sun. It is a beautiful conception of science which regards the energy which is manifested on the earth as having its origin in the Pulsating awhile in the ether-molecules which fill the intervening space, this motion reaches our earth and communicates its tremor to the molecules of its matter. Instantly all starts into life. The winds move, the waters rise and fall, the lightnings flash and the thunders roll, all as subdivisions of this received power. The muscle of the fleeing animal transforms it in escaping from the hunter who seeks to use it for the purpose of his destruction. The wave that runs along that tiny nerve-thread to apprise us of danger transmutes it, and the return pulse that removes us from its presence is a portion of it. The groan of the weary, the shriek of the tortured, the voicéd agony of the babeless mother, all borrow their significance from the same source. The magnificence of the work of a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michael Angelo; the divine creations of a Beethoven or of a Mozart; the immortal Principia of a Newton and the Méchanique Celeste of a Laplace,-all had their existence at some point of time in oscillations of ether in the intersolar space. But all this energy is only a transitory possession. As the sunlight gilds the mountain top and then glances off again into space, so this energy touches upon and beautifies our earth and then speeds on its way. What other worlds it reaches and vivifies, we may never know. Beyond the veil of the seen, science may not penetrate. But religion, more hopeful, seeks there for the new heavens and the new earth, wherein shall be solved the problems of a higher life. NOTES. 1 H. Bence Jones, Croonian Lectures on Matter and Force, London, 1868. 2 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology, New York, 1871, I, 60. 8 Küss, Lectures on Physiology, Edited by Duval and Translated by Amory, Boston, 1875, 2. 4"Among the phenomena of life those which are intelligible to us are precisely of the physical or mechanical order."- Marey, Animal Mechanism, New York, 1874, 7. "All action of which we are immediately cognizant is but the result of the operation of the solar heat upon and through independent and correlative existences." "Conservation of energy makes more and more doubtful the existence of a vital principle, and tends to bring the phenomena of living bodies more and more within the domain of pure physical necessity."-Acland, Medicine in Modern Times, London, 1869, 23. "An animal can no more generate an amount of force capable of moving a grain of sand, than a stone can fall upwards or a locomotive draw a train without fuel. Frankland, Phil. Mag. IV, xxxii, 182; Proc. Roy. Inst., June 8, 1866; Am. J. Sci., II, xlii, 393, Nov., 1866. * Haughton, Medicine in Modern Times, 107. Lavoisier, Ib., 113; also Phys. Chem. Schriften, 1785, Bd. III. 1 Bischoff and Voit, Die Gesetze der Ernährung des Fleischfressers, Munich, 1860. "They found that the amount of urea eliminated was not in proportion to the exercise of force, but the amount of carbonic acid was so."-Sci. Conf., 174. Lawes and Gilbert, South Kensington Science Conferences, London, 1876, Biology, 173, 174, "I believe it is now accepted that the elimination of urea is no measure of the muscular force exerted within the body. Haughton, loc. cit., 108, "No greater mistake is possible in Physiology than to suppose that the products of the changes in the blood, by which mechanical or intellectual work is done, are themselves merely the result of the waste of the organs whether muscles or brain, on the exercise of which that work depends.” Theodor, Zeitschr. f. Biol., xiv, 51-56; J. Chem. Soc., xxxvi, 74. Voit, Ib., 57-160; Ib., 75. Also, Untersuchungen über den Einfluss des Kochsalzes, des Kaffees, und der Muskelbewegungen auf den Stoffwechsel, Munich, 1860. Fick and Wislicenus, Phil. Mag., IV, xxxi, 485. Smith, E., Phil. Trans., 1859, 709; 1861, 747. Parkes, Proc. Roy. Soc., xv, 339; xvi, 44. Noyes, Am. J. Med. Sci., Oct., 1867. M. Foster, Textbook of Physiology, 3d ed., London, 1880, 471. Haughton, loc. cit., 120. Haughton, Animal Mechanics, London, 1873. On Law of Fatigue, see Proc. Roy. Soc., 1879, 1880; Nature, xxii, 128, 1880; Am. J. Sci., III, xx, 147. 