abundantly saturate the friable shales of our coal-bearing strata, and which add so much to the cost of working many collieries, on account of the rivulets that must be continually pumped from the pits.

Here and there are strange outbreaks, like the holy well of St. Winfred, where there rush from one hole in the rock about 20 tons of water per minute, forming a river that turns many mills in its short course down to the Dee. The flood bursts upwards, where the porous millstone grit and coal measures suddenly abut upon the nearly impermeable carboniferous limestones that supply the well-known Holywell cements and fluxing lime.

The above hasty sketch of some of the prominent facts, just those that crop up in memory as I write, are sufficient to indicate the useful field that is open for geological research directly bearing upon one of the primary necessaries of life-so necessary, that upon its better and purer supply depend the possible limits of our future increase of population; for if we go on committing joint-stock suicide by supplying one town with the sewage of the next above it, the Malthusian problem will be effectually solved by reaching the limit when typhoid fever will kill a sufficient number to make the death-rate balance that of births.

The work already done by Mr. De Rance, and those associated with him, is but a tentative instalment of the work that should be done, not by the British Association merely, but by the nation, for national prosperity's sake.

We have an admirable organization in the staff of the National Geological Surveyors, and now that they have so nearly completed the first stage of the ordinary Geological Survey, they might at once commence this great and necessary work, which, done as they will do it, if properly supported, would enable any town council or village vestry to know beforehand the quantity and quality of water under its feet, and where and how to find it at depths that shall render sewage pollution impossible.

Some of the existing water companies may pooh-pooh and oppose such researches, but vested interests only maintainable by poisoning our children and sober water-drinking adults are no more worthy of preservation than were those of Messrs. Turpin, Sheppard, & Co., which were assailed, and have been nearly ruined, by the progress of gas lighting and improved police arrangements.

Mr. De Rance estimates the amount of rainfall absorbed by the Triassic Sandstones of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Midlands to average 400,000 gallons daily for each square mile. The average population of Great Britain is 265 persons per square mile. This

gives above 1,500 gallons daily for each. The supply must of course be concentrated as the population concentrates. In some places a natural concentration of the underground water occurs, and wells may there be sunk, that will draw upon the supplies of several square miles, and thus yield two to three millions of gallons daily.

The artificial concentration is merely a mechanical problem, one of pumps and pipes, the practical solution of which may be safely left to our engineers when the geologists have indicated where the best supply is to be found. The available quantity is probably sufficient to enable us to pick and choose, selecting only the best and softest, and rejecting altogether. such as is now supplied to London, and supplied so villainously by the niggardly devices of plug-holes in the roadway, of water-butts and house cisterns, aided, or rather impeded, by the ball-cocks and turn-cocks, that disgrace the great metropolis of the world. I write this in Yorkshire, through which I have been lately wandering, visiting most of its great towns. In none of these have I seen the "F.P. 13 ft., S.C. 15 ft." painted on street walls, nor any such barbarous monster as a turncock to dole out the daily dribble, provided he receives his Christmas box. These towns, and those of Lancashire and the Midlands, like all others where municipal and sanitary civilization is established, are supplied directly and continuously from the public reservoirs.

S1

THE PROGRESS OF THE PHOTOPHONE.

INCE my description of the photophone (see page 628 of last number) was written, further accounts of experiments of Professor Bell and Mr. Tainter have been published. From these it appears that the simple form of the instrument which I described is only capable of repeating musical sounds, or variations of pitch, and that something further is demanded to obtain a distinct repetition of articulate speech. This something is the interposition of a film of selenium, having that property of variable conductivity of electricity, with varying degrees of illumination, which I described. Mr. Bell's latest improvement includes a selenium receiver, placed in the focus of a concave mirror, which concentrates the trembling beam of light and all its tremours upon the ingeniously extended selenium film. The variations of the light produce corresponding variations of the power of the selenium receiver to convey a current of electricity, which passes through it from a battery, and these variations of the electric current act upon a pair of telephone receivers, and make them speak, by producing magnetic disturbances similar to those of the ordinary telephone.

At present the instrument is but a philosophical curiosity that has not reached the stage of practical utility, such as the telephone has attained. But we must not be impatient. Long and laborious experimental research may yet be required to perfect it, and this perfection will be attained when a simple diaphragm is devised that will effect distinct articulation without the intervention of the selenium receiver and the battery.

Should this be achieved, the instrument may be used for naval and military communications, and for other cases where there is no intermediate conducting wire such as the telephone requires.

H

ELECTRICITY AND SALTED HERRINGS.

