. 65 weighed 2°99 grains. It gave the reaction of titanic acid be- fore blowpipe, but evidently contained columbic acid, as it be- came bright yellow on ignition, while it was of the usual colour when cold. Iam not acquainted with any means of separat- ing these acids completely. The solution was now precipitated by ammonia, and the precipitate filtered off and carefully washed. In the filtrate a small amount of lime and magnesia were respectively deter- mined by oxalate of ammonia and phosphate of ammonia. The precipitate itself was dissolved in hydrochloric acid, rendered as nearly neutral as possible by ammonia, and pre- cipitated by oxalate of ammonia—a white precipitate fell which was collected and washed. The washings at first went milky through the filter, but it was found that it could be prevented by adding a few drops of oxalate of ammonia to the wash water. This precipitate was ignited, dissolved in hydrochloric acid, and the cerium separated by sulphate of potash, filtered off and determined as usual. The yttria was precipitated by ammonia from the solution and dried. It then weighed 9:24 grains, but as it did not look well I re-dissolved it and again precipitated, when it was found to weigh only. 6:11 grains, so that the first precipitate was evidently a basic salt. The filtrate from the precipitation of the oxalates was now precipitated by hydrosulphate of ammonia,—and this precipi- tate after solution in nitrohydrochloric acid was treated with potash to separate alumina, and the uranium afterwards sepa- rated from the iron by carbonate of ammonia. The following results were thus obtained :— Grains, Employed in analysis, : . 20°81 Loss on ignition—reckoned as water, . 0:60 Columbic acid, : : 8:03 Titanic acid (with some do. satiate! 2°99 Carbonate of lime, d : : 51 Phosphate of magnesia, : - *44, Alumina, ‘ ‘ 4 : 65 Sesquioxide of iron, . ; . 46 Oxide of uranium, : : : 113 Yttria, 3 : : : G1 Sesquioxide of cerium, : AS i678 VOL. I. NO. I.— JAN. 1855. 1 66 ‘Mr David Forbes on the Chemical Which, when tabulated will stand as follow :— In 20°81. In 100. Oxygen. Columbie acid, j 8:03 38°58 2 Titanic acid, with some ) ,. 52:94 , columbie acid, } hie a ore Alumina, 5 ‘65 3°12 1:45 Lime, : : ‘28 TSO! = 0:38 Magnesia, 04 0°19 0:07 Yttria, F F 6:11 29°36 12 Protoxide of cerium, 68 o:34 0:47 Protoxide of iron, . ‘41 1:98 0:43 Protoxide of uranium, 1-08 5°22 0:61 Waiter, ; : “60 2°88 2°56 20:87 100°37 As we have no fixed atomic equivalent for either columbium or yttrium, we cannot calculate the amount of oxygen, but taking them at the old numbers of 180 and 382, the oxy- gen will be 4:53 in the columbic acid, and 5:87, in the yttria, which will make the relation of the amounts of oxygen as 10°32 in the acids to 10°73 in the bases; but it is useless at- tempting to deduce a formula from this analysis until we have more information as to the composition and atomic equi- valent of columbic acid and yttria. For the sake of comparison Scheerer’s result is annexed :— From From Jolster. Arendal. Sp. Gr. 4°60. Sp. Gr. 4:73 to 4°76. Metallic acids, . 57:60 53°64 Yttria, . : 25:09 28:97 Protox. of uranium, 6°34 7°58 Protox. of cerium, 3°14 2:91 Protox, of iron, — 2°60 Lime, . y 2-47 oes Magnesia, 0:29 —s Water, . : 397 4:04 98-90 99-74 When comparing the mineral here analysed with that from Arendal by Scheerer we find that the sum of the metallic acids, and the yttria, agree, but that Scheerer has no alumina, lime, or magnesia, and considerably more water and protoxide of uranium than I have found. Composition of some Norwegian Minerals. 67 Il.—TYRITE. The other mineral which in external appearances might be confounded with Euxenite, was found on the same island by Mr Dahl, at a place called Hampemyr, and was crystallized in prisms, having a quadratic section, but too irregular and unreflecting to admit of measurement, and one apparently belonging to the tetragonal system. Fracture conchoidal ; and no trace of cleavage apparent; exceedingly brittle; hardness 6:5. The specific gravity of a crystal was 5°30, and of a massive piece was 5°56 at 60° Fahrenheit. It scolour and lustre were perfectly the same as those of Euxenite, and it is translucent in thin splinters. When heated in a glass tube it decrepitates strongly, evolves water, and the powder resulting from its decrepitation is of a brilliant yellow colour. Before the blow-pipe it is soluble in borax to a glass of a reddish yellow colour when warm, but colourless on cooling. In phosphate of soda and ammonia it is soluble with difficulty, and appears to leave portions undissolved. The glass is greenish yellow whilst hot, and green when cold. The analysis was conducted as follows :— A portion, in fine powder, weighing 29-42 grains, was cautiously heated to redness, when it became of a greyish yellow colour, and the loss was estimated as water. Another portion of mineral finely pulverized was digested with pure concentrated sulphuric acid in a platinum vessel for a considerable time; it appeared to decompose easily and completely, leaving a hile powder, which was several times successively digested with sulphuric acid well worked with water, and weighed. This substance reacted as columbic acid, was of a pure white colour when cold, but became intensely yellow when heated, recovering, however, its original colour completely on cooling. It was readily soluble in hydrofluoric acid, and this solution deposited stellar groups of crystals on concentration. The solution was then precipitated by ammonia, filtered, and lime determined in the filtrate by means of oxalate of ammonia ; no magnesia was found to be present. E 2 68 Mr David Forbes on the Chemical The precipitate on filter was dissolved in a little dilute sulphuric acid, then greatly diluted with water, and boiled for some time, when a small quantity (0:26 gr.) of a white pre- cipitate fell, which was weighed and tested for titanic acid, but found only to consist of columbic acid, (that is, if no tantalum is present, as no means of separating them is known,) it was therefore added to the former. The solution after this precipitation was supersaturated with ammonia in excess, and then oxalic acid added until a very faint acid reaction was perceptible. The oxalates thus preci- pitated were filtered off, washed, ignited, and dissolved in hydrochloric acid; the solution treated with sulphate of potash to separate the cerium and yttria, which were both determined in the usual manner. The filtrate from the precipitated oxalates was now preci- pitated by hydrosulphuret of ammonia, and the alumina, iron, and uranium determined as in the previous analysis. The results obtained were as follows :— Mineral employed for water determination, 29°42 grs. Loss on ignition, : 1+3a7 Mineral employed in analysis, ; 12:36 4 ie Columbic acid obtained, } : 5:29 ,, Do. on boiling, , ' ' OD Gere Carbonate of lime, : : O-ls s. Tenited oxalates, : ; 437 Ytiria, : j COW fae Sesquioxide of cerium, i , O:Fil148; of iron, : ; 0°86 _,, Oxide of uranium, ; ‘ 0°39) ue. Alumina, : ; : On Dime From which the per centage calculated will be :— Oxygen Columbic acid, ; 44:90 Q Alumina, 5°66 2°64. Lime, 0°81 0°23 Yttria, ; 29.72 ? Protoxide of cerium, 5°35 0:77 ae OL Tani, 3°03 0°35 of iron, 6°26 1°38 Water, 3 4°52 4:02 100°25 If we calculate the yttria and columbic acid as before, the : Composition of some Norwegian Minerals. 69 ratio between the acids and bases are as 5:28 to 11°31, which is most likely as 2 to 1, although it is impossible, as in the case of Euxenite, to deduce any satisfactory formula before we are better acquainted with the compounds in question. From this analysis the mineral appears to be a new species, and it has accordingly been called Tyrite.* It can be most readily distinguished from the Euxenite by the following cha- racters :— By its specific gravity much higher than that of Huxenite, and by being brittle. By its behaviour when heated. By its re- actions with phosphate of soda and ammonia. And, lastly, by its chemical composition, and the absence of titanic acid. In short, though it is impossible at present to fix a formula for it, it must be regarded as mainly consisting of a hydrous columbate of yttria. I1I.— YTTROTITANITE OR KEILHAUITE. This mineral was first found by Weibye, at Buden, an island, near Arendal, and was analysed simultaneously by Scheerer and Erdmann, who respectively named it yttrotitanite and keilhauite—it was not crystalized although it possessed two cleavages. Mr Dahl has however found it crystallized at Arkereen, in regular and distinct crystals, belonging to the monoklinohedric system. Some of these weighed as much as 23 |bs., and from their size and rough surfaces could only be measured by the hand goniometer. The following figures give the crystalline forms :— Fig. 3. Fig. 4. * From Tyr, the Norwegian god of war, this mineral being discovered at about the same time as the commencement of the present war. 70 Mr David Forbes on the Chemical From which form approximative measurements were obtained by the common goniometer. Mr 147° li re ped —~ 149° Min = 125° a: M — De pee ST, te 153°30’ =O ea 143°30’ The angle M: T is the average of measurement from four different crystals. As the junction of T:'T is always cut off by the plane M, and all the crystals hitherto obtained are hemitropes, so that the planes T:T, which form an acute angle, belong each to its own half of the crystal, the direct determination of the angle T: T is too uncertain, but reckoned from M: T = 147°, it will be 114°. The angle a = 58°. From these data Mr Hansteen has had the kindness to cal- culate the following values :— Axes a: 6: c¢ = 0.835: 1: 0°766, and 2: 1; > DAO, 42! M +...) te ee S:+o0 = 149°, 14’ a: = (eae 4a RE rl a ce a 7 BW Rall La eagc6 ==yits 1' ps Bt el dh Sn —o0: oP = 148°, 84’ 720° The observed forms are— a =” oF SO | — P aa = —_— P r = 2P s = SE 4 Pp A ee P © M = woPo The positive terminal planes have on most of the crystals a strong vitreous lustre, as if polished by friction, and have a great number of small furrows arranged in rows parallel to the edges between T and + 0. The vertical prismatic planes are smooth, but possess much less lustre. The negative ter- minal planes are rough, and irregular by reason of an oscil- lating combination between the planes—o and T, by which Composition of some Norwegian Minerals. 71 the crystals sometimes are lengthened in this direction, as shown by Fig. 4. The cleavage planes are very distinct, and are parallel to the plane 7; and it was easy to cleave out pieces of a rhombic section, the angle being about 138°, no third cleavage was observed. The specific gravity at 60° Fahr. was found to be 5°53. In analysing it I determined to follow the method employed by Scheerer, and in consequence 22°78 grains were digested in hydrochloric acid, by which it was readily decomposed. Much water was then added, and the whole filtered from the silica; but I found that on attempting to precipitate the titanic acid from this solution by boiling, as stated by Scheerer, no pre- cipitation occurred ; the solution was therefore thrown down by ammonia, washed, and re-dissolved in dilute sulphuric acid, when a small quantity of silica remained undissolved, which was filtered off, and much water then added to this solution, and boiled when the titanic acid was readily thrown down and weighed. On ignition it was found to be slightly tinged with iron. In the filtrate from the ammoniacal precipitate, lime was precipitated by oxalic acid ; the oxalate collected, ignited, and dissolved in acetic acid, to separate some manganese which was precipitated with it, and determined as sulphate. The solution from this gave a precipitate of oxalate of lime. And on evaporation of the filtrate a small quantity of inso- luble matter remained which reacted for titanic acid before blow-pipe, and was considered as such. The silica was treated with hydrofluoric acid, which left a very small quantity of titanic acid undissolved. The solution from which the titanic acid had been separated by boiling was now neutralized by ammonia, and precipitated by oxalate of ammonia, and the yttria determined in this as usual. The filtrate from this last precipitate was found to contain iron, alumina, and glucina, which, after precipitation by hy- drosulphuret of ammonia, were all determined in the usual way; the glucina being separated by carbonate of ammonia, and the sesquioxide of iron freed from alumina by caustic potash. The results obtained were :— 72 On the Chemical Composition of Norwegian Minerals. Mineral employed, : : «22-78 gna Impure Silica obtained, j eS EE, Titanic acid, from do.,_ . ; y aN EE Titanic acid, from solution, . j gy Aga Titanic acid, with trace of iron, ati ac i ea Silica, from ammoniacal Shag eck OOP AY. Yttria, ‘ ; , y ob OD i sa Sulphate of lime, : F oxi hOB Olas Sesquioxide of iron, ~ . : a kee eae Alumina, . ‘ - ; Pee i: 1: eee. Glucina, , : . 6 OO he oe Oxide of manganese, : OOPS, From which the following Setegunge seats ‘ral be ob- tained :— In 22°78.) '" Tn'100. Oxygen. RUA R Ss ce POC es ter ae 31:33 1119 26:24 Tian acd, . ...... ooo 28°84. 11°18 Pitoninas ts? OF USA ASS 8:03 ee 4-07 Ghiema) brie yi Gerke "52 32 Imes wut. vliidetic al S49 19-56 5°56 12°16 A ai 7 A:09 4:78 95 8-09 Praoaide ORATON, «| sat OG 6°87 1b manganese, *06 28 06 22°64 99°41 This analysis agrees pretty well with those of Erdmann and Scheerer, with the exception that the yttria is not more than half the amount found by them, and the lime and alu- mina are both somewhat higher. Erdmann gives the for- mula, as 3Ca°S? +RSi+ YT which, however, does not seem to be correct, as he supposes the titanic acid to be entirely combined with the yttria, which here is evidently not the case. It seems probable to me that the yttria only replaces a part of the lime, and although it may be an essential ingredient, in so far as.it may never be absent, still it most probably does not play so important part as to show itself in the formula. Supposing the titanic acid to play the part of a base, we shall find that the ‘oxygen of the base to that of the silica will not be far from the ratio of 3: 2, not farther indeed than the several analyses Professor Harkness on Mineral Charcoal. 73 differ amongst themselves. This will, therefore, be the same as Sphene, so that the formula might be considered as as the percentage of silica is the same asin Sphene. It ap- pears to me doubtful whether we can consider any mineral as true silico-titanates or silico-tantalates; and it is probably preferable not to do so, on account of the great différences in properties between silicic and titanic acids. On Mineral Charcoal. By Ropert Harxness, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., Professor of Mineralogy and Geology, Queen’s Col- lege, Cork. Mineral Charcoal, or, as it is termed in some parts of Eng- land, “ Mother Coal,” occurs in greater or less abundance in almost every description of coal.* It usually presents itself in the form of a black, pulverulent, fibrous, silky-looking sub- stance, coating or embedded in the ordinary mass of the coal. Sometimes, however, instead of having a fibrous structure, it is somewhat granular, and both these forms may, in some cases, be seen in the same coal. This substance, when fibrous, makes its appearance in a shred-like state, but when it has a granular aspect it is fre- quently manifest as a thin layer covering a face of the coal, and these layers often form laminz among the seams of coal. The occurrence of mineral charcoal in fossil fuel is not a cir- cumstance which always prevails, and there are certain con- ditions connected with coal-seams which lead to the preva- lence, in some beds of coal, of this matter, while in others it makes its appearance only to a very slight extent. On seeing a portion of mineral charcoal embedded in a mass of ordinary coal, it will be at once perceived that it must have owed its occurrence, in such a situation, to the influence of causes which have not operated uniformly on coal-seams; and when we see a considerable mass of this substance associated * The substance here termed mineral charcoal is not, in its chemical compo- sition, in all cases allied to anthracite, but is that matter which, in its external aspect, somewhat resembles wood charcoal, and to which the name mineral charcoal has been applied by mineralogists, 74 Professor Harkness on Mineral Charcoal. together, it will easily be perceived that this association is the result of partial drifting, since we have mineral charcoal so combined that, although each separate piece has its fibres parallel, the whole of the pieces are confusedly heaped to- gether. This partial drifting of the matter which now occurs in the form of mineral charcoal is borne out by other circumstances, which at once show that this substance must, to a certain ex- tent, be regarded as an accidental feature in coal. Among these circumstances, we find the evidence afforded by the in- terculated strata is such as to justify the conclusion that when this mineral charcoal makes its appearance in consi- derable masses in a fibrous state, it owes its position to partial drifting. In the sections given by Mr Dawson of the coal-measures of South Joggins, Nova Scotia (Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., Vol. X., p. 3), we have two instances given of the occurrence of mineral charcoal, and in both of these the nature of the accompanying deposits is such as to indicate the operation of - drifting causes. In the first instance, we have a “ coal, with much mineral charcoal,” 8 inches thick, lying upon “ under-clay, hard and arenaceous,” 8 feet in thickness, a description of floor which shows considerable motion in the water from whence it ema- nated. The second instance furnishes us with “coal and bituminous shale, prostrate trunks of trees, and mineral char- coal,” half-an-inch in thickness, resting on “ sandstone with clay partings,” also indicating the prevalence of motion during the deposition of this bed containing mineral charcoal. The coal-fields of Great Britain, likewise, provide us with proofs that this matter also occurs among the coal in conse- quence of partial drifting. As an instance of this, in two coal-seams which are wrought near Sanquhar, in Dumfries- shire, where the great coal-field of Scotland has its most southerly limit, we meet with the same causes influencing the appearance of mineral charcoal. Here we have a coal called the Calmstone-seam, from the circumstance that its roof is formed of fine indurated light- grey clay, a deposit which must have sprung from a compara- tively tranquil! medium, and in this coal we have few traces of Professor Harkness on Mineral Charcoal. 