of Ampère. His electric telegraph, one of the first which was worked over a line of any length, has been replaced by more convenient arrangements, but the name of our colleague will retain its place in the history of the new telegraphic system. He has entitled himself to that, not only by this effort, but also by a long and persevering succession of studies and inventions intended to render the arrangements of telegraphic apparatus more certain, their working more easy and simple. It was thus that Sir C. Wheatstone was led to inquire into the speed with which the electric wave passes along a metallic wire, by what causes its passage may be retarded or diverted back to its starting-point. It was thus, by changing the nature of the metals along which the electric current passed, that he ascertained that the sparks given forth by each emitted special coloured rays, thus shadowing forth the discovery of the spectroscope, which was soon to surprise the scientific world. Again, it was while engaged in measuring the rapid pasasge of electricity over a metal wire-equal to that of light-that he invented the admirable method of revolving mirrors, of which Arago, who has described them, and his fellowworkers were to make such noble use. The admirable plan, indeed, enabled Arago-crowning the work of his scientific life-to trace with certainty the plan of fundamental experiment which should decide whether light is a body emanating from the sun or the stars, or an undulatory motion excited by them. Carried out by a consummate experimentalist they put aside the theory of emission. This method, therefore, has supplied to the philosophy of science the certain data upon which rest our ideas of the nature of forces, and especially of that of light. By the aid of this or a similar method we have been enabled to ascertain the rapidity of light by experiments purely terrestrial, which, carried on by a skilful physicist, have governed the admeasurement of the distance of the earth from the sun. The duration of movements rapid as thought, or even more rapid still, is measured with certainty by the method of revolving mirrors, or by other methods of analogous principle. This method, which will render the name of Sir C. Wheatstone immortal, marks a date and characterizes an epoch in that difficult art of consulting nature, the solid basis of modern science. It is thus that Sir C. Wheatstone, associated by his most brilliant discoveries with the labours of the French school, and honoured by the friendship of Arago, was in the habit of coming among us sometimes for recreation, but more frequently to favour us with the first fruits of his recent labours. The noble traditions which for more than two centuries have caused so close an union between the Paris Academy of Science and the Royal Society of London were personified in our illustrious colleague."

Of Sir Charles Lyell, an English critic in the Saturday Review said: "The death of Sir Charles Lyell ends a stage in the history of geology in England. He was the last of the veteran geologists the labours of whose lives kept England famous in spite of the dearth of eminent successors in the younger generation, and one cannot but feel that his departure severs the tie that connected us with the infancy of geology. These men found geology uncertain as to the nature and scope of its investigations, feeble and hesitating in asserting its claims to attention, wild in its notions of their possible causes, and submitting to be dictated to as to both by the narrow theological views of the time. They have left it one of the soberest and least flighty of the many branches of natural science, taking its rank unquestioned among those which it is important for all to study; and though it never has lost, and probably never will lose, the charm which is given to it by the vastness of the scale upon which the operations of

which it speaks have been carried on, and the dim mystery of the countless ages through which we have to look back in reading its records, yet such is the mass of facts it has accumulated as compared with the amount of theory that can possibly be framed upon them, that it is rapidly getting to be regarded as consisting mainly of observations of minute details, to be enjoyed only by specialists, and at which a theologian would as little think of cavilling as he would think of cavilling at the daily meteorological observations at Greenwich. The jealousy with which its progress was watched has become a thing of the past, save so far as its teachings bear upon the controversy on evolution; and a clergyman who should treat his congregation to the invectives once so common against those who would weaken the authority of Scripture by throwing doubt on the literal descriptiveness of the Mosaic account of the Creation would trouble the minds of none but his ecclesiastical superiors. Of all the men who have aided in effecting this revolution by far the highest place must be assigned to Sir Charles Lyell. We would not for a moment disparage the labours of such men as Murchison, Phillips, and Sedgwick; but all these, though vying with him perhaps in their actual knowledge of the subject, and the extent and value of their original researches, stand far below him in that grasp of it as a whole and that power of generalization by which he made his knowledge fruitful. Under his hands the science took shape, its phenomena were shown to be parts of a consistent whole, and the vast accumulation of facts which threatened to encumber rather than to aid those who sought to reach from facts to causes, fell into their proper places, and ceased to be subjects of special explanations, because they needed He found the subject a heap of building-stone; he left it a building; and such was his freedom from bias and his capacity for weighing evidence, that the results of his labours are in but little danger of being superseded. Every day we learn something new which bears upon his conclusions, and they must necessarily be greatly modified by advancing knowledge; but, so far as its main features are concerned, his system is too firmly based upon sound reasoning and trustworthy observation to be shaken." Between the publication of the ninth and tenth editions of Sir C. Lyell's Principles of Geology, the celebrated work of his friend Mr. Darwin on the Origin of Species appeared. Sir Charles, though upwards of sixty years of age, gave his adhesion to the new doctrine, and, first in the work on the Antiquity of Man, which appeared in 1863, and subsequently in the tenth edition of his Principles of Geology, he incorporated it with his system, elaborated, and defended it. Some of his old companions in research declined to follow him in the step he took, and remained to the end of their days firm opponents of the Darwinian theory; but Sir Charles Lyell so completely adopted it and made it his own, that it is hard for one who reads the later editions of his works to figure to himself how the hypothesis of special creations could ever have formed part of them. Thus his system represents the world past and present as the result of a continuous process exactly similar to what is going on now. And whatever may be thought of the conclusions of the arguments by which he supports some parts of his theories, his works must ever remain a monument of his genius and one of the most valuable productions of our age.

none.

PART II.
Π.

CHRONICLE

OF REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES

IN 1875.

JANUARY.

1. THE WEATHER.-The opening of the year found the country white with the unusually severe snowstorms which we chronicled last year; but a thaw commenced on or about the first day of this month, the remainder of which was mild. The scene in Paris on the evening of New Year's Day was such as has not often been seen there. The streets were already slippery when, at nine in the evening, the rain began to fall and to freeze instantaneously; it was frozen before it could run off an umbrella. The roads were quickly sheeted with ice, and it was impossible to obtain a cab at any price. Along the boulevards when the theatres were over the sight was at once painful and ridiculous, for ladies and gentlemen who had counted on their carriages were forced to face the road on foot, and the only way to walk with any safety was to pull off your boots and trust to your stockings. A gentleman said he never saw so many horses down except at Champigny, when the German batteries played sad havoc with the French artillery teams. In many instances the poor animals remained where they fell, either too much frightened or too much hurt to rise, and it is said that the omnibus company lost no fewer than 200 horses from broken legs or severe strains. One gentleman cut up a railway wrapper, and, making stockings for his horse, drove home; and an enterprising smith established himself on the boulevards, and roughed a number of steeds. A man with a quantity of list slippers made a little fortune, but his stock was soon exhausted. In some of the worst places, at the Pont Neuf, for example, there were dozens of vehicles unable to move, and in fact all over Paris were to be found deserted carriages and omnibuses, in which persons who despaired of getting home took

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refuge. Several deaths were reported, and nearly 300 people were taken to the hospitals with broken limbs or serious contusions. A blind man, who clung to the railings of the Mayoralty of the 11th arrondissement, was fastened there by the tips of his fingers, which became frozen. He was released by a picket.

2. SEVERAL RAILWAY ACCIDENTS took place this day, in consequence probably of the frost. The most serious occurred on the Forth and Clyde Railway to the passenger train leaving Balloch for Stirling at 8.48 a.m. While the train was proceeding at full speed between Balfron and Buckly vie, the tire of one of the wheels suddenly gave way, and the result was that a number of the carriages left the line, one of them being thrown into a field and broken to splinters, and other two considerably smashed. The passengers, to the number of ten or eleven, were more or less, but none of them seriously, injured, except a young lad, who was severely cut about the head. The others were forwarded to their several destinations. The traffic on the line was stopped for several hours.

