VI.

While it is much to be regretted that the observations which were conducted on the fasting Doctor from day to day were not so accurate, or I had rather said so extended, for I do not know that we have any reason to doubt the accuracy of what was observed as far as it went, there is still, in a physiological point of view, a good deal to be learned from what was observed. That under so restricted a diet the temperature of the man should to the end have remained so steady is of itself an important bit of evidence. We have been led to believe that in a very few days the process of abstaining. from a sufficient supply of food, to say nothing about abstaining from food altogether, was a certain means of reducing the animal temperature. It was never surmised that water alone would lead to conditions in which the animal warmth would for many weeks remain practically sustained. That the respiration should have remained so little affected is a second equally remarkable fact; and that the muscular power should have been kept up so as to enable the starved man to walk, talk, scold, and compress the dynamometer to 82° for forty days is beyond what any physiologist living would have admitted as possible previously to the event that declares the possibility. On the veritable assumption that, in the matter of feeding, some deception has been carried out, and that, in a surreptitious way, food in small quantities, or some concentrated food, has been cleverly adminstered, these results, coupled with the unquestionable waste of tissue, and with the painful and frequent disturbance of the stomach, are quite sufficiently remarkable to demand the attention of the thoughtful physiological scholar.

The most striking physical fact of all remains, that during the whole of the fasting period the mind of the faster was unclouded, and, taking it all in all, his reasoning powers good. Whoever remembers what depressions of mind, what lapses of memory, what stages of indecision and vacuity come on when for a few hours only the body is deprived of food will wonder, not a little, that any human being could remain self-possessed and ready for argument and contention during a fast of nearly six weeks. Yet, from what is known of Dr. Tanner's experiment, and from the example I gave from my own knowledge, the possession of mental was even more conspicuous than that of physical endurance. Suppose it he urged that, in both the cases cited, the excellent sleeping faculties of the fasters kept their minds in good balance; then we do but move the difficulty one step farther back, since to sleep in a state of fast and to wake again refreshed is itself a strange order of phenomenon. In sleep there is in progress the repair of the body.

How shall there be repair when the food material out of which the repair is secured is not supplied? For a starving man to sleep and die we might be prepared; for a starving man to awake in the shadow of semi-consciousness or dementia; for a starving man to wake in the terror and excitement of delirium and rage; for any one of these conditions we might be prepared. But for such a man to wake up refreshed and, at the worst, no more than irritable and pettish, is not by any means a condition easy to be classed amongst the probable phenomena of nature. It would be sheer vanity and conceit to say that a fact of this order is not new to science and is not worthy of a place in the annals of scientific research.

VII.

The last and most obvious teaching from these fasting experiences consists in the old, but now more demonstrative, evidence of the grand part which water plays in the economy of life. The physiologist, who knows that about seventy-five per cent. of the human body is made up of water, will not wonder, so much as others will that water should possess the life-sustaining power which now is seen to belong to it. Yet he will be perplexed with the new readings, which are presented as to the mode by which it sustains for so long a period of time. He will see that under its influence a kind of peripheral digestion is established in the body itself, by which, independently of the stomach, the body can subsist for a long time on itself; first on its stored-up or reserve structures, and afterwards on its own active structures. He will infer that, by the influence of the water imbibed, the digestive juices of the stomach are kept from acting on the walls of the stomach. He will discern that, by the steady introduction of water into the blood, the blood corpuscles are kept in a state of vitality and in a condition fitted for the absorption of oxygen from the air. He will note that the minute vesicular structures of the lungs and of all the glandular organs are kept also vitalised and physically capable of function; and he will understand how, by the same agent, that water-engine the brain is sustained in activity, its cement fluid, and its cellular structure free. There will, nevertheless, be much still left to afford him food for contemplation; and, even if he thinks these fasters are not the wisest of men, he will hardly be averse to distil from them such essence of philosophy as may be legitimately extracted.

BENJAMIN WARD RICHARDSON,

SCIENCE NOTES.

VERYBODY is now interested in the progress of science, and

Εν

wishes to know something about it; but only those who have little else to do can follow it in the voluminous records where scientific discoveries are originally announced. Even to read the two or three English journals where these are epitomised is too much for most of us, seeing that everything available is heaped together therein; and nine-tenths or more of this accumulation is so purely technical that it is dull, dismal, and worthless to the general reader. He therefore requires the help of a judicious Mentor, who shall select from the heap the most interesting morsels, and render them easily intelligible. These notes are intended to supply this demand. They will not be paragraphs produced merely by the aid of scissors and paste; but short, simple essays carefully prepared for the Gentleman's Magazine by a writer whose long experience as a popular-science teacher enables him to form a fair estimate of popular requirements, and has trained him in the art of intelligible exposition.

The primary characteristic of natural truth, i.e. pure science, when fully understood, is simplicity, though the struggles in search of it by its discoverers may be extremely complex and difficult. An example or two will illustrate this.

Two great mathematicians, Adams and Leverrier, struggled long and arduously with the difficulties of most complex calculations in order to determine the cause of certain deviations of the planet Uranus from the path it ought theoretically to have followed. They finally determined that these irregularities are due to the gravitation of another world beyond: they told the owners of suitable telescopes where to find it, and it was found accordingly. Thus the discovery of the planet Neptune demanded a vast amount of technical mathematical skill; but, when discovered, the great fact became clearly open to all.

The Astronomer Royal and his assistants have been working for some years past in reducing the costly and difficult observations of the last transit of Venus. None but highly-trained mathematicians

can accompany or follow them in this work; but its result, the distance of the earth from the sun, is intelligible to any schoolboy when fairly established and plainly stated.

The making of a railway is a very tedious and costly task; but the travelling over it a swift and cheap one. It is the same with the truths of science. The exclusive pedant would drag you through his details of discovery and demonstration, pretending that you cannot be a passenger in the triumphal car of science without being also an engineer.

These notes are intended to carry ordinary passengers along the path of scientific discovery without requiring them to excavate their own tunnels or drive the engine.

A selection of subjects will be carefully made month by month, and only those of general interest will be treated: others that are specially technical, or interesting only to a small section of experts, will not be touched at all.

Where preliminary explanation is necessary, it will be given in as few words as may be consistent with clear and readable exposition.

M.

A NEW DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

JANSSEN has announced a very curious, and at present a mysterious, discovery in photography. He has lately produced some magnificent photographs of the face of the sun, displaying the spots, the faculæ, the "mottling" or "rice grains," or "willow leaves," as they have been fancifully called, and the other details of solar physiognomy, in a manner that affords to all and sundry fair opportunity of studying these stupendous irregularities. In the further prosecution of this admirable work, M. Janssen found that prolonged exposure destroys the picture, nothing appearing on applying the developer. Careful observation showed that this disappearance was gradual, as might be expected. So far there is no particular novelty in the observations, but by continuing the exposure beyond the period of disappearance an unexpected transformation is displayed. Instead of an ordinary negative picture with lights represented by shades, and the shades by light, a positive picture is now displayed on development; the bright body of the sun shown white and the spots black, as to ordinary vision. With careful manipulation this direct positive has all the distinctness of a fine photographic picture. About 10 of a second was the time allowed for an ordinary picture of the sun, and with the gelatinobromide process of this time is sufficient. The direct positives

were obtained by continuing the exposure from half a second to a second.

What is the chemistry of this second action? To answer this question satisfactorily, further, and probably rather extensive, investigation is demanded; a research that must include the whole philosophy of the wondrous phenomenon of photographic development.

If among my readers there are any who have not witnessed this magical process, he or she should visit a communicative photographer, and ask for an introduction to his darkened chamber, where a glass plate, presenting only a surface of dirty-looking collodion film, is subjected to an incantation by enchanted waters, and forthwith appears a spectral image of the observer or any other person or thing the operating wizard has chosen to call forth. Nothing narrated in the chronicles of witchcraft is more weird and wonderful than this.

THE

ARCTIC BALLOONING.

HE Central Arctic Committee, after careful consideration and some discussion, passed unanimously the following resolution: "That, in the opinion of this committee, the plan of using three connected balloons, as tested at the Alexandra Palace, does not warrant the committee in following out further that suggestion, but leads them to revert to the original idea of using single balloons as auxiliary to the work of the new expedition."

It is quite evident, from the valuable practical instruction derived from the rude experiment to which allusion is made in the above, that more experiments are required. The Government had done something in the study of military ballooning, but not nearly enough. Though somewhat blasé in reference to the putting forth of original projects, I am sorely tempted to revive one of the devices of my youth, suggested in the course of some struggles over Alpine glaciers, especially that of the Bossons. It was to attach to the upper part of the back, by a system of shoulder straps, a small balloon capable of lifting one's knapsack and from a half to three-fourths of the weight of the body; and thus, relieved of so much encumbrance, to skip merrily over the Alps, especially up the snow slopes and glaciers, tripping lightly from ridge to ridge of the craggy glacier ice, and crossing its blue crevasses by easy flying leaps.

Such an arrangement, carrying a fortnight's supply of food in addition, might enable an exploring party to approach the Pole in spite of the so-called "paleocrystic ice," provided the gas would not ooze through the balloon faster than it became relieved of ballast by