FROM a paper on "Some indigenous Tus- common things on the minds of those who are can Remedies," read by Mr. H. Groves before to go forth and do battle with the ignorance the recent Pharmaceutical Conference, it and failings of our population, and to spread would seem that plants furnish a considerable light throughout the land. A little knowledge portion of the medicinal products in use in of the ancient elements, fire, air, earth, and that country. Many of the plants enumerated water, would save many a young clergyman are well known as medicinal plants in other from the vanity of ridiculous extremes, and parts of Europe. The Chamomile (Matrica- from the surprise of the more wisely and ria chamomilla), for instance, is said to be widely educated among his flock." Surely no found in the cupboard of every housewife, one will think that with regard to the univerbeing used as a calming antispasmodic, and sities Prof. Pritchard is asking too much! also applied hot externally for relieving pain. He then goes on: "Depend upon it, whatever A custom very prevalent in Tuscany seems to may be our suspicions or our fears, the pursuit be the administration of herb-juice in spring, of the knowledge of the works of nature will which is prepared daily by many herbalists, increase, and increase with an accelerated and is also ordered by medical men. Nastur- velocity; and if our clergy decline to keep tium officinale, known as Crescione, is used in pace with it, and to direct it into wholesome conjunction with Cochlearia officinalis in the channels, they and their flocks will be overcomposition of herb-juice. This latter plant, taken, though from opposite directions, by the though indigenous, is also cultivated to some inevitable Nemesis of disproportion." extent. The flowers of the Wallflower (CheiNature. ranthus cheiri), under the name of Viole gialle, or Yellow Violets, are boiled in olive-oil and used for enemata. With regard to products other than plants, the writer remarks that viper-broth is gone out of fashion, and the pharmacist is spared keeping those reptiles and the pincers with which they were handled. Snail-poultices are still used in the country. The snails are applied alive, the shell being crushed or partly removed, and the snails set upside down on a piece of coarse paper; they are then sprinkled with a little vinegar and applied at once to the soles of the feet, on which they produce an irritation greater than mustard, and which is supposed to be effica

cious in some cases of fever.

Nature.

THE British Association partook this year somewhat of the nature of a Church Congress; the real Church Congress has, en revanche, partaken somewhat of a British Association meeting, Prof. Pritchard having communicated a paper to it giving his view of certain conclusions to be drawn from our present knowledge of molecules, and quoting in support of it the honoured names of Herschel and ClerkMaxwell. As we are informed that the paper will be published in extenso elsewhere, we need not refer to it at any length here; but there is one bit of it which, coming from a clergyman and a professor at Oxford, we cannot refrain from quoting. He suggests that it would be a good thing "if in the study of every manse throughout England there were found a wellused microscope, and on the lawn a tolerable telescope; and, best of all, if those who possess influence in our national universities could see their way to the enforcement of a small modicum of the practical knowledge of

THE history of the domestic fowl has occuPied the attention of Herr Jeitteles, and he states that although the species Gallus is not there in the Tertiary epoch; in the quarternow wild in Europe, there were wild sorts nary period of the Mammoth there were two varieties, one coming near, or identical with the pile-dwellings of the Stone Period the the domestic fowl in Western Europe. In domestic fowl does not appear, but it does

in the Bronze Period: it is found in Celtic graves. In Upper India and China, the domestic fowl, whose wild ancestor the Bankiva fowl is still living, spread in very early times through Central and Eastern Asia. It was (?) century, and known to Germans, Celts and common about the Mediterranean in the fifth Britons long before the time of the Roman Empire, and may have come from the East through Southern Russia, Poland and Hun

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AWAY with me to Athens, Agathon!
Again we pause in idle mood to see
Great Pheidias' pupils shape the marble
fair,

Where perfect forms by Art from chaos

From Blackwood's Magazine.

MODERN SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

upon any estimate of Dr. Tyndall's position as a man of science. The real or per

NOTHING is more strange than the in-manent value of his scientific labours are cessant reproduction of old thoughts beyond our scope. But when he comes under the guise of new and advanced forth from his lecture-room to address opinions. It would seem as if the human the world on those old and great subjects mind, with all its restless activity, were which lie at the foundation of all human destined to revolve in an endless circle. knowledge and belief, his utterances Its progress is marked by many changes necessarily provoke criticism. Not conand discoveries; it sees and understands tent with the function of expositor, he far more clearly the facts that lie along has again, as occasionally before, affected the line of its route, and the modes or the role of prophet, and invited men to laws under which these facts occur; but look beyond the facts and laws of science this route in its higher levels always re- to the origin of things in its highest turns upon itself. Nature and all its sense. secrets become better known, and the It may be questioned whether nature powers of nature are brought more under has fitted him for this higher rôle. A human control; but the sources of na- man may have a keen and bright intelliture and life and thought—all the ulti-gence eminently fitted for scientific obmate problems of being-never become servation and discovery, and a fertile and more clearly intelligible. Not only so, lucid power of exposition, and yet no but the last efforts of human reasoning gifts of speculation or prophetic depth. on these subjects are even as the first. The very keenness of vision which Differing in form, and even sometimes traverses rapidly the superficialities of not greatly in form, they are in substance things, often becomes blunted when trythe same. Bold as the course of scien- ing to penetrate below the surface. The tific adventure has seemed for a time, it audacity which ministers to success in ends very much as it began; and men of experiment often overleaps itself in the the nineteenth century look over the task of thought. Certainly neither Dr. same abysses of speculation as did their Tyndall nor any of his school are likely forefathers thousands of years before. to suffer from any modesty of effort. If No philosophy of theism can be said to they do not scale the barriers which have have advanced beyond the Book of Job; hitherto confined human knowledge, it and Professor Tyndall, addressing the will not be because they have shrunk world from the throne of modern science from assailing them. One remembers an -which the chair of the British Associa-old story of Newton, in the plenitude of tion ought to be-repeats the thoughts his powers and of his marvellous discovof Democritus and Epicurus, as the last guesses of the modern scientific mind.

