Every afternoon, when it is fine, the cricket-grounds, most of which are at Cowley, present a lively scene. The practising nets are occupied by batsmen, the sound of whose strokes on the much-enduring leather is like the tap, tap, tapping at the hollow beech-tree, or at the garden-gate, according to the taste of the listener. If you go in front of the nets, keep your eyes and ears open, or you may get knocked down by a stray ball—a danger kept constantly in your mind by frequent cries of 'Head!' which cause many to anticipate the bump in store for one. A man does not look to advantage at the moment when he becomes conscious of a descending cricket-ball in close proximity to the back of his head. In the centre of the ground a college match is being played; and in the tiny structure often graced by the title of Pavilion much beer is being consumed. At the further end, a couple of games of lawn-tennis are being briskly kept up. Altogether, the college ground is not a bad place in which to spend the afternoon, even though you may not be A1 at cricket.
As to the river, every visitor to Oxford in the summer term has seen that, and its varied and variegated load of eight-oars, four-oars, dingies, whiffs, skiffs, cockle-shells, pairs, punts, and coal-barges. For my own part I prefer the Cherwell and the cushioned punt. It is not a bad plan to get on shore in the Botanical Gardens, and stroll up the High as far as Cooper's, wherein to consume strawberry ices. I do not much affect the archery and croquet, nor yet the flower-shows; very good in their way, I daresay, but you can enjoy them at home, where a racket court, or even a skiff, is not always handy, and where skittles are apt to be voted low, and the secrets of cider-cup hidden from the butler's ken. So make your hay while the sun shines. And almost as fast as the skittles fall before the practised hurler, fly the nine weeks of the summer term, which comes to most men but three times in their lives; and if enjoyed again, must be so generally only at the expense of a disastrous 'plough,' a catastrophe which necessitates extra reading and perhaps a change of residence.
So the curtain falls upon the glories of the final tableau, the Commemoration, a tableau which has sadly wanted its proper amount of blue-fire lately. Even the Long Walk is beginning to fail as an avenue, and there are some gaps in the foliage, I think. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy: but even though he does work, and 'reads' when he ought, Jack need not be dull withal at dear old Oxford.
[THE MONTH:]
SCIENCE AND ARTS.
While the President of the Royal Society is travelling in America, studying, in company with Professor Asa Gray, the peculiar vegetation at the foot of the Rocky Mountains—while Dr Tyndall is solacing himself with a quiet holiday in his own house on the Bel Alp—while spectroscopists are rejoicing in the new 'grating' constructed by Professor Rutherford, which multiplies to an extraordinary degree their power of observation—while physicists and naturalists are betaking themselves to inland villages or to remote bays on the sea—while amateurs are looking at the one hundred and seven photographs of the Arctic expedition recently published by the Admiralty—while artists, engravers, and printers are at work on the voyage of the Challenger—while readers are acquainting themselves with Mr Darwin's new book, The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the same Species—while the British Association are reckoning up the profit and loss of their meeting at Plymouth—while the promoters of the Ordnance Survey of Palestine are appealing for funds to finish their work—while geographers and adventurers are soliciting means for the exploration of Africa—while Europe is trying to prevent immigration of the Colorado beetle—while Mr Varley is attempting by telephone to carry music from Her Majesty's Theatre to the 'other side of the water'—while the Treasury are considering whether they will ask parliament to vote three million pounds for the building of the much wanted new public offices—while Mr Berthollet is pointing out 'the possibility of producing temperatures really approaching three thousand degrees'—while Mr Rarchaert is shewing that his locomotive, combining the two essentials of adherence and flexibility, will travel safely round curves of two hundred and fifty mètres radius—while Mr Cornet, chief engineer of mines in Belgium, is endeavouring to prove that compressed air can be used in mines; and while the Social Science Council are settling their programme for amendment of law, repression of crime, promotion of education, improvement of health, furtherance of economy and trade, and diffusion of art—while all this is going on, science, art, and philosophy progress in a way that implies force within as well as without.
Where steam is employed, especially on board ship, it not unfrequently happens that a sudden occasion arises for exercise of the utmost power of the engines, and that to this gain extreme power for the short time required is of more importance than economy of coal. The method hitherto adopted to effect this object is to drive more air through the fire, or to throw a jet of steam into the chimney.
Mr Bertin, a French marine engineer, has proved that the best method is to throw jets of slightly compressed air into the base of the chimney by means of a centrifugal ventilator, or at higher pressure by employing a blowing-machine working with a piston. Under the transitory action of these jets of air the combustion in the furnace is doubled, and the ship, like a warrior in extremity, may make efforts impossible in ordinary circumstances. The increase in the consumption of coal is not more than twenty per cent.; and the method having been tried on board one of the national frigates, La Résolue, has proved so effectual, that its adoption is only a question of time. Mr Bertin has described his method and the principles on which it is based in a paper to be published in the Bulletin of the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale.
The same Society have just recognised the merits of an English chemist, Mr Walter Weldon, by conferring on him their Lavoisier medal—grande medaille d'honneur—for his discoveries and improvements in the art of manufacturing chlorine. Formerly all the manganese used in the process was wasted, and manganese became scarcer and dearer. Waste is an opprobrium in chemical operations. Mr Weldon shewed a way by which the manganese could be reoxydised over and over again indefinitely; and at once an offensive part of the process was got rid of, and the price of chlorine fell thirty per cent. This of course cheapened all the articles, and they are numerous, in the production of which chlorine plays a part; and Mr Weldon's method has been adopted wherever chemicals are manufactured on a great scale. Mr Lamy, who drew up the statement of the grounds on which the medal was awarded, said: 'If we have not the good fortune to designate a Frenchman for your suffrages, at least we have the satisfaction to present an inventor belonging to a friendly nation, the first among all for the development and the potency of its chemical industry.'
If this be true, there is a chance for another ingenious chemist for the Council General of Guadeloupe offer a reward of one hundred thousand francs to the inventor of a new method of extracting the juice of the sugar-cane, or of manufacturing sugar.