A collision between a goods train and a coal train at Rhyl in North Wales, which caused great destruction of property, was accounted for by the slippery state of the rails.

4. FOUR EXECUTIONS IN ONE DAY.-There were four criminals hanged to-day, three in Liverpool and one in Newgate. The three men executed at the Kirkdale Gaol, Liverpool, were Michael Mulan and John McCave, who were leaders in an unprovoked attack upon Richard Morgan in Tithebarn Street, and William Worthington, the master of a canal boat, convicted of murdering his wife by kicking her. Both cases were marked by extreme ruffianism. The man executed at Newgate was James Cranwell, who was convicted of the murder of a woman named Emma Bellamy, by beating her on the head with a shoemaker's hammer and cutting her throat.

- DREADFUL COLLIERY EXPLOSION.-A terrible gas explosion occurred at the Aldwick Main Colliery, Park Gate, Rotherham, on the same day. The pit was considered one of the safest in South Yorkshire, and had long been worked with naked lights without any accident beyond slight falls of roof. On the previous day there was a smell of gas in the pit, and the men in that part which was more particularly affected came out in consequence. However, all was passed as being safe before the men went to work, but they had not been down more than twenty minutes when the explosion took place. There were then over 300 persons in the pit. As soon as the noise was heard all the men near the shaft hurried to it, and were drawn out, but many of those at a distance worked on for hours without being aware of anything wrong. Eight men were killed. The cause of the explosion is supposed to be the liberation of a large volume of gas by the fall of the roof in a part of the pit. The force of the explosion blew

the stoppings away and disarranged the circulation of air, and for a considerable time it was feared that a second explosion would take place. Although the explosion occurred very early in the morning, it was nearly noon before the first body was got out, and it was late in the evening before all the bodies were recovered. Some of the corpses were almost reduced to cinders.

FATAL BOAT ACCIDENT ON THE TYNE.-Nine men were drowned in a boat accident on the Tyne on the same day. The rapid thaw had greatly swollen the river, and quantities of broken ice were carried down the stream with great force. A number of labourers employed at Blaydon, but living on the south side of the river, were returning home from work, and, as usual, entered a wherry to cross it. They encountered much difficulty, even at the outset, in making progress towards the opposite bank, in consequence of the velocity and force of the stream. Persevering, however, they managed to reach nearly to mid-stream, when their craft was struck and driven rapidly along by a huge mass of ice, and in a moment the boat was upset and all its occupants were thrown into the water. The accident was witnessed by a large number of persons on shore, and several boatmen at once put off to their rescue, but before they could succeed in reaching them nine had been carried away and drowned. Five others having clung to the floating ice and trees which were being driven down the river, kept themselves on the surface and were saved. They were much exhausted, and terribly cut and bruised.

6. FREEMASONRY AT DUBLIN.-The Duke of Abercorn was installed to-day as Grand Master of the Freemasons of Ireland, in the room of the late Duke of Leinster. There was a brilliant gathering of the Masonic body, including the Marquis of Headfort, Senior Grand Warden; Lord Dunboyne, Junior Grand Warden; Viscount Bernard, Grand Secretary; the Hon. David Plunket, M.P., Senior Grand Deacon, and a number of representatives of foreign lodges. The ceremony took place in the Masonic Hall, Molesworth Street, Dublin. His Grace reinstated Mr. Shekleton as Deputy Grand Master; and the Marquis of Headfort having been installed Senior Grand Warden, and Lord Dunboyne Junior Grand Warden, the Grand Lodge was closed with the usual forms.

16. FIRE IN GLASGOW.-The most destructive fire that has occurred in this city for a long time broke out this day, when the well-known biscuit factory of Gray and Dunn, Kinningpark, was totally consumed. The damage was estimated at 50,000l. Three hundred persons, male and female, have been thrown out of employment by the fire. By the time the Glasgow Brigade arrived the flames had obtained complete mastery of the premises. The city and local firemen therefore directed their efforts to prevent the flames consuming the neighbouring dwelling-houses and the Burgh police buildings. The occupants had fled for their lives, leaving most of their household goods