10 Du Bois Reymond, Untersuch. ü. thierische Elektricität, 1848-1860. Marey, loc. cit. 22, 50. Radcliffe, Dynamics of Nerve and Muscle, London, 1871, 26. Hermann, Nature, xix, 561. Haughton, Animal Mechanics, 5. Maudsley, Physiology and Pathology of Mind, 2d ed., London, 1868, 42. Voit and Theodor, J. Chem. Soc., xxxvi, 951. The conclusions are: 1st, the muscles are the centre of the formation of CO2, in health 403 grams being excreted, and in a paralytic 250 grams. 2d, lowering of the temperature from 14.3° to 4.4° increases the CO, from 155.0 to 210.7 grams. 3d, the urea was not increased, showing that the non-nitrogenous matter was burned. Foster, op. cit., 66, 116, et seq. Gamgee, Physiol. Chemistry Anim. Body, London, 1880, 345 et seq. 11 Matteucci, Physical Phenomena of Living Beings, London, 1847, 205, 216, 321. 12 E. J. Marey, loc. cit., 53; Nature, xix, 295, 320; C. R., lxxxiv, 190, 354, 1877. 13 Students' Text-Book of Electricity, Noad, 4th ed., edited by Preece, London, 1879, 159. 14 Donders and Buys Ballot, Over de Elasticiteit der Spiren, Utrecht, 1863, 47. Quoted in Animal Mechanics, 2. 15 Radcliffe, C. B., Dynamics of Nerve and Muscle, London, 1871, 29. Matteucci, loc. cit., 216, The analogies between muscular contraction and the discharge of the torpedo are complete; what destroys, augments and modifies the one, acts equally upon the other." Marey," 1st, the rapidity of the nervous agent in the electrical nerves of the torpedo seems evidently to be the same as that of the nervous agent producing motion in the frog. 24, the phenomenon called by Helmholtz lost time exists also in the electric apparatus of the torpedo and lasts about the same time as in the muscle. 3d, the discharge of the torpedo is not instantaneous but is prolonged about 0.14 of a second; which is in a remarkable degree equal to the duration of the shock of the frog's muscle." Animal Mechanism, 57. 16 Wollaston, Phil. Trans., 1803.-Haughton, Anim. Mechanics, 16. "It resembles most nearly the deep hum produced by the blowing fan of a large foundry." It is obtained by gently inserting the extremity of the finger into the ear, bringing at the same time the muscles of the hand and forearm into strong contraction. Brunton places the ball of the strongly contracted thumb against the ear. Sci. Conf., 193. 17 Weber, Muskelbewegung, Wagner's Handwörterbuch. Minot, C. S., Jour. Anat. Physiol., xii, 297, 1878. Lauder Brunton, Sci. Conf., Biology, 192–1. Marey, Animal Mechanism, 47. 18 Marey, Compte Rendu des Travaux du Laboratoire de M. Marey, Paris, 1877, iii. "1st, a torpedo's discharge is not a continuous current. It is formed of a series of successive waves, added one upon another. 2d, each electric wave presents a phase of suddenly increasing intensity followed by a phase of gradually decreasing intensity, 3d, currents induced by a torpedo discharge are all produced at the beginning of each wave. 4th, there are currents induced on the completion of a circuit, the inverse of the inducing currents, as is shown by the electrometer. 5th, the discharge of the torpedo is analogous to muscular tetanus; every electric wave in the discharge corre sponds to a muscular shock." Thus we see that a muscle-shock, like an electric discharge, is produced by a single excitation, the delay being the same, about seven hundredths of a second. The wave, like the shock, increases more abruptly than it decreases, alike in muscle and electric organ. The same agents modify the wave and shock similarly. Heat renders both more energetic up to a certain point, from which both disappear. Cold diminishes both and they both cease at zero. In both, the waves and the shocks run into each other in the same manner. Both suffer