In this way they drove him close to type-series of the vertebrates, so that the edge of the precipice, when they in going through the galleries the made a sudden dash, causing the visitors would recognize the creatures animal to lose his balance and fall into which they had seen grouped, and the valley below. The closing scene would realize the relationship in which of this episode would make a most they stood to other animals. effective group, the buffalo just beginning to lose his footing, one of the wolves flying at him with open mouth, and the others all eager, and preparing for their final rush. I This, however, is not all. Putting aside the absolute ignorance with which we have to deal, we must remember that the faculty of observation is almost in abeyance in many individuals, The same stratagem is said to have while that of generalization has never been employed by the wolves of America been developed. To each group, therewhen they could manage to isolate a fore, a placard should be attached, bison from his companions. The stating that it would be explained at a bison is, however, practically extinct, certain hour, and that the lecturer so that I do not venture to include it would remain for the purpose of answerwithin the list of life-groups. To the ing questions. Such a course would wolf and buffalo group might be added attract thousands who otherwise would a family of bears upon the rocks above, not set a foot inside a museum. the young bears playing with each have often noticed that at museums, other and the parents watching the at the Zoological Gardens, and similar proceedings of the wolves below. exhibitions, as soon as any one begins The Arctic regions would afford to explain an object, an cager crowd several fine groups. There might be, begins to collect, all thirsting for for instance, a group of the walrus information, and often showing themupon an ice-floe, one of them being selves inconveniently unwilling to dis attacked by a polar bear after the perse. Should such a course be extraordinary fashion employed by adopted, the lecturers must be selected these animals-the bear springing on with the greatest care, none being the back of the walrus, clinging to it appointed but those who have learned with one paw, and battering its head the difficult task of placing themselves with the other, so as to stun it before in the mental condition of their hearers. it can reach the sea, where it would be safe. A second bear could be shown coming to help the first in securing the walrus. Other specimens of the walrus could be seen as swimming, others as scrambling to the water to avoid the bears, and another almost submerged, but hanging by the points of his tusks to the ice. The most learned men are not necessarily the best teachers. On the contrary, they generally make the mistake of assuming that their hearers are already somewhat versed in the subject, and in consequence are unintelligible just where they wish to be especially lucid. Not long ago I heard a lecturer engaged in imparting the rudiments of comparative anatomy to a mixed audience. While so doing, he spoke of the "distal phalanx of the third digit," thus Many such subjects might be described, but I have only mentioned a few as examples of the life-groups conveying no more ideas to the minds. which I would place in my Utopian of his hearers than if he had spoken in museum. Attached to the building Sanskrit or Malagasy. To repeat a which contains them I would have a former illustration, while trying to teach them the A B C of the science he | cargo of Poesy directed to Mr. Hobwas acting as if they had passed the house, all spick and span, and in MS.; fifth standard. Had he, instead of using you will see what it is like. i have such words as "distal," "phalanx," given it to Master Southey, and he and "digit,' "been content to say the shall have more before I have done "last joint of the middle finger," the with him. information would have been the same, and all his hearers would have under stood him. You may make what I say here as public as you please, more particularly to Southey, whom I look upon-and will say so publicly-to be a dirty, lying rascal, and will prove it in inkor in his blood, if I did not believe him to be too much of a poet to risk back, as he has the Quarterly, I would have at him in his scribbling capacity now that he has begun with me; but I will do nothing underhand; tell him what I say from me and every one else you please. The object of language is to convey ideas, and I have always held that words are valuable in proportion to their power of conveying thought from one brain to another. A word there-it! If he had forty reviews at his fore which can be understood by ten thousand hearers should always be used in preference to one which only three or four individuals can be expected to comprehend. A lecturer should always bear in mind that his true object is to teach his hearers, and not to impress You will see what I have said, if the them with awe of his vast attainments. parcel arrives safe. I understand Nothing is easier than to employ the Coleridge went about repeating Southtechnical phraseology of science. The ey's lie with pleasure. I can believe real difficulty lies in conveying the it, for I had done him what is called a same information in language which favor. . . . I can understand Coleridge's every one can understand. Could an abusing me-but how or why Southey, institute such as I have sketched be whom I had never obliged in any sort established for the benefit of the gener- of way, or, done him the remotest al public, my dream would be realized. service, should go about fibbing and Would that it might take visible form calumniating is more than I readily among the permanent institutes which comprehend. Does he think to put now seem to take the place of tempo-me down with his Canting, not being rary exhibitions!-REV. J. G. WOOD, in able to do it with his poetry? We will The Nineteenth Century. try the question. I have read his Southey would have attacked me too there, if he durst, further than by hints about Hunt's friends in general, and some outery about an "Epicurean System" carried on by men of the most opposite habits and tastes and THE EROSIVE POWER OF GLACIERS AS SEEN IN NORWAY. 41 opinions in life and poetry (I believe) chooses to avow to the public with all that ever had their names in the same his eulogy. I speak judging only volume Moore, Byron, Shelley, from the article, for I don't know him Hazlitt, Haydon, Leigh Hunt, Lamb. personally. What resemblance do ye find among Here is a long letter-can you read all or any of these men? And how it? Yours ever, could any sort of system or plan be carried on or attempted amongst them? However, let Mr. Southey look to himself; since the wine is tapped, he shall drink it. ago B. THE EROSIVE POWER OF GLA- I got some books a few weeks many thanks. Amongst them is Israeli's new edition; it was not fair The above heading is the title of a in you to show him my copy of his paper in course of preparation, of former one, with all the marginal which the following is a résumé in notes and nonsense made in Greece part:— when I was not two-and-twenty, and 1. As many of the Norwegian which certainly were not meant for his perusal, nor for that of his readers. glaciers are rapidly advancing, they arch over from rock to rock, and leave sub-glacial caverns into which the explorer can go long distances. I have a great respect for Israeli and his talents, and have read his works over and over repeatedly, and been 2. Numerous angular and subamused by them greatly, and instructed angular stones, as well as those rounded often. Besides, I hate giving pain, un- by atmospheric erosion, are resting less provoked; and he is an author, and upon the crystaline rocky beds with must feel like his brethren; and the ice flowing about them; that is to although his Liberality repaid my say, the resistance due to the friction marginal flippancies with a compliment between the stones and the rock is -the highest compliment-that don't greater than the cohesion of the molereconcile me to myself-nor to you. cules of the ice, which flow about the It was a breach of confidence to do this obstacles as a viscous body. Even without my leave. I don't know a stones resting upon loose and soft living man's book I take up so often morainic matter, over which the or lay down more reluctantly than glacier is advancing, are sufficient to Israeli's, and I never will forgive you channel the ice as it moves over, in -that is, for many weeks. If he had place of pushing it along.. got out of humor I should have been less sorry; but even then I should have been sorry; but really he has heaped his "coals of fire" so handsomely upon my head that they burn unquenchably. You ask me of the two reviews [of Childe Harold in the Quarterly and the Edinburgh I will I will tell you. Scott's is the review of one poet on another his friend, Wilson's, the 5. The abrasion by the falling of review of a poet too, on another his detached masses of ice and stones is Idol; for he liked me better than he considerable. 3. No blocks were seen in the act of being torn up from the subjacent rock, nor were the loose stones being picked up. 4. A large rounded bowlder, held in the ice, was being rolled, in place of shoved, along by glaciers, as shown by the mouldings in the ice. At the same time, it was being crushed. 6. A tongue of ice, hanging from moraines were sufficient resistance to the roof of a cavern, was pressing cause the bottom of the ice to be against a loose bowlder, that a man grooved. could have moved. In place of pushing the stone, or moving around it, the tongue of ice, of about a cubic yard, was being held suspended by a sheet of ice bent backward, nearly at right angles, in a graceful curve. 11. The fall of a great ice-avalanche from a high snow-field, down a precipice of a thousand feet, to the top of à glacier rémanié was seen. These falling masses of ice bring down the frost-loosened stones from the sides of the mountains upon the glacier, which is charged with detritus. It is this material which furnishes mud to the sub-glacial streams, and not the rocky bed of the valley worn down by glacial 7. Scratched stones were rarely seen among those falling out of the bottoms of glaciers, and in many places the rocks were scarcely, if at all, scratched. Although occasionally highly polished, the subjacent rocks, even where erosion. scratched, showed generally surfaces roughened by weathering, or with only the angles removed. 8. The upper layers of ice were seen to bend and flow over the lower, wherever low barriers were met with, in place of the lower strata being pushed up by an oblique thrust. 9. A glacier was advancing into a morainic lake, and, in part, against the terminal barrier. In place of ploughing up the obstruction, the strata of ice were forced up into an anticlinal, along whose axis there was a fracture and fault. Thus domes of ice covered with sand were produced. The sand had been deposited upon the surface of glaciers by the waters of the lake. The conformability of the sand and the strata of uplifted ice was undisturbed, except along the line of fault. the domes melt, cones of sand with cores of ice are left. By the lifting process the morainic barrier is covered with clayey sand, as if subjacent strata had been ploughed up by the glacier, of which there was no evidence. As 12. One does not find that the glaciers per se are producing hummocks. These are the result of atmospheric and aqueous erosion, although perhaps beneath a glacier, which sweeps over them, and to some extent scratches and polishes them. The effects of glaciation in removing angles and in polishing surfaces are small compared with atmospheric erosion upon the same rocks. 13. The transporting power of glaciers is limited to the débris, which falls upon its surface from over-hanging or adjacent cliffs, and afterward works through the mass or comes to be deposited at its end. J. W. SPENCER, University of Missouri, in Science. CURRENT THOUGHT. EDUCATION IN EGYPT.-Mr. R. Arrowsmith writes in Science: "The report of the minister of public instruction for 1875 shows a total of 4,817 schools in Egypt, with 6,045 teachers and 10. At several places where glaciers 3 sc-called universities having, in all, 5.307 140.977 students. Of these 4,685 schools and are advancing over moraines, they are teachers and 127,138 students, were purely leveling them, and not ploughing | them out. This leveling process is by the dripping of the water from the whole under surface. In fact, even the loose stones upon the water-soaked Arabic; 93 schools, with 416 teachers and 8.961 pupils, were sustained by the various foreign colonies and religious communities; the remainder being under governmental control. The native education consists in mere memorizing, the other faculties being entirely neglected. At almost every street-corner in the cities is a native school, presided over by a sheikh, who instructs from ten to one hundred boys in committing the Koran to memory. In 1875 these schools were attended by 112,000 children. The instruction consists in repeating over and over again a single verse, until the pupil has learned it. The droning of the children is always accompanied with a swinging motion of the body, which is supposed to facilitate the mental effort. The university course is much the same as that of the elementary schools, the Koran being the center and end of all instruction. At Cairo is the University El Azhar, the most celebrated stronghold of Mohammedan doctrine. Its students number seven or eight thousand, and come from all Mohammedan countries. The studies are the memorizing of the Koran and of the commentaries, grammar, language, and law (but only so far as they are interwoven with the faith), and a smattering of Aristo telian philosophy. No time is devoted to mathematics; history and geography are despised, and every foreign language is rigor ously excluded as dangerous to the religion of the faithful. Students sometimes spend a number of years at the school, and at the end of the time are fitted for nothing more than to become caliphs or teachers of Arabic in foreign schools, at a salary of one or two pounds a month. The schools managed by foreigners, especially those of the American and English missions, are European in organization, and are accomplishing some excellent results. In them much time is devoted to the study of English and French, a knowledge of which is of increasing value and importance in Egypt. These schools are attended by pupils of all nationalities and religions, and many of them are open to both sexes." THE SILVER DOLLAR.-Vice-Chancellor Henry MacCracken, of the University of the City of New York, gives in The Independent the following statement of what will be the probable condition of our coinage, at the opening of the next Congress in December: and the cost was only seventy-five cents. He is obliged to spend twenty-four millions of dollars for silver the present year. If this wil! make as many dollars as were made last year we shall have, by simple addition, $278,097,272 in legal-tender silver next December. But the Treasury will be ordered also to accept every mutilated trade dollar that may be presented within six months from the passage of the law on this subject, paying a standard doliar therefor, and to make out of the metal so received legal-tender dollars. Each trade dollar containing 420 grains will make one legal tender dollar and nearly two cents over. Mr. Morrison said February 13, 1887, that over twenty millions of trade dollars might be presented for redemption out of the total coinage of nearly thirty-six millions. The Director of the Mint estimated that only seven millions would be presented. If the former estimate prove correct and there be twenty-two millions presented, then our silver dollars by next December will be quite three hundred millions. It is hardly probable that they will be short of two hundred and ninety millions. Add to this our smaller silver coinage of seventy million dollars and we shall have of silver in all three hundred and sixty millions." ENGLISH BUDS OF ROYALTY.-Mr. James Payn, not unknown as an English novelist, writes, rather disrespectfully, in the Independent:- "A sense of humor in high places is not I suppose to be looked for; otherwise the complaints from Osborne that the firing of guns at Spithead interferes with the comfort of the Court would be cherished by the royal circle as one of the best jokes on record. Of course the representation has been attended to; it has been proved that 'the wind was within the prescribed points of the compass' (though, indeed, if it had not one hardly sees how one would have remedied it), and that the charge of powder was not greater than that ordinarily used in practice.' The fault seems to lie with the fog during which sounds travel more rapidly' (with the view no doubt of getting The question as to the condition of the out of it), and instructions have been issued to coinage by next December is, as respects the prevent the possibility of further annoyance silver dollar, one of simple arithmetic. Up to to the royal ears under similar circumstances. December 1, 1886 there had been coined of But the anomaly of such a complaint prolegal-tender dollars $246,673,386. The sec- ceeding from such a source is surely beyond retary bought last year silver which cost him measure charming. Why, I suppose once a $24,323,524.66, which he manufactured into fortnight at the very least every part of this dollars to the amount of $31,423,886, each metropolis adjacent to St. James's Park is dollar costing seventy-seven cents, decimals shaken to its foundations because some baby omitted. The first half of the year the average or another is born, allied to the reigning cost was greater, being about seventy-nine family. Thomas Hood compares the cry of cents. The second half the metal was cheaper a female infant of large property to the roar |