AD any scientific enthusiast of the last generation announced his belief that the progress of electrical science would directly affect the supply of herrings to those inland Catholic countries where they are-when salted-in such demand for food on fast days, his friends would have been anxious concerning his cerebral welfare. As a matter of fact, this is now the case. The Norwegian coast is girdled by 1,200 miles of herring telegraph wire, and telegraph stations are established on the barren rocks of the Lofodden Islands, and in the hollows between the dark precipitous cliffs that form the Arctic face of Europe. Here, among the screaming sea-birds, a watch is kept of the movements of herring shoals, and particulars concerning their progress are flashed to the little settlements of hardy Norsemen who live by the harvest of the Arctic and sub-Arctic ocean. According to such intelligence they make their preparations for securing some of the merchandise that they send so largely to the countries on the Mediterranean.

W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS.

I'

TABLE TALK.

T is no business of mine to dilate upon the breadth of view, the accuracy of statement, and the clearness of utterance which mark Mr. Justin McCarthy's now completed "History of Our Own Times." As a matter of permanent interest it seems worth while to notice the influence over the style of that familiarity with fiction which is to be expected in the author of "Miss Misanthrope," "Donna Quixote," and "Dear Lady Disdain." I know of no work of solid thought and learning, such as this may claim to be, which is so eminently happy in the illustrations from past literature it affords. A few only of those which have struck me in the pleasant task of perusal shall be mentioned. When, in 1858, Lord Palmerston was turned from office by that Peace party he had derided, Mr. McCarthy's reflection, drawn from Othello, is, "Cassio hath beaten thee, and thou by that small hurt hast cashiered Cassio." Sir John Wrottesley, in a debate upon the Removal of Jewish Disabilities, declared that "when it was notorious that seats were to be had in that House for money, he could not consent to allow any one to become a member who was not also a Christian." To this statement Mr. McCarthy appends a quotation from Master Slender, "If I be drunk, I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves." England's intervention in the affairs of Poland rendered, he holds, the same service to Poland "that the interposition of Don Quixote did for the boy whose master was flogging him." Mr. Layard out of office is described as a swashbuckler and soldado of parliamentary conflict, "a very Drawcansir of political debate." It would be easy to multiply instances of this singular facility, but those I have supplied will serve to indicate its nature. The only point on which I feel disposed to break a lance with Mr. McCarthy is à propos of his statement in his very interesting summary of literary effort during the period with which he deals, that "We have had no great poet in these latter days." As I cannot fight out the matter with Mr. McCarthy, I will simply express my dissent from his opinion.

IN

N dealing with evidence concerning the convict settlements in Norfolk Island Mr. McCarthy says, "It is right and necessary

to say that we have passed over, almost without allusion, some of the most hideous of the revelations. We have kept ourselves to abominations which, at all events, bear to be spoken of." I wish editors of newspapers would be equally reticent. Not long ago some shameful revelations concerning proceedings in Manchester brought to the knowledge of thousands the existence in modern society of offences supposed by the majority of men to be characteristic of past times, and stirred in others a large amount of unhealthy curiosity. In every newspaper office there should be written up the splendidly solemn argument of Sir Thomas Browne, in a chapter of his "Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors," entitled "Of some relations whose truth we fear." These noble words are as follows: "Many other accounts like these" (foregoing) "we meet sometimes in history, scandalous unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose verities not only but whose relations honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclitical, and such as want either name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They omit of monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it veniall to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these singularities of villany; for as they increase the hatred of vice in some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this is one thing that may make latter ages worse than were the former. For the vicious examples of ages past poyson the curiosity of these present, affording a hint of sin unto seduceable spirits and soliciting those unto the imitation of them whose heads were never so perversely principled as to invent them. In this kind we commend the wisdom of Galen, who would not leave unto the world too subtile a theory of poysons, unarming thereby the malice of venomous spirits, whose ignorance must be contented with sublimate and arsenick. For surely there are subtiler venenations such as will invisibly destroy, and like the Basilisks of Heaven. In things of this nature silence commendeth History; 'tis the veniable part of things lost, wherein there must never rise a Pancirollus nor remain any register but that of Hell.”"Pseudodoxia Epidemica," Bk. VII. cap. 19, pp. 315-16, ed. 1686.

A

MONG questions of the day, the inquiry, "What is to be done with juvenile offenders?" is one of the most difficult and perplexing. The rod, with all due respect to the Preacher, is not an unfailing deterrent, and its administration for all classes of offence is not to be seriously advocated. That imprisonment, as it is now