from fatigue alike and both are alike affected by poisons. "Does the fact that a voluntary discharge of the torpedo is a complex act not prove that the voluntary contraction of the muscles is also a complex act? Very certainly the comparison of the voluntary contraction of the muscles with the tetanic phenomena produced by electricity, or strychnine, the existence of a muscular sound during the contraction, the quivering or dissociation of the shocks which are produced under the influence of cold,-all these seem arguments in favor of the theory which considers rauscular contraction as the result of very frequent shocks; but the complexity of the voluntary discharge of the torpedo, the manner in which the waves composing it succeed each other and are added together, forms a very important confirmation of the numerous presumptions already made." Abstract by Francois Franck, Nature, xix, 295, 320. 19 Feddersen, Pogg. Ann., ciii, 69. O. N. Rood, Am. J. Sci., II, xlviii, 153, 1869. A. M. Mayer, Ib., III, viii, 136, 1874. The electric spark in air, and probably also the discharge through conductors, is intermittent and consists of a great number of oscillatory movements. In a private communication from Dr. T. A. Edison, he states that muscular tetanus can be produced by rapid vibrations of a purely mechanical char acter; the effect closely resembling that which results from the secondary current of an induction coil. 20 Matteucci, loc. cit., 195, 252. M. Foster, Physiology, 44-46. "When a frog is poisoned with urari, the nerves may be subjected to the strongest stimuli without causing any contractions in the muscles to which they are distributed; yet even ordinary stimuli applied directly to the muscle readily cause contractions." "The activity of contractile protoplasm is in no way essentially dependent on the presence of nervous elements." 21 Matteucci, loc. cit., 200. "The origin of this current resides in the electric conditions which are produced by the chemical actions of the nutrition of the muscle." Marey, loc. cit., 55. "As to the origin of the electric force, we think no one can now see anything in it but the result of chemical actions produced in the interior of the apparatus." 22 Prof. Sir Wm. Thomson, Electrostatics and Magnetism, 1872, 317. Fleeming Jenkin, Electricity and Magnetism. 44. "If two metals (as copper and zinc) be plunged in water, the copper, the zinc, and the water forming a galvanic cell, all remain at one potential and no charge of electricity is observed on any part of the system." 23 Peclet, Ann. Chim. Phys., III, ii, 233. Kohlrausch, Pogg. Ann., lxxxviii, 465; lxxii, 353; 1xxxii, 1. Buff, Ann. Chem. Pharm., xlii, 5; xlv, 137. Becquerel, Ann. Chim. Phys.. xxv, 405; C. R., xxii, 677. Hankel, Pogg. Ann., cxxvi, 286. Gerland, Ib., cxxxiii, 513. Du Moncel, C. R., xc, 934; La Lumière Electrique, ii, 357, 1880. Pellat, C. R. xc, 990. Ayrton and Perry, Proc. Roy. Soc., 1878-9; Phil. Trans., 1879; Nature, xix, 498, 1879. Everett, Units and Physical Constants, 146-150, 1879. Gore, Nature, xxii, 21. Edelmann, Rep. f. Exp. Physik., xvi, 464, 1880. B. O. Peirce, jr., Inaug. Diss., Leipzig. 1879. 24 L. Cumming, Theory of Electricity, London, 1876, 120, et seq. 25 Peltier, Ann. Chim. Phys., Ivi, 371, 1831. Tyndall, Phil. Mag., IV, iv, 419. Lenz, Pogg. Ann., xliv, 342. Bouty, C. R., xc, 917, 987, 1880. 26 Prof. Sir Wm. Thomson, Phil. Mag.. IV, ii, 529, 1852; viii, 62-69; Phil. Trans., iii, 661, 1856. Jenkin, Electricity and Magnetism, 187. Hoorweg, Wied. Ann., II, ix, 552, Apr., 1880; Nature, xxii, 90. 28 Matteucci, loc. cit., 200. Marey, loc. cit., 55. M. Foster, op. cit., 474. "If we admit that the energy of muscular contraction (and with that the energy of all other vital manifestations) arises from an explosive decomposition of a complex substance which we may call real protoplasm, and that this complex protoplasm is capable of reconstruction within limits which may be very wide, we acquire a conception of phys iological processes, which if not precise and definite is at least simple and consistent and moreover a first step toward a future molecular physiology." Matteucci, loc. cit., 332. Prevost and Dumas, Schwann, Quoted by Lauder Brunton, Sci. Conf., Biol., 191, 192. 