At the Royal Society, April 12, the Rev. Professor O'Brien, in a paper "on a Popular View of certain Points in the Undulatory Theory of Light," restricted his illustration to a single topic, namely, the analogy of the mixture of colors to the mixture of sounds, having first explained generally what the undulatory theory of light is, and the composition of colors and sounds. At the meeting on the 19th, Mr. Stenhouse, in concluding a paper on the artificial production of organic bases, said he did not despair of producing artificially the natural alkaloids, and the more especially as, thirty years ago, we could not produce any alkaloids. Before the chair was vacated, Mr. Faraday submitted a powerful magnet which had been sent to him by a foreign philosopher; indeed, it was the strongest ever made. A good magnet, Mr. Faraday said, weighing 8 lbs., would support a weight of about 40 lbs. The magnet he exhibited had surprised him; it weighed only 1 lb., and it supported 26-1/2 lbs. This magnet, so beautifully made, was, we believe, constructed by M. Lozeman, on a new method, the result of the researches of M. Elias, both of Haarlem.
At another meeting of the same society, Dr. Mantell submitted a paper upon the Pelorosaurus, an undescribed, gigantic terrestrial reptile, of which an enormous arm-bone, or humerus, has recently been discovered in Sussex. It was found imbedded in sandstone, by Mr. Peter Fuller, of Lewes, at about twenty feet below the surface; it presents the usual mineralized condition of the fossil bones from the arneaceous strata of the Wealden. It is four and a half feet in length, and the circumference of its distal extremity is 32 inches! It has a medullary cavity 3 inches in diameter, which at once separates it from the Cetiosaurus and other supposed marine Saurians, while its form and proportions distinguish it from the humerus of the Iguanodon, Hylæosaurus, and Megalosaurus. It approaches most nearly to the Crocodilians, but possesses characters distinct from any known fossil genus. Its size is stupendous, far surpassing that of the corresponding bone even of the gigantic Iguanodon; and the name of Pelorosaurus (from [Greek: pelor], pelõr, monster) is, therefore, proposed for the genus, with the specific term Conybeari, in honor of the palæontological labors of the Dean of Llandaff. No bones have been found in such contiguity with this humerus as to render it certain that they belonged to the same gigantic reptile; but several very large caudal vertebræ of peculiar characters, collected from the same quarry, are probably referable to the Pelorosaurus; these, together with some distal caudals which belong to the same type, are figured and described by the author. Certain femora and other bones from the oolite of Oxfordshire, in the collection of the dean of Westminster, at Oxford, are mentioned as possessing characters more allied to those of the Pelorosaurus, or to some unknown terrestrial Saurian, than to the Cetiosaurus, with which they have been confounded. As to the magnitude of the animal to which the humerus belonged, Dr. Mantell, while disclaiming the idea of arriving at any certain conclusions from a single bone, stated that in a Gavial 18 feet long, the humerus is one foot in length, i.e., one-eighteenth part of the length of the animal, from the end, of the muzzle to the tip of the tail. According to these admeasurements the Pelorosaurus would be 81 feet long, and its body 20 feet in circumference. But if we assume the length and number of the vertebræ as the scale, we should have a reptile of relatively abbreviated proportions; even in this case, however, the original creature would far surpass in magnitude the most colossal of reptilian forms. A writer in the Athenæum, in speaking of the expense of marble and bronze statues, which limits the possession of works of high art to the wealthy, calls attention to the fact that lead possesses every requisite for the casting of statues which bronze possesses, while it excels that costly material in two very important particulars—cheapness, and fusibility at a low temperature. As evidence that it may be used for that purpose, he cites the fact that the finest piece of statuary in Edinburgh is composed of lead. This is the equestrian statue of Charles the Second, erected in the Parliament Square by the magistrates of Edinburgh in honor of the restoration of that monarch. This statue is such a fine work of art that it has deceived almost every one who has mentioned its composition. Thus, a late writer in giving an account of the statuary in Edinburgh describes it as consisting of "hollow bronze;" and in "Black's Guide through Edinburgh" it is spoken of as "the best specimen of bronze statuary which Edinburgh possesses." It is, however, composed of lead, and has already, without sensible deterioration, stood the test of 165 years' exposure to the weather, and it still seems as fresh as if erected but yesterday. Lead, therefore, appears from this instance to be sufficiently durable to induce artists to make trial of it in metallic castings, instead of bronze.