75 the mineral charcoal, the coal having a bright aspect. In the other coal, which is known under the name of the Creepy, we have abundance of this substance, more particularly in the higher part of the seam, which in some spots is absolutely composed of mineral charcoal. The nature of the deposits overlying this bed of coal points out from what circumstances it derived its peculiar composition. The roof of the Creepy- coal consists of a flaggy sandstone, such as would arise from the operation of water in motion, in the form of currents; and previous to the deposition of this sandstone roof these currents carried portions of plants, which became water-logged and fell to the bottom, forming the mineral charcoal which enters so largely into the composition of the Creepy-coal. The occurrence of mineral charcoal is not confined to the coal of the carboniferous formations alone. The oolitic coal of Virginia also affords this matter, and the tertiary coals of Great Britain, as these are developed at Bovey Tracy, also furnish ‘us with mineral charcoal. These, however, differ in their nature, and likewise in their aspect, from those which are obtained from the true coal-fields of Great Britain, yet there is every reason to conclude that they originated from the same conditions. As regards the nature and origin of mineral charcoal, the appearance which this substance presents at once furnishes sufficient proof of its being vegetable matter. However, as it has both a granular and a fibrous aspect, so it seems to differ in its vegetable nature. When submitted to the microscope, the granular variety does not afford the same regular struc- ture as does the fibrous kind. The former appears to consist of a mass of cells which are comparatively only slightly elon- ‘gated, and these have, so far as can be seen, the structure of simple cellular tissue, which has probably been derived from the ordinary plants usually entering into the composition of coal. When this tissue is sufficiently hardened to admit of its being sliced transversely, an arrangement of cells in a hexagonal form is manifest, a description of tissue which occurs in the woody cylinder of sigillaria as well as in the gymnospermous vegetation which makes its appearance in the carboniferous formation. Concerning the more fibrous variety of mineral charcoal, ~ 76 Professor Harkness on Mineral Charcoal. this exhibits, not only when viewed under ordinary circum- stances, but likewise when submitted to microscopical exami- nation, a more highly organized structure than that which exists in the granular kind: £ foo) ~ Professor Calvert on the Act 110 proportions of from two to four per cent. on cotton and flax fabrics, and added to their scorched appearance. The results observed are shown in Table III, "m9}301 011n% ‘poanfut yonur £10 AQ ‘poanfar yonyq ‘ploy exo use ove *poanfat Apysrs 4104 “poanfur yonyy *poanfar yonyq ‘poanfur ApqSts £10 A ‘ploy o1I4IO “2s i o ; : ‘ploy od11e418 7, ‘poanfur ygonyy *peanfut yonur L104 ‘poinfur Apyq43119 *yue0 ted F Sururezuoo 1048 AA "09409 cleats § *003409 *aouLTy "00309 “usury ‘0 QSL ‘DO .00T | “DeL8 ‘II TIdvy, : -peanfar qonut L190, ‘pounfar a10yq *poanfur roy} ey ‘ploy o11exQ +" ase | ‘poanfur AT SITg ‘peanfar ApqS1js A104 “od ‘od ‘PlOV o1I}z10 ‘poanfar *poan fut ° . ‘ply 1vzIVy, A “oq | AyyySijs Aro A ‘oq | Apqsrts £194 oq | ‘yu00 zed g Surureyu0o 1038 AA ‘pean -ut ATVqSIIS ‘poinfaruy *‘poanfuru *poinfutug *poanfara *poinfaiu * ‘Quoye 1038M UT pesiowWy *09}09 *ueuly "007309 “usul'y *u09}09 *mOurT ‘DO 9ST ‘OD .00T ‘0 .08 ‘T aIadvyL 111 Organic Acids on Cotton and Flax Fibres. *painoloosip ‘og you4ynq ‘poanfay *paainopoo ‘peInopOosIp -SIp jou 4nq Apysys 4104 ‘poanfur yonyy ‘pofoajsop oyinb Ay1oeuey, ‘sjzed UI peanozpoostp ATIqSITS *sjaed ur eSuTy UMOIq v jo puv ‘poanfar qonut 410A *Su013s Aron TINS *peziuo0g *poanfut -1eo APWYSIG youu AroA *10}}09 ‘u9UrT ‘OD 96L _*poanfur Apqstg *‘poinfat qonur JON ‘poanfur yonur £10 A ‘poinfur yonu JON "onys YIM JUewtIedxe Surpuods -91100 oy} UBY} pean{ul eso, *poinfar qonur JON *poanfar yon] 103400 ‘UdUTT "0 00L *‘peanfar *poanfur ATq Apygsys AtaA -tyda010d yon; ‘pornfar Apyqs1s A190 A *pornfur qonyT -poinfar Apyqysizs A190 A ‘poanfur ANqSIT9 *poantuy *poanfar Apyst[s £190 A *poinfurun ‘poanl Ajuereddy =-ur AMYstTg *110}}09 *uoury 0) 08 ‘TIL FIsviyE ‘plow dI[e@xO eee ece ‘PPV OMHO a: ay ee ee ‘PPV o14e4 18], jue sad g Suruteyu0g —SSVIONIST ‘ploy o1[exo wre ses ‘ploy A) 6 Ue) eve eee : : ‘ploy o11e4 -I@y, yue0 Jed g Sururezu0g —way ‘ploy dI[exQ eee eve PPLOV OLS) = - eam bes ecu ‘proy o14e9 “req, yueo sed g Sururezu0g —an 19 112 Professor Calvert on the Action of The above experiments were undertaken with the view of throwing some light on what is sometimes observed when fa- brics printed with the above acids are passed over heated cy- linders or plates; and I deemed it advisable to inquire also into their action when applied to goods which were simply dried in the atmosphere and afterwards steamed, as is often the case in block-printing. For this purpose I prepared two series of experiments similar to those above described, taking care to separate the specimens, by first wrapping each in paper, and then placing them between folds of white calico. These samples, so arranged, were then submitted respectively for half an hour to steam having 3, 12, and 45 lb. pressure; and the results, which are contained in the subjoined table, were very surprising, as the fibres were found to be much more injured than when they had been submitted to dry heat. STEAM AT A PRESSURE OF | 3 lb. 45 lb. Water alone, . ‘ 2 p. ct. Tartaric Acid, 4p.ct. Do. . 2 p. ct. Oxalic, 4 p. ct. Do. Gum alone, " : 2p.ct- Tartaric Acid, 4 p. ct. Do. oe 2p. ct. Oxalic, 4 p.ct. Do. Starch alone, ; 2 p.ct. Tartaric Acid, 4p.ct. Do . 2 p. ct. Oxalic, 4 p.ct. Do. Water +} p.ct.Sulphu- ric Acid, . + p. ct. Do. Uninjured. Slightly injured. Do. Very much injured. Rotten. Uninjured. Not more injured than water + 2 p. ct. tar- taric acid. Same as 4 p. ct. tartaric acid and water. Rather more injured than water + 2 p. ct. oxalic acid. Very rotten. Uninjured. Hardly injured at all. Very slightly injured. Not more injured than water +2 p. ct. oxalic acid. Do. 4 p.ct. Do. Can hardly be handled. Falls to pieces in the hands. Uninjured. Much more injured. Do. Rotten. Very rotten. Uninjured. Slightly injured. Injured, but still rather strong. Rotten. Very rotten. Uninjured. Slightly injured. Rather more injured, Rotten. Very rotten. Not tried. Do. \ Organic Acids on Cotton and Flax Fibres. 113 The facts contained in the preceding paper are interesting, as indicating the extent to which less powerful, though still sufficiently characteristic actions may be overlooked. Hitherto we have gone upon the supposition that the organic acids are entirely without action upon vegetable fibres, and constant use is made of them by the calico-printers in the production of their colours. My observations, however, sufficiently show that they cannot be used for this purpose without injury ; and should serve as a warning to avoid their use, and to replace them as far as possible by neutral salts. In conclusion, I may mention, as somewhat allied to the subject of this paper, that I have succeeded in making use of the difference of the action of weak animal acids on vegetable and animal fibres, as a means of detecting the admixture of cot- ton and flax with wool. The latter resists an acid which en- tirely destroys the former. This fact has acquired consider- _ able practical importance from the extent to which mixed fa- bries have been introduced of late years. On a Hermaphrodite and Fissiparous Species of Tubicolar Annelid. By Tuomas A. Huxtey, F.R.S., Lecturer on General Natural History in the Government School of Mines. In the course of a series of dredging operations, in which I have lately been engaged, upon the shores of Caermarthen Bay, in the neighbourhood of Tenby, I took, upon one occasion and in one locality (in about six fathoms water, near Proud Giltar), the Annelid which is the subject of the present communica- tion. It is questionable, however, whether the animal is so rare as I might have been led to suppose from this solitary instance of its occurrence within my own knowledge—for I had afterwards the opportunity of seeing masses of its calcareous habitation considerably larger than that which I took my- self, in the celebrated collection of the late Mr Lyons of Tenby. The Vermidom (as one might conveniently term the habi- tations of tubicolar annelids in general) of this annelid is VOL. I. NO. I.—JAN. 1855. H 114 Mr Thomas A. Huxley on a Hermaphrodite and composed of very fine, more or less undulated, white, calca- reous tubes, attached by one end to some solid body. Rising from this fixed base, they unite together side by side into irregular bundles, and these bundles anastomose like bundles of nerves in their plexuses—leaving irregular spaces here and there, and thus forming a kind of coarse solid network (fig. 1). Each tube has a circular section, but can hardly be called cylindrical, because it is thickened at intervals, so as to be obscurely annulated. . When placed in a vessel of clear sea-water, the annelids issue from the tubules of their vermidom, and each spreading out its eight branchial filaments and displaying its bright red cephalic extremity—the mass assumes a very beautiful and striking appearance—singularly resembling a tubulipa- rous polyzoarium (fig. 2). If, however, a portion of the calcareous mass be broken down, and its delicate fabricators carefully extracted (fig. 3), their annelidan nature becomes immediately obvious; and in determining the exact place of this form among the tubicola, the expanded membrane which fringes the sides of the body, the peculiar branchial plumes, and the absence of any oper- culum, would point at once tothe genus Protula* as that to which this species belongs, were it not for two most remark- able peculiarities of its organization, which, so far as we know at present, are to be found in no Protula; and one of them in no other tubicolar annelid. These peculiarities are, in the first place, that this species undergoes jissiparous multiplication ; and, in the second, that it is hermaphrodite—the male and female reproductive ele- ments being, unequivocally, developed in the same individual. So far as I am aware, the process of fissiparous multiplica- tion has hitherto been observed in only one family among the errant annelids, the Syllidea (of Grube); in only one family among the Scoleid@ (Hirudinide and Lumbricide), that of the Naidea,—and in only one genus among the tubicolar annelids, Filograna. * On consulting the original description of Filograna—a genus to which the form of the Vermidom of this species would at first induce one to refer it, its affinities therewith appear evident; but whether there is any real difference between Filograna and Protula is a question for further consideration. Fissiparous Species of Tubicolar Annelid. 115 - Hermaphrodism has hitherto been observed in no errant or tubicolar annelid.* Indeed the author to whom we are in- debted for the most beautiful researches into annelid organiza- tion extant, M. de Quatrefages, thus concludes his elaborate memoir on the nervous system of the annelida :— “ We must then seek elsewhere (than in the nervous sys- tem) the characteristics on which to base the divisions which are necessitated by the great extent of this group, and the - multiplicity of types which it embraces. Now, as an ana- tomical character, there is nothing more distinct and well marked than the union or separation of the sexes in the same individual. These differences of organization, besides, indicate profound physiological distinctions, which have long been justly appreciated by botanists. I am, therefore, more and more inclined to believe that the distinction of the amnnelids (Vers) into monecious and dicecious ought to be adopted in science.” In arriving at this conclusion, M. de Quatrefages was, of course, only furnishing additional evidence for the justice of that division of the annelids into the Annélides proper, charac- terized by the separation of their sexes—and the Scoléides, characterized by their hermaphrodism—which was first esta- blished by M. Milne-Edwards, and which has been very generally received. However, on a careful survey of the whole class of worms, many facts come to light which throw considerable doubt on the propriety of raising unisexuality or hermaphrodism into distinctive characters of large groups. We have hermaphro- dite Rotifera, and unisexual Rotifera. The Nemertide and Microstomum are unisexual, the other Turbellaria herma- phrodite ; there appears to be considerable doubt as to the universality of hermaphrodism in the Trematoda even; and Echinorhynchus, which cannot be placed very far from the Teniade and Distomata, is well known to be unisexual, and * See among other authorities, Frey and Leuckart, op. cit. inf., p. 87, who exa- mined Hermella, Vermilia, Fabricia, and Spirorbis, among the tubicolar anne- lids, with especial reference to this point. + Types inférieurs del’Embranchement des Annelés. Ann, des Sc. Nat. 1250. nH 2 116 Mr Thomas A. Huxley on a Hermaphrodite and there is therefore, perhaps, nothing so very anomalous in the discovery of a truly hermaphrodite tubicolar annelid. It is another question how far it need affect the classification to which I have alluded. The fluctuation in the terminology of the classification of the annelids, in fact, has proceeded from the very common but always obstructive practice of giving notional instead of trivial names to incomplete groups of animals. Cuvier divided the annelids into errant, tubicolar, terricolar, &c., deriving his terminology from the habits of those with which naturalists were then acquainted; but, with the advance of knowledge, it was found that some of the Hrrantia inhabit tubes, while one main division of the “ Zerricola” consists of aquatic worms ; and thus these notional terms, instead of aiding the memory as they were intended to do, served simply to origi- nate and propagate erroneous conceptions. There can be no doubt that the divisions established by Cuvier are essen- tially natural, and had he devised some happily unintelligible Grecism, instead of the names which he actually adopted, they would have stood, their definitions altering with the progress of knowledge, until this day. The divisions proposed by M. Milne-Edwards possess exactly the qualification which is here wanting. Annélides and Sco- léides may mean anything, and, as names of groups, may very conveniently remain, even if it should be found necessary to remodel the whole definition which was primarily assigned to them. It appears to me, therefore, that if the statements which follow be confirmed, they will lead, not to an alteration or sub- division of the group of A nnelides, but to a widening of its de- finition so as to include hermaphrodite forms; or perhapsit would be better to admit that owing to the imperfection of our know- ledge, we have not yet a definition of either Annélides or Scoléides at all, but that we must arrange under the former head all those worms which resemble the errant and tubicolar sea worms more than anything else, while those which resemble the land and fresh water worms must fall under the latter cate- gory. If, from the great division of the Annulosa, we take away those animals which are characterized by the possession | of one or more of the following characters—l. Articulated Fissiparous Species ef Tubicolar Annelid. 117 appendages. 2. Such appendages modified into jaws around the mouth. 3. A true heart in communication with the peri- visceral cavity: that is, the Insecta, Myriapoda, Arachnida, and Crustacea—we have left a large division of the animal king- dom, to which the old term of Vermes might well be appro- priated, had it not been already used in so many significations. For this division, whose members are united by a marked com- munity of structure and development, and which includes the Annelida of Cuvier and a large section of his Radiata, viz., the Entozoa, the Rotifera, and the Echinodermata, I have elsewhere proposed the name of Annuloida, a term parallel to that very useful one of Molluscoida (Molluscoides), invented by Milne-Edwards for the Polyzoa and Ascidians.* If it be remembered that it is only within the last few years that the structure and development of these A nnuloida—which present extraordinary difficulties to the investigator—have been made the subjects of thorough and complete examination, it will not be a matter of surprise that, at present, the subordi- nate division of the group must be effected more by reference to types than by exact definition. Of course this is still more the case with the smaller sub-divisions; and until much more light has been thrown on these most interesting but most perplexing creatures, I think it would be well to under- stand the existing classes and orders to be purely conventional and artificial. For my own part, I doubt greatly whether any well-marked natural demarcation can, at present, be drawn be- tween the Annelida (M. E.) and the Scoleidw, or between these and the Hntozoa; or, again, between the latter, the Turbellaria, and the Rotifera; or, once more, between the Amnelida and the Echinodermata ; though I have little doubt _ that the progress of inquiry will tend here, as elsewhere, to eliminate osculant forms, and to substitute definitions for types. * In writing this passage it escaped my memory that the very same division had been long ago proposed by Milne-Edwards himself : “ Je crois quil faudrait diviser cet embranchement (Les Articulés) en deux groupes principaux, l’un les articulés a pieds articulés, et autre les annélides, les Helminthes, les Rotateurs, &c., serie 4 laquelle on pourrait donner le nom vulgaire des Vers.” Sur la circulation dans les Annélides. Ann. des Sc. Nat.. 1838, p. 194. {18 Mr Thomas A. Huxley on a Hermaphrodite and Not only does it appear to me that, under these circum- stances, it is inexpedient to create new sectional terms; but until a more extended and careful examination of the tubi- colar annelides shall have been made with reference to these very points, I do not think it is worth while even to found a new genus for the form I am about to describe, as it possesses - all the essential characters of Protula. Specifically, however, it appears to be distinct from all forms of Protula hitherto described, and I therefore propose to eall it Protula Dysteri, after my friend Mr Dyster of Tenby, in whose society it was discovered, and from whom I hope some day to see good work in this branch of science. I have already described the vermidom of this species, and I now therefore pass to the details of the organization of the animal itself. Protula Dysteri (fig. 3) possesses a very elon- gated body, which may be conveniently divided into a cephalic, a thoracic, an abdominal, and a caudal portion. The cephalic portion (fig. 3, e) can hardly be said toconstitute a distinct head, for the oral aperture, which is wide and funnel- shaped, is terminal. The dorsal margin of the oral aperture is formed by a prominent rounded lobe, beneath which are two richly-ciliated, short filaments, which adhere to the base of the branchial plumes, and might be regarded either as their lowest pinnules, or perhaps, more properly, as tentacles ana- logous to the operculigerous tentacles of the Serpulz. On the ventral side the margin is deeply incised, so that a rounded fissure, bounded by two lips, lies beneath and leads into the oral cavity. From each side of the head springs a distinct branchial plume, whose peduncle immediately divides into four branches. These are beset with a double series of short filiform pinnules, the origins of each series alternating with those of the other. The termination of each branch is somewhat cla- vate, and when expanded the eight branches are usually grace- fully incurved towards one another, the whole having not a little the aspect of a Comatula.* The thoracic portion of the body (fig. 3, ef) is short, but wide and somewhat flattened. It is produced laterally into nine * It is worthy of note, how very crinoid the branchial plumes would be if their skeleton were calcified instead of simply cartilaginous. Fissiparous Species of Tubicolar Annelid. 119 pairs of close-set, double pedal processes. The lower portion of each process forms a mere transverse ridge, beset with the peculiar hooks to be described by and by; the upper pro- cess, on the other hand, is conical, and is provided with elongated sete. The most striking feature of the thorax, however, consists in the peculiar membranous expansion, (b) which, arising as a ridge upon each side of what might be termed the nuchal surface of the animal, and attached to the sides of the thorax, above the bases of the feet, runs down to terminate on the ventral surface, behind the last pair of thoracic appendages. From this origin it extends as a wide free membrane beyond the setz, forming an elegant collar around the head, on whose ventral surface the expansions of each side unite, and form a wide reflexed lobe (fig. 4, g), while poste- riorly they remain separate. To the thorax succeeds what may be called the abdomen, which is much longer than the other regions of the body ; and is, besides, distinguished from them by the imperfect development of the feet, and the paucity of the setee and hooks. In this, and in the caudal portion of the body, the relative position of the hooks and setze is the reverse of what it is in the thorax, the former being superior, and the latter inferior. * The caudal portion of the body is short, and wider than the abdomen. Its rings are close-set, with well-developed hooks and setze, and it is terminated by two conical papille between which the anus is situated. There are not less than 50 rings in the whole body. Cilia could be detected in active motion on many parts of the external surface, on the bases of the feet, on the rudimental tentacles, and scattered in tufts over the whole surface of the thoracic expansions. Having thus sketched its external character, I will now pass to the minuter features presented by the organization of the animal. Branchial plumes.—The principal mass of these organs is formed by a clear, firm, supporting axis, so marked transversely as very closely to resemble the chorda of an Amphioxus. The lower end of this axis terminates by a somewhat pointed ex- * According to Grube, this is the case in all the Serpulacea. See his most excellent work—“ Die Familien der Anneliden.” 1851. 120 Mr Thomas A. Huxley on a Hermaphrodite and tremity, which lies in immediate proximity to the esophagus (fig. 4), and receives the insertion of the lateral longitudinal muscles of the body. Superiorly, as has already been said, the axis divides into four branches, one of which enters the stem of each branchia and forms its skeleton and support, sending lateral processes into each of the pinnules. These, however, are much more delicate, and are composed of oblong particles set end to end; somewhat like the axis of the tail of an Ascidian larva. All this branchial skeleton, as one might term it, is invested by a continuation of the general parietes of the body, which adheres closely to the outer side of the stem and pinnules, but leaves a space on their inner side. In this space lies the so-called “ blood’’-vessel, with its green contents. It does not fill the space, but lies loosely in it ; the interval be- tween it and the walls of the filament oe I suppose, in continuity with the perivisceral cavity.* The whole of the internal surface of the branchiz is pro- vided with long, close-set, vibratile cilia, while nothing of the sort is visible externally. The end of the stem has a very peculiar structure. It is somewhat enlarged by the develop- ment within its walls of a number of elongated granular masses of about ;25, inch in length, entirely made up of very minute, strongly refracting granules, which, when pressed out, become rapidly diffused and dissolved in the surrounding water. These bodies were not confined to the ends of the branchial stems, but similar aggregations existed at the ends of many of the pinnules, and were also very regularly developed in little elevations seated upon the sides of the stem in front of the base of each pinnule.+ Alimentary Canal.—The esophagus leads into a pyriform, more or less marked, dilatation or crop, provided with thicker * The skeleton of the branchiew of the Serpulacea has been well and care- fully described by De Quatrefages in his valuable memoir “Sur la circula- tion des Annelides,” Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1850; and that of Sabella unispira by Grube, so long ago as 1838. See his memoirs “ Zur Anat. und Physiologie der Kiemenwurmer.” 1838. t Are the peculiar rounded whitish granular patches which occupy a similar position ou the arms of Comatula of a corresponding nature, or are these really testes? I have never been able to find developed spermatozoa in them, nor anywhere else in Comatula. Fissiparous Species of Tubicolar Annelid. 121 walls than the remainder of the alimentary canal (fig. 5). The cropcommunicates by a constricted portion with a wide stomach, whose walls are strongly tinged by deep brown granules. This passes into a narrow intestine, which widens in the caudal region into a sort of rectum, opening externally, between the terminal papille, by a richly-ciliated anus. In every segment the intestine was united to the parietes by delicate transverse membranous dissepiments, forming par- titions across the perivisceral cavity, and thus dividing it into a series of chambers, which, so far as I could observe, did not communicate with one another, though it would be unsafe ab- solutely to affirm this. “ Vascular” System.—The so-called “ blood”-vessels* of the Annelida were represented, in the present case, by lateral contractile vessels which ran upon each side of the intestine, and gave off transverse branches on to the dissepi- ments, from which twigs proceeded dorsally and ventrally. The dimensions of these lateral vessels varied considerably ; sometimes they were comparatively narrow, but in other in- stances so wide as to appear to form a complete sheath around the intestine. They contained a deep green, clear fluid, to- tally without corpuscles or solid elements of any kind, while they themselves, when empty, were usually quite colourless ; but I would draw attention to the curious fact, which I have also observed in other annelids, that in the anterior part of their course they occasionally present bright green, granular par- ticles, imbedded in, and adhering to, their outer surface. The opacity of the anterior end of the animal, resulting from the quantity of deep red pigment, prevented any very * At the last meeting of the British Association (September 1854), I ven- tured to propound the theory that what are commonly called the blood- vessels of the Annelida are not ‘“ blood”’-vessels at all; that is, that these ves- sels, and the fluid which they contain, are not the homologues of the blood- vessels and blood of Vertebrata, Mollusca, and Articulata, the latter being represented in annelids by the perivisceral cavity and its contained fluid, whose anatomical and physiological importance have been so excellently and exhaustively developed by De Quatrefages. See his researches on the Anne- lids, and more particularly his memoir “ Sur la cavité generale du corps des Invertebrés.” It is to be hoped that M. de Quatrefages understands that in- structed Englishmen do not countenance the unwarrantable attempts that have been made to depreciate his merits in this country. 122 Mr Thomas A. Huxley on a Hermaphrodite and certain observation of the manner in which these vessels termi- nate there. Iam inclined to think, however, that they open into a circular vessel, from which the branchial vessels arise. It was no less difficult, in an adult specimen, to determine whether a ventral vessel existed or not; but in a young form, I saw such a vessel communicating with the inferior trans- verse branches, and distinctly contracting. It was superficial to the ciliated canal immediately to be described. Of a dorsal vessel I could find no trace. The final ramus- cules of the superior transverse branches of the lateral trunks were found, whenever they could be distinctly observed, to ter- minate cecally. There could be no question whatever, that these czecal ends were the natural terminations of the ramus- cules, as the animal under observation had been subjected to no violence, and was viewed by transmitted light. I am the more particular in insisting upon this point, as one might very readily be led, in dissecting annelids, to suppose that cecal terminations of the vessels are much more frequent than they really are. Their vessels, in fact, possess, in a very high degree, that tendency to contract when torn, which is so well known in the arteries of the higher animals. And if under the simple microscope the vessels of an Eunice or Nereid be deliberately pulled asunder, it is most curious to observe how very little of the contained fluid pours out, and how smooth and round the torn endsimmediately become. In our Protula, however, the mode of examination was such as to preclude all chance of error from this source; and I have besides fully con- firmed the fact of this mode of termination,* in the singular and beautiful genus Chlorema, which has the advantage of great transparency. In this animal it is easy to observe that, though many of the ultimate branches of the vessels anastomose, and thus give rise to a network, yet that there are also many branches of no inconsiderable dimensions, which terminate in cecal ex- tremities. Such vessels may be frequently observed coming off from the transverse trunk and hanging freely into the peri- * This cecal termination of the vessels appears to reach its greatest develop- ment in the Scoleid genera, Euaxes and Lumbriculus, in which a vessel arises in each segment from the dorsal trunk, and shortly divides into many cecal ramuscules. See Siebold. Vegleichende Anatomie, p. 212, Fissiparous Species of Tubicolar Annelid. 123 visceral cavity, attached only by a few delicate threads of con- nective tissue, to the parietes. It is most curious to watch the regular contractions of these pendent vessels, their momentary emptying, and their subsequent distention and erection by the returning wave of fluid. And in considering the nature of this remarkable system of vessels, it is most important to note that we have here, at any rate, no circulation, but a mere backward and forward undulation.* Ciliated Canal.—A clear, longitudinal, very narrow ( ;jy; to ss60 Inch) canal (fig. 6, a) may be observed extending along the ventral surface of the intestine in the middle line, from the anus, where it appeared to me to open, as far as the brown di- lated stomach, when it either stopped or became so obscured as to be no further traceable. The canal had well-marked walls with a double contour, which sometimes appeared curiously broken; and contained, set along its dorsal wall, one to four longitudinal series of cilia (fig. 9). These were placed at regu- lar intervals, and worked together, as if they were pulled by a@ common string. In young specimens there was only one cilium in each row, but in the older ones I saw as many as four in each transverse line. Has this enigmatical canal anything to do with the ‘typhlosole’ of the earthworm ? On the dorsal surface of the head a longitudinal canal, which sometimes appears to be ciliated, was visible at b (fig. 3); posteriorly it divided into two branches which dilated into granular ceca, arranged in a kind of festoon in the first segment of the thorax. The coloration of this part of the body prevented me from determining whether this canal opened externally or into the cesophagus, and also whether it was in any way connected with the ventral ciliated canal,—both of them points of much interest. However this may be, these sacs are clearly homologous with the curious sacs which have been described in Chlorema, and perhaps with the sacs opening externally, which are found in the anterior segment of Pectinaria. * The general contractility of the vessels of the annelids has already been pointed out by De Quatrefages. Siebold doubts the existence of a regular cir culation in the majority of the Annelida. Op. cit., p. 210. 124 Mr Thomas A. Huxley on a Hermaphrodite and I may mention here that ciliated organs, possibly homologous with these, and with the lateral convoluted canals of the Lumbricide and Hirudinide are by no means uncommon among the Annelida Errantia, and may be observed in Phyllodoce ; it requires care however to discover them. Nervous system.—On this head the result of my examina- tions was exceedingly unsatisfactory, as I could assure myself of the existence of only two oval ganglia, one on each side of the cesophagus, each of which presented a dark pigment mass (eyespot ?) on its anterior extremity. Reproductive elements.—Protula Dysteri can hardly be said to possess special reproductive organs, the reproductive ele- ments, viz., ova and spermatozoa, being developed as it were accidentally from the walls of the perivisceral cavity, by the fluid contained in which (whose nature and importance M. de Quatrefages has so well pointed out) they are bathed, and supplied with nutritive materials. It appeared to me that the spermatozoa or ova took their origin in granular thickenings of that portion of the face of the dissepiments which is traversed by the transverse vessel, becoming detached thence, and floating freely in the perivisceral fluid, as they attained their full development. * The youngest spermatozoa were minute spherules, of not more than 554, of an inch in diameter, aggregated together into irregular masses (fig. 11). Ina more advanced state a very fine short and delicate filamentcould beobserved springing from one side of this body. By degrees the spherule became ellip- tical, and narrowing pari passu with the elongation and thick- ening of the filament, the ultimate result was a spermatozoon, such as that represented in fig. 11, with a subcylindrical slightly pointed head of 555 of an inch in diameter, and a very long actively-undulating tail. The ova are, at first, very small, not more than 7,455 of an inch in diameter, and possess a relatively very large, clear space, representing the germinal vesicles, containing a minute * Frey and Leuckart (Zool. Untersuchungen, p. 88) assert that the genera- tive elements of the annelids are developed from a free blastema, and not from the septa only, as Krohn asserts to be the case in Alciope, and as I should, from what is stated above, be disposed to believe. Fissiparous Species of Tubicolar Annelid. 125 germinal spot. By degrees they increase in size to ¢$5 inch, with a germinal vesicle of 545, and a spot of 3555, and a few granules become visible in their yelk. From this size they gradually increase to the ;45 inch in diameter, acquiring a well-marked vitellary membrane, and a dark orange-red, very coarsely granular yelk. The germinal vesicle and spot may still be rendered visible by pressure, the former having about geo of an inch in diameter. When those segments of the body in which the genitalia are situated were subjected to moderate pressure, the sperma- tozoa made their exit at the bases of the pedal tubercles of the male segments, while the ova, just giving rise to bulgings in a corresponding position, eventually passed out in the same manner. I could not satisfactorily decide, however, whether the apertures by which the generative products passed out were natural or artificial.* Sete and Uncini of the Pedal Tubercles.—The general form of the pedal tubercles has already been described ; it re- mains only, therefore, to note more particularly the form of their appendages, whether Sete or Uncini. The Sete (figs. 7, 8) are slender spines, about s4 of an inch in length, consisting of a haft and a blade; the former is about six times the length of the latter, and is rounded, flattening gradually as it passes into the blade, with which it is completely continuous, though at an obtuse angle.t ‘The blade tapers gradually to its point, and is smooth on one edge, but minutely denticulated upon the other, while delicate striz are continued from the serra- tions upon the flat face of the blade. Such is the structure of those stronger setze which are di- rected forwards on each side of the head-lobe. ‘Those of the * It should be added that the genital products occupy about fourteen suc- cessive segments of the abdomen, of which the two anterior are seminiferous ; the rest, ovigerous. See fig. 3. J Lam not aware of any annelid in which the sete are really articulated. The statements of Audouin and Milne-Edwards rest, I believe, upon errors of observation, very intelligible, if one considers what microscopes were twenty years ago. How such strange perversions of fact as the figures of annelid sete appended to Dr Williams’s Report on the British Annelida, published in the Transactions of the British Association for 1851—can have arisen, it is - not so easy to comprehend. 126 Mr Thomas A. Huxley on a Hermaphrodite and posterior segments have a similar general structure, but are more delicate. The uncini (figs. 7,8)are very small, not more than ;,)55 inch in length; anditis not easy to make out their exact structure. Each, however, appears to be composed of a short implanted stem, and a blade set upon the end of this, at somewhat less than a right angle, like the claw of a hammer. The edges of this blade are minutely denticulated. Fissiparous multiplication.—It was only a minority of the Protule which presented the aspect hitherto described ; for the larger number were undergoing multiplication or prolifi- cation, by a process which can only be described as a com- bined fission and gemmation. The prolification takes place so as to separate all the segments of the parent behind the sixteenth, as a new zooid; but it is not a mere process of fission, for the seventeenth segment, 7. ¢., the first of the new zooid, undergoes a very considerable enlargement, and event- ually becomes divided into the nine segments of the head and thorax, of the bud. These segments do not appear all at once, but gradually, one behind the other. The intestinal canal of the stock and of the bud are at first perfectly continuous, but the peri-intestinal cavity of the bud is completely filled with a mass of red granules. These would seem in some way to subserve the nutrition of the young animal; for in some free zooids, apparently fully formed, all but the development of ge- nitalia, the caudal segments were full of these orange gra- nules, while no trace of them was to be found anteriorly.* It is very interesting to note the manner in which the branchial plumes are developed, as it closely corresponds with what Milne-Idwards describes in Terebella. Fach plume ap- pears at first as a quadrate palmate process of the dorsal side of the first segment ; and the divisions representing the stems of the future branchiz are at first mere processes,—perfectly simple tubes, which do not even present annulations. Several modes of prolification are already known to exist among the annelids. The one long since described by O. F. Miller, as one of the methods of multiplication of Mais, and * Sars gives an account of the prolification of Filograna implexa, similar in all essential points. See his Fauna littoralis, &€., pp. 88-9. Fissiparous Species of Tubicolar Annelid. 127 more lately by Quatrefages as occurring in Syllis prolifera is very nearly simple fission, the animal dividing near its middle, and the under half, before separation, only putting forth, as buds, those appendages which are characteristic of the head. Secondly, Milne-Edwards has described in Myriadina a prolification by a sort of continuous budding between the anal and the penultimate segment. A new ring is produced be- hind the penultimate segment, and this enlarging gives rise to a newring posteriorly, and so on until the bud attains its full length. It would seem possible that the second mode of prolifica- tion in Nats, described by O. F. Miiller, is in reality the same as this, though he describes the new growth as entirely result- ing from the excessive development of the anal segment. Thirdly, M. Schulze, an excellent observer, has described a third very singular mode of prolification in Mais, whence the . long chains of zooids occasionally observed arise, For when, by the fissive process the ais is divided into an anterior and posterior zooid, the last segment of the former greatly enlarges, becomes divided into segments, and the anterior of these be- coming a head, a new zooid is formed between the previously existing ones; this process 1s repeated in what was the pen- ultimate, but is now the ultimate segment of the anterior zooid ; and, again, in the anti-penultimate, so that at least a long string of zooids is formed, each of which, except the last, is produced from a single segment. Fourthly, According to Frey and Leuckart, whose observa- tions have been confirmed by Krohn (Wieg. Archiy., 1852), Autolytus prolifer multiplies in a somewhat similar way, but instead of each new interposed zooid being formed at the expense of a fresh segment of the anterior zooid—it is pro- duced by the metamorphosis of a bud, or rather of a mass of blastema the equivalent of a bud, developed from the under extremity of the last segment of the anterior zooid. Supposing further observation to confirm the distinctness of all these modes of prolification, they might be classified accord- ing to the amount of the already formed parental organism which enters into the produced zooid. , 128 Mr Huxley on a Species of Tubicolar Annelid. 1. All the segments of the latter were segments of the former, the new products being merely cephalic organs. 2. None of the segments of the produced zooid belonged to the parent zooid, but the former is a metamorphosis of a whole segment of the latter. 3. None of the segments of the produced zooid belonged to the parent zooid, and the former contains hardly any of the. primitive substance of the latter, being developed by ger- mination from its last segment. It is clear that the prolification of Protula Dysteri will come under none of these categories; but is a combination of the first and second methods. The abdomen of the produced zooid is a mere fissive product of the parent, but its thorax is the result of the metamorphosis of a single segment of the parent into many segments. Quatrefages endeavoured to show that the relation of the produced zooids of Syllis to the anterior zooid was that of an ‘alternation of generation,” the former alone developing sexual products. Krohn has however proved that no such relation exists in this case; but on the other hand he brings forward good evidence to demonstrate that the posterior zooids of Autolytus prolifer really are generative zooids, and alone develop the reproductive elements. The male zooids in this case are widely different from the gemmiparous zooid ; so different, in fact, that they were regarded by O. F. Miller as belonging to a distinct species. I sought carefully for evidence of any such “ alternation” in Protula Dysteri, but the result was to convince myself that nothing of the kind exists. The generative products may indeed almost always be detected, though the ova are very small and indistinct, in the anterior zooid of any still unseparated pair; and it is there- fore clear that the gemmiparous zooid is not asexual, the in- variable rule where that separation of the individual into asexual and sexual zooids, which constitutes the so-called ‘alternation of generations,” really exists. ala, ees ayy Xu! geet , i = e Load a pew i ao) ae f fi) { A i i i 1 ‘ ‘ ; . \ ¥ L ne ° A - j Z va iP € [ hy ’ f 1 y ue y t ‘ ae ‘ : ¥ if qui | % Rely . wil : 4 t ‘ o ru - = eile) * \ 4 * la ne t PY ; 40) . Ah ‘ ul } i i 4 hy f \ eT is i , “4 i i 1 h ? r 4 Fi ¥ r ( i. i. , : f 1 \ ‘ * / ; 4 AW rW, ; ite bs Np WL et ai 2S : ‘ sO Ree iit 1 iy Evie \ 1 se Neh aed p . * Wena tr aa by wigs fathens YY? ES TBs ag a Pen a= OTLII OT OT B ad nat. ded. LHL. Preparation of Sea Water for the Aquarium. 129 Description of Figures, PUT, . Vermidom of Protula Dysterv. . Single calcareous tube with the worm protruded and ex- panded. . An adult Protula extracted from its case, ¢c. branchia, c. testes, d. ova,—(dorsal view). . A Protula undergoing prolification (central view). . The produced zooid just set free. . Junction of parent and derivative zooids (ventral view), a. ciliated canal, . Pedal tubercle. . Sete and Uncini. . Ciliated canal, greatly magnified. . Ova—young and completely developed. . Spermatozoa—young and completely developed. 08 sw) Oe S> on poh pet me Ooo Onl On the Artificial Preparation of Sea Water for the Aqua- rium. By GEORGE WILSON, M.D., F.R.S.E., Lecturer on Chemistry.* In an interesting communication contained in the “ Annals of Natural History, for July 1854 (p.65), Mr Gosse has recorded the results of an important experiment on the possibility of arti- ficially preparing sea water for Marine Vivaria. Guiding him- self by Schweitzer’s analysis of the water off Brighton, and ex- cluding the less abundant ingredients, he employed chloride of sodium, sulphate of magnesia, chloride of magnesium, and chloride of potassium,t which were dissolved in a suitable quantity of water. In April last various species of marine plants and animals were introduced into this imitation sea water, and as during a period of six weeks they “throve and flourished from day to day, manifesting the highest health and vigour,’ Mr Gosse draws the very natural conclusion, * Read to the Chemical Section of the British Association, September 1854, T The following are Mr Gosse’s exact directions :—Common table salt, 3h ounces; Epsom salts, + ounce; chloride of magnesium, 200 grains troy ; chlo- ride of potassium, 40 grains troy. To these salts a little less than four quarts of water were added. VOL. I. NO. I.