30 Matteucci, Op. cit., 332. Brunton, Sci. Conf., 191. Ritter, Thèse de concours, Strasbourg, 1863. Küss, Physiol., 70. Foster, Physiol., 61. * Radcliffe, loc. cit., viii, ix, 29, 98. 32 Marey, Op. cit., 39. 33 Rouget, C. R., June, 1867. Quincke, Nature, xxii, 206, 1880. "The lengthening is produced by a moving cause which is developed in the act of nutrition and is correlative to heat if it be not heat itself." Engelmann, Pflüger's Archiv, vii, 33-71; 155-188; xviii, 1-24. Also Hoffman and Schwalbe's Jahresbericht for 1878, 71, 72. [I am indebted for these views of Eng. elmann to Dr. C. S. Minot of Boston.-B.] 34 Schäfer, Scl. Conf., Biol. 171. Marey, C. R., lxxxix, 203. Levon, Ib., 242. Richet, Ib., 792, 956; Nature, xx, 106, xxi, 76. Couty and Lacerda, C. R., lxxxix, 794, 1034; Nature, xxi, 76. 25 Prout, "This agency is vital and its nature is completely unknown. It is impossi ble to imagine that the agency of the stomach can be chemical." Bridgewater Treatise, 1834, 493. Quoted by Bence Jones, loc. cit., 53. 25 Kühne, Physiologische Chemie, 1866. Haidenhain, Nature, xix, 541. Bernhard. J. Chem. Soc., xxxiv. 82. Defresne, C. R., lxxxix, 737, 1070; J. Chem. Soc., xxxviii, 330. Ricket, J. Chem. Soc., xxxiv, 520. Seegen, J. Chem. Soc., xxxvi, 548, 549. Harth, J. Chem. Soc., xxxvi, GCO. See also Am. Chem. Journal, ii, 204-212. 37 Matteucci, loc. cit. "Thin plates of slate or of baked clay" show the phenomena of osmose (page 35); and those of transpiration take place "with tubes of vein, artery, clay, pasteboard and wood" (page 83). Nasse, J. Chem. Soc., xxxiv, 519. See also Xxxviii, 414. 38 Setschinoff, J. Chem. Soc., xxxiv, 519. See also Grehant, Nature, xviii, 103. Gaule, Nature, xix, 474. Fredericq, The venous blood of the squid (Octopus vulgaris) and lobster (Homarus) contains a colorless albuminoid cupriferous body, which he calls hæmocyanin. In the gills it forms an unstable compound with oxygen, oxy hæmocyanin, being of a beautiful blue color. The venous blood is colorless; but when the animal respires acrated water, the arterial blood becomes blue. Like hæmoglobin, hæmocyanin breaks up into a proteid substance free from copper, and a cupriferous body analogous to hæmatin. J. Chem. Soc., xxxv, 333; Nature, xxi, 370. 29 Marey, Travaux du Laboratoire, i, 100; ii, 1, 1875. 40 Schmidt, Reichert u. Du Bois Reymond's Archiv, 1861, 545; 1862, 428, 533. 41 Hammarsten, J. Chem. Soc., xxxv, 472; xxxviii, 172; Pflüger's Archiv, xiv, 211; xvii, 413; xviii, 38; xix, 563. See also Gamgee, op. cit., 42-53. 42 Liebreich, Ann. Chem. Pharm., cxxxiv. 29. 43 Gamgee and Blankenhorn, C100 H303 N3 PO35, J. Chem. Soc., xxxvi, 950; Nature, xxi, 387; Zeitschr. phys. Chem., iii, 260, 1879. 44 Radclife, loc. cit., 17. Du Bois Reymond, Gesammelte Abhandl., ii, 232, 1877. Engelmann, Pflüger's Archiv, xv, 211, 1877. 45 Haughton, Anim. Mechanics, 18, Note. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, 1, 81, et seq. Clifford, Seeing and Thinking, London, 1879, 12-17. See also Sci. Conf., Biology, 224. 47 Donders, Sci. Conf., Biology, 224. Müller, J., Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen. Coblentz, 1844, i, 581. 48 Helmholtz, Müller's Archiv, 1850, 276; 1852, 199. Du Bois Reymond, Royal Inst. Lecture, 1838. Haughton, Anim. Mechanics, 14. Along the motor nerve of the frog, Helmholtz found the velocity of transmission at the rate of 88 feet per second. Along the sensor nerves of man Schelske found it to be at the rate of 97 feet. 49 Marey, Anim. Mechanism, 41, 43. See also Du Bois Reymond's Lecture, "On the Time required for the Transmission of Sensation and Volition through the Nerves," Proc. Roy. Inst., 1866. Garver, Am. J. Sci., III, xv. 413, 1878; xx, 189, 1880. 50 Lovering, Proc. A. A. A. S., xxiv, 37, 1876. 