Without volcanoes and without deserts, we should not have had that uninterrupted supply of atmospheric dust without which the earth would have been uninhabitable by men. Our position, therefore, without the solar system is as central and unique as that of our sun in the whole starry universe. He sums up his conclusions as follows:

"The three startling facts-that we are in the center of a cluster of suns, and that that cluster is situated not only precisely in the plane of the Galaxy, but also centrally in that plane, can hardly now be looked upon as chance coincidences without any significance in relation to the culminating fact that the planet so situated has developed humanity.

"Of course, the relation here pointed out may be a true relation of cause and effect, and yet have arisen as the result of one in a thousand million chances occurring during almost infinite time. But, on the other hand, those thinkers may be right who, holding that the universe is a manifestation of mind, and that the orderly development of living souls supplies an adequate reason why such a universe should have been called into existence, believe that we ourselves are its sole and sufficient result, and that nowhere else than near the central position in the universe which we occupy could that result have been attained."

If Dr. Wallace be right, it is obvious what an important bearing his conclusion will have upon the whole field of theological thought.

An Opposing View.

It is said that Dr. Wallace is at present engaged in writing a book in which he will elaborate the thesis advanced in his Fortnightly article. Meantime, Prof. H. H. Turner, of Oxford, offers a reply in the April number; and it must be admitted that he puts a very different light upon Dr. Wallace's arguments. As regards the existence of life on other planets, Mr. Turner sums up Dr. Wallace's argument as follows:

Life is impossible at the uttermost boundaries of the universe. Therefore, it is only possible at the exact center."

But even if we are at the center of the universe, which Mr. Turner does not admit, he maintains that we are there only temporarily and accidentally. The solar system is moving through space at a rate which would take us to Sirius in one hundred thousand years, if we happened to be moving that way. In the fifty million or one hundred million years during which this earth has been inhabited, we must have passed thousands of stars, and other stars must have held the position before. If the

universe is as finite as Dr. Wallace argues, we should have traversed it from boundary to boundary in that time. Professor Turner, however, does not admit that the apparent thinning out of the stars at what Dr. Wallace considers the borders of the universe proves that the universe is finite. There are everywhere dark stars and dark nebula which obstruct light, and therefore the fact that no stars can be perceived beyond certain limits proves nothing. Finally, we are not even temporarily at the center of the universe. The universe, as known, is like a saucepan-we may be at the center of the bowl, but not at the center of the bowl and handle taken together.

IN

THE COMING TELESCOPE.

N the May Harper's, there is an account by Prof. G. W. Ritchey of "Photographing the Nebulae with Reflecting Telescopes" which gives a most surprising idea of the feats of the astronomical photographer, when it is considered that the camera has been seriously used in astronomy for only about twenty years, although the first work of photographing the moon was done forty years ago by Draper. This writer gives some very interesting information as to the possibilities of building much larger telescopes than now exist. The largest ever constructed was Lord Rosse's, of six feet in diameter. This was sixty years ago, and nowadays modern reflecting telescopes one foot in diameter will give photographs more distinct and brilliant than Lord Rosse could obtain.

GREAT MIRRORS NOW POSSIBLE.

When this is said, Professor Ritchey's further statements become all the more interesting. He says no great telescope now exists, and that it is entirely possible now to construct a great reflector with even more than the refinement of the instrument in the Yerkes Observatory. "In the optical shop of the Yerkes Observatory is the nearly finished mirror for a reflecting telescope of five feet aperture. Two years' work has al ready been done upon this glass by the writer. The rough disk for this mirror was cast at the glass-works of St. Gobain, near Paris. It is five feet in diameter, is eight inches thick, and weighs a ton. No serious difficulties have been encountered in making this mirror, and there can be not the slightest doubt that an eight-foot mirror could now be made which would be as perfect in all respects as the mirror of the twofoot reflector which we are now using in photography. The French makers of the rough disks of glass have recently expressed their readiness

to undertake for us a ten-foot disk, one foot thick, which they think would be as homogeneous, as well annealed, and as perfect in all respects as the five-foot disk.

"I do not advocate mere bigness. In order that the improvement in the photographs obtained with a great reflecting telescope shall be proportional to the increase of size, all parts of the instrument must be made with the utmost care and skill; with all of the perfection made possible by modern engineering and mechanical methods, and by the latest improvements in glass-making and in optical work.

REFLECTING AND REFRACTING INSTRUMENTS.