— JAN. 1855. I 130 Dr George Wilson on the Artificial “that the experiment of manufacturing sea water for the aquarium has been perfectly successful.” In spite of this success, however, there are cogent reasons for believing that sea water made according to the recipe given above, would fail to maintain for any length of time either plants or animals in health and vigour. Mr Gosse’s sea water differs from that of the ocean in not containing several ingredients which must be regarded as essential to the growth of sea plants, and still more of sea animals. It contains only such of the constituents of the ocean as are soluble in pure water, and only some of these. Thus, although it may be difficult or even impossible to de- tect in considerable volumes of natural sea water, carbonate of lime, sulphate of lime, phosphate of lime, fluoride of calcium, and silica, all of these as well as oxide of iron are procured in manifest quantity by evaporating sea water to dryness, as | have many times ascertained by analysing the hard crusts from the boilers of steam-ships, sailing in the Atlantic and German oceans, and in the Mediterranean and other seas. The sul- phate of lime and fluoride of calcium are soluble in pure water, and the carbonate and phosphate of lime are kept in solution by carbonic acid. The silica is either held simply in solution, or occurs as a soluble alkaline silicate. Now it is plain that marine animals (to restrict ourselves to them) must derive all their constituents, directly or in- directly, from the medium in which they live; and the law does not appear to admit of any question, that whatever sub- - stances are invariably found in the structures of animals, must be essential to their healthy development, and this whether the substance is present in large or small quantity, provided it is invariably present. Thus, to take one example, we find fluoride of calcium, not isolated in one minute portion of an animal’s body, but built up along with phosphate of lime wherever that occurs. It seems a dangerous rule to go. by, that because the quantity of fluoride is much smaller than — that of phosphate, the fluoride may be (omitted altogether. We might as well, I apprehend, in erecting a house, dispense with mortar, because the quantity used in building is very Preparation of Sea Water for the Aquarium. 131 small, compared in weight or bulk, with that of the stones it binds together. ; Seeing, however, that the internal and external skeletons, habitations, or other solid appendages of many of the animals kept alive in aquaria, consist of carbonate of lime, along with © some phosphate of lime, and a little fluoride of calcium, whilst others consist of silica—those substances besides iron must be contained in the water in which these creatures dwell. Again, to refer to sea plants, Mr Gosse excludes from his sea water, soluble bromides, and, as appears, also iodides, be- cause they occur in the ocean in small quantities. Yet it is quite certain that many sea-weeds concentrate within them- selves much iodine as well as a little bromine, and both, but especially the former, must be held to be serviceable to those plants. It may be added, that although no minute inquiry into the matter has been made, both iodine and bromine oc- cur in the organs of sea animals, for example, in the liver of the cod ; and it is impossible to believe that such powerful re- medial agents, can be without an influence on the health of the animals receiving them. lIodides and bromides, therefore, should be present in the imitation sea-water. Nor would there be any difficulty in supplying the desi- derata indicated. As calcareous phosphates, carbonates, and fluorides occur together in shells, corals, and many limestones, and in the proportion in which sea animals require them, the arrangement of fragments of such calcareous bodies at the bottom of the aquarium would suffice ;—for the carbonic acid produced by the animals within it would slowly dissolve the lime-salts as they were needed. Pieces of felspar or of any of the trap rocks containing al- kaline silicates would in the same circumstances furnish silica. It would not probably be requisite to make a deli- berate addition of sulphate of lime, as the sulphate of mag- nesia and the calcareous fragments would supply its elements. If it were thought necessary to add it, a solution, containing about a grain of sulphate of lime to the ounce of water, can be easily prepared by shaking the latter with some burned stucco powder, and of this a measured quantity could be LZ 132 Preparation of Sea Water for the Aquarium. added to the contents of the aquarium. There would be no difficulty in supplying bromides and iodides, as the bromide and iodide of potassium may be procured from any druggist. It is of course quite possible that ina single aquarium the death of a certain portion of the animals might furnish cal- eareous salts or silica for the skeletons of their survivors,* and in like manner, the death of a given number of the plants might liberate iodides and bromides for the remainder ; but the object of those who maintain aquaria, I presume to be, the rendering as certain as possible the vigorous develop- ment of all its living contents, and this could only be secured by some such arrangement as I have proposed. As aquaria are now attracting much attention among natu- ralists, I would suggest the desirableness of some of them trying how long animals will live in sea water made strictly after Mr Gosse’s recipe, and without any calcareous or sill- cious fragments at the bottom of the vivaria. Those observ- ers also who record their success with artificial sea water should be as careful in stating the chemical composition of the stony fragments laid at the bottom, as of the water employed in filling their aquaria. In their aquarian experiments hither- to, naturalists have guided themselves chiefly by the results of the chemist’s analyses of sea-water. But these supply but one-half of the requisite data: the naturalist should have equally regarded the analyses of marine plants and animals ; for if any substance is invariably found in them, it must as invariably be furnished in the liquid or solid contents of the aquarium. The minuteness of quantity in which par- ticular ingredients occur in living organisms can only be a reason for furnishing them in minute quantity not for omitting them altogether. * Mr Gosse observes that carbonate of lime “ might be found in sufficient abundance in the fragments of shell, coral, and calcareous alge thrown in to make the bottom of the aquarium” but he nevertheless refers to it as one of those substances which he thought he “‘might neglect from the minuteness of their quantities.” The practice here corrects the error of the precept, for the calcareous fragments would furnish not only carbonate of lime, but salts of magnesia, as well as phosphate of lime and fluoride of calcium. 133 The late Professor Kdward Forbes. We need not now endeavour to give expression to a grief so deeply felt and universally diffused, as that occasioned by the sudden and disastrous death of this distinguished naturalist. Ours is the loss, and, we doubt not, his the gain. The disad- vantages, both of a personal nature to his private friends, and of a more public kind to the community at large, are inex- pressible and irremediable. If all hearts are still saddened by this heavy and unlooked-for calamity,—if even those who knew him not, or had but a faint idea of his surpassing powers, —are impressed with so deep a sense of this bereavement,— how much more must it weigh down the spirits, almost deaden the hopes, of those who were associated in his labours, but who felt their labours lightened by their rejoicing confidence in such a companion and coadjutor. Viewing the loss as amounting to a national misfortune, not to be measured merely by the sudden sorrow produced among ourselves by its unex- pected occurrence, amid the first upraising of so many fresh and sanguine hopes, we shall not dwell upon its great disad- vantage to this Journal, the management of which he was about to undertake, with all his well-known and unfailing zeal, as Editor of the Natural History department, in its va- rious branches. As it might truly be said of Professor Edward Forbes “ nil tetigit quod non ornayit,” so, under his fostering care and skil- ful hand, whatever of barren and unfruitful might have un- avoidably crept in upon our management of later years would have been corrected or expelled, and new life and vigour in- terfused. But having been honoured with his confidence, we shall consider the increased responsibilities thrown upon us by his disastrous death, as so many pledges to the Public, that this Journal, to which he so fondly desired to devote him- self, shall be conducted, if not with the same talent, at least in the same tone and temper, as distinguished every procedure of him whom we deplore. We shall here present a brief and most inadequate 100K 134 The late Professor Edward Forbes. of his life and labours, drawn from our own knowledge and re- collections, aided by reference to some friendly and affection- ate reminiscences which have already appeared in several of the literary and other Journals.* Professor Edward Forbes, so recently, and with such uni- versal satisfaction, appointed to the chair of Natural History in our university, died at Wardie, near Edinburgh, on the even- ing of Saturday, the 18th of November 1854, in the fortieth year of his age, leaving a widow, and a son and daughter still in in- fancy, to mourn and suffer from his loss. ‘The certainty of his appointment had been long foreseen, and was looked forward to as an event likely to give a fresh impulse among us to the study of natural science in every department. He had re- ceived his scientific education here,—had here formed several of his strongest and most enduring friendships; and his early celebrity, and continuing increase of fame, had been nowhere observed with more pride and pleasure, than among those who had started with him in the race of life. When he returned to Edinburgh, it was to the “ old familiar faces,” changed, no doubt, from youth to manhood, but rejoicing all the more to re- ceive again in social and scientific union one between whom and them not even the shadow of a passing cloud had been ever inter- posed. It is indeed worthy of record, that among his earliest and most endeared associates, he was welcomed back by such * The death of Professor Edward Forbes has been feelingly and faithfully recorded at considerable length, and apparently from intimate personal ac- quaintance, in the Atheneum, Literary Gazette, Spectator, and Gardener’s Chronicle ; as well as in the Witness, and other Edinburgh newspapers. We are happy, however, to announce that a much more ample and satisfying me- moir of his life and writings has been undertaken, with the concurrence of his literary executor, Mr Austen, by a kindred spirit, and early friend, Dr George Wilson, F.R.S.E., already so well known as a biographer, from his lives of Cavendish and Dr John Reid. We had hoped to present this memoir in the April number of our Journal, and have therefore restricted ourselves, in the meantime, to what we fear our readers may regard as by no means a satisfactory exhibition and estimate of the Professor’s personal and scientific attainments. But, in deference to the wishes of those by whose feelings it is a pleasure, no less than a duty to be guided, it has been decided that the ex- tended biographical memoir shall form a separate volume, probably introduc- tory to a collected series of Professor Edward Forbes’ works, The late Professor Edward Forbes. 135 men as Mr John Goodsir, Mr James Syme, Mr James, Miller, Dr J. Y. Simpson, Dr J. H. Balfour, Dr J. H. Bennett, and others, already professors in that same university within the walls of which, as youthful companions, their mutual friendship had commenced,—a friendship unbroken but by death. Edward Forbes, of Scottish extraction, was born in the Isle of Man, on the 12th day of February 1815. We have heard himself say, that had he made the attempt to define the period when the love of natural history first arose as the day-star in his heart, he must have searched back into the dim and_dis- tant recollections of his earliest childhood. This peculiar propensity, or rather passion, must have been in-bred, and all his own ; for it is understood that no individual of his family, nor even of his acquaintanceship, had the slightest taste for scientific studies. So this surpassing love of natural history must have been either born with him, or speedily and spon- taneously generated in his brains. His first printed guide-book was one of the driest,— Turton’s English Edition of the Systema Nature of Lin- neus ; and we know, on his own authority, that by the time he was seven years of age, he had formed a small but tolerably well arranged museum of his own. Next, though still in very early life, came the perusal of Buckland’s Reliquie Dilu- viane, Parkinson’s Organic Remains, and Conybeare’s Geo- logy of England,—all rather difficult reading for a boy, and possibly rather wrestled with than fully understood. However, there is nothing so good as a high standard in the intellectual struggles of youth, as difficulties ere long spontaneously un- fold themselves, and become smooth and shapely, just as the wings of the butterfly enlarge and brighten, when the hard- ened coating of the chrysalis is cast away. Neither is there anything so bad as bringing all early instruction down toa level with the limited understanding of childhood. There are few really good books which even full-grown men completely comprehend; but this, though an argument against the capacity of the readers, is surely none against the excellence of the books. Those above named, however, when he was not more than twelve years of age, inspired Edward Forbes with a 136 The late Professor Edward Forbes. warm and abiding love of Geology. At this period also, it may be stated as a remarkable, perhaps unprecedented: fact, that he compiled a Manual of British Natural History in all its departments,—a youthful labour, a reference to which, we know, he afterwards found serviceable up almost to his close of life. At sixteen he visited London ; and while there, was ehiefly occupied by the study of the art of drawing, under Sasse, a celebrated trainer for the Royal Academy in those days. The careful practice of drawing in outline from the antique, which he then acquired, was of advantage to him for ever after in his zoological pursuits and publications. About a year after this, he came to Edinburgh, and entered the medical classes, as the best course of initial and elementary study in relation to those departments of science to which he had even thus early determined to dedicate his life. He became at once the friend and pupil of Professor Jameson ; and from that period till he found himself his successor (how much we mourn the brief survival!) he frequently referred, with grateful acknow- ledgment, to the benefit he had reaped from his scientific in- struction, and friendly counsel. In the summer of the ensu- ing year he first endeavoured to apply practically the know- ledge he had now acquired, by making an exploration of a part of Norway,—chiefly with a view to the mineralogy of that picturesque country. He returned with large collec- tions, and published an account of his proceedings and obser- vations in Loudon’s Magazine (vols. viii. and ix.) under the title of ‘‘ Notes of a Natural History Tour in Norway,”’— being his first contributions to science. At nearly the same period, and in the same work, he printed his earliest papers on submarine researches,—“ Records of the results of Dredg- ing,’—for which he became eventually so noted, having, in fact, commenced in his sixteenth year those remarkable obser- vations by means of the dredge, with the accurate register of depths, which, it is well known and admitted, have thrown an entirely new light upon the geographical distribution of marine life. We need not here say how amply he has filled, even to overflowing, the measure of that early promise. He . The late Professor Edward Forbes. 137 has far transcended all others in the importance and extent of his submarine researches in the British Seas, as well as in those of Greece and Asia Minor. He thus pursued his studies with great intensity of thought and application, yet with so much of the buoyant light- heartedness of youth, as no doubt to draw many very worthy common-place people into the belief that he was making no particular progress in his pursuits, and had too much of the unconstrained, it might almost seem, unacademical, spirit of the German “ Burschen’’ in his general bearing and mode of life. But the result more than justified the hopes and expectations of those who augured, because they knew of, better things. He did not confine himself to scientific pur- suits, but mingled with them many miscellaneous literary exercises, thus strengthening and enlarging his intellectual faculties, and fitting himself all the more to take eventual advantage of those points in the minds of others, to whom a discursive power, and some imaginative impulse, were required to create a tendency towards scientific studies, rather than a dry enunciation of technical details, which so often fails to affect the feelings. It is not knowledge or intellect alone that is required in science, though each is indispensable, and both are too often found wanting. There must be feeling and affection, as towards. a living being, as if it formed almost an inseparable component portion of our own existence. It was thus that Edward Forbes built up all his great things on a secure foundation,—no man more cautious yet so bold,—but it was by the exercise of something akin to the imaginative faculty that he first foresaw and felt the grandeur of those general views,—such as the zones of living life, which exist not alone upon the sunny surface of the earth, but in the dark- some waters far beneath it,—and which he afterwards wrought out with the patient zeal of a devoted inquirer, not less than rapid apprehension of an accomplished naturalist.* It is but * The natural law above alluded to, and of which Professor Edward Fer- bes was the first, as he continued to be the principal exponent, is this,—that as there are great and characteristically distinct zones of animal and vegetable life, in altitude, as we proceed upwards on the sides of mountains, or into alpine 138 The late Professor Edward Forbes. seldom that such a mind is born into the world, and hence our loss. If the rash hand of the fool or the maniac destroys some so-called priceless work of art,—some Portland vase, unique and unequalled in the elegance of its fair and frail propor- tions,—extraordinary human skill may sorepair it, that ordinary human sight is deceived into the belief that it stands again before us in its first integrity, almost without a flaw; but if “the silver cords be loosed,” and “ the golden bowl be broken,”’ who can re-animate the insensate form? The desolate dwell- ing cannot be re-entered,—the fallen column no more upraised upon the earth. The residence of our lamented friend was continued almost uninterruptedly in Edinburgh, as his head-quarters, until 1839. We believe that 1837 formed an exceptional season, as he spent that year in Paris studying geology under Constant Pre- vost, mineralogy under Beaudent, and zoology under De Blain- ville and Geoffroy St Hilaire. During the autumn of al! these busy and invaluable years he explored some interesting portion of the Continent of Europe, or beyond it, doing good service to science by a somewhat lengthened sojourn, at one time in Illyria, at another in Algiers. The results of these various visitations have been publicly recorded, as were also, about the same period, a short treatise on the Mollusca of the Irish Sea, and several papers on zoology and botany.* valleys, from the sea, so there are also equally distinct and different zones of animal and vegetable life, in depth, as we descend (which we can only do by dredging) from the sea-shore, down the mountains, and into the great submerged and sunless valleys, of the ocean. * See “ Malacologia Monensis,” Edin., 1838; “On the Land and Fresh- Water Mollusca of Algiers and Bougia,”—Annals of Nat. Hist., vol. ii.; ‘ On the Distribution of Terrestrial Pulmonifera in Kurope,”—Reports of Brit. Assoc., 1838 ; ‘ On a Shell-bank in the [rish Sea, considered zoologically and geologi- cally,”’—Annals of Nat. Hist., vol. iii. ; “Notice of Zoological Researches in Orkney and Shetland during the month of June 1839,”—Reports Brit, Assoc. 1839 ; “On the Asteriadx of the Irish Seas,”— Wernerian Memoirs, vol. viii. ; “ Report on the Distribution of Pulmoniferous Mollusca in the British Islands,” — Reports Brit. Assoc., 1839; “On the Association of Mollusca on the British Coasts, considered with reference to Pleistocene Geology,”—Edin. Acad, Annual, 1810; “ Ona Pleistocene Tract in the Isle of Man, and the relations of its The late Professor Edward Forbes. 