51 See Preece's edition of Noad's Electricity, 67. On aërial wires the observed speed has varied from 112,680 miles per second on a wire 179 metres long to 816 miles per second on a cable 1,020 kilometres in length. 52 Weber, Quoted by Radcliffe, loc. cit., 18. 53 Radcliffe, loc. cit., 18. 54 Gaugain, Quoted by Lovering, loc. cit., 37. 55 Marey, “We know that electric phenomena are produced in the nerve when it has been excited in a certain way, and that their propagation throughout the nervous cord seems to have precisely the same speed as that of the transference of the nervous energy itself." Anim. Mechanism, 41. Bernstein, Untersuch. ü. d. Erregungsvorgang im Nerven- und Muskel-systeme, 1871, has shown that the negative variation or current of action passes along a muscle or nerve from the spot stimulated in the form of a wave, travelling in the nerve at the same rate as the nervous impulse, in the muscle at the same rate as the contraction. See Foster, op. cit., pp. 77, 105. 56 Clifford, Seeing and Thinking, 26. Du Bois Reymond, Roy. Inst. Lect., 1866. Spencer, Psychology, I, 81. 57 Bert, C. R., lxxxiv, 173. Foster, op. cit., 77, 126, 503. 58 Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, 3d ed., New York, 1872. Maudsley, Body and Mind, London, 1870. Physiology and Pathology of Mind, 2d ed., London, 1868. Spencer, Principles of Psychology, New York, 1871. 59 Maudsley, Body and Mind, 18; Physiology and Pathology, 42, 44, 49, 138. Bain, loc. cit., 12. Clifford, loc. cit., 77. Allman, Nature xx, 393. "Every phenomenon of mind is the result as manifest energy, of some change, molecular, chemical or vital, in the nervous elements of the brain."-" The performance of an idea, like the performance of movement, is a retrograde metamorphosis of the organic element." "Mental action is as surely dependent on the nervous system as the liver function is on the hepatic."- Maudsley. "No fact in our constitution can be considered more certain than this, that the brain is the chief organ of mind and has mind for its principal function."-Bain. "That consciousness is never manifested except in presence of cerebral matter or something like it, there cannot be a question.”—Allman. 60 J. S. Lombard, New York Medical Journal, v. 198, June, 1867. 61 Hirsch, Determination telegraphique de la difference de longitude entre les Observatoires de Genève et de Neuchatel. Genève et Bale, 1864. Donders, Reichert ü. Du Bois Reymond's Archiv, 1868, 657; Sci. Conf., Biol., 225. Haughton, Anim. Mechanics, 15. 62 Donders, Science Conferences, Biology, 226. 63 Donders, Ib., 227. & Gaskell, Science Conferences, Biology, 186. Angelo Mosso, "Sopra un nuovo metodo per scrivere i movimenti dei vasi sanguigni nell' uomo;" Atti della Reale Accademia della Scienze di Torino, xi, Nov. 14, 1875. 65 Barnard, Proc. A. A. A. S., xvii, 93, 1868. ec Clausius, Pogg. Ann., Dec., 1851. Thomson, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., 1852; Phil. Mag., 1852; Feb., 1853. Tait, Thermodynamics, Edinburgh, 1868, 29, 58. "No known natural process is exactly reversible and whenever an attempt is made to transform and retransform energy by an imperfect process, part of the energy is necessarily transformed into heat and dissipated, so as to be incapable of further useful transformation. It therefore follows that as energy is constantly in a state of transformation there is a constant degradation of energy to the final unavailable form of uniformly diffused heat; and that this will go on as long as transformations occur, until the whole energy of the universe has taken this final form." Maxwell, Theory of Heat, 188. Balfour Stewart, Conservation of Energy, New York, 1874, 141–154. 67 Hermann, Nature, xix, 561, 1879; Unters. ü. d. Stoffwechsel, Berlin, 1867. es Berthelot, Essai de Méchanique Chimique fondée sur la Thermochimie, Paris, 1879. C. R.. xc, 1240, 1880. Thomsen, Various papers in Pogg. and Wied. 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