"Some idea of the compactness, the rigidity, and the economy of construction possible in the mounting of a great reflector can be gained when I state that the tube of a reflector of eight feet aperture would be less than forty feet long, twenty-three feet shorter than the tube of the forty-inch Yerkes refractor and that the diameter of the dome required for such a great reflector would be eighty feet, ten feet less than that of the dome of the forty-inch refractor. The cost of an eight-foot reflector, constructed with the greatest economy and simplicity, and yet with the utmost refinement, for use in photography, together with the cost of the dome, would be little, if any, greater than that of the Yerkes refractor with its dome.

WHAT WE COULD SEE WITH AN EIGHT-FOOT
REFLECTOR.

"Judging from the results obtained with the two-foot instrument, an eight-foot reflector, if used in a climate where atmospheric conditions are fine, would photograph stars which are fifty times fainter than the faintest stars which can be seen with the largest modern refractors. This means that such a reflector would enable us to penetrate seven times farther into space than can now be done with the greatest visual telescopes, and therefore that such an instrument would reveal to us a universe seven times seven times seven-more than three hundred-times greater than the universe which is revealed by the most powerful modern refractors.

"Such a great reflector would give us photographs of the nebulæ of about five times the scale of the photographs obtained with the twofoot reflector; the delicate structure and minute details of these wonderful objects would be shown proportionately better, provided that the instrument were used in a suitable climate. know of no opportunity which has ever been presented in the entire history of astronomy greater than that which now awaits us in the

construction of a large modern reflector and its use in astronomical photography. We are accustomed to think of the construction of such a great telescope as an enormous undertaking; and yet the cost of an eight-foot reflector would be about one-twentieth that of a great modern office building or a modern battleship. How insignificant does even such a telescope appear when we think of the inconceivable depths of space which we are trying to penetrate; of the great works of the Creator which we are trying to study; of the problem of the development. the evolution, of suns and worlds which we are endeavoring to solve."

WHAT SCIENCE HAS FOUND OUT ABOUT
THE BRAIN.

"THE Mechanism of the Brain" is the title of an article in the May Harper's by Mr. Carl Snyder, who reports the latest discoveries and hypotheses of our scientists in regard to the composition and function of that organ. For half a century, the scientific world has recognized that the vital part of the brain and the nerves seems to be highly phosphorized fat, and that without the phosphorus, this fat does not seem to think. Mr. Snyder pithily says: "Whether it be the brain-cell of a glowworm, or one trembling with the harmonies of Tristan und Isolde,' the stuff it is made of is much the same; it is a difference of structure, apparently, rather than of material. And the chemical difference between a brain or nerve cell and that of the muscles or the skin seems reducible mainly to a difference in the proportion of two substances, water and phosphorus. Lean beef, for example, is from 70 to 80 per cent. water; the brain is from 90 to 95 per cent. water. And a brain or nerve cell may contain from five to ten times as much phosphorus as, let us say, the cells of the liver or the heart. The actual quantity is, of course, extremely small,—by weight, but a fraction of 1 per cent."

THE SIZE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN.

The brain of the average man weighs about three pounds. There is more of the phosphorized fat down the spinal column, and little plexuses all over the body, wherever a group of muscles are to be moved; and others still, the sensory or feeling nerves, which are everywhere. This nervous substance is made up of distinctly separated units, most of them extremely minute. though some attain a length of two or three feet. "The cells which run from the small of the back down into your toes are the longest. Those of the brain are mostly so small as to tax the powers

"It will be seen that Byron, who was commonly supposed to have a small head, is highest in the list; and whatever may be thought of his poetry, certainly he was a man of rather mediocre intellectual attainments, as poets generally are; while Baron Liebig, who possessed one of the best-equipped brains of the first half-century, was below the average."

HOW THE NERVE WAVES TRAVEL.

"Quick as thought" is not very quick. While a light wave would travel seven times around the equator in a second, a nerve wave makes only about a hundred feet a second. Just what this nerve wave is puzzles the scientific men. As there is no nerve action without the evident presence of electricity, it seems probable that nerve action, thought, and consciousness, and what in our present ignorance we call electricity, are one and the same.

PROFESSOR MATHEWS' EXPERIMENTS.

"This view gained heavy reënforcements a year ago from some brilliant experiments of Prof. Albert P. Mathews, who had been working on nerve stimulation with Prof. Jacques Loeb in the University of Chicago. Professor Loeb, and others, had shown that in certain salt solutions an excised heart could be kept beating for hours; further, that a piece of ordinary frog's muscle, for example, dipped in the same solutions, would beat rhythmically, like a heart.

"Professor Mathews took a step further. In stead of cutting away the nerves from the mus cles, he left them joined at one end, merely separating the nerve enough to let the end of it hang in a cup of salt solution, while the frog's legs were suspended on a frame. The rhythmical beat began in a short time, just as if the muscles themselves were in the salt bath. Plainly, the nerve carried the stimulus, and, so far as any mortal could see, the stimulus was the same

as that which makes a live frog's muscles contract when it jumps. Whence came this stimulus?