139 - In the winter of 1839-40, he delivered a course of lectures in Edinburgh on Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, of a strictly scientific nature, for professed working students; and he also gave at that time a course of a more popular character on Zoology, in its connection with Geology on the one hand, and Mental Philosophy on the other. Early in the year 1840, he completed his beautiful and still standard work on British Star-fish and Sea-urchins (published in 1841), adorned by not fewer than 120 accurate and highly-finished illustrations. These latter were all designed by himself; and we may here note that his artistic skill was fully and frequently employed, not only in the representation of animal forms, but in sketches both of rural and architectural scenery, and, most character- istically of all, in the vignettes and tail-pieces to his various publications, where we have humour and sentiment, gracefully and truthfully combined. This power of drawing was of in- calculable advantage in his professorial career, by enabling him to exhibit to the eye many things beyond expression by the power of words. By making use of different coloured chalks, he would give most life-like sketches, not only of outer form, but of internal structure, both being in some cases of a nature so fragile, unfixed, translucent, that little or nothing could be understood regarding them, by those previously un- instructed, from the inspection of the actual subjects. But this accomplished instructor having ascertained, by the most minute and pains-taking labour, the actualities of form and substance, and having impressed them on his own mind, was able, by the combined power of a retentive memory and a skilful hand, to bring into the clearest light what was in itself invisible to common eyes, or, if visible, then incomprehensible by common intellects, till seen through the borrowed lustre of his understanding. Alas! it seems but as the remembrance of yesterday, that the feeling returns upon us with all its freshness, how in his recent summer course (so frankly under- Fauna to that of the neighbouring Sea,”— Reports Brit. Assoc. 1840. We men- tion the preceding merely as among the more prominent of his earlier contri- butions, and to show how soon his determinations tended towards marine researches. 140 -The late Professor Edward Forbes. br taken, and so fully accomplished) while he was demonstrating the essential nature and attributes of those almost crystalline creations from the “ blue profound,” of which he was himself the prime expositor, the interest of his most original descrip- tions was almost as it were submerged in admiration of the beautifully graceful forms which seemed to arise as if by magic from beneath his long and delicate fingers, and how a murmur of applause was not refrained from by his grateful and admiring audience,—spectators, rather they might then be called. In April 1841, he accepted an invitation from his friend, Captain Graves, who commanded the surveying squadron in the Mediterranean, to join the ‘‘ Beacon,” in the capacity of natu- ralist, holding a nominal appointment from the Admiralty, which gave him position but no pay. He continued in the ex- ploration of the Archipelago and of the coasts of Asia Minor, with ample and most valuable results.* The Beacon having visited the coast of Lycia in the beginning of 1842, for the purpose of conveying away the remarkable remains of antiquity discovered at Xanthus by Sir Charles Fellows, her crew were employed there in making excavations among the ruins, and preparing for the removal of the marbles; for which task, how- ever, she proved unfitted. She therefore went back to Malta for the necessary requirements ; and being expected to return to Lycia, Mr Edward Forbes and Lieutenant Spratt (having been previously joined by the Rev. Mr Daniel, an accomplished * The following are a few of the important papers, the materials for which were acquired about this time. ‘ On two remarkable Marine Invertebrata in- habiting the Augean Sea”—Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1841. ‘On the species Newra (Gray) inhabiting the Aigean Sea”—Proceedings Zool. Soc., xi, p. 75. “On the Radiata of the Eastern Mediterranean”— Linn. Trans., xix., p. 143. “ Re- port on the Mollusca and Radiata of the Augean Sea, and on their distribution, considered as bearing on Geology”—Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1843. ‘ On a Collection of Tertiary Fossils from Malta and Gozo’’—-Proceedings of Geol. Soc., iv., p. 231. * On the Fossils collected by Lieutenant Spratt in the Fresh-water Tertiary Formation of the Gulf of Smyrna”—Journ. Geol. Soc., i., p. 162. “On the Geology of Lycia”—JIb., ii, p. 8. “ On the Fossils collected by Lieutenant Spratt in the Islands of Samos and Kubea’’—Jb,, iii, p. 73. “ On a Remark- able Phenomenon presented by the Fossils in the Fresh-water Tertiary of the Island of Cos” —Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1845, The late Professor Edward Forbes. T41 draughtsman) were kindly permitted to remain, for the sake of further antiquarian and natural history investigations. Mr Daniel was unfortunately cut off by fever in his prime; but notwithstanding this calamity, the results of a few months’ ex- ploration were most satisfactory. No fewer than eighteen ancient cities, the sites of which were unknown to geographers, were examined and determined ;* and many valuable facts in geology and zoology ascertained and recorded. Having successfully accomplished a task, not unattended by difficulty and danger, Mr Forbes was on the point of proceed- ing to conduct corresponding investigations in the Red Sea, when letters from England announced his (unsought and un- thought of ) election to the chair of Botany, in King’s College, London ; an honour not more gratifying than unexpected, as he was not even aware of the lamented death of his predecessor, Professor Don. He was chosen over the heads of several very competent,—indeed, eminent candidates,—without having been a candidate himself. He returned immediately to Lon- don, and finding that his professorial duties were coufined to the summer season, he sought and obtained the curatorship of the Museum of the Geological Society. In this superficial sketch we enter not into details. Of Pro- fessor Edward Forbes’ great excellence as an accurate and philosophical botanist we feel quite assured. One who knew him well, andis highly competent to judge (Dr Joseph Hooker, a kindred spirit), has expressed his wonder that the author of so many and varied geological treatises should have found time to aim at original researches in any other department of science, and should have been so successful in that aim. ‘“ This - was mainly due to the early age at which he acquired its rudi- ments; to the efficient practical training in systematic botany and collecting that he received in Edinburgh; to his quick perception of affinities; to his philosophical views of morpho- logy, distribution, structure, functions, and the mutual rela- tions of all these; to his mind being richly stored with the literature of the science; to the wide experience obtained dur- ing his travels; and, finally, to that heaven-given power of * See Travels in Lycia, Milyas, and the Cibyratis, 2 vols., 1847. 142 The late Professor Edward Forbes. generalization and abstraction which he so eminently pos- sessed.” * His introductory address, on assuming the Chair of Botany, was remarkable alike for excellency of expression and originality of thought. It was printed by desire of the Governors and Council. ‘“ Those who attended his class will ever remember the charm he threw around the study of vege- table structure, and the delightful hours they spent in his com- pany during the periodical excursions, which he made a point of taking with his pupils, in the neighbourhood of London. Nor were these excursions attended by pupils alone. Many are the distinguished men of science in London who sought the opportunity of availing themselves of his great practical knowledge of every department of natural history.” t One of his most important papers (belonging to an after pe- riod) is of a mixed nature, such as he alone could furnish from his own “invincible armoury,’”—‘ On the connection between the Distribution of the existing Fauna and Flora of the Bri- tish Isles, and the Geological Changes which have affected their area.’ { In this~signal work we have opened up to us a wide field of speculative research into almost every depart- ment of natural science, while it contains, imbedded in itself, a vast and varied mass of knowledge. It throws a flood of light on some most intricate inquiries regarding the age and rela- tionship of the rocks of Britain. In 1845 he was offered and accepted the honorable and advantageous appointment of Paleontologist to the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom; and thereafter resigned his situation in the Geological Society, of which at a future pe- riod (1853) he was chosen president.§ In connection with this * Gardeners’ Chronicle, Dec. 2, 1854. Tt Atheneum, Nov. 25, 1854. { This very remarkable paper is published in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, vol. i., p. 336. Our author’s other works, as bearing on Botany, are chiefly these :—“ On the Morphology of the Reproductive Sys- tem of Sertularian Zoophytes, and its analogy with that of Flowering Plants,” —Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1844. ‘‘ On some important analogies between the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms,’—Royal Institution, Feb. 1845. “ On the Distribu- tion of Endemic Plants, more especially those of the British Islands, considered with regard to Geological Changes,”—Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1845. § His “ Anniversary Address” forms a part of the “ Proceedings” of the Geological Society for 1854, - The late Professor Edward Forbes. 143 department, for the duties of which he was so admirably qua- lified, we need not do more than name the Paleontological and Geological Map of the British Islands, with explanatory Dis- sertation, forming part of that now national work, Mr Keith Johnston’s Physical Atlas, to which Professor Edward Forbes also, and more recently, contributed the map, with letter- press, of the “ Distribution of Marine Life.” This post of Palze- ontologist he continued to hold till the period of his death ; at least we are not aware that his elevation to the chair of Na- tural History here—the highest and most influential situation of the kind to be obtained in Britain—led to any change, al- though some eventual modification might have been found ex- pedient to obviate over-labour on the one hand, or the neglect of scientific business on the other. His being placed among us here was, indeed, deemed a most fortunate circumstance in relation to the proposed establishment of the so-called Economic or Industrial Museum, forming a branch of, or in some other way intimately connected with, the great zoological and geological collections of the university— themselves about to be, as we and all our community fondly hope, endowed, re-arranged, and opened gratuitously to the public. But where is now the accomplished head and the will- ing hand, that would have planned so wisely, and so plainly pointed out, the most approved and appropriate courses which we ought to follow,—where the kindly heart and disinterested disposition, which would have smoothed down and overcome the difficulties which cannot but beset the re-construction, on a new, enlarged, untried foundation, of a great scientific Insti- tute about to be unsealed ? But we shall not prolong our mournful meditations on this most sad bereavement, which we really regard as one of the greatest which could have befallen our community. Natural science is necessarily retarded among us formanyaday. But let the rising generation bear in mind how much he did with no more assistance than they may still obtain. Let them re- member, not only his love of knowledge, and assiduity in its attainment, but more especially his noble and generous temper, ever radiant even in the midst of opposition, like the sun, whose 144 The late Professor Edward Forbes. clearness no envious cloud can long encumber, though, when broken and dispersed, it may seem to make his brightness all the more effulgent. Let them think of his simplicity, modesty, freedom from arrogance and affectation, from jealousy and all uncharitableness, and how he ever kept the even tenor of his way, unspoiled by success, unmoved by flattery, fearless in his love of truth, undaunted in his hatred of malevolence and guile. Let not only the young, but also the mature, the middle-aged, the ancient, think of these things.* “ But our idle regrets,” says a great and most remarkable observer in the same field, “ can neither restore the dead nor benefit the living. Let us rather manifest our regard for the memory of our ilustrious brother,—taken so unexpectedly from among us,—by making his disinterested devotion to science our example, and by striving to eatch the tone of his frank and generous spirit. And seeing how very much he succeeded in accompliwaRp FORBES, F.R.S., F.G.S., Regius Professor of Natural History.) [The notes of this Lecture were found among Professor Forbes’ Manuscripts, and although probably not intended for publication, they are now printed, in the hope that they will be acceptable to his friends and pupils, and that they wil furnish valuable hints as to the mode of conducting courses of Natural History. There are few persons who would willingly admit that they know nothing of natural history ; and, in one sense, they are right: for, the beauties and curiosities of nature meeting the sight of man at every turn, there can scarcely be a human being, however ignorant and degraded, who has not at some time observed and admired them. But natural history, properly so-called, is more than this: it is the science of the understanding of natural objects. When we consider that all objects untransformed by the art of man are natural, the vastness of this science in its full extension must be great indeed, for it would embrace all that concerns the earth and its productions, the surrounding air, and extend into the domains of astronomy. But as that which is aimed at by the professorial office is rather the teaching how to study and master a science, through the exposition of its leading facts and laws, than to communicate all that is known about it, to extend the field of our teachings through- out the realms of natural history, would be to prevent the purpose we have in view. But there are certain great and principal sections of our science which should and will form the substance of our studies here, and which, however various and different they may seem, are in reality intimately and inseparably blended, These are the history of living beings, as they are on our globe and as they were, and the preparation and constitution of the earth’s crust for the reception and development of life, VOL. I. NO. I-—JAN. 1855, K 146 The late Professor Edward Forbes's We thus embrace biology, in its more special sense, and geology. Since the details of one portion of biology, viz., the natural history of plants, are fully taught by one of my colleagues, and since the course of study for which I contend, that which would conduct you to geological knowledge through a prelimi- nary investigation of the classification and characters of living beings, can in the main be effected only through z0o- logy, or the study of the animal part of the creation, it is to the latter division of biology that I shall confine my prelec- tions. And since, for the understanding of geology (the science to which the latter half of the course will be devoted), an acquaintance with the characters and combinations of minerals is requisite, the sub-science of mineralogy will ne- cessarily form part of our studies. This, then, will be the orderof our work. Commencing with the consideration of those general facts and principles that are common to the several sections of natural history, we shall proceed to the study of existing animals, and through them, arrive at an understanding of extinct forms of life, known only in the fossil state. This department, or paleontology, will, along with mineralogy, form the basis of our enquiry into the structure and geological history of the globe. Almost all the varied science which we shall have to survey has been eliminated from the facts of nature, within very modern times. Among the ancients, strange as it may seem, little progress appears to have been made in natural history, and the very science, the materials for the study of which lie most abundantly across the pathways of men, was that most neglected, and abandoned to dreamy fable. There are only two authors of antiquity, whose works are preserved, worthy of being cited as original contributors and understanders of science. ‘These are Aristotle and Strabo; the first, unequalled in all times for the grasp of his intellect and the variety of his acquirements, has left in the fragments of his treatise “* lege wo,’ a masterly essay in scientific geology, and a wonderfully accurate statement of well-directed observations. The second, in his geography, the minute accuracy of which Introductory Lecture. 147 I have admired, when travelling by the guidance of his descrip- tions, and by them only, through unexplored districts in Western Asia, has in several instances described and com- mented upon geological phenomena, and started views which for centuries remained unnoticed, because far in advance of their time. Now it is certainly remarkable that there should be no evi- dence of any other than these two illustrious philosophers, amongst all the ancients, having made real progress in our science. In all the statements of importance put forth by them, the information is given from their own observation, and no references are made indicative of there having been other men in the field, working in the true spirit of induction, which distinguishes what they themselves did and placed on record. Of other ancient authors whom we are accustomed to quote on account of natural history statements, Dioscorides, although the preserver of much interesting information concerning plants, can scarcely be regarded as more than a herbalist, whilst Arrian and Pliny are in the main compilers, and cer- tainly have no claim to take scientific rank with Aristotle and Strabo. The building of the great edifice of natural history science was long deferred, although, as we have seen, the corner stones were placed early. During the last 200 years almost everything has been done, and during the latter of these two centuries, the best part of the work. The order of develop- ment of the several sections has been in the main empirical. Thus botany advanced first ; chiefly through the impulse given to the study by its adoption in schools of medicine, and its connection with the materia medica; zoology passed through many phases, owing much to the systematization of the know- ledge of it in his day by the great Linneus ; and more, after- wards, through the wedding of it with comparative anatomy, by John Hunter, Cuvier, and their cotemporaries. Geology, after struggling through the mist of vague speculation, though cheered by occasional and momentary breaks of sunshine, at length, at the beginning of this century, emerged into clear day, and rapidly and steadily advancing, has now taken its just place amongst the foremost and grandest of the sciences. K 2 148 The late Professor Edward Forbes’s If we regard the position and condition of the natural his- tory sciences at the present moment, we may consider the age and time most favourable to the successful study of them. But we must not deceive ourselves, and fancy that because natural history is popular, it is therefore generally understood. Were we to form our opinion from the number of books on all branches of the science, issued almost monthly from the press, in Britain alone, and perused with avidity, we might suppose ourselves a nation of naturalists, and fairly reckon upon finding every tenth educated person we meet versed even in the technicalities of zoology, botany, and geology. Yet is it so? I need scarcely reply in the negative. On the contrary, we are too well aware of the prevailing and wide-spread ignorance of these studies. The fact is this, the books in question are bought and read; the interesting statements they contain excite momentary attention and pleasure ; even scien- tific classifications seem pleasing, because suggestive of well digested order. But the knowledge so gained is word-know- ledge only. Now this kind of knowledge can take no root, unless it be accompanied by a knowledge of things and beings. When Oliver Goldsmith, genius as he was, tried his hand at a “‘ History of Animated Nature,” and a very delightful book he made of it, he knew so little of the chief subject of his chapters ~ | viz., quadrupeds, that he described the cow as casting her horns annually. Thereis no more dangerous experiment than that of writing about things without a practical acquaintance with them. And there is no information which passes more speedily and thoroughly away from the memory than that of natural history, if it be learned from books only. The remedy is an easy one. Verify what you read in your book, and hear in your class-room, by observation in the field, and in the museum. Observe for yourselves. Try to decipher the structure, and make out the names of animate and inani- mate objects from actual specimens. Even to do this in the most rudimentary fashion is better than to rest content with reading the most lucid descriptions. Many a man can define a vertebrated, an articulate or a radiate animal, with out an erroneous expression, and yet be sadly puzzled as to what some unaccustomed specimen placed before him might Introductory Lecture. 7 149 be. The student who has counted and compared the legs of a fly and a spider, and noticed the resemblance between the segmentation of a centipede and of a layworm, is further ad- vanced in knowledge of the characters of the great articulate group, than he who can repeat whole pages of definition on the subject by heart, and yet would be exceedingly embar- rassed were he to be presented with a cockchafer, and called upon to point out those peculiarities in its external organiza- tion that distinguish it as an insect. Many a reader of geological treatises will tell you con- fidently how the world was made, yet be at his wits’ end if re- quested to name and define specimens of the rocks which he would meet with in sétu were he to walk from this class-room to the summit of Arthur’s seat. I remember some years ago, having a painful interview with a modest and intelligent per- son, who on account of testimonials and undoubted hard read- ing, had been appointed to the office of naturalist and geologist in an important foreign expedition. No man could have passed a better oral or written examination upon the sciences required of him, but unluckily all his knowledge of them had been derived from books. He was utterly adrift when asked how h2 would go to work when he arrived at the scene of his in- tended labours, and what tools he would use. Still more so when called upon to name a series of specimens of objects with which he would probably haye to institute his first com- parison. This gentleman, in no spirit of petulance or despair, but simply through an honest sense of his inability to fulfil the task required of him, resigned his mission at once. Now, I would earnestly urge on every student of this class the necessity of exercising himself frequently in observation of natural objects. My teaching, were it to be as perfect as my utmost ambition would desire, would be of little avail, unless you use your own eyes. Above everything go to the fields, and the seaside. You could not be more favourably situate for out-of-door study than you are here. In a huge metropolis such as London, or even Paris, to make field ob- servations, is to give up entire days to the work. But here the healthy exercise which all of you ought to take, the invigorating stroll around our beautiful neighbourhood, may 150 The late Professor Edward Forbes’s be made at the same time one of the best scientific lessons.: The Queen’s Park is a museum of British zoology in itself, and one of the finest natural geological models in the world. The shores of the Frith of Forth are strewn with interesting specimens of marine animals. The very ditches of the mea- dows, almost within the town, abound in curious freshwater creatures, every one a study in itself. To strolls in the neigh- bourhood of Edinburgh, whilst a student in the University, I am indebted for much knowledge that has proved to me a never-ceasing pleasure and a benefit in after years. Do not neglect the museum. It may not be all we could wish, but it is more than enough for supplying the materials of study during the time you can give to it. It has been said of hospitals, that their capacities for instruction are not always in proportion to their vastness, and their number of beds is not of so much consequence as variety and interest of cases. So with museums; it is not mere extent and great accumulations of specimens that render them available for purposes of study, but rather the systematic illustration of the leading types of the several kingdoms of nature. This is the purpose which we shall keep in view in getting our museum here into order, a task that will take some time, but which, nevertheless, is, I trust, advancing. Now, from the types of animal and mineral forms exposed in its rooms and cabinets, you ought to be able to acquire a fair fundamental notion of the science we are met to cultivate. How best to make use of the collection I will explain in another lecture. The main purpose of your assembling in this class-room is the acquiring a knowledge of the principles of natural history, of the leading facts of zoology and geology, and of the way to go to work in pursuing the practice of these sciences. Within these limits the method of instruction by lectures is well adapted for conveying the requisite information, and forming a basis for more detailed studies in the cabinet and the open air. Moreover, you will thus be guided in the course of study which can only be pursued in your chambers. Study, when desultory and unguided, is rarely beneficial, although better than none at all. When properly and systematically conducted, the study of natural history invigorates the mind, Introductory Lecture. 151 exercises and strengthens the reasoning powers, and educates the observing faculty. For these qualities, it is selected to be a branch of professional education; and those among you who are intended for the noble and self-sacrificing profession of medicine, will never regret having devoted a fair portion of your time to the receiving of zoological, botanical, and geolo- logical instruction. These are days when almost every man, sooner or later in the course of his life, travels, either of necessity, or for pur- poses of information and amusement. Delightful as it is to explore strange lands, no small part of the pleasure and the benefit of travelling is lost to the man who is ignorant of natu- ral history. The differences between one country and another do not depend wholly upon their inhabitants, their edifices, or their tewns. Nature, animate and inanimate, varies in each region of the earth’s surface. The differences strike even the uninformed,—but in what manner? Vaguely, dimly, and ignorantly. How often, when we visit foreign countries, do we meet with intelligent travellers, who, perceiving those differ- ences, and unable to comprehend them, lament grievously over their ignorance, and exclaim, “ Would that we knew something of natural history!” Often have I heard a like exclamation uttered by the active-minded soldier or sailor, ‘who has longed for occupation in some far-away and lonely station, whence all the sense of loneliness might have been banished, had he been able to observe the wondrous world of living creatures and the construction of the rocky soil around him. Many of you will probably find yourselves under similar circumstances, but, I trust, not under like intellectual dificul- ties. Learn to observe and to know nature in good time, and you will never be oppressed by listlessness, or wearied through want of objects of interest with which to engage the mind. Under conditions which to most minds induce hopeless idle- ness, it is possible for you not only to make yourselves happy, but to gain fame, if that be your ambition, and certainly to contribute, in no small degree, towards the advancement of science. Nay more, under these conditions, you may be in the most favourable position for the perfecting of your own knowledge, and the opening out fresh fountains of discovery. 152 The late Professor Edward Forbes’s You will have the advantage over many a naturalist at home ; for there is no advantage in our department of science so great as that conferred by travel. The mind becomes warped and narrowed when limited to the contemplation of one set and con- dition of objects. Observation is exercised, but without the check and gloss of sufficient comparison, and we think we see all, when we are regarding but a fragment. The zoologist and botanist can, it is true, by means of menageries, gardens, and museums, gather together readily the fruits of travel. Still, the natural combinations, so to speak, of living beings, are not fully and fairly seen through such artificial media. The mi- neralogist can do much in the cabinet and in the laboratory ; but there is a mineralogy on a grand scale that must be studied in the open air, and in the recesses of the earth. It is cus- tomary to say that minerals are the same everywhere they oc- cur: but this is not strictly true; and the curious and minute differences of constitution, and even of crystallization, which distinguish the minerals of one region from those of another, are indicative of phenomena which have yet to be worked out in the wide geographical fields. The geologist, though he may ground himself thoroughly in his science at home, above all other naturalists, requires to correct and extend his know- ledge by wide-spread research and observation ; and, when Sir Charles Lyell said that there are three requisites for a geolo- gist, and that these are, “ Travel, travel, travel!” he gave that advice which, if it had been the doctrine of the illustrious Wer- | ner, would have placed his favourite science in a very differ- ent position half a century ago, and freed it at an earlier day from the trammels of local prejudice and partial knowledge. Now to those who must stay at home—and they are many— the greatest service that can be conferred by him who travels is the communication of correct scientific observations. All of you, then, who look forward to see the wonders of foreign regions, prepare yourselves, in good time, to understand and describe them; and let those to whom the British islands are to be a life residence, learn also, in order that they may un- derstand the new facts that will thus be brought to light. When urging upon some of my friends the benefit and de- light they would derive from natural history studies, I have Introductory Lecture. 153 heard the objection occasionally put forth, that they are in- compatible with active professional or business occupations ; or, at least, that the carrying them out worthily, and in a spirit of true science, not mere dilletanteism, cannot be ef- fected without an interference with the sterner duties of life. Plausible as this objection seems, it is not well founded. The proof that it is not so lies in the fact that many of the ablest advancers of the natural history, as well as of other sciences, and, I might add, of literature and philosophy, are men diligently engaged in daily duties of a different kind, and doing their tasks thoroughly and well. The names of many of the most eminent of British men of science are those of fully occupied physicians and successful merchants. Who, for example, have done better service towards the investiga- tion of the zoology of the British Islands than Dr George Johnston of Berwick, and Professor Thomas Bell of London, both carrying out extensive and original researches whilst busily engaged in arduous and never-neglected professional duties? In the last century, Ellis, a busy London merchant, changed the whole face of zoophytology. Only last year died Charles Stokes, a name not popularly known, but very fa- miliar to men of science at home and abroad, similarly oc- cupied with Ellis, who, nevertheless, found time to aid, by his “extensive and original knowledge and ever-judicious advice, almost every naturalist of whatever denomination in HKurope. At the present moment I could point out several of our very best zoologists and geologists among the most diligent and ablest of British merchants. The law, too, might do much for us, but does not often add to our ranks ; yet it is a curious fact, that one of our chief authorities for the anatomy of the invertebrata is a lawyer. The army and navy have more time at their disposal; but it is not among the idle portion of the services that we find the scientific amidst arduous duties ; and a naval officer, in command of one of our ships now in the Black Sea, has contrived to acquire and communicate the first satisfactory and scientific information concerning the coal- fields of Asia Minor. Let it not be pleaded, then, that science is to be put aside on account of active professional occu- pations of any kind. The excuse never comes from the able 154 The late Professor Edward Forbes’s and willing. It is exactly by the aid of the classes of men who do their professional and business duties best that science has reaped, and is reaping, its most valuable harvests. To urge upon you the desirability of studying natural his- tory, on account of the material benefits that may result from the pursuit, would be to take a very low ground of persuasion. You do not come here to acquire the art of making fortunes by this kind of learning, but to study it because it is a science worthy of the mind’s employment intellectually en- nobling in the knowledge it imparts. That which it pleased the Creator to make—the universe and the world on which we live, and the beings that live upon the world with us—these are surely subjects worthy of our deepest study. Every crea- ture, whether existing or extinct, every fragment of rock and constituent mineral, each and all are revelations of Divine wisdom. Now, all which was worthy of God’s making is worthy of man’s learning, is too plain a truth to need a com- ment. Well might the old Christian father exclaim, “ Crea- vit angelos in ccelo, vermiculos in terra; non superior in istis, non inferior in illis.” Yet such is the nature of man, that he is constantly harp- ing about things beneath his dignity. The politician, whose business really concerns the fleeting moment, who, whilst he boastfully fancies himself stirring the world—as the fly in- the fable stood upon the axle and fancied itself the mover of the wheel—who is useful, because politicians must be as things are constituted, and therefore, and therefore only, respectable— the politician regards the man of science with compassionate concern or supercilious indifference, deeming his pursuits un- practical, because not always useful in the lowest sense. Yet the very politics of the world are changing through the advance- ment of every form of knowledge, and the development of the character and power of nations depends in no slight degree on the progress of sciences that seem at the moment wholly iso- — lated and theoretical. Show the man of commerce and the statesman a utilitarian bearing in scientific researches, and all the dignity and va- nity of man are forgotten. Show that gold is to be got or to be saved through our work, and the value of our science is at Introductory Lecture. 155 once admitted. Short-sighted diplomatists and sorry econo- mists! The spread of a thirst for pure knowledge is in its results eventually of more benefit, both politically and pecu- eas to the state, than all the immediate “ useful applica- tions.” A wise people, delighting in intellectual pursuits for their own sake, is a shrewder generation than one lost in money-making and sna But to get at the mind of a world that values sealth and power as “the grand aim of earthly occupation whilst this world lasts, we must occasionally employ its own weapons. It is true that natural history, under its sub-sciences, physics and chemistry, cannot do this very effectively or frequently ; but, nevertheless, it has something to say. More especially in its mineral aspects does it bear upon utilitarian interests. In these gold-seeking days, a little knowledge of mineralogy would have prevented the waste of not a little gold. I have seen boxes of yellow mica, imported from California, under the belief that they were filled with the precious metal, and carefully packed prisms of quartz brought home, after being dearly paid for as diamonds, the seller probably having re- gretted the cheapness at which his necessities compelled him to dispose of them, and the buyer dishonestly chuckling over the goodness of the bargain he had made. On the other hand, I have lately placed, in the cases of the museum, frag- ments of a mineral that promises to yield a fortune, which lay open, abundantly, to the day, and stood by the roadside un- noticed until it attracted the eye of a scientific observer. Especially valuable is geological knowledge. Not many years ago, a competent engineer, visiting a district where lime was precious for agricultural purposes, and was procured from a considerable distance inland at much cost, being impressed with the belief, drawn from his geological observations, that there ought to be limestone strata beneath the superficial covering, went to work systematically to test his impression, and ended, to the amazement of the people, by obtaining a lease of the limestone.in a district where the natives never heard of its presence. He then made his shafts, and supplied them with the desideratum. 156 The late Professor Edward Forbes’s In this case money was made by geological knowledge,— oftener it may be prevented being thrown away. Not a hundred miles from Edinburgh I have seen, since I last lectured in this class-room, costly excavations in progress, the object being a common one—the search after coal in a spot where any geologist would have told the seekers that they might as well throw their money into the sea. In this case a good geologist, who knew the country well, did give timely warning, but in vain. As if to illustrate the absurdity of this wasteful and unscientific experiment, the so-called “ practical” men who conducted these operations were actually mining amid vertical strata, sinking their shaft in the dip, and driv- ing their galleries in the strata of the bed; so that, however long they continued their fruitless task, they would be (and possibly at this moment are) constantly working in the same bed in which they commenced. But I trust that, whilst there shall be no danger of the stu- dents of this class making such preposterous blunders, they will always bear in mind the intellectual dignity of the science, and whilst they apply its results to every useful and economi- cal purpose to which they may be adapted, never forget that the grand aim and object is the contemplation and understand- ing of the greatness and goodness of the Deity, as revealed to us in creation. This purpose constitutes the worthiness of our science, and stamps it with unmistakeable grandeur. Edinburgh has long been famous as a nursery of naturalists. A large proportion of the most distinguished British zoologists and geologists of our day, and not a few foreign ones, acquired or cherished their taste for the study of nature in this univer- sity. The physical advantages of the district have had doubt- less much to do in attracting the minds of students to natural history. But these would have been ineffective without the teachings and enthusiasm of my late illustrious predecessor in this chair, who was himself preceded by a less known but able man, Professor Walker, imbued with a like spirit. The emi- - — nent men who have gone before me held that the student who aims at being a naturalist, in the proper sense of the word, must combine biological with geological knowledge. For the Introductory Lecture. 157 same view I most strenuously contend. It was the doctrine held and practised by Linneus, by Cuvier, by Blainville, by Brongniart ; and at the present day by such men as Owen, Dar- win, and Falconer, all formerly Edinburgh students ; by Agas- siz, Loven, Phillippi, and Dana. A philosophy of natural his- tory can only spring out of this combination, and can never be evolved from the exclusive study of isolated sections. I hold that the student should begin by taking broad and compre- hensive views of the general bearings of the science ; and when afterwards, as he must if he 1s to master it well, he engages in monographic researches, then he will reap the benefit of having laid a foundation of good, sound, general principles. The day will come when, ere we attempt a complete descrip- tion and precise definition of any one species of animal or plant, we must first have worked out not only external varia- tions and internal structure, but also the whole history of its distribution in geological time and geographical space. I am aware that these views are not invariably assented to by the naturalists of the present day, although in favour of them the opinions of the ablest may be cited. I trust to you, gentlemen, for the evidence of their correctness. To the fu- ture career of many of you I look forward with hope and con- fidence. I have had a guarantee of it in the ability and ear- nestness displayed by many of the students of this class dur- ing the past summer. Whatever I can do I will do, and hope you will come to me freely for advice and assistance. We have fine subjects for study; let us go to work earnestly and diligently, and we shall be sure to gain much good scientific knowledge before the winter shall have passed away. [158 ] REVIEWS. Die Conchylien der Nord-Deutschen Tertidr-gebirges. The Fossil Shells of the Tertiary Formations of the North of Germany. By Prof. Beyricu. Berlin: 1853-4. Parts I.— III. No one can have directed his attention to a physical map of the North of Europe, excluding, of course, the Scandinavian penin- sula, without being struck by the vast extent of the flat, or only very slightly undulating country, which stretches from the south- western frontiers of Belgium through Holland, Oldenburg, Hano- ver and Prussia, into the very heart of Russia. This relatively low flat region also comprises parts of Silesia and Prussian Poland, with Pomerania and adjacent territories. No inconsider- able portion of this tract consists of unproductive sands, turf bogs, and dreary morasses, occasionally interrupted by districts of diluvial clays, which have been converted into rich and productive meadow lands. In later times the value of this district has been greatly in- creased by the discovery of extensive tracts of brown coal, which have been successively worked, and, especially in the neighbour- hood of Magdeburg, and of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, supply the in- habitants with a cheap and valuable fuel. The working of these brown coal beds, however, has led to another, and, geologically speaking, still more important discovery. These brown coal beds, derived from the decay of the vegetation of vast lagoons and swamps, form the basis of an interesting series of tertiary deposits, some of which have proved to be unusually rich in the remains of marine mollusca, showing in many districts a remarkable con- nexion with the well-known tertiaries of Belgium and other coun- tries. At first, however, they did not meet with all the attention they deserved, and, although the contents of the Septaria clays of Berlin and of Magdeburg, and those of the nodules of Sternberg, have been long known, it is only since the Belgium tertiaries have been worked out by the exertions of Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Dumont, that the attention of the German geologists has been | directed to ascertaining their correct position in the tertiary system. Amongst those who have been most active in working out these results is Professor Beyrich of Berlin, the author of the work now under our consideration. It will not, therefore, now be uninter- esting to the readers of the Philosophical Journal, to have placed before them a short outline of the work, so far as it is already Reviews. 159 published, and of the plans and views of the author in carrying out his undertaking. Professor Beyrich soon recognised the insufficiency of the pre- viously existing catalogues, or lists of names of the Molluscous Fauna of the tertiary beds of North Germany, to enable the geo- logist to establish a correct comparison between them and the fos- sils of other countries. They were gencrally unaccompanied by illustrations. Even the investigations of Philippi respecting the tertiary shells of Cassel, Freden, Zuilkorst, and the neighbourhood of Magdeburg, are not sufficiently comprehensive to enable the geologist to institute exact comparisons between them and the productions of other localities; the progress of the study of the North German tertiaries has consequently been slow. The evil of such an imperfect state of the literature of this branch of science had been acknowledged by the Direction of the Imperial Institute of Geology of Vienna, who immediately prepared the commence- ment of a separate work on the shells of the tertiary basin of Vienna by Professor Hornes, in which not only the names but full descriptions and accurate drawings of all known existing species should be given. Professor Beyrich wishes to do for the North of Germany what Hornes has undertaken with regard to the Vienna basin. “Tt is my intention,’’ he observes, “to extend the work to all the tertiary formations which have been discovered, from the fron- tiers of Belgium and Holland, eastward through North Germany as far as the Oder. AJl these formations belong undoubtedly to one series of deposits, closely connected with each other, and of which the faunze are so intimately allied by numerous gradations, that the removal of any single member from the series would destroy the continuity of the whole. In order to have a clear insight into the relative connexions of deposits which occur at such various and distant points, we must bring together for comparison the fossils from the neighbourhood of Dusseldorf, Osnabriick and Biinde, those of Hildesheim and Cassel, those from Liineburg and the island Sylt, as well as from the neighbourhood of Magdeburg, _ and from the Markgraviate of Brandenburg. We must also exa- ‘mine the tertiary shells which have been transported into new posi- tions in the diluvial deposits, in order to obtain a perfect view of the molluscous fauna of the tertiary seas of the north of Germany.” The eastern boundary of the country which Professor Beyrich proposes to examine is somewhat artificial, being limited by the extent of our knowledge on the subject. Between the Elbe and the Oder, great progress has been made of late years in the inves- tigations of tertiary geology, while no observations have been made respecting the extension of these fossiliferous tertiary beds beyond the Oder. The author thinks it probable, however, that they nevertheless exist. The geological features of the country form 160 Reviews. anatural boundary to the south. The Hartz and other mountain districts, which rise more or less abruptly from this northern plain, mark with more or less exactness the limits of the ancient ocean. Alternations of marine and fresh-water deposits are no where met with, nor do any of those combinations of organic forms occur, which are characteristic of brackish waters. This ancient tertiary sea was permanently shut off from those fresh- water basins, which in the interior of Germany formed extensive and perhaps contemporary deposits. The marine tertiary forma- tions, which extend through the countries watered by the Weser as far as Gottingen and Cassel, are a southern prolongation of this North German tertiary deposit, and must be considered as sepa- rated from the north-eastern prolongations of the Mayence basin, which is characterized by its peculiar composition, and the abnor- mal development of its fauna. We cannot state thus generally the views of Professor Beyrich without adding one or two remarks, modifying, in some degree, the universality of the expressions. When Professor Beyrich states that there is no alternation of marine and fresh-water deposits, he surely cannot have overlooked the fact that these marine forma- tions almost everywhere overlie the brown coal, and that although no animal remains have been found in this brown coal, it must be looked upon as a fresh-water deposit formed in vast lagoons or swamps probably at no great elevation above the then level of the ocean, and derived from the decay of fresh-water vegetable matter. In the next place it appears to us that in the present state of our knowledge, it is somewhat arbitrary to attempt on the one hand to connect the tertiary beds of Cassel, Biinde, Gottingen, &c., with those of North Germany, from which they are separated by moun- tain ranges of considerable elevation, and on the other to cut off these same Cassel tertiaries from the North Hastern prolonga- tions of the Mayence Basin with which the physical, and, to a certain extent also, the mineralogical connection appears to have been both natural and continuous. The author then proceeds to show the importance of institut- ing a comparison between the tertiaries of Belgium and those of North Germany, observing that, although the time is not yet come for the complete development of this parallelism, there are certain established points of connection which must not be lost sight of. After explaining Dumont’s five systems (Landenien, Ypresien, Panisilien, Bruxellien, and Laekenien), which, taken together, are the equivalents of the Paris Eocene formations up to the sand of Beauchamp, and of those of England up to the Barton clay, he observes :—‘‘ Hitherto we know of no fossils from any part of the North of Germany which positively prove the existence of tertiary deposits of so great an age. The oldest North German tertiary Fauna, viz., that of what I have called the Magdeburg Sands Reviews. 161 agrees rather with that of Lethen in Belgium, which belongs to the lower portion of the Tongrian (Systeme Tongrien), and imme- diately overlies the Systeme Laekenien, the uppermost of the five Systems of Dumont just alluded to. Moreover, the occurrence of this Fauna is as yet confined in North Germany to the country west of the Elbe between Magdeburg, Calbe, and Egeln.” The next fossiliferous bed in ascending order which occurs in Northérn Germany is the Septaria Clay of Berlin, which, with its characteristic fossils, has hitherto been found near Stettin, Freien- walde, Bukow, Hermsdorf, and Liibars near Berlin, Burg, Hohenwarthe on the Elbe below Magdeburg, and Géorzig near Kothen. ‘The same clay occurs in an isolated position in the Liinebiirger Heath at Walle, near Celle, but it is not again met with in a westerly direction nearer than Belgium, where the clay of Boom Baesele and other places south of Antwerp is perfectly identical. Professor Beyrich refers the Fauna of the Sternberger beds to the same Belgian System (Systeme Rupelien). They contain the characteristic shells of the Septaria clay, with others which are not found in the older beds. It also occurs in the neighbourhood of Stettin, The author is still uncertain whether any beds occur in North Germany corresponding with the deposits of Kleyn- Spawen, placed by Dumont between the Rupelmonde Clay and that of Lethen, and which are referred partially to the Rupelmonde, and partly to the Tongrian System. ‘This is important because these are the beds which, as De Koninek first suggested, have the greatest analogy with those of the Mayence basin. All the tertiary deposits of the lower Elbe belong to a more recent period, as well as those of other more northern localities near Liineburg, Hamburg, and Holstein, and those of the island Sylt and Schleswig. Of the same age are those observed by F. Roemer on the frontier of Holland, and by Acfeld and Diisseldorf. They must not, however, be placed higher than the deposits of Bordeaux, the Touraine, Turin, and Vienna. Deposits of the age of the clay of England and of Antwerp are altogether wanting in North Germany. The youngest tertiary deposits of North Ger- many belong to the Bolderberg System, which is placed by Dumont and Lyell as parallel with the typical Miocene formations of France and other countries, and of which, although inferior to that of the Vienna basin, it is a better representation than the Belgian deposit. After thus describing the physical characters of the North Ger- man tertiary deposits, the author proceeds to discuss the question as to where the boundary line is to be drawn between the Hocene and Miocene formations in Belgium; and after fairly stating the views of Dumont, Lyell, and d’Orbigny, he appeals to the evidence of North Germany, from which it appears that, in so far as the VOL. I. NO. 1.— JAN. 1850. L 162 Reviews. lowest beds of the Tongrian System appear as the base of the whole marine tertiary formation of the North of Germany, to the total exclusion of all older formations, this is an important geological support to the view of Sir C. Lyell, that a stronger line of separa- tion is to be drawn between the Laeken and Tongrian systems rather than between the Tongrian and the Rupelmonde systems ; but he does not agree with Lyell in giving to these united systems the name of Upper Hocene rather than Lower Miocene—he rather adopts the views of the French Palxontologist in considering them the forerunners of the Miocene formation, and is therefore prepared to call them Lower Miocene. After alluding to the different suggestions of Dumont and others for various subdivisions of the tertiary formation, he observes, (while at the same time refusing to be bound to the mere artificial rule of percentages), that the terms Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, should be maintained as representing periods of time, the centres of which are well known to us, but whose beginnings and ends run into each other; in the same way as, the more our knowledge is extended, we find to be more and more the case in all investiga- tions respecting geological periods. In conelusion, the author adds a few words respecting the ar- rangement and the form in which he proposes to give his deserip- tion of the north German tertiary shells. The Univalves precede the Bivalves ; and adopting the plan of Hornes’s work on the Vienna Basin, he commences with the Gastropods. This has the advan- tage of establishing a more easy system of comparison between the two formations ; and with the same highly laudable view he has determined to adopt the same order of genera, This is the more praiseworthy, as he admits that in some instances a more satis- factory arrangement might have been adopted. Such a sacrifice of personal views is the more to be admired in proportion as it is rare ; and the advantage to students of the two systems cannot be questioned. He has wisely determined not to overload his work with too much description, or the useless repetition of synonyms already published in so many other standard works. To give some idea of the extent of the work, we add a list of the genera already published, with the number of species belong- ing to each genus :—Voluta, 10 species; Mitra, 11; Columbella, 3; Terebra, 6; Buccinum, 13; Purpura, 2; Cassis, 7; Cassida- ria, 3; Rostellaria, 2; Aporrhais, 2. Total,—60 species on 15 plates. | We cannot conclude these remarks without thus publicly award- ing our thanks to Prof. Beyrich for having undertaken this work. It is evident that we can have no correct idea of the real nature of the successive facies of the Molluscan fauna of the Northern Ocean without it. It will indirectly tend to give us more correct views of our own interesting tertiary formations, and thus lead to Reviews. 163 a truer knowledge of the various gradations through which tho creation of tertiary forms have proceeded from the close of the cretaceous epoch down to its most recent deposits; and while, on the one hand, we urge Prof. Beyrich to advance in his great work as rapidly as circumstances will allow him, we must also express a hope that he will meet with such encouragement from British Paleontologists, as will prove to him that his labours are fully appreciated in the country of a Lyell and a Forbes. Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Researches of John Dal- ton, Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, &c. By WILLIAM CHARLES Henry, M.D., F.R.S. Printed for the Cavendish Society, 1854. We have now the satisfaction of weleoming a work on Dalton, which leaves us nothing to desire, so far as regards his personal history or his scientific labours. His history was eventless, his nature unimpassioned, his intellect clear and self-reliant, and his perseverance inexhaustible. By many and slow steps he won his way to reputation, and what to so modest a philosopher seemed wealth, was added to fame. Born in 1766 in Cumberland, the son of a yeoman, whose small copyhold afforded no patrimony for a younger brother, Dalton shared in the labours of his father’s farm during the summer months, and in addition commenced at the precocious age of twelve, to teach a school in his native village. When fifteen years old, he removed to Kendal, and along with his elder brother Jonathan, conducted a seminary for children of members of the Society of Friends, among whom the Daltons had been numbered for three generations. In the humble office of schoolmaster, he continued at Kendal for eight years, devoting his leisure to the study of mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and the languages, in the prosecu- tion of which he was encouraged and assisted by Mr Gough, a blind gentleman of remarkable acquirements, who set him the ex- ample of keeping a meteorological register. For this the continu- ally changing aspects of such a district as that around Kendal, with its hills and dales, and sheets of water, presented peculiar facilities, and Dalton soon became an enthusiastic meteorologist, and continued one to the last. Round meteorology, indeed, all his researches naturally grouped themselves, and it was originally to solve important problems in the science, which he had more or less cultivated for twenty years among his native hills, that he entered upon those enquiries into the laws of Heat, the Constitu- 1.2 164 Reviews. tion of Gases, and the Composition of Chemical Compounds, which afterwards made him so famous. The first of his scientific publications, “* Meteorological Obser- vations and Hssays,” appeared in 1793, soon after his removal to Manchester, to enter on the office of Tutor in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in a Dissenting College in that town. He resigned this appointment at the end of six years, but continued to reside in Manchester to the close of his days. It is not our intention here to trace the events of his personal history: it will suffice, therefore, to state that the reputation he acquired by his Meteorological Essays, was greatly increased by the publication in the Manchester Philosophical Memoirs, from 1799 onwards to 1801, of Essays on Evaporation ; on the conduction of heat by liquids ; on the constitution of mixed gases; on the force of steam or vapour from water, and other liquids ; on evaporation ; and on the expansion of gases by heat. These remarkable papers attracted the notice of the scientific world and led to Dalton’s invitation to lecture at the Royal Insti- tution, London, in 1804, where Davy was then delighting audi- tors of all ranks and professions by his chemical prelections. In the short course of lectures Dalton delivered at this time, he an- nounced the results of researches, which were not published till 1805. These embraced an experimental enquiry into the elastic fluids of the atmosphere; an investigation into the diffusion of gases; and a Memoir on the absorption of gases by water. It was this last paper, read to the Manchester Society in 1803, but not published till 1805, which contained what its author called a ‘‘ Table of the relative weights of the ultimate particles of gaseous and other bodies ;”” or what we should now name a Table of Atomic Weights. It was the first such Table, and was destined more than any of his publications to make its author memorable. He was led to construct such a Table originally from the de- sire to solve a problem important to meteorology: ‘‘ why is one gas more soluble in water than another?” He thought the dif- ferent solubilities of gases might prove to depend on the unlike size of those ultimate particles, which he afterwards named atoms, and regarded as so essentially indivisible that he enforced on his pupil, Mr Ransome, that a law of Multiple Proportion could not fail to exist, in these naive, but most expressive words—‘*‘ Thou knows 1 Must BE so, for no man can split an atom!” (Life, | p- 222.) From this time forward, chemistry much more largely occupied his time than before, and fully alive to the novelty and import- ance of his views on atomics, he proceeded to embody them in a work which his modesty and simplicity of character did not pre~ vent him from naming a “ New System of Chemical Philosophy ;” a title which the scientific world cordially and admiringly received Reviews. 165 and ratified. The first part of vol. I. of the New System was not published till 1808, and the second not till 1810. The second volume did not appear till 1827. It contained in an Appendix, what its author styled a “‘ Reformed” Table of Atomic Weights, in which oxygen figures as 7: nitrogen as 5 + or 10%; carbon as 5:4; sulphur 13 or 14; and phosphorus as 9 ; hydrogen being regarded as unity. It is not a little remarkable that the author of the atomic theory was wrong, and far wrong, in every one of his atomic weights. He would accept none of the corrections of other chemists, and priding himself on his practicality defended all his numbers, which are now universally discarded; but it was this stubborn self-reliance which enabled him to transcend the imper- fection of his self-supplied data, and by the power of his genius to announce laws, which, paradoxical though it may appear, he established as true, although every example of their truth he offered was false. Dr Henry’s work enables us to dispose conclusively of the much-vexed question how far Dalton was anticipated by others in his announcement of those laws of combining proportion by weight, which obtain in chemistry. His biographer’s revelations strik- ingly show how difficult a task it ever is to write history faithfully, and how little even the most able and friendly contemporaries of a man cam often be trusted in their estimate of his doings. Every chemist was aware that Dalton had been anticipated in the disco- very of the law of Reciprocal Proportion, by Richter (following out the views of Bergman and Wenzel), not to mention the law of Definite or Constant Proportion, which he did not claim as_ his own; and that Higgins had preceded him in regarding chemical combination as occurring between the ultimate particles of bodies. At the same time, it was matter of almost total uncertainty how far Dalton, who read exceedingly few books, was familiar with those earlier researches ; but the general impression, advocated in his own behalf by Higgins, and so far favoured by Davy, was, that Dalton had some acquaintance with Higgins’s views, but none, as Dr T. Thomson specially asserted, with those of Richter, It now appears that Dalton was ignorant altogether of the ex- istence of Higgins or his writings, till many years after he pub- lished his views on atomics ; and Dr Henry shows very distinctly that though Higgins did not hesitate to hint at plagiarism, his doctrines, however ingenious, are inconsistent with each other, and are not based on such considerations as led Dalton to his conclusions. On the other hand, his biographer gathered from the lips of the chemist himself, that he had profoundly studied Richter’s tables of combining proportions before he published his Atomic Theory ; but it does not less clearly appear, that before he was familiar with the views of the German chemists, he had not only 166 Reviews. realized very clearly the existence of what are now termed the laws of Constant and of Reciprocal Proportion, but had disco- vered the law of Multiple Proportion, which no one had even suspected to exist, before he announced it ; and had im effect an- nounced the equally important law of Compound Proportion, the honour of proclaiming which no one disputes with him, Dr Henry also shows more fully than had been shown before, that with an almost inexplicable perversity, Dalton insisted on disbelieving in those beautiful laws of Combination by Measure, which Gay-Lussac proved to obtain in the case of gases, and en- titled the Theory of Gaseous Volumes, although it was the coun- terpart of his own theory of Combination by Weight, and, as every one now sees, confirmed and extended it. Dalton died a believer in the existence of atoms which “no man can split.” His biographer has marshalled with great ful- ness and clearness all the arguments deducible from recent che- mical discoveries and speculations, in support of the existence of indivisible ultimate particles, or true atoms; but he impartially acknowledges that they cannot be demonstrated to exist, and con- tents himself with urging the probability of their existence. The important and much disputed question here raised, we shall not discuss on this occasion, but all to whom it is interesting will find new and valuable materials for its settlement in Dr Henry’s work. ‘It remains to add, that on the personelle of Dalton, of which we have said nothing, ample and very interesting par ticiabacs are furnished ; and that the volume is pa ee by contributions from many distinguished men of science. The Cavendish Society has done a signal service in publishing a work so well written and so valuable. The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours, and their Applications to the Arts. By M. EK. CHEVREUL, Membre de I|’Institut de France, &c., &c. Translated from the French by CHARLES MARTEL. London: Longman & Co. 1854, Chevreul is a remarkable example of distinction won in depart- ments of enquiry so different, that posterity is likely to halve or double him, and insist on the existence of at least of two Messieurs Chevreul, the one famous amongst chemists, as the discoverer of the true nature of Fatty bodies ; the other, a high authority among Natural Philosophers and Artists, as a discoverer of new relations among colours. There is, however, but one Chevreul, and his work on colour, which sprang out of his labours as chemist to the Gobe- Reviews. 167 lins tapestry dye-works, stands in natural and pleasing association with his purely chemical investigations. His views upon colour have been so long and so highly appre- ciated on the Continent, and especially in France, that our foreign brethren have naturally wondered that we have been so tardy in acknowledging their value, especially in their application to the practical chromatic arts. Our natural philosophers did not over- look their importance, as our university libraries can testify; and in 1848, the Cavendish Society published an admirable abstract of Chevreul’s views, of the existence of which the translator of the work before us appears to be quite ignorant. It was not, however, till the Great Exhibition in 1851, that the conspicuous superiority of the French coloured designs drove our workmen to discover the cause of their own inferiority, and the continual reference to Chey- reul as one of the great authors of the skilful use of colours by the French dyers, weavers, and other workers in the chromatic arts, turned the attention of practical men in this country to his book. The volume before us is the fruit of the interest thus awakened in the author’s researches, and we welcome its appearance in an English form. Large as the work is, it is the demonstration of a single fertile principle, which its author calls the “ Law of the Simultaneous Contrast of Colours.” The purport of this law, is to point out the singular fact, that when two coloured objects, such for example as a red and a green ribbon, are placed side by side, or so near each other as to be seen together, the quality and intensity of their respective colours do not appear the same as when each is looked at separately, Thus, the same red ribbon will have a different tint if seen side by side with a green, with a yellow, and with a blue ribbon, and these colours will in their turn be modified to the eye, by their juxtaposition with red. This is the Simultaneous Contrast of Colour. If, again, two shades or tints of the same colour be placed together,—for example, a light red, and a dark red, the latter will appear darker, and the former lighter, than either does when seen alone. This is the Simultaneous Contrast of Tone; the word “ tone,” being used by Chevreul as synonymous with intensity of tint or shade, not as referring to any real or sup- posed analogy between colour and sound. So far as tone is concerned, the rule is sufficiently noticed above. As for contrast of colour, it occurs according to the principle that every colour adds its complementary to the colour it is placed near or beside. Thus, red causes other colours near it to appear as if its complementary green were added to them. Green tints them with red. Blue adds to other colours orange. Yellow adds to them purple. The appearance of any coloured body beside another coloured body, is thus different from what it is when seen alone or on a white ground, and the difference is such as would be 168 Reviews. produced by adding to the isolated colour so much of the comple- ment of the colour which by its proximity, modifies it. It had long been known, as Chevreul amply acknowledges, that when the eye is fatigued by looking at one colour it sees its com- plementary ; but it was reserved for him to show that fatigue is not essential to the development of the phenomenon, or rather that there are two phenomena which have been confounded toge- ther,—the one, long observed, where the eye gazing long on one colour, sees thereafter on white surfaces its complementary ; the other that discovered by Chevreul, where the colour and its com- plement are seen side by side. The former he names the Succes- sive contrast; his own discovery the Simultaneous Contrast of Colours ; and he points out very clearly that the phenomena may intermingle so as to give rise to what he calls Mixed contrast of colours. The application of those observations to the practice of the chromatic arts is carried out by Chevreul in the most elaborate and interesting way. With the utmost patience, conscientious- ness, and sagacity, he illustrates the light which his discoveries throw on the details of painting, glass-staining, tapestry-weaving, carpet-making, the selection of furniture, the arrangement of flowers in gardens, the provision of uniforms for soldiers, the choice of linings for ladies’ bonnets, and much else. Those things lie beyond our sphere, but we could wish that — some of our writers who publish on the Harmony of Colours in organised beings would study Chevreul. They might find that they had been long anticipated, and even surpassed. Much, for example, has been said regarding the occurrence of complementary colours in flowers and birds, as if the discovery were something new. It is not only old, but those who read the book will find that an explanation (as we venture at least to suggest) of the pleasure with which the complementary colours, such as red and green as- sociated in plants and in birds, is to be found in the fact pointed out by Chevreul, that when complementary colours are placed together, each exalts the other, so that red makes green greener, and green makes red redder, than either would appear alone. The eye is gratified with the full colour m these eases, not in virtue of some vague recognition of complementaries, but because by no other arrangement can two colours be made to show so fully and richly, We cannot forbear stating that justice is not done to Chevreul in the present translation. It is awkward, inelegant, often bar- barous in style, and sometimes quite unintelligible. Uncoloured diagrams, also, are employed in illustrating the work, but they are most inadequate; and the plea for omitting colours, that the reader can make such for himself is untenable; for a reader skilful enough to do that need not study Chevreul. eee (6 Q's) CORRESPONDENCE. Letter from Mr M‘Anprew to Dr Batrour, relative to a Communication from the late Professor EL. Forbes. A few notes for a paper ‘‘ On some points concerning the Natural History of the Azores, by the late Professor E. Forbes,” have been placed in my hands for elucidation. They are the result of in- formation furnished by me, and as my lamented friend pointed out to me the bearing which such information had upon his Theory concerning the Origin of the Fauna and Flora of the British Islands, I am enabled to furnish the following statement, which may not be without tnterest, as recording and explaining certain opinions of the eminent naturalist, who has just been taken from among us, Professor HE. Forbes has stated, that when in 1846 he published in the 1st volume of the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, his essay “ On the Connection between the Distribution of the existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles, and the Geo- logical Changes which have affected their area, especially during the epoch of the Northern Drift,” his theory, that previous to or during the glacial period, the Continent of Kurope had extended as far west as the Azores, was inferred from geological and bota- nical phenomena, and that at that time there were no data acces- sible for testing his opinion, by reference to animal life. He says, that if his views were correct, then the terrestrial and marine mo- luses of- the Azores should be neither peculiar nor American, but Lusitanian types, and species identical with Portuguese molluses, or those inhabiting the coasts and shores of Madeira and the Ca- naries, “ This question,” he continues, “may now be said in a great measure to be answered ;” and he refers to the accompanying list of 52 species of marine, and 20 species of land mollusca* col- lected in the Azores by my son, James J. M‘Andrew, during the last winter. Of these, he Sates that all the marine, except two or three critical forms, are Lusitanian, or in a few instances, Canarian species; and that of the land shells, only three are undeseribed types, the remainder being common to the Lusitanian or Atlantic Island fauna. These facts he considers as fully supporting his theory. In the notes before me, Professor Forbes also calls attention to * Thave ventured to makea few corrections in the lists, omitting Mitra nigra, which is identical with M. fusca, and adding Helix lactea, H. crystallina, and H. barbula (Moulet.) The latter received by Professor EK. Forbes from Fayal, is, of all, the most peculiarly Lusitanian, heving, to the best of my knowledge, only been obtained previously in Portugal and the adjoining Province cf Gal- licia in Spain. 170 Correspondence. the curious fact, that whilst both the land and marine shells are chiefly of European species, the littoral portion of the latter are mostly of African type, common to West Africa, as well as to the Canary and Madeira Islands. He has not given any interpreta- tion of this significant record of changes which the earth must have undergone since the introduction of the existing fauna, and which may possibly be deserving of the attention of geologists. The preceding facts are all that are referred to in the notes be- fore me, and I only hope that I have succeeded in stating them intelligibly. LIVERPOOL, 19th Dec. 1854. Rost, M‘Anprew. List of Shells obtained from the Azores. Marine Mollusca. Chiton fascicularis—(Celtic and Lu- sitanian.) Patella vulgata—(Celtic and Lusita- nian.) Acmezxa Gussoni—(Mediterranean and Canaries.) 55 parva—(Celtic.) Emarginula (pink)—(Madeira.) Fissurella—(Mediterranean. ) Haliotis (tuberculatus, var. ?)—(Lusi- tanian.) Trochus Langieri—(Portugal and Me- diterranean.) » striatus, var.—(Portugaland Me- diterranean.) (monodonta) Berthelotti— Cana- ries and Madeira.) Turbo rugosus—(Lusitanian. ) Phasianella pullus ?—(Lusitanian.) Fossarus Adamsoni (littoral)—(Africa and Canaries.) Littorina striata (littoral) — (Africa and Canaries.) Rissoa cingillus—(Celtic.) crenatus — (Mediterranean and > >) Canaries.) », clathrus — (Celtic and Lusita- nian.) » cimex—(Lusitanian.) 5 new species ? ? new species ? Cerithium adversum—(Celtic and Lu- sitanian.) reticulatum—(Celtic and Lusi- tanian.) Scalaria clathratula—(Celtic and Lu- sitanian.) Eulima Boscii?—(Canaries and Ma- deira.) distorta— (Canaries, Celtic, and Lusitanian.) ”) ”? Natica intricata ? — (Lusitanian and Canaries.) Chemnitzia elegantissima —- (Celtic and Lusitanian.) Mitra fusca (littoral)—(Africa, Cana- ries, &c.) ,», zebrina (littoral)—(Africa, Ca- naries, &c.) Mangelia septangularis ?—(Celtic.) “ (or Columbella) (Peculiar.) Nassu incrassata—(Celtic and Lusita- nian.) Columbella rustica—(Lusitanian. ) 4 cribraria ? ?—-(Canaries.) Murex corallinus—(Lusitanian.) Purpura hemastoma—(Lusitanian and Canaries.) Triton nodosum (dwarf var.)—(Lusi- tanian and Canaries.) » tuberosum—(Canaries.) », scrobiculatum —- (Mediterra- nean.) Cyprea pulex—(Mediterranean. ) Pedipes (littoral)—Africa and Cana- ries. Conovulus albus—(Celtic. ) Tanthina fragilis : floaters. » exigua Spirula Peronii—(Portugal, Canaries, &e.) Tapes Cardium papyraceum-—-(Mediterranean . and Canaries.) Cardita calyculata — (Mediterranean and Canaries.) Ervilia castanea—(Portugal, Canaries, and Mediterranean. ) Cytheria Chione—(Lusitanian. ) Pecten pusio— (Celtic and Lusitanian.) Lima hians—(Celtie and Lusitanian.) Correspondence. 171 Land Mollusca. Testacellus Maugei? from St Mary’s. Vitrina Lamarkii? from St Michael’s. Helix aspersa, from St Michael’s. » lactea, from St Mary’s. » lenticulata, from St Michael’s and St Mary’s. » rotundata, from St Michael’s and St Mary’s. » crystallina, from St Michael’s. » cellaria or lurida, from St Mi- chael’s. » YTubescens, var., chael’s, from St Mi- Helix, new species ? from St Michael’s and St Mary’s. » new species? from St Michael’s and St Mary’s, Bulimus decollatus, from St Mary’s. » species allied to B. pupa? from St Michael’s and St Mary’s. »» new species ? from St Michael’s, », ventrosus, from St Mary’s. Zua lubrica, from St Michael’s. Balea fragilis, var., from St Michael’s, Pupa compostoma ? from St Michael’s. Limax cinereus, from St Michael’s. », new species, like arbustum, from St Michael’s. Selwyn on Australian Geology.—The following notice of various points connected with the geology of the colony of Victoria, is ex- tracted from a letter (19th May 1854,) from Mr Alfred Selwyn to Professor Ramsay :—High results would accrue to geological science were more of our colonies examined in the able and syste- matic manner followed by Mr Selwyn, who has now been for about two years in charge of the geological survey of the colony, after having been for about six years actively and ably engaged in the geological survey of Great Britain. The notice possesses a melan- choly interest from the mention of that gifted man, whose untimely death will long be felt and deplored by geologists in every quarter of the world. “ For the last three months I have been at work between Mel- bourne, Port-Philip Head, and Western Port Bay. I have found and collected a considerable number of tertiary fossils, mostly in a stratum of blue stiff clay, containing bands and nodules of hard grey limestone, with veins containing sulphur and fine crystals of selenite, the whole very like the London clay, or Barton Cliff, Hampshire. Among the fossils are terebratula, and a few other bivalves, turitella, vermetus, patella, nautilus, murex, buccinum, &c. I shall send a quantity home to Forbes by first opportunity. I have found them in only one place, on the east side of Port- Philip Bay. “ 1 think I mentioned in my last, that I had found fossils, ap- parently Lower Silurian, in the auriferous rocks at Mount Ivor, fifteen or twenty miles east of Mount Alexander. “ Another matter of great interest, and one I mentioned in a etter to Jukes some twelve months since, is now proved beyond a doubt, viz., the extension of the auriferous drifts under the great lava plains of the rivers Loddow, Campaspie, &c. At the very place where I first saw some evidence of such being the case, they are now sinking through the lava down into the auriferous drift, I have also lately seen several small grains of native tin 172 Correspondence. mixed with the gold from the Ovens and Ballarat. This is, I be- lieve, uncommon, | “To the eastward of West Port Bay the country has never been explored. I intended to have begun an examination of it this _ autumn, but the wet weather having set in a month earlier than usual, has obliged me to defer it till next summer, it being a very difficult country to penetrate. There are no roads, and many steep ranges covered with dense scrubs and thickly timbered. I know it to be for the most part coal measures, and in this district it is, if anywhere, that workable beds of coal, are likely to be dis- covered. From what I have seen of the coal measure beds, they seem to consist chiefly of thick bedded soft sandstones, green, brown, and yellow, of various shades, and I think they are quite unconformable on the older (Silurian or Cambrian) paleozoic auriferous rocks. Of this, however, I have no certam proof at present. “The traps and basalt of the Western Port district, are evidently of much older date than the great lava plains in the vicinity of the diggings, which are the products of recent volcanoes, while the former are, I should say, igneous, but not strictly volcanic. All the districts occupied by the older igneous rocks are hilly, scrubby, and densely timbered, while those occupied by the volcanic rocks are open grassy plains, almost destitute of timber, with a few scat- tered conical hills, apparently, for the most part, eraters, or points of eruption. ‘There are, I find, traditions amongst the aborigines of some of these hills having been seen on fire by their ancestors, which does not seem improbable. In one or two I have visited, the craters are distinctly visible with a small gap broken down on one side of the wall.” Spratt on the Occurrence of Coal in Turkey.—In the present juncture of affairs, the following extract from a Letter from that able geologist, Commander Spratt of the Spitfire, to Professor Forses, is of much interest, showing the possible supplies of coal that may be obtained by Government for our steamers in the Hast. “ T am truly glad to hear that the Kosloo coal proves to be of the true carboniferous age by the fossils, as the governments here are said to have some intention to work the mines by English miners, and by their knowing that the district is really so valu- able and promising, they may be induced to secure to themselves a deeper share and interest in the working of the district ; for the coal may be found in almost every valley betweeen Erakle and Amastris, at from one-half to seven or eight miles, and at various elevations from 50 to nearly 1000 feet, and there are many valleys which open into the sea on this tine of coast. seve. asia wei Mele 04) sinseis os sae dea bboe0 45°05 Dam eP ENN Ghote ta ws i Dia cid SAA Wy boss ba ae Mitealeleae trace EERO ONC, BOUL fe iv gia ono 0 als's «dlvaeidiue unbvicea snaienentonse do 18°56 ON, UR STE i ak ccs ares a tials fuidoos's evesnenne’vines’s 30°94 188 Scientific Intelligence. This analysis agrees very closely with that of Richardson, and also with those of Steinman, provided we subtract the silica and alumina found by these chemists, and which are obviously impurities. The formula is 2 (Fe, O,) PO;+12 HO. The greenish kidney-shaped masses were of different composition, and their analysis leads to the formula 3 Fe, O; 2 PO;+20 HO, but the author does not venture to describe them as a different species. Gieseckite.—A very pure specimen from Nunasoruaursak in Green- land, gave— Bias « slit asinedidp nis od ash oot oie hauibteR Sassen egtedadeegen 46°40 AL AIOID ens sees doped y) dngigntixsl Ses tmadietie «dlET ad 26°60 PRLOKIAS Of UO id tancaasnmed «depts talelsce ashih Rute 6°30 Magnesia »........0nainsefersriaus Prignlrean n tolihde seyarauhs- Ty bean 8°35 Oxide of ManGanese:. Wes... dasha bale -ppmen aris brincense trace TEODERNE wdivin's op 5.g0 gu 0 pine antes aut casei veale haath aeeete 4°84 RV ECE ho ces spe aelchacehac passage chcdnns san taGhebea tameee 6°76 For this the author gives the formula— Mg O 3 Fe of Si 0,2 Al, O, 3 Si0,-+-3 HO. kK O Anauwxite.—A pure specimen of this mineral from Bilin, gave— ROMBEGEE ett orcas ca tretnaasn sak haste «ceca Reeth cccen cate 62:20 SPONTA TT ney eo cet a aes cise anes tan eee oe cae oe ae eee 23°82 dy 1S sa arc a1 dy he ia 9 eng SLR Bape SMA NN YS 1:00 FFGtORIGS OF TFORG