Intelligence from Mosul to the 4th ult. states that Mr. Layard and his party are still carrying on their excavations at Nimrood and Nineveh. A large number of copper vessels beautifully engraved have been found in the former; and from the latter a large assortment of fine slabs illustrative of the rule, conquests, domestic life, and arts of the ancient Assyrians, are daily coming to light, and are committed to paper by the artist, Mr. Cooper, one of the expedition. Mr Layard intends to make a trip to the Chaboor, the Chaboras of the Romans, and to visit Reish Aina, the Resen of Scripture, where he hopes to find a treasure of Assyrian remains.
The Literary Intelligence of the month is not of special interest. The first part of a new work by William Mure, entitled a "Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece," has just been published in London, and elicits warm commendation from the critical journals. The three volumes thus far published are devoted mainly to a discussion of Homer. Mr. Charles Merivale has also completed and published two volumes of his "History of the Romans under the Empire," which extend to the death of Julius Caesar.
Mrs. Sara Coleridge, widow of Henry Nelson, and daughter of S.T. Coleridge, has collected such of her father's supposed writings in the Watchman, Morning Post, and Courier, ranging between the years 1795 and 1817, as could with any certainty be identified for his, and, with such as he avowed by his signature, has published them in three duodecimo volumes, as Essays on his own Times, or a second series of The Friend. They are dedicated to Archdeacon Hare, and embody not a little of that system of thought, or method of regarding public affairs from the point of view of a liberal and enlarged Christianity, which is now ordinarily associated with what is called the German party in the English Church. The volumes are not only a valuable contribution to the history of a very remarkable man's mind, but also to the history of the most powerful influence now existing in the world—the Newspaper Press.
A more complete and elaborate work upon this subject, however, has appeared in the shape of two post octavo volumes by Mr. F. Knight Hunt, entitled The Fourth Estate. Mr. Hunt describes his book very fairly as contributions toward a history of newspapers, and of the liberty of the press, rather than as a complete historical view of either; but he has had a proper feeling for the literature of his subject, and has varied his entertaining anecdotes of the present race of newspaper men, with extremely curious and valuable notices of the past.
Of books on mixed social and political questions the most prominent has been a new volume of Mr. Laing's Observations on the Social and Political State of the European People, devoted to the last two years, from the momentous incidents of which Mr. Laing derives sundry warnings as to the instability of the future, the necessity of changes in education and political arrangements, and the certain ultimate predominance of material over imaginative influences in the progress of civilization, which his readers will very variously estimate, according to their habits of thinking; and Mr. Kay's collections of evidence as to the present Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe, the object of which is to show that the results of the primary schools, and of the system of dividing landed property, existing on the Continent, has been to produce a certain amount of mental cultivation and social comfort among the lower classes of the people abroad, to which the same classes in England can advance no claim whatever. The book contains a great deal of curious evidence in support of this opinion.
Of works strictly relating to modern history, the first volume of General Klapka's memoirs of the War in Hungary, and a military treatise by Colonel Cathcart on the Russian and German Campaigns of 1812 and 1813, may be mentioned as having authority. Klapka was a distinguished actor in the war he now illustrates by his narrative, and Colonel Cathcart saw eight general actions lost and won in which Napoleon commanded in person.
In the department of biography, the principal publications have been a greatly improved edition of Mr. Charles Knight's illustrations of the Life of Shakspeare, with the erasure of many fanciful, and the addition of many authentic details; a narrative of the Life of the Duke of Kent, by Mr. Erskine Neale, in which the somewhat troubled career of that very amiable prince is described with an evident desire to do justice to his character and virtues; and a Life of Dr. Andrew Combe, of Edinburgh, an active and benevolent physician, who led the way in that application of the truths and teachings of physiology to health and education, which has of late occupied so largely the attention of the best thinkers of the time, and whose career is described with affectionate enthusiasm by his brother Mr. George Combe. Not as a regular biography, but as a delightful assistance, not only to our better knowledge of the wittiest and one of the wisest of modern men, but to our temperate and just judgments of all men, we may mention the publication of the posthumous fragments of Sydney Smith's Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy.