It is expected that nearly one thousand members and associates of the British Association will cross the Atlantic in August next to take part in the meeting which is to be held this year at Montreal. All visitors to the Dominion know well that the Canadians understand the meaning of the word hospitality in its broadest sense, and they are, according to all reports, taking measures which will cause their British cousins to long remember the welcome which they will receive. The Association is taking good care that the members shall be seen at their best, and no new members will be allowed to join the party except under stringent conditions. This will very rightly prevent an influx of people who will take a sudden interest in scientific research for the sake of getting a cheap trip to Canada. The names of the representative men under whose care the various sections are placed, are sufficient guarantee that plenty of good work will be done. We may mention that special attention will be paid in section D, under Professor Ray Lankester, to the vexed question of the supposed connection between sun-spot periods and terrestrial phenomena. This question has long been a bone of contention among scientific men, one side bringing forward figures giving remarkable points of agreement, the other side disclaiming them with the assertion that statistics can be made to prove anything. Perhaps this meeting of the Association may guide us to a right solution of the problems involved.
‘The Mineral Wealth of Queensland,’ the title of a paper recently read before the Royal Colonial Institute by Mr C. S. Dicken, was full of matter which should be interesting to those who are seeking an outlay for their capital. Queensland is five and a half times larger in area than the United Kingdom. Its gold-fields are estimated to cover a space of seven thousand square miles, and it produces large quantities of silver, copper, and tin. According to the official Reports of geologists, coal crops out on the surface over some twenty-four thousand square miles. Hitherto, these vast resources have been comparatively untouched. Men and capital are required for their development; and as the climate is a healthy one, and the laws administered by capable and impartial men, there is every incentive to Europeans to turn their attention to the country.
A Bill now before the House of Commons is of extreme interest and importance to students of natural history, to artists, and many others. We allude to Mr Bryce’s ‘Access to Mountains (Scotland) Bill.’ In the preamble to this proposed measure, it is set forth that many large tracts of uncultivated mountain and moorland, which have in past times been covered with sheep and cattle, are now stocked with deer, and in many cases the rights which have hitherto been enjoyed by artists and others of visiting such lands, have been stopped by the owners. It is now proposed that it should be henceforward illegal for owners of such property to exclude any one who wishes to go there ‘for the purposes of recreation, or scientific or artistic study.’ At the same time the Bill clearly provides that any one committing any kind of poaching or damage is to be regarded as a trespasser, and dealt with accordingly. Parks and pleasure-grounds attached to a dwelling-house are of course excepted from the operation of the Act.
Mr Johnston’s book upon The River Congo is full of interesting particulars of his wanderings through that part of Africa and his meeting with Stanley. He certainly throws some new light upon the climate of the country; for whereas previous travellers have described it as fever-breeding, and full of terrors to the white man, Mr Johnston tells us that the climate of the interior table-land is as healthy as possible, and that any European taking ordinary precautions as to temperate eating and drinking, need never have a day’s illness there. This is perhaps a matter of personal constitution and physique. Because one man has had such a pleasant experience of African climate, it is no reason why every one else should expect the same exemption from illness. Still, we trust that Mr Johnston’s deductions may prove correct.
We are all of us now and then astonished by the report of some sale in which a fancy price, as it is called, has been paid for something of no intrinsic value, and very often of no artistic value either. Hundreds of pounds have been paid within recent years for a single teacup, provided that the happy purchaser can be sure that it is unique. Even thousands have been paid for a vase a few inches high simply because it was rare. The mania for collecting curiosities which prompts people to pay these large sums, is by no means confined to articles of virtu. Natural history claims a large army of such collectors. A single orchid was sold only the other day for a small fortune. At the time of the Cochin-China fowl mania, which John Leech helped to caricature out of existence, a single rooster fetched five hundred pounds. Only last month, in London, some enormous prices were obtained under the hammer for a collection of Lepidoptera, vulgarly known as moths and butterflies. Single specimens fetched three and four pounds apiece, and even more; whilst a common white butterfly, apparently having a particular value because it was caught in the Hebrides, was actually knocked down for the sum of thirteen guineas. It would be extremely interesting to ascertain the exact nature of the pleasurable sensations with which the owner of this butterfly doubtless regards his purchase. The export of a few white butterflies to the Hebrides might prove a profitable venture, if not overdone.
It may be that the age of big prices for little teacups and vases is on the eve of passing away, for it would seem that the secret processes by which the old workers could endow the china with a depth of colour and richness of tone impossible to achieve by more modern hands, have been rediscovered. It is reported that M. Lauth, the Director of the Sèvres state porcelain manufactory, has attained this result. Moreover, his discovery does not, like too many others, resolve itself into a mere laboratory experiment, but represents a manufacturing success. The results, too, can be looked for with certainty, whereas there is little doubt that the old workers had many a failure as well as successes.
The recent opinion of Mr Justice Stephen that cremation, if properly conducted, is not illegal, has again opened up a subject, which, although of a somewhat delicate, and to some people actually repulsive nature, is bound sooner or later to force its importance upon public attention. There is every reason to believe that public opinion is fast undergoing a very great change, as the subject becomes better understood. A like alteration of public feeling is also observable in other European countries. Sir Spencer Wells has lately published an account of the public cemetery in Rome, where, in the four months previous to his visit, no fewer than forty bodies had been submitted to the new form of sepulture. Dr Cameron’s Bill for the regulation of the practice of cremation will possibly come before the House of Commons before these lines appear in print, and we shall then have an opportunity of gauging the feeling for and against a practice which, after all, is not new, but very old indeed.
Lovers of nature will be glad to hear that otters are yet extant in the Thames; but unless possessed of that unfortunate instinct which causes the average Briton to kill and slay anything alive which is not actually a domestic animal, they will be disgusted to learn that these interesting creatures are no sooner discovered than they are shot and stuffed. In January 1880, an otter weighing twenty-six pounds was shot at Hampton Court; another shared the same fate at Thames-Ditton in January last; and one more has recently been slaughtered at Cookham.
We have recently had an opportunity of visiting the steep-grade tramway which is being laid, and is now on the point of being finished, on that same quiet Highgate Hill where tradition tells us Dick Whittington heard the bells prophesying his future good-fortune. This tramway is the first of its kind in this country, and will probably prove the pioneer line of many others in situations where the hilly nature of the ground forbids horse-traction. Briefly described, it consists of an endless cable, a steel rope kept constantly moving at the rate of six miles an hour by means of a stationary engine. This cable moves in a pipe buried in the ground midway between the rails; but the pipe has an opening above. Through this opening—a narrow slit about an inch wide—passes from the car a kind of grip-bar, which by the turn of a handle in the car is made to take hold of the travelling-rope below, or to release its hold, as required. This system has been in successful operation in San Francisco for many years, and there is no reason why it should not succeed in this country. The only question seems to be whether the traffic up and down Highgate Hill is sufficient to make the enterprise pay.
The profits of the International Fisheries Exhibition amount to fifteen thousand pounds. Two-thirds of this sum will be devoted to the benefit of the widows and orphans of fishermen, presumably through the instrumentality of some Society or Insurance Association to be formed for the purpose; three thousand pounds will go to form a Royal Fisheries Society for scientific work in connection with the harvest of the sea; whilst the balance remains in hand, at present unappropriated.