The magnificent Joss House now in process of erection by the Chinese of London forms a striking ornament to Regent Street, standing as it does on the site of the old deserted Langham Chapel. It will, we imagine, be the only place dedicated to religious purposes which has been built during the last twenty years in the metropolis, and almost the only one in actual use. Although we cannot, of course, ourselves, as a Scientific nation, formally join in the worship of Buddha, we must all regard with sympathy and satisfaction the honours paid to that great Teacher by the very important section of our community, the Chinese day labourers and domestic servants, of whom it is said more than half a million have contributed to the erection and adornment of this Temple. Considering the impossibility of inducing Englishmen to undertake in these days the lower kinds of work, we should come altogether to a standstill were it not for the tens of thousands of industrious Chinese who have replenished our labour market. The statue of Buddha is a noble work of modern sculpture by Mr. Merino. The traditional pose of the crossed legs is slightly altered to bring them within the rules of scientific anatomy, and the Sage is obviously pondering those profound lessons of Pessimism (that it is a bad world we live in, and that we need not expect a better) which have justly secured for him the reverence of cultivated Europe.
An accident of the ordinary sort occurred last night to the new Magnetic train, which was at the moment passing under the Channel, about 10 miles from Dover. From messages sent by the portable electric machine along the wires the moment before the catastrophe took place, it would appear that the engineers have been again at fault in the construction of the roof of the tunnel, and that the sea was rushing in with such violence that little hopes were entertained of bringing the train to the next watertight compartment. The result justified these fears, for the whole compartment of the tunnel in which the train was stopped is to-day entirely full of water, and it must be assumed that the unfortunate passengers—numbering, it is supposed, about 800—have been drowned like so many rats in a trap. The accident is unfortunate for the proprietors of Submarine Tunnel Stock, and also for several Insurance Companies, as extensive repairs will be required; but Science teaches us to regard these occurrences with composure, as serving to check the increase of a superabundant population.
The Simian Educational Institute (on Frobel’s system), for members of the Ape family, continues to attract the strongest interest. In testing the educability of the Simian tribe we are solving one of the most important problems of Science, and hitherto everything seems to promise the triumphant success of the experiment. There are now among the pupils at the Institute three Chimpanzees, whose grandfathers and grandmothers have all been well-educated monkeys; so that the set of the brain of these young people is already marked towards progress and civilization. It is needless to observe that all the students are required to wash and dress themselves every morning in the becoming male and female habiliments provided by the taste of the Governors of the Institute. Great pains are also taken with their manners at meal times, and, to avoid temptation, nuts are not admitted at dessert. One of the young gentlemen (Joseph Macacus Silenus, Esq., generally known by his intimates as “Joe”) is said to exhibit extraordinary talents, and to be able to answer any question in elementary science by means of an alphabet and a system of knocks, which (in view of the yet unconquerable speechlessness of monkeys) has been accepted as the best substitute for language, having been formerly invented by an ingenious race of impostors named Mediums, who flourished in the obscurity of the Victorian age. The plan adopted in France, in deference to the advice of the great French naturalist, M. Houzeau, to employ the anthropoid apes as domestic servants, has proved, we are informed, altogether successful in several families. Madame Le Singe, a fine specimen of the Gorilla tribe, has acted for some months as confidential Nurse in the family of a distinguished Member of the Institute (M. Gobemouche), and is said to maintain discipline among her charges excellently well. It is an instructive spectacle to see Madame Le Singe walking on a fine day with the children, and pushing a perambulator in the Gardens of the Tuileries. The more ordinary employment found, however, for domestic Apes is that of cooks, when it is observed they occasionally call in the services of the household cat to assist them as kitchenmaid, especially when roast chestnuts form part of the entertainment.
The cheerful ceremony of opening the new “Incineration Hall” was performed an hour ago in Manchester by the Lord Doctor of Manchester, attended by the Mayor. It is a magnificent building, with a furnace capable of reducing 12 bodies at a time to ashes, which, after a certain period, will be used in the manufacture of water-filters for the drinking-fountains of the town. It is specially fortunate that the Hall can be employed at once, since the number of persons despatched by Euthanasia has been so great during the past week all over the country that the other Cremation establishments have proved inadequate to dispose of the corpses with sufficient rapidity.
An important addition has been made to that instructive place of public amusement, the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park. The ground formerly occupied by a great Dissenting College (long in ruins) has been devoted to a department destined to contain those species of animals which are rapidly dying out in Europe, and which, if not thus carefully preserved, must soon be lost altogether to Zoological science. Among these are the Ass, the Fox, the Dog, the Hare, the Pheasant, and Partridge. In this age of Science it is, of course, impossible to go on employing a creature like the Donkey, proverbial for its intellectual deficiency, and we have no regret that only two pair of animals of the species (both in the Regent’s Park collection) now survive in England, though a few are said to linger in Egypt. Connected with the dog (Canis Familiaris) there are so many traditional records of sagacity, having a certain scientific interest in connection with the form and size of its brain, that we should have been glad if a more complete collection of the varieties could have been preserved. The Foxhound, however, the Greyhound, Setter, and Pointer, seem all to have become extinct within about thirty years of the repeal of the Game Laws and the consequent cessation of held sports; and several of the more favoured kinds of dogs—Italian Greyhounds, Toy Terriers, Pomeranians, and Poodles—were, it is said, privately destroyed by hundreds by their owners, who disgracefully sought to withdraw them from the researches of physiologists. The remaining kinds have been perhaps rather recklessly used by vivisectors, whose ardour in the noble cause of science has caused them to experiment, on an average, on about 14,000 dogs apiece (an example originally set by the sainted Maurizio Schiff), and the result has been that we only find at present twelve animals surviving, of whom nine belong to the class Mongrel. One noble old Newfoundland, who would have greatly graced the collection, was, it is said, drowned by his owner last year under interesting circumstances. The dog was much devoted to his master (a celebrated physiologist), and especially to his boy, a child of six years old. One day the little fellow fell out of a boat, and sank for the last time, when the dog arrived, and with immense difficulty (the water being very deep and stormy) dived for him and brought him safe to shore. The animal itself was so nearly exhausted that its stertorous breathing and other symptoms suggested to the physiologist the scientific interest which would attach to watching it slowly drowning in a suitable vessel, where all the conditions of that death could be accurately investigated on so large a scale as that of a full sized dog. The learned gentleman accordingly, in obedience to these fine and fleeting suggestions of the intellect, drowned the animal in a tub in his physiological laboratory as soon as his son was sufficiently recovered to witness the instructive and entertaining spectacle. The dog, when withdrawn half dead for a moment from the water, having attempted to lick the boy’s face, the child was weak enough to implore his father to spare it; but the learned gentleman of course pointed out to the boy the folly of such a request, and the experiment was completed. We trust to see this young gentleman hereafter as sound and eminent a physiologist as his distinguished father.
After some five columns more of similar Intelligence, the Age of Science proceeds to give its readers a few Reviews of Books. The brevity of the remarks vouchsafed to these productions seems to indicate that no great importance is attached to Literature properly so called, but only to treatises on Physical Science.