party. A schism is now inevitable, because the Evangelicals will insist that the Liberals shall either leave the Church or subscribe the new confession of faith. "An English Protestant," whose letter we published last week, imagines that the two parties could still live together as they have done for more than half a century; but he mistakes the temper of the time in which we live. Union was once comparatively easy, because both parties were free from zeal; but the tone of both has now become so heated as to make an easy-going tolerance impossible. The Liberals would, of course, tolerate the Evangelicals; but the Evangelicals will not tolerate the Liberals, and hence both will spend their time in quarrelling with each other if they be forced to live in the same house.

But we repeat that the disruption will be far from an unmixed evil. The quarrel shows, in the first place, how earnest are both the parties, how clean gone is their old indifferentism. That is an immense gain. We believe also that each will display greater zeal and a better

spirit after their separation. For a whole
generation they have been fighting so
constantly in presbyteries and consis-
tories that they have wasted much of
their energy in mutual hostilities. The
Liberals have put forth most of their
strength in defending their right to re-
main in the same Church with M. Guizot
and M. Bois. The titles of M. Coquerel's
published sermons show that his mind is
always running on his own equivocal
position, and that he has had time to do
little else than make it good. The strife
has also stirred up incredible bitterness.
But there will come a state of calm when
the two parties shall be separated, for
each will then find no need to defend
itself against the other; each will see
that it has a special work, and both will
recognize the presence of a
enemy. Hence we anticipate that the
Protestantism of France will be more
powerful after the coming disruption,
than it has been during the years in which
its teachers have been fighting among
themselves.

common

A GREAT deal of interest is attached to the | since, and are now from 8 to 11 1-2 ft. in cir4ast report of Dr. King, the superintendent of cumference, 6 ft. from the ground. The qual the Calcutta Botanic Gardens, for, besides the ity of the wood of some of the trees blown usual details as to the exchange of plants and down in the cyclones of 1864 and 1867 was seeds with the Royal Gardens at Kew, and found to be excellent. Such, then, are the other similar colonial and foreign establish- prospects of the successful acclimatization ments - which exchange, by the way, has not of one of the most valuable furniture-woods been a light affair, inasmuch as from April known: so valuable indeed is it in European 1873 to March 1874, 12,812 plants and 2,532 commerce, that about 40,000 tons are annually parcels of seeds were sent to various parts of imported into Great Britain from Honduras, the world—we have satisfactory accounts of Jamaica, and San Domingo. So far as the the cultivation of the mahogany-tree, the increase of the ipecacuanha-plants is conipecacuanha, and the Para rubber-tree. The cerned, the propagation by root and leafformer, as is well known, is a native of Cen-cuttings has been so successful that there is at tral America and the West Indies; but there present a stock of 63,000 living plants; are, as Dr. King tells us, a good many old whereas only four years since there were but mahogany-trees about Calcutta, which, how-twelve cuttings at the Cinchona Gardens, and ever, rarely if ever yield perfect seed, so that fresh plants have been obtained direct from their native country. He says, further, that "it has been abundantly proved that the tree will thrive in most parts of Bengal, and that the Indian-grown timber is valuable." There are fine mahogany-trees in the gardens at Saharunpore and Madras, and Dr. King doubts not that it will grow admirably in almost any part of India in situations free from frost, and where a little moisture can be secured in very dry weather. Of the few trees that were left in the Calcutta Botanic Gardens after the last cyclone in 1867, the mahoganies are by far the finest; they were planted about eight years

seven out of these twelve were afterwards accidentally destroyed. Then again, with regard to the most valuable of all the indiarubber-producing plants, namely, that of Para

the Hevea Brasiliensis-six plants of which Dr. King took with him from Kew on his return to India in November last, we are told that already a few plants have been raised from cuttings taken from these six plants, and before the lapse of another year Dr. King hopes "to be able to report a considerable increase." The advantages to be obtained by the successful introduction of these trees into India are many, for besides the great superiority of the rubber over that obtained from the

from the mouths of the Siberian rivers, and the consequence is a concentration of all the drift ice in place, which according to local circumstances favours or hinders navigation. Dr. Chavanne concludes by emphatically asserting that it is the duty of England, as the first of naval powers, to recognize the importance of Arctic research by despatching an expedition next spring. Some details are given by Herr Littrof respecting the crew of the Tegethoff. These came principally from the town of Fiume, on the Adriatic, and were hardiness, pluck, and cheerfulness; his experience having told him that northerners, though inhabiting a colder climate, are less able to adapt themselves to change of living than Dalmatians.

MR. JOHN HORNE, of the Botanic Gar-selected by Weyprecht on account of their den, Mauritius, who is now on a botanical expedition in the Seychelles, writing to Dr. Hooker, says that he has visited the islands of Silhouette, Praslin, and Félicité, searching them from the seashore to the tops of the highest hills, in Silhouette up to 2,200 ft., at which elevation pitcher-plants abound, hanging in immense clusters over every stone, bush, and tree. Flowers of these Nepenthes were obtained, and arrangements made for procuring a good supply of plants. When these materials come to hand it will be seen whether the Nepenthes of Silhouette is different from the N. wardii which grows in Mahè. The tops of these mountains where the pitchers grow have a perpetual moisture hanging over them, being almost constantly enveloped by mist and rain.

Nature.

GOTLAND, the largest and most important island belonging to Sweden, has a history well worthy of a chapter in the romance of trade. As far back as the eleventh century its commerce with the East, by way of Novgorod, was of great importance, and in 1158 Wisby, its chief, and indeed now its only, town, was declared a free city by the Emperor Lothair, England, France, Holland, Russia, Lubeck, and Rostock had warehouses there, and King Henry III. of England, by a letter dated 1237, granted the merchants of Gotland liberty to trade all over England free from duty. The valuable and yearly-recurring finds of Oriental coins and ornaments, as well as of Anglo

IN a characteristic article in the November number of the Mittheilungen, Dr. Petermann enlarges on the results of the Austro-Hunga-Saxon and German coins, testify to the former rian Polar Expedition. After alluding to the commercial intercourse between the East, heroic nature of the exploit, and comparing England, Denmark, and Germany, and this the leaders of the party to Columbus and island. The fall of Wisby is commonly Vasco de Gama, he turns with some inward attributed to its subjection by the Danes in satisfaction to his own writings on the sub- 1361, but, with greater justice, perhaps, to ject, and points out that ten years ago he took the discovery of the new passage to India by up the subject of Arctic exploration, and ex- way of the Cape of Good Hope in 1498. horted his countrymen to action; but, instead Wisby was restored to Sweden in 1645, but of following in the wake of numerous English until recent years its government has been expeditions up Baffin's Bay, he counselled very neglectful of its interests. The archithem to turn and explore systematically the tectural remains, spread over the entire island, comparatively new and unknown region be- are of great attraction and beauty. The intween Greenland and Nowaya Zemlya, and as habitants still glory in and cherish these a first trial advised the despatch of a steamer memorials of fallen greatness, and although along the east coast of Greenland. The cor- Gotland may never recover her former magrectness of his view, he urges, is now borne nificence and prosperity, there is every reason out by the importance of the discoveries made to expect an increasing development of her in the eastern quarter of this field of research. agricultural and commercial resources. The In an article which follows, Dr. Joseph province now numbers about 55,000 inhab Chavanne goes even further than Dr. Peter-itants, who, besides agricultural and pastomann himself, and makes out that the latter has always specially advocated the sea between Spitzbergen and Nowaya Zemlya in preference to the Smith Sound and the East Greenland routes. Dr. Chavanne also argues that the north-westerly drift of the Tegethoff is indisputably the work of the northern arm of the Gulf Stream. This arm, he contends, encounters the united stream which proceeds

ral pursuits, occupy themselves with coasting and foreign navigation, fisheries, lime-burning, stone-quarrying, &c. Wisby, as previously stated, is the only town, and the seat of the governor, and a bishopric; the population is about 6,300, of whom, according to the latest return, 82 are merchants or tradesmen, and 185 manufacturers and artisans. Academy.

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A PANTHEISTIC FANTASY, FROM THE FRENCH Of flower-talk flushing through the petals red

of his work upon the man who did make it is patent and unquestionable. This man was René Descartes, who, though by. many years Harvey's junior, died before

inasmuch as he did for the physiology of motion and sensation that which Harvey had done for the circulation of the blood, and opened up that road to the mechanical theory of these processes, which has been followed by all his successors.

THE first half of the seventeenth century is one of the great epochs of bio-him; and yet, in his short span of fiftylogical science. For though suggestions four years, took an undisputed place not and indications of the conceptions which only among the chiefs of philosophy, but took definite shape at that time are to be amongst the greatest and most original met with in works of earlier date, they of mathematicians; while, in my belief, are little more than the shadows which he is no less certainly entitled to the coming truths cast forward; men's rank of a great and original physiologist; knowledge was neither extensive enough, nor exact enough, to show them the solid body of fact which threw these shadows. But, in the seventeenth century, the idea that the physical processes of life are capable of being explained in the same way as other physical phenomena, and, therefore, that the living body is a mech-some would have us believe: but a man anism, was proved to be true for certain classes of vital actions; and, having thus taken firm root in irrefragable fact, this conception has not only successfully repelied every assault which has been made upon it, but has steadily grown in force and extent of application, until is is now the expressed or implied fundamental proposition of the whole doctrine of scientific physiology.

If we ask to whom mankind are indebted for this great service, the general voice will name William Harvey. For, by his discovery of the circulation of the blood in the higher animals, by his explanation of the nature of the mechanism by which that circulation is effected, and by his no less remarkable, though less known, investigation of the process of development, Harvey solidly laid the foundations of all those physical explanations of the functions of sustentation and reproduction which modern physiologists have achieved.

Descartes was no mere speculator, as

who knew of his own knowledge what was to be known of the facts of anatomy and physiology in his day. He was an unwearied dissector and observer; and, it is said, that on a visitor once asking to see his library, Descartes led him into a room set aside for dissections, and full of specimens under examination. "There," said he, “is my library.”

I anticipate a smile of incredulity when I thus champion Descartes' claim to be considered a physiologist of the first rank. I expect to be told that I have read into his works what I find there, and to be asked, Why is it that we are left to discover Descartes' deserts at this time of day, more than two centuries after his death? How is it that Descartes is utterly ignored in some of the latest works which treat expressly of the subject in which he is said to have been so great?

It is much easier to ask such questions than to answer them, especially if But the living body is not only sus- one desires to be on good terms with tained and reproduced: it adjusts itself one's contemporaries; but, if I must to external and internal changes; it give an answer, it is this: the growth of moves and feels. The attempt to reduce physical science is now so prodigiously the endless complexities of animal mo- rapid, that those who are actively ention and feeling to law and order is, at gaged in keeping up with the present, least, as important a part of the task of have much ado to find time to look at the physiologist as the elucidation of the past, and even grow into the habit of what are sometimes called the vegeta- neglecting it. But, natural as this retive processes. Harvey did not make sult may be, it is none the less detrithis attempt himself; but the influence mental. The intellect loses, for there is