eries, confessing to his immeasurable ignorance; comparing himself to a child Professor Tyndall is well known as a who had only gathered a few pebbles on clever and eloquent lecturer on scientific the shore of a boundless sea. This is subjects. He has occupied himself with possibly a myth, like others of those ages the popular exposition of science; and of reverence which have long since gone. whatever doubts may be expressed of the Our modern scientists (as it is the fashion solidity of his acquirements and the to call them) are certainly not animated soundness and sobriety of his knowledge, by any such spirit of modest humility. none can well question that he has suc-¡ They rejoice in the great achievements ceeded brilliantly in his chosen line. of the scientific mind, and laud and magBoth in this country and in America vast nify their own share in them. All "reliaudiences have listened with enthusiasm gious theories" must be brought to their to his expositions; and the wide-spread- lecture-rooms and tested. We do not ing interest in scientific education is quarrel with the pre-eminence thus largely indebted to his activity and zeal. claimed for science. But the spirit in which the claim is made is hardly a phi

It is not our present purpose to enter

losophical, and still less a religious spirit. | every such place has its decent reserves Religion is, after all, a great fact in hu- as well as its duties. Professor Huxley, man life and history as great as any who has shown his prophetic aspirations with which science can deal. It is the no less than Professor Tyndall, and a highest of human experiences, and should considerably deeper capacity of treating never be approached without something both philosophical and religious quesof the reverence, and sense of mystery, tions, wisely abstained as its president and tenderness, and depth of insight from turning the British Association into which belong to its essential nature. It a propaganda of scientific belief or nois a great thing, no doubt, to extend the belief. He spoke with authority on the boundaries of science, and to apply its progress of a most interesting branch of verifying tests to the explanation of all science, to the culture of which he had phenomena; but it is also a serious thing devoted himself. It would have been to meddle rashly with the foundations of well, we think, if Professor Tyndall had human belief and society, especially followed his example, for the sake both when one has nothing better to suggest of his own reputation and of the reputathan the old guesses of a philosophy which tion of the British Association. has more than once failed to satisfy even For, after all, the British Association, the intellectual aspirations of mankind. while it has survived ridicule, and no Particularly it must be questioned doubt worked its way into some real whether the position temporarily occu-function of usefulness in the promotion pied by Professor Tyndall was an appro- of science, is not without its ridiculous priate one for the ventilation of material-side. Like every other popular instituistic theories. The British Association tion, it has gathered to itself not only has outlived the early ridicule with which its annual meetings were greeted, and has gathered to itself the mass of scientific workers in the three countries. It is a representative institution, and its annual president ought to bear a representative character. His private religious opinions, or lack of religious opinions, are something with which the Association has nothing to do; and there is a degree of impertinence in the obtrusion on such an occasion of the "confession," whether of a new or an old faith. Men do not expect to have their religious convictions either helped or hindered at the British Association, and it is not becoming that they should have to complain of the president's address as disturbing their customary tone of religious thought. If they wished to go into fundamental questions of cosmical origin, and the right which the idea of a divine mind rather than mere force has to stand at the head of all things, they would prefer, or at least all sensible men would prefer, leisure of inquiry and of interrogation for such questions. The chair of the British Association, no less than the Christian pulpit, offers no opportunity of reply. It is a place of privilege, and

It

wise and able workers in science, but
many of those spurious theorists, and
vague intellectual fanatics, who are con-
stantly seeking an opportunity of pre-
senting themselves before the public.
has its crowds of hangers-on who know
little of science, and not much of any-
thing else, but who find its sections an
appropriate sphere for their windy decla-
mation on all subjects which can possibly
be brought within their scope. These
are the devotees of what is known as the
modern spirit, waiting with greedy ears
upon the utterances of its apostles and
prophets, and ready to catch at any sound
of scepticism as a breath of life. It is a
strange phenomenon, this enthusiasm of
unbelief, which is in the air of our time,
and the rush which so many minds are
making towards negations of some kind
or another. There is nothing apparently
so difficult for men as to stand alone,
and calmly inquire into the truth of great
questions. But few men, in point of
fact, are fitted by native strength of mind
or training to face such questions them-
selves. They are either scared by them,
and so revert to some blind form of faith,
or vaguely fascinated by them, and ready
to take up with the first daring solution