"The only solutions which give this effect are those capable of generating a current of electricity. A succession of electrical impulses, from a dynamo, for example, will make the frog's leg's twitch rhythmically, just as do these electrical solutions."

ENGLAND'S Need of UNIVERSITIES.

Now

WOW and then is heard in England a demand 'for more and cheaper universities. Not more Oxfords and Cambridges, but institutions which make adequate provision for complete intellectual training and professional instruction, cheap and easily accessible for every boy or girl destined for a brain-working occupation. In the Cornhill Magazine for April, Mr. Sidney Webb argues convincingly on this line.

A HUMILIATING COMPARISON.

"The proportion of university students is going up in Holland and the United States at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum; in Germany and Belgium, by 6 per cent.; in Switzerland, by more than 7 per cent. ; while in France, Italy, Austria, and Russia the annual increase cannot fall behind these figures. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom the proportion of the population for whom we provide the highest training is at best stationary, and in some years actually declines. We may still believe that man for man an Englishman is superior to the citizen of any other country, but not even the most sanguine patriot can ignore the advantages of education. . . . We have come, at the opening of the twentieth century, to an era of professional expertness, in which the merely cultivated amateur is hopelessly beaten out of the field."

Mr. Webb points out that the new universities are not, and should never be, intended to become the rivals of Oxford and Cambridge. They have different aims and different methods,

they also appeal to different classes. He then describes the functions of the new universities, which is briefly to turn out the graduate fully equipped, not only as a cultivated citizen,—as is now the case, but also as far as may be possible as a trained professional.

The conditions and limitations of the new universities imply,-first, that they will rapidly become large and numerously frequented institutions, and, secondly, that the standard of their teaching will be extremely high. They will be practical above everything else; students will go there in order to master the subjects which

will enable them to gain a livelihood. This will compel an intensive study of each department of learning unknown to the average "pass man. Imagine the economic professor at Oxford having to lecture on banking and currency daily before a class of bank clerks and branch managers in such a way as to retain their respect and convey instruction!

LONDON'S NEED.

Mr. Webb pleads for a great technical high school, of the Charlottenburg type, to be erected on the four or five acres of vacant land at South Kensington. The University of London is lamentably inadequate for the needs of the great metropolis! It needs money, and the stimulating impulse of a great ideal. It would take $250,000 a year, at least, to put the science faculty properly on its feet. The engineering faculty is in such an infantile condition that the advanced mechanical student is advised to go to the McGill University at Montreal or the Polytechnikum at Zurich. To set the whole university on its feet and equip it with the necessary endowment requires at least five millions sterling. Each of the nine other new local universities proposed would require about $2,500,000. Within the next decade, says Mr. Webb, it will be necessary to provide for England alone, for what we may call tertiary education and the advancement of learning, the equivalent of $50,000,000.

The proposed universities are as follows:

"In London and its thirty miles radius; at Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Dur ham (with Newcastle-on-Tyne); for Yorkshire, for the East Midlands (with Nottingham), for East Anglia, for the southwestern counties (with Bristol, Exeter, and, it may be hoped, Plymouth), and for the south (with Reading and Southampton).”

DU

MARTYRS OF THE POLE.

URING the nineteenth century, two hundred ships have perished in Arctic exploration, over thirty million dollars has been spent, and numberless lives have been lost-but the mystery of the Pole remains unsolved.

THE RECORD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The Deutsche Revue contains a most interesting article by the Marquis de Nadaillac upon the martyrs of the North Pole. The nineteenth century closed with the expeditions of Greely, De Long, Jackson, Peary, Nansen, Andrée, and the Duke of Abruzzi; and the prize of the greatest effort was a few more miles of ice-field conquered, and the attainment to the highest

point yet reached, 83° 33′ 49′′ north latitude. This was done by Captain Cagni, Abruzzi's lieutenant. Three men in his expedition were lost and never again seen. Andrée's project was condemned by all the highest authorities as quite impossible, and the writer considers that after such a clear sign from heaven as was given by the continuous contrary winds during a whole year, Andrée should have desisted. His twe companions did do so; but he had so many offers to fill their places that he could pick and choose as he liked. It was said that an American newspaper offered him $20,000 to take one of its editors! Rumors of the discovery of the skeletons of the bold explorers were many, but none proved authentic. Sverdrup, however, seems to have achieved the greatest measure of success of all. He was captain of the Fram in Nansen's expedition. On that occasion, staying quietly on his ship, he penetrated almost as far north as did Nansen with fearful labor and privation. A second time he essayed to conquer the problem of the Pole in the Fram. He solved many important problems. He upset the theory that there was no land between America and Asia by the discovery of three islands. Sir Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographical Society, spoke enthusiastically of Sverdrup, but strongly deprecated the costly expeditions which the various nations sent out in rivalry without any system of coöperation. He considers future North Pole expeditions as worthless; useless for geographical purposes; useless from the naturalist's point of view.

THE LATEST ATTEMPTS.

Sverdrup ought, perhaps, not to be considered a martyr of the North Pole, as he had a wellbuilt ship under him all the time. Peary has proved by far the most energetic and persistent of Arctic explorers. He took his wife with him on his first expedition, during which a daughter was born to them. In all, he made seven expeditions, and discovered that Greenland was an island. The latest pioneers do not deserve the name of martyrs. They go in well-appointed ships, with tenders to keep them supplied with food and every luxury-and do nothing. Russians made a bold attempt to reach the Pole by means of the ice-breaker, the Zermak, but it was a miserable failure. Two Danish expeditions did very good scientific work from the east side. They discovered a village full of skeletons. The men lying in the huts, the dogs at their feet, while the bones of bear and walrus round the huts showed that the grewsome sight was not caused by starvation, but by some sudden catastrophe.

The

"A cereal-food factory is a huge digestive machine, relieving the human stomach of the more difficult part of the work of converting vegetable material into body tissue. The idea at Battle Creek, the birthplace of the healthfood' industry, is that, as we gradually give up the vocations of brawn for the vocations of brain, we must change the character of our food. A farmer who toils from sunrise to sunset in the field, working his body and not his brain, is fit physically to eat foods that would send an office worker in a town to his doctor. When a swift torpedo-boat destroyer is sent out to secure a speed record, the engineers feed only picked coal to the fires; a present-day American, giving his whole thought to rapid achievement, is equally in need of picked fuel. It is a strange condition of affairs that, in this age of scientific research and of marvelous investigations into the secrets of life, we give so little scientific thought to the food we eat. At Battle Creek, dietetists have been working out a reform in food for thirty years. Their progress was slow up to the time when a few shrewd men saw the commercial possibilities of health-food manufacture. Now diet reform is rapidly becoming a question of national interest. With ten million dollars a year being spent to advertise breakfast foods,' the public is forced to take an interest in the food question. One cannot pick up a magazine, or ride in a street car, or walk down a street, without having the merits of some new cereal food brought before his eye. The idea of a scientific diet that Battle Creek is spreading out over the world may not revolutionize the diet of the human race, but it will work a change in millions of kitchens."

MORE THAN A HUNDRED VARIETIES.

"The varieties of food and drink that can be made from fruits, nuts, and cereals are almost infinite in number. Already there are more than a hundred on the market. Within a few years, it would seem, this scientific preparation

of foods will be an immense industry, and the present remarkable output of nearly fifty million dollars' worth a year will be increased many times."

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PACKAGE.

"The rise of the breakfast-food industry has made popular the package idea for kitchens. American housewives take kindly to pasteboard packages, or cartons. The sudden growth of the industry would have been impossible without the cartons. Small pasteboard boxes and large wooden cases, each holding two or three dozen cartons, are very large items in the cost of production, but labor-saving machinery cuts these items down to a minimum. In the food factories,

the cartons are cut, printed, and folded almost automatically; and after they have been automatically filled with cereal food, they are closed with paste by machinery. Only by the use of all this automatic machinery is it possible to keep the price of the cartons under a cent apiece. A fraction of a cent is not much money, but one Chicago factory spends more than five thousand dollars a day on cartons. It recently gave an order for ninety thousand dollars' worth of paper for labels and fifty tons of ink to print them. The cost of wooden packing-cases about equals that of the cartons. In putting a carton of a certain well-known breakfast food on the market, the cost of the cereal product is about two and one-third cents, and the cost of the packing one and one-third cents, making the cost of manufacture three and one-third cents. The selling price to the grocer is eleven and one-third cents, and to the public, fifteen cents. One factory uses a piece of paraffine paper to wrap the product inside the carton. This paper costs more than one hundred thousand dollars a year, but the manufacturers think that American housewives want to have it, and the sale of this particular product would seem to indicate that they are right."

THE MARGIN OF PROFIT IN HEALTH FOODS.

"With the cost of a carton of breakfast food only between three and four cents, and the retail selling price fifteen cents, the industry is one that attracts prospectors like a new gold field. But not all get rich who erect food factories. The profit in the sale of cereal foods is large, but a market is not to be had for simply the asking. It needs just as much business sagacity to make money out of a food factory as it does out of a rolling mill or a railway. A market can be created and kept in existence only by persistent publicity, and by publicity that costs. It costs from four hundred to eight hundred dollars in advertising to sell one thousand dollars'