side had received distinguishing names, the party of Dr. Bastian being termed heterogenists, and the opponents of his theory physiologists. The former were continually making new experiments, and the latter were continually showing that the proofs derived from those experiments would not hold water. He was ready to admit that Bastian had produced bacteria from infusions of turnip and cheese exposed to a temperature of 212° Fahrenheit; but he had already published experiments, undertaken by himself, which proved if the boiling of the liquids were made to occur under pressure, that on cooling no trace of living matter occurred in the liquids after standing even for months. Huizinger-who was a disciple of Bastian on this question-had experimented upon another mixture consisting of peptone, a substance prepared by the action of albumen on gastric juice, and another mixture intended to be more stable than cheese, which Dr. Bastian used. Instead of flasks with capillary necks, he employed porous porcelain plate as stoppers in his flasks, the object being to exclude all germinal matter and yet allow air to enter. He found that after boiling these infusions for ten minutes, and then allowing them to stand for two or three days, a plentiful crop of bacteria was always produced. The author had now submitted the mixtures mentioned by Professor Huizinger to the same test that he had applied to Dr. Bastian's mixtures-namely, boiling under pressure and he had found again that no bacteria was produced; and to confirm his observation he had added a drop of distilled water—which was well known to contain bacteria-to one of the infusions, and in a quarter of an hour a plentiful crop resulted, proving that the liquid was quite capable of supplying the nourishment necessary for bacteria, had they been generated. He was far from agreeing with those who looked upon the believers in spontaneous generation as scientific heretics, but he was compelled to say that, so far as his experiments had gone, spontaneous generation had not been proved.

Of all the papers read before the British Association this year, none were more important than that of Professor Ferrier, on the localization of the functions of the brain. He pointed towards the realization of a surmise which men of science had long cherished, though mistaken modes of verifying it had been from time to time attempted. Almost from the time when it was established that the brain, as a whole, is the organ of feeling, of thought, and of voluntary motion, it became manifestly probable that each of these functions has its especial seat in the nervous tissue, and that their partial operations might also be localized in a similar manner. On this question, however, the researches of anatomists were almost wholly fruitless. They showed that the brain consisted of two kinds of material-a grey substance, which was found spread over the surface of the hemispheres, and collected here and there into masses in the interior, and a white substance, fibrous in its character, which lined the grey matter of the hemispheres, and surrounded the masses within. A variety of evidence, partly experimental, partly derived from the actions of the lower animals, and partly from the observation of disease, proved that only the grey matter originated action, and that the function of the white fibres was to establish communication between different parts of the whole. Between nervous action and electricity there is a resemblance nearly approaching to identity, and the grey matter was early compared to a galvanic battery and the white to the conductors proceeding

from it. In the lower animals, as they rose in the scale of intelligence, the brain was found to become larger relatively to the bulk of the body, and also more complicated in structure; and an increased amount of superficial grey matter was gained by the surface being intersected by deep grooves, which marked out convolutions of corresponding prominence. In man the whole bulk of the brain, the complexity of its several parts, and the size and definite character of the convolutions reached their highest point; and in all these particulars, as a general rule, cultivated races and gifted individuals were believed to surpass savage races and the ordinary mass of mankind. At this point, however, inquiry was arrested; and a German anatomist, who devoted thirty years of his life to the dissection of human brains in the hope of throwing some light upon the functions of their several parts, committed suicide in his laboratory in despair at the fruitlessness of his researches. Dr. Gall in this country, and Spurzheim in Germany, attempted to find the solution of the problem in another way, by tracing out some relation between the shape and development of the brain, as exhibited by the shape and development of the head, and the varieties of individual capacity and character. They started with the assumption that clever men have not only fully-developed heads, but also fully-developed foreheads; and they placed the "intellectual qualities " in the front portion, the "moral qualities” in the middle portion, and the "animal propensities" towards the back of the head. Their mistakes and contradictions became notorious, however, and Lord Jeffrey's articles in the Edinburgh Review for the time extinguished its pretensions. A revival took place about five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, and the theory was again much discussed till it received its coup de grâce at the hands of Dr. Carpenter, who showed, in an elaborate essay-first, that the configuration of the outside of the skull bore no necessary relation to that of the brain; secondly, that in ascending the animal scale the first appearance of the hemispheres of the brain was as a rudiment of the anterior lobes, that the middle and posterior lobes were gradually superadded, and that the latter attained their full development only in man; so that the hypothesis that the anterior lobes were the seats of the intelligence and the posterior lobes of the animal propensities was one which could not be sustained; thirdly, that the phrenologists, in their professedly complete system, left out of account more than half of the grey matter that of the opposed surfaces of the two hemispheres, and that of the base of the brain. Dr. Carpenter then put forward his own view, which was that the masses of grey matter towards the base of the brain were the centres of sensation and motion, that the hemispheres were the organs of thought, and that in this capacity they did not act in isolated portions, but as a whole. This view was maintained by many ingenious arguments, and for a long time it commanded the general assent of physiologists. Of late years, however, much attention has been directed to the parts which have been found diseased after death in persons who have exhibited definite symptoms during life; and in this way evidence of the localization of function in different portions of the hemispheres has gradually been accumulated. M. Broca announced that, in a disorder called aphasia, or loss of the memory and power of utterance of words, a certain convolution of the left side was frequently affected; and Dr. Hughlings Jackson has been able on several occasions to predict from symptoms the precise situation of morbid action. Still, in many instances, the ordinary

relation has been wanting; and endeavours to extend the evidence by experiment were for a long time without result, probably in both cases because a local injury had produced extensive and general disturbance. Recently, however, Professor Ferrier, following up a clue afforded by some imperfect experiments of the German physiologists, Fritsch and Hitzig, succeeded in localizing the action of a stimulus in certain parts of the brain. His method of proceeding, as he described it to the British Association, was to place an animal under chloroform, to remove a portion of the skull and of the dura mater, or dense membrane, beneath it, and then to apply two electric conductors to the brain itself, or rather to the inner membranes which immediately cover it. In these experiments the Faradic or induced electric current had been employed, and it was found that if the current should exceed a certain strength general excitement or disturbance is produced. When, however, the current is very feeble, so that it may be presumed to flow only along the most direct path from conductor to conductor, and to influence only the portion of brain lying between them, it is found that the results are constant and definite, and that stimulation of the same part of the surface of a hemisphere produces always the same movement, not only in the same animal, but in all animals. Thus, when the conductors include one portion of brain, a front limb is moved in some determinate direction; when they include another, a hind limb is moved instead; and a great variety of actions may thus be called forth with absolute certainty, and the limbs of the unconscious animal may be played upon, so to speak, at the will of the operator. It seems that some light has already been thrown by these inquiries upon the conditions which produce epileptic and other convulsions; and, as far as can at present be determined, it is probable that Dr. Carpenter's view of the functions of the hemispheres will have to be modified or abandoned. As yet, however, it would be premature to form any definite conclusions, except that Dr. Ferrier has given to science a method of research which cannot fail to be of incalculable value, and which marks an æra in the progress of Physiology. It is almost sure that at no distant time this method will add enormously to our knowledge of the diseases of the nervous system, at once the most obscure and the most afflicting of the evils incident to humanity.

Later on in the year, Dr. Carpenter made the researches of Dr. Ferrier the subject of the Sunday Lectures which he delivered in St. George's Hall. After describing the experiments, he deduced from them a confirmation of the doctrine that the cerebrum has a proper reflex action of its own, ordinarily called forth by sensorial changes; and that this action may be exerted unconsciously, so that a connected series of cerebral modifications may take place, of which only the results come within the sphere of consciousness as ideas or emotions. As to the question whether the centres of the movements of expression are also the "organs" of the ideas or emotions which call forth those movements, the lecturer expressed himself more doubtfully. Dr. Ferrier had ingeniously endeavoured to deduce from the phenomena of aphasia (or morbid loss of the memory and power of utterance of words) an indication that such may possibly be the case, but Dr. Carpenter said he himself considered that a much more careful analysis and classification of these phenomena would be required in order to justify such an inference, the general term " aphasia" having been used to include states which are really

very different from each other. Much, he said, was to be hoped from the continued prosecution of the experimental inquiries which Dr. Ferrier had so well begun, and from the constant and careful observation of the phenomena of disease.

The arrangements in progress for carrying out observations on the Transit of Venus, anticipated in 1874, gave rise to a somewhat angry controversy in the public press. Mr. Proctor agitated strongly for additional guarantees of accuracy, indeed for an almost total change of plan, and wrote in the Times, "It is a common mistake to suppose that a few good observations will satisfy all requirements. But every astronomer knows that the whole matter depends on securing many observations, for not otherwise can the probable error of the result be sufficiently reduced. It was thus that the observations made in 1769, though individually affected by considerable errors, gave, in Mr. Stone's able hands, a result affected by only a small probable error." Yet this confessedly satisfactory result (we quote from the Athenæum) was obtained from a much smaller number of observations than that which every reasonable precaution has been taken to secure in 1874. Two parties only were sent to the southern hemisphere in 1769; one of these, a French one, was unsuccessful through not reaching land before the transit came on; the other, our own, commanded by Captain Cook, made the only southern observations, which Mr. Stone long afterwards correctly reduced. Next year, on the other hand (not to speak now of other nations), three of the principal English stations (New Zealand, Kerguelen's Land, and the island of Rodriguez) are in the southern hemisphere; and we are to have other ones besides, subsidiary to these. Well, therefore, might the Edinburgh Reviewer write (in the Times of July 29), "I have been led by a somewhat careful consideration of the bearings of the case to a belief that, in all human probability, a good and entirely satisfactory result will be secured from the proceedings of the Astronomer-Royal."

In connexion with this subject we may mention M. Janssen's ingenious invention of a method for photographing the apparent contact of Venus with the edge of the sun. The photographic plate is in the form of a disc, fixed upon a plate which rotates upon an axis parallel to that of the telescope. Before it is placed another disc, forming a screen, in which is a small aperture, in order to limit the photographic action to the edge of the sun. The plate which carries the sensitive disc has 180 teeth, and is placed in communication with an escapement apparatus actuated by an electric current. At each second the pendulum of a clock interrupts the current, and the plate turns one tooth, so that at each second a fresh portion of the photographic plate is exposed. Thus, in as many seconds, 180 images of the sun and the planet can be obtained. When the series relating to the first contact is obtained, the plate is withdrawn and another substituted, which gives the second contact, and so on for the four.

Mr. St. George Mivart, the author of the "Genesis of Species," has attacked the Darwinian hypothesis of the descent of man in a treatise devoted to an examination of the structural resemblances and differences between man and apes. In his opening paragraphs Mr. Mivart speaks of the frequent injustice of popular awards, and points out that the doctrine of evolution-i.e., that the various new species of animals and plants have manifested themselves through a purely natural process of

hereditary succession-is widely spoken of by the term Darwinism, just as America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, and Swammerdamm is forgotten in the term "Galvanism," while, as a matter of fact, evolution is far older than Mr. Darwin, whose hypothesis is really "the origin of species by natural selection." Again, the gorilla is popularly supposed to have been first made known to science by M. du Chaillu, and, if not the direct ancestor of man, is thought to be very closely related to that ancestor-the other side of the "gap" in fact. Dr. Thomas Savage was the discoverer of the gorilla, and Professor Wyman first described it in the United States, as Professor Owen did in this country.

Mr. Mivart is a redoubtable antagonist on the question of man's descent from the apes, and the arguments he brings forward in support of his position will not be readily set aside by his opponents. It is manifest, he says, that man, the ape, and the half-apes, cannot be arranged in a single ascending series, of which man is the term and culmination. By confining our attention to one organ, or to one set of parts, we may arrange the different forms in a more or less simple manner, but if we take all the organs into consideration, the cross relations and interdependencies become in the highest degree complex. Mr. Darwin has asserted, and his hypothesis has been widely accepted, that, looking to the general resemblances between man and apes, it is possible to conceive that the former may have descended from the latter. It may be acknowledged, for it is certainly true, that the anatomical features of man's body have more resemblance to those found in the latisternal group of Primates, than to those exhibited by any other section of that order. But what then? Does similarity of structure afford conclusive evidence of common origin ? On the contrary, human structural characteristics are shared by so many and such diverse forms, that it is impossible to arrange even groups of genera in a single ascending series from the Aye-aye to man, if all the resemblances are taken into account. If the number of wrist-bones is deemed a special mark of affinity between the Troglodytes and man, why not also between him and the Indris, the Diadem Lemur? If the arms are supposed to evidence descent from the Chimpanzee, why not look upon the legs as evidence of descent from the gibbons ? If the "bridging convolutions" in the Orang's brain help to sustain its claim to supremacy, what weight is to be attached to similar characteristics in the long-tailed, thumbless, Spider Monkeys? The tongue of the orang is more like a man's than is that of any other animal, but the gibbons have a liver and a stomach which resemble man's more than do those of any other animal. The orang and chimpanzee possess a liver approximating to that of man, but that of the gorilla is of a very degraded type. The ear lobule of the gorilla, however, makes him at least our cousin, but his tongue betrays his want of relationship. Schroeder, Van der Kolk, and Vrolik say that the lines of affinity existing between different Primates construct a network rather than a ladder, and turn which way we will there is always a network of difficulties when we attempt to account for existing structural characters through the influence of inheritance and "natural selection."

But if the above-mentioned facts tell against a belief in the origin of man, as descending from the apes by the accidental preservation in the struggle of life of minute and fortuitous structural variations, they do not tell against the evolution hypothesis, if we